The South left the Union in order to defend slavery and racial supremacy. The Southerners believed it was a scientific truth of the world that blacks were inferior and should be subservient. They didn’t lose these beliefs the moment they lost the war. After the Civil War, White Southerns responded to the loss by organizing in order to persecute, murder, beat, and instill fear in, blacks, in order to keep them down and maintain racial supremacy. White Southerners maintained white supremacy through terrorism.
The Klu Klux Klan, the KKK, started as a kind of social club, almost like a college fraternity. They made up silly-sounding titles and wore fun costumes. The people in it were racists, but they didn’t set up the organization to do racist things.
The Klan became a political organization when members perceived the North’s rule as too aggressive in potentially arming blacks in state militias and giving them the ability to vote.
The US allowing Iran to ship its oil while Iran stops most others, except those it gives permission, is a sign of weakness from the US. Trump isn’t willing to face the pain of much higher oil prices. If Trump isn’t willing to take such pain, then why would Iran agree to any significant demands?
The 2k or so marines sailing toward Iran from the Pacific, leaving two weeks after the war started for some reason, are not numerous enough to take and hold contested land, like Kharg Island, without heavy casualties. They may be able to make a beachhead in the province of Baluchestan where: the land is further away from the Strait of Hormuz, further away from Tehran, the US has better air supremacy, a landing would be surrounded by open lands where an Iranian attack could be easily seen, and the locals may be sympathetic because they are a different ethnic group and religion than the Persians and already have separatist rebels.
Much of America is enthralled by a demagogue who never had policy competency or decent character, and who has staffed his administration with many unqualified people and some who previously pretended like they stood for something but are now sycophantic enablers.
Ships are turning toward Iranian islands, checking in with Iran, and then moving on if they are one of the few allowed ships. Iran controls the Strait.
An F-35 may have been hit by an Iranian anti-air missile. The plane and pilot survived, making it safely to a base in the Middle East. Stealth makes the F-35 harder to detect and hit, but not invisible. If a video given by Iran purporting to be the F-35 getting hit is real, then it looks like a smaller payload delivered by a relatively short-ranged infrared or electro-optically guided weapon, or even a shoulder fired missile. If a radar guided weapon targeted it, the plane would sense it and the pilot would be trying to avoid it. And if larger, longer-range weapons hit it, the plane would not have survived that size of payload.
Regime change wars have never been successful from the air with conventional weapons. Administrations get wooed by the ability to strike targets with precision from afar, and forget that blowing a bunch of stuff up and killing important people doesn’t end a regime’s ability to suppress its people or fight back.
Ukraine’s drone killers are much cheaper than many US interceptors, and the US and Gulf countries are running out of such interceptors, so want these cheaper Ukranian drone killers to defend against Iranian drones.