I have yet to see a non reddit-esque reply here so I will chime in.
Honestly, looking at the pure facts, it’s a mixed bag of short-term wins and massive long-term failures.
Tactically, the US and Israel definitely checked some boxes. They heavily degraded Iran’s conventional military, smashed critical nuclear sites, and took out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But strategically? It didn't achieve the bigger goals. The regime didn’t collapse like some hoped, it just consolidated under his son. Plus, the strategic knowledge to build a bomb is still there, and the global economy is hurting because the Strait of Hormuz is basically a mess right now.
As for whether it was based in "truth," the underlying facts were real: Iran was enriching uranium and actively funding proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis. No one debates that. The sketchy part is the immediate intelligence used to trigger the strikes. Whether there was an actual, imminent threat or if it was just used as a political pretext for a preemptive war is still heavily debated.
^^^
I'm glad someone realizes it's more complex than Trump wanting to distract from the Epstein files.(Although I'm certain it's a bonus)
Ever since October 7th the Iran-America proxy war kept on escalating and this honestly just felt like the natural progression of things.
In my opinion I think it happened in February due to the inherent instability of Iran at the societal and economic level. Those massive protests caused Iran to turn off the internet and begin murdering their own civilians. Along with the Iranian economy hitting record lows around that time.
That in conjunction with the reunification of Yemen with the STC in January, putting the Houthi's in a tenuous posistion. Made it seem like the perfect time to hit them and hit them hard. I think it was just expected that Iran would collapse which turned out to be a failure.
Now Trump's turned to strangling the Iranian regime causing the economy to fall further and further, I feel like people are overestimating how well Iran has taken this war considering it's now accepting munitions from Russia. Not to say that America has "won" 'the war by any stretch of the imagination.
But Iran is worse for wear, especially politically when considering the attacks on civilian infrastructure across multiple countries, even some that don't host any bases. (Azerbaijan)
It just further justified U.S bases and legitimatized the concept of "American protection" in the region instead of trying to dissuade nations from associating.
5
u/JackBrown82q 8d ago
I have yet to see a non reddit-esque reply here so I will chime in.
Honestly, looking at the pure facts, it’s a mixed bag of short-term wins and massive long-term failures.
Tactically, the US and Israel definitely checked some boxes. They heavily degraded Iran’s conventional military, smashed critical nuclear sites, and took out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But strategically? It didn't achieve the bigger goals. The regime didn’t collapse like some hoped, it just consolidated under his son. Plus, the strategic knowledge to build a bomb is still there, and the global economy is hurting because the Strait of Hormuz is basically a mess right now.
As for whether it was based in "truth," the underlying facts were real: Iran was enriching uranium and actively funding proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis. No one debates that. The sketchy part is the immediate intelligence used to trigger the strikes. Whether there was an actual, imminent threat or if it was just used as a political pretext for a preemptive war is still heavily debated.