Champion of Truth
Trump told Iranians to surrender, but there was no one to surrender to. There were no revolutionary forces or US troops on the ground.
The US cut off their Farsi service before attacking Iran and telling their people to rise up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGb-u1XMl90
Israel sees Iran as an existential threat and is happy to see Iran greatly weakened so Israel can have some temporary breathing room.
This doesn’t match American interests. Iran is not the same level of threat to the United States. Using blood, treasure, and munitions to temporarily weaken Iran is a large net bad for the US. This war is only worth it for the US if Iran gets a friendlier regime or has a long term change in behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCkwFvuRvM0
W Bush focusing on fighting insurgencies while China was rising, led to the US not having the military industrial base and stockpiles of certain munitions. If the US uses too many munitions fighting Iran, it will be greatly weakened for a fight against China. This also weakens US deterrence against China.
However, if Iran is in too much chaos to pump oil, or if it is friendly enough with the US that in the event of a China-US war it would not sell oil to China, that would be a huge advantage in starving China of oil in the event of a war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupwKXGd54g
It seems that Trump got overconfident from the military’s dazzling success in Venezuela. That, combined with Trump gutting the bureaucracy that actually knew a lot about Iran, led to a war against Iran that’s harder to win than Trump expected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgHH_y8tceI
The US didn’t seem ready to defend against Iranian drones against their own bases. There are cheaper ways to defend against such drones learned in the Ukraine war, but the US didn’t apply those learnings even though they chose the time of the war.
Trump went to war without enough of certain munitions and then blames and insults Ukraine while also wishing Ukraine would share their knowledge in defending against drones. Incompetency.
Trump’s special military operation in Iran is getting bogged down. The US is destroying a lot of stuff, but don’t appear anywhere near to achieving actual serious goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbkLWSOskV0
History is full of stories of powerful countries losing a war in a foreign land partially because they think they’ll have more local support then they actually get.
Iran decentralized its military and designated 5 backups for all leaders, so it was prepared for strikes on military leadership. Iran’s military may be resilient and prepared for a long war.
The Trump administration seemed to think that the Iranian regime would implode and the war would be over in days. We can see this in their shifting explanations to the war and Trump’s comments about his original expectations.
If the Iranian regime and military are really resilient and not close to breaking, then the United States is losing this war. It doesn’t matter how many military successes the US and Israel have, the objectives of the war are either regime change or a long-term weakening of Iran. Without Iranian leaders agreeing not to rebuild their offensive capabilities, they will rebuild them and the war will have been a failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3TVxgh-R-c
F-35 scored its first air-to-air victory against a piloted jet. They have shot down drones and cruise missiles before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5im1oct6Cw
Looks like a Kuwaiti pilot, trying to defend against Iranian drones that were hitting his country, mistaked three American planes for attacking drones and shot them down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSU7wSQl1-o
““Everything here feels inflated,” said Parker, who has been an architect for more than 35 years. “The net effect of this is to adversely impact what is the most important historic — the most identifiable historic — house in the entire United States. This is permanent, what it will do to the White House.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trumps-white-house-ballroom-too-010607626.html