Iran aftermath

[Jerry]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

 

[Jokerman]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

Yeah, and it's total devastation no matter what tubby says with his bs partial leaked report. Wrong again.

 

[Barry]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

Personally, I did not see much risk with US bombing those sites under the premise that no one is going to come to the aid of Iran. Many disagreed with me, citing allies of NK, China, USSR, & Turkey. I just didn't see that and used the term 'the juice isn't worth the squeeze' for those countries.

 

[LudicrousSpeedGO!]

I was fairly confident that it wouldn't get too messy. Israel cleared the path and we took away Iran's big prize in the short term. Iran will go back to the long game for now. I am more curious about the long-term implications in the middle east and if Iran tries to get too frisky in terms of terror cell efforts.

 

[Sherriff Coffee]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

agreed. I don't think we will ever be able to look at Iran as a mountain we climb where we plant a flag at the top and walk down. It is more like an ongoing process. Iran will never be "over" but an ongoing pain in the *** until there is significant regeme change.

 

[bdroc]

agreed. I don't think we will ever be able to look at Iran as a mountain we climb where we plant a flag at the top and walk down. It is more like an ongoing process. Iran will never be "over" but an ongoing pain in the *** until there is significant regeme change.

Yep. The mullahs aren't going to go away quietly. Hopefully we slowed them down a bit.

 

[Midnighter]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

Thinking the Iranians are ‘done’ escalating this just because they didn’t immediately retaliate big is a mistake - they are not a forgiving regime and are playing a much longer game than Trump (Israelis know this which is why they’re anxious to keep the pressure on until there is a regime change - but, they can’t as long as Trump threatens to withhold weapons/support) They likely have hidden processing facilities and still have most if not all of their soon to be weapons grade uranium. They just ceased working with the UN nuclear energy inspectors too. We shall see but I suspect Iran isn’t finished…

 

[bdroc]

Thinking the Iranians are ‘done’ escalating this just because they didn’t immediately retaliate big is a mistake - they are not a forgiving regime and are playing a much longer game than Trump (Israelis know this which is why they’re anxious to keep the pressure on until there is a regime change - but, they can’t as long as Trump threatens to withhold weapons/support) They likely have hidden processing facilities and still have most if not all of their soon to be weapons grade uranium. They just ceased working with the UN nuclear energy inspectors too. We shall see but I suspect Iran isn’t finished…

I agree that Iran won't quit and that their nuclear capability hasn't been 100% eliminated. They still took a beating and it will take time to regroup. My guess is the setback is significantly more than a couple of months.

 

[Jerry]

Thinking the Iranians are ‘done’ escalating this just because they didn’t immediately retaliate big is a mistake - they are not a forgiving regime and are playing a much longer game than Trump (Israelis know this which is why they’re anxious to keep the pressure on until there is a regime change - but, they can’t as long as Trump threatens to withhold weapons/support) They likely have hidden processing facilities and still have most if not all of their soon to be weapons grade uranium. They just ceased working with the UN nuclear energy inspectors too. We shall see but I suspect Iran isn’t finished…

I agree that Iran won't quit and that their nuclear capability hasn't been 100% eliminated. They still took a beating and it will take time to regroup. My guess is the setback is significantly more than a couple of months.

I think there's a pretty broad consensus now that the Iranian program has been at least "severely damaged." Even the Iranian Foreign Minister admitted this. The setback should apparently not be measured in weeks but more likely in years.

The lack of confirmed information about the whereabouts or continued existence of Iran's stores of enriched uranium is a concern, but you need centrifuges...and lots of them...to enrich uranium and it's difficult to believe that Iran any longer has that many operable.

The early negative DIA assessment, which was clearly leaked to take the shine off the apparent success of the military strikes, was from the beginning reported to be "low-confidence" which equates in intel-speak to not much better than guesswork. In addition, a variety of subsequent assessments are at odds with the initial DIA report.

I agree that we should be cautious about premature declarations of victory, but it does seem like a clear win in the short- and medium-terms, which is a pretty good outcome given the risks involved and the various ways that things could have gone sideways.

 

[bdroc]

I think there's a pretty broad consensus now that the Iranian program has been at least "severely damaged." Even the Iranian Foreign Minister admitted this. The setback should apparently not be measured in weeks but more likely in years.

The lack of confirmed information about the whereabouts or continued existence of Iran's stores of enriched uranium is a concern, but you need centrifuges...and lots of them...to enrich uranium and it's difficult to believe that Iran any longer has that many operable.

The early negative DIA assessment, which was clearly leaked to take the shine off the apparent success of the military strikes, was from the beginning reported to be "low-confidence" which equates in intel-speak to not much better than guesswork. In addition, a variety of subsequent assessments are at odds with the initial DIA report.

I agree that we should be cautious about premature declarations of victory, but it does seem like a clear win in the short- and medium-terms, which is a pretty good outcome given the risks involved and the various ways that things could have gone sideways.

My guess is that they still have some 60% enriched uranium but I have no idea how much. I'm sure they also have centrifuges but half of them were probably destroyed. They also have more scientists to replace those that were killed. They're not dead and buried but they took some big losses.

 

[Jokerman]

I agree that Iran won't quit and that their nuclear capability hasn't been 100% eliminated. They still took a beating and it will take time to regroup. My guess is the setback is significantly more than a couple of months.

It will take them years to clean up that mess, and more years to rebuild. I don't believe they got the uranium out. Hell, their top people were still living in their same residences while knowing Israel had them as prime targets. I don't believe they thought Trump would do what he did, nor, have the capability to do so.

 

[Steve G]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

what this calls to mind is all the other scary boogey men that have been sold to the American public to stoke fear and justify excess defense spending. the missile gap, the tank gap, the bomber gap, the submarine gap, yellow cake uranium, aluminum tubes, chemical and biological weapons, ISIS coming to get you and your goat in the middle of the night, the Taiwan straight, North Korea.........all in service of keeping fear and insecurity running high to justify bloated defense spending. When all of the adversaries were actually confronted turned out they were paper tigers at best and did not have the capabilities that had been used to scare us. Iran? Turns out all the hype about their advanced military was so much hot air., As the congress pushes forward big old spending bill maybe the actual lesson here is cut some of the bloat out of defense spending?

 

[interrobang]

The fact this quickly disappeared from news cycles proves how good it went

 

[91Joe95]

Well I had some serious misgivings about our involvement in Israel's war on Iran and expressed them in a series of posts on the Rivals main board...after the mods abandoned ship and things became a free-for-all.

But I'm pleased as punch to think my worst fears were not realized. In fact, Trump's order to launch a single strike appears to have proven a masterstroke. It now seems pretty clear that part of the deal was a message to Israel that, look, we're gonna do this one time on the condition that you call off the dogs immediately thereafter. And that's exactly what the Israelis did. They did need a forceful reminder from Trump in the form of a brutally direct phone call the morning after, but they got the message.

Meanwhile, the Iranians did an obviously choreographed "retaliation" that was careful not to cost any American lives. Basically, a white flag on their part.

I've voted for Trump three times, but I'm hardly an uncritical fan of the guy. However, he scored big in this instance and may have rewritten the entire script on our long history of Middle East misadventures. If it were Biden or whoever was pulling Biden's strings, the media would be spending weeks touting his senile genius. But because it's Trump, the whole thing becomes ancient history within three days.

Still, it was a pretty amazing feat on his part. No quagmire. One and done. Get in and get out. And show both the Iranians and Israelis who's boss in the process. Well done, Mr. President.

For now, everyone's scared of the US under Trump's leadership, but the real problems start up again once Trump leaves office. Unfortunately you have a lot of powerful military interests still lurking around waiting for their moment to start sowing chaos again. It's nice that we have this 3+ year reprieve, and an opportunity to spread more peaceful outcomes, but the next president needs to remember the lessons Trump has shown. There are still big swaths of the state department, intelligence agencies, and regular senators and representatives that need to cleaned out. This is a 12 year plan minimum to remake the ethos of the government. On the bright side it has finally started.

 

[91Joe95]

what this calls to mind is all the other scary boogey men that have been sold to the American public to stoke fear and justify excess defense spending. the missile gap, the tank gap, the bomber gap, the submarine gap, yellow cake uranium, aluminum tubes, chemical and biological weapons, ISIS coming to get you and your goat in the middle of the night, the Taiwan straight, North Korea.........all in service of keeping fear and insecurity running high to justify bloated defense spending. When all of the adversaries were actually confronted turned out they were paper tigers at best and did not have the capabilities that had been used to scare us. Iran? Turns out all the hype about their advanced military was so much hot air., As the congress pushes forward big old spending bill maybe the actual lesson here is cut some of the bloat out of defense spending?

I'd love to a ton of the 800-900 military bases around the world shut down. Threaten to close US bases, and then when there is the predictable revolt, offer to shut bases around the world down and bolster US bases, especially near the borders where they belong.

One of our security guys, who is also in the national guard, just got back from Kenya. Kenya! WTF is the US doing in Kenya?!? Other than being targets and spending a ton of money.

 

[bdroc]

what this calls to mind is all the other scary boogey men that have been sold to the American public to stoke fear and justify excess defense spending. the missile gap, the tank gap, the bomber gap, the submarine gap, yellow cake uranium, aluminum tubes, chemical and biological weapons, ISIS coming to get you and your goat in the middle of the night, the Taiwan straight, North Korea.........all in service of keeping fear and insecurity running high to justify bloated defense spending. When all of the adversaries were actually confronted turned out they were paper tigers at best and did not have the capabilities that had been used to scare us. Iran? Turns out all the hype about their advanced military was so much hot air., As the congress pushes forward big old spending bill maybe the actual lesson here is cut some of the bloat out of defense spending?

What would your spending bill look like? Were you spending a few hundred $billion on Ukraine & Israel?

 

[Steve G]

What would your spending bill look like? Were you spending a few hundred $billion on Ukraine & Israel?

if there is not a major chunk cut from defense all the rest is just rounding errors and will not impact defect or debt to any significant degree

 

[bdroc]

if there is not a major chunk cut from defense all the rest is just rounding errors and will not impact defect or debt to any significant degree

Answer the question please

 

[PAstr]

I am no fan of President Trump. There’s no way I could possibly vote for the guy. I had to explain to the folks officiating at the polling place that I wished to spoil my presidential vote…..intentionally left blank.

Having said that, I’m rooting for President Trump now because he is in fact our president. While I have zero interest in another forever war, I think the president made the right coll to take advantage of a weakened Iranian air defense system and cause major damage to their nuclear enrichment program.

What is and will be difficult to stomach is the right wing folks saying “we obliterated everything…….complete success!”
Followed by the left saying “they must have already taken some of the enriched stuff elsewhere!”

At this point, nobody knows exactly how effective it was. It looked to be good to me, but NEITHER side should be making the comments they are making. In my view, it was the right decision for a number of reasons, but the loud mouths on both sides will be hard to take.

 

[Dailybuck777]

I saw something about a US intelligence assessment that I can't link to now that not all of Fordow was destroyed and that Iran could make a bomb in 1 to 2 years.