Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Israel previously destroyed Iranian mixers needed to make medium range ballistic missiles. This was supposed to keep production offline for at least a year, but the Chinese gave Iran the equipment needed to rebuild the program. Iran decided to build way more of these missiles than before. These are a huge threat to Israel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=donq0zCqf8Y
Killed Iranian leader, Khamenei, wanted to be America’s enemy. He even admitted that he thought his revolution needed enmity with the US.
Usually, when violence ends an authoritarian regime, it results in a new authoritarian government.
If Iranians think the US is arming sectarian factions in order to break up Iran, even Iranians who are against the regime may join with the regime to defeat the US encouraging sectarian rebellions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=108s8U65ZH0
Prediction markets are for some reason regulated as investments, when really they are gambling. They are prone to manipulation–not just insider trading, but someone can pay a person to throw a dildo in a basketball game and then bet that someone will throw a dildo in a basketball game; someone can bet that a certain guy will get punched in the face, and then go punch that guy in the face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXpR9bsEVqE
The problem wasn’t that Trump didn’t evacuate Americans from the area in advance, that would cause a panic and give a tell that we were attacking. The problem is that we didn’t have a plan to get them out at all! That makes it seem like the administration did not expect Iran’s reaction even though a large and deadly reaction should be expected when we are trying to eliminate their regime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=givlddFLYv8
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.