re: WSJ: Trump thought opening Hormuz Straight was imminent, Iran had other plans

Iranian drones have a range up to 2k miles. They can come from anywhere.

I swear some of you have never looked at a map. Iran is a huge mountainous country. It's the size of western Europe.

"Trump needs to take off the gloves." What the frick does this even mean?

We bombed the shite out of them for 7 weeks and here we are.

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Yeah, and this is where the outrage over NATO gets strangely selective. We hear endlessly about allies “free-riding” on American power, but somehow that same standard disappears in the Gulf. We spend enormous amounts of money guaranteeing the security of countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE, maintain forces and bases throughout the region, and repeatedly put American troops and assets at risk protecting their trade and energy infrastructure. In return we get to pay rent on a few bases and commercial relationships. Yet Trump keeps treating these governments like indispensable partners while complaining that Europeans are taking advantage of us. If burden-sharing is really the principle, it ought to apply in the Middle East too.

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That and the fact that most of us have never been to that part of the world and have no desire to. The U.S. is bankrupting itself with non stop wars. The Middle East is a nonstop war zone and has been for a very long time.

Did we lose?

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US just agreed to sell 5K interceptors to ME countries, stop believing the bullshite and even worse repeating it.

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This thing ain't over with yet.

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Trump needs to take the gloves off.

Announce Tehran is going to be leveled in 24 hours and civilians should get the frick out.

Monitor where the government officials go.

Attack those locations instead.

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The problem is when the Iranians do the same to Tel Aviv and Riyadh. They clearly have missiles stored in mountains we’ve not gotten to yet.

Hey I'm trying to be nice to the a-hole

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Trump needs to take off the gloves...

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This is the tough guy talk these guys use to sound tough. Another is from the top rope...

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capturing dust

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I thought this was going to be the catalyst to bring down Obama and the Cabal?

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Joe Kent was saying the goal of "capturing dust" is almost intended to be a whack-a-mole situation to justify constant intervention.

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It's also a scenario where Iran is incentivized to overstate its capabilities in order to force the US and Israel to act. They can perpetually dangle the nuclear carrot too as something they could potentially give up in exchange for something they want immediately. The entire game has been about leverage and that is the focal point of Iranian foreign policy, which is to do something in order to gain leverage on rivals for some end and then give it up. They've done it repeatedly, and when that leverage tries to wriggle itself out of the power dynamic, as Assad tried to in Syria, the Iranians are fine with giving it up.

The US has the advantage in the 'big' things, technology, money, weapons, but US foreign policy isn't oriented around investing time, money and energy into something with the purpose of giving it up at a later point. After all this, Iran will continue to operate this way, and I think it is a central dynamic to how the Shia in particular execute their foreign policy. It isn't all that much different from how criminal organizations work, and I expect that anything that is in US interest will continue to be leveraged the same way.

No one remembers this but Iran before COVID was attempting to make in-roads with the South American drug trade, effectively doing the Iran-Contra scandal but without the US as middlemen. Given US security interests and de-coupling from China also involve controlling the cartels in Central and South America and also controlling mineral rights, I do think that the Iranians will absolutely try to expend some efforts continuing cultivating those links. Here is an article about Hezbollah in Latin America from the Rand Institute, LINK

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It didn't work. They won. We lost. Now it's time to go home. Trump knows it. Everyone in the world knows it.

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I’m good with going home. I think Israel duped DJT into this war anyways.

I also think Iran is going to bluff about a deal while holding out until the mid terms hoping Trump loses Congress.

My bigger question is could Trump be waiting until November to put boots on the ground (whether R’s win or lose the mid terms).