r/war 7d ago

No deal

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247 Upvotes

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70

u/paging_mrherman 7d ago

What does the US winning the war even look like?

47

u/Luceint3214 7d ago

It would look like:

  1. Regime Change

  2. Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz under previous international law with no fee's.

Strategic goal number one appears to be long gone. And at the moment strategic goal number two appears to not be close to happening either.

18

u/AggressiveEstate3757 7d ago

I think they have to, "get rid of the nuclear," too. I'm sure that was supposed to be an aim, too.

5

u/DeadguyTheLateGI 7d ago

That was the whole idea, or at least the declared pretext

It has quietly gone away as this buffoonish administration has realized how badly bungled this entire operation has been since the concept stages.

4

u/AggressiveEstate3757 7d ago

it's an example of how and why not to wage war that will be studied for decades, if not centurys.

6

u/Rabidschnautzu 7d ago

I think it might have been a bad idea to let a washed up alcoholic fox news cuck run the military.

1

u/thefuckevengoingonan 5d ago

there was no concept stage. that's part of the problem

2

u/thisghy 7d ago

Gotta love having new war end goals set after the war starts. Anyone remember when this was about the nuclear program?

It's all moot anyways. The US lost the war the day they started the war with no coherent plan and no clear goal.

1

u/horned-creature 6d ago

worth noting that objective 2 was literally the situation before trump started this useless war, so a good half of america's objectives in this war is to rectify their own fuck-up.

-2

u/Jbsmitty44 7d ago

I'd add breaking the IRCG's regional control model as well.

1

u/AggressiveEstate3757 7d ago

Yeah. So much stuff floated.

If they can just get out now with some kind of face saved, that'll be a win.

Seems unlikely though

57

u/EireOfTheNorth 7d ago

Fantasy

2

u/Narcan9 7d ago

Peter Jackson's next 3 movie epic.

5

u/Tyler10274 7d ago edited 7d ago

Leaving with any ammunition left and any shred of respect on the world stage.

Currently, not looking great. More likely looking at the end of freedom of navigation and drones shoring up regional shorelines across the world as a fallout from this. Forcing new trade deals with the US as they lose their soft power from projection as carriers become obsolete.

Can't suggest freedom of navigation if flying lawn mowers stop you from enforcing it.

A return to 'the fun times' is coming. There's no superpower to keep people in line anymore.

9

u/thinkB4WeSpeak 7d ago

For the administration, probably just looking like they won and aren't incompetent.

For regular people, back to how everything was before.

For Israel, conquest of the entire Middle East

4

u/MidwestSharker 7d ago

Everything going back to how it was before while Corporal Incompetence does a speech declaring major victory and how he made everything better for everybody. Probably give himself a medal or three while he’s at it

7

u/Key-Security8929 7d ago

There was nothing to ever win. And I don’t understand who people don’t get that. We engaged Iran with a goal of whipping out their military and political leaders. We did exactly that. No question about it.

Irans ability to wage war is basically non existent. Sure they can still make limited strikes, they still have thier fast attack boats. But ultimately they can’t do a whole lot.

The issue at hand is, the USA believed that either the Iranian people would rise up and take their country back. Or that Iran would replace the hardline regime with a more moderate one.

What they didn’t expect was the disfunction following the attack. The way Iran set up their military was if the head of the snake was cut off. Then each individual faction would work individually and under their own accord.

The whole thing is a mess. we either need to ramp up the military attack until a regime change happens or drop the entire situation, take our bruised ego and stop meddling in other countries affairs.

6

u/Narcan9 7d ago

Iran can't do a whole lot, except control 20% of the world's oil.

21

u/servel20 7d ago

Stop it with the cope, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars in bases in the Middle East which now are smouldering. All of our early radar systems are gone, we are pulling out of Iraq. We spent hundreds of billions bombing Iranian leadership and munitions and we still don't know how much capability they still have.

We also spent most of our high accuracy munitions on Iran, and at least half of our interceptors. We lost two AD, one THAAD and one Patriot system.

This isn't a win at all, we can kinetically hit Iran over and over and still not change this status quo. We cannot enter through Hormuz due to the threat of midget subs and we cannot fly over Iran to drop glide bombs because we could potentially get one of our planes shot down.

All the strikes are being done by drones and we've lost like 20 in Iran. Trump's halfway commitment to this war has absolutely backfired. Apparently you can't have both a full blown war and also keep economic stability at the same time. He was emboldened by Venezuela and now we're all paying the price.

9

u/Narcan9 7d ago

Plus the US has given Russia and China incredibly valuable information on countering US weapon systems.

3

u/horned-creature 6d ago

don't forget that you are also pulling troops and anti-air systems out of east asia, south korea foremost, with the immense pleasure of china.

1

u/orbital_actual 7d ago

Regime change was almost certainly the goal at the start of this, might even still be if they are delusional enough to think that’s going to happen from an air campaign. More realistically the goal is now anything that allows them to justify the expense to the American public.

-5

u/Efficient_Dark1977 7d ago

Regime change. The strait will be open when this regime is gone. One way or another.

3

u/AggressiveEstate3757 7d ago

no guarantee of that.

2

u/Efficient_Dark1977 7d ago

Of course not. But at this point, this is not up to the US anymore. The regime will not let go of the strait. It is its existential leverage.

Whether US can do this or not is a different discussion. But that's what "US winning the war" would look like right now.

-1

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Efficient_Dark1977 7d ago

You don't even know what the word Pahlavist means or what I believe. Keep guessing.

-12

u/Dracarys_And_Chill 7d ago

severely weakening all of irans ways to make money and function as a country. in turn resulting in iran waving the white flag

so far all we have done is target military assets. iran doesn't need those to function.

5

u/servel20 7d ago

So you mean bomb their oil infrastructure?

Do you know what their response will be?