So what? We have a lot of crazy people that live here.

> Just the year, agents of the U.S. government executed two citizens in broad daylight caught by dozens of cameras, it was national news in both cases. You say Tomato I say Tomato.

Yea, 2 people killed in highly volatile situations and the entire country flipped out over it (as we should have) and caused the person in charge to be fired and Iran’s government literally ordered soldiers with machine guns to fire indiscriminately toward protestors and killed over 30,000 people and the government faced no repercussions.

And you actually believe those are equivalent? Sorry but that’s just good ole’ fashioned bull shit.

Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.

> blockading vital commerce routes

Yes, this is in response to the Iranian regime's attempts to hold global trade hostage for their own benefit and enrichment - i.e. if you pay the regime ransom money you can purchase oil, but that is not acceptable so we will not allow it. Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.

> and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons are dangerous, for sure. That's why Iran can't be allowed to posses one.

> It seems ripe for regime change.

Usually every four years we select a new President. Every 2 years we hold elections and usually we select new Senators or members of the House of Representatives. Iranians, unfortunately, just live under a brutal military dictatorship without the possibility of regime change despite their ever-increasing desire and need.

The rest of the world better start figuring out how to pressure Iran or take military action against Iran, or the whole Gulf is going to shut down and America isn’t hurt that bad besides MAGA not being able to fill up their giant trucks.

Who cares? I don't. I can't do anything with open source software either - like I'm going to spend hundreds or thousands of hours figuring our how any given software package works and that's going to somehow make me more free? C'mon. I can't tell Apple no anymore than I can tell someone maintaining a Linux distribution no.

Besides, you can buy a Mac and do whatever you want and go buy a bunch of off the shelf components to do whatever hobby stuff you want to do too.

Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.

Then again, who cares one way or the other?

On the other hand, the US is big time. We're always on the front page, and so Europeans of course begin to believe they know a lot about American politics and thoughts because they read about it all the time. That leads to outlandish understandings and expectations of the US and so even when you want to start looking at governance comparisons it's hard to have conversations because "defenders" of American systems don't know enough about the EU and European "defenders" of the EU think they know quite a bit about American politics. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, unfortunately.

The reality is that both systems have pros and cons, and how good each system is really depends on individual circumstances, and even then those circumstances and pros/cons change over time.

To keep the fun part of the conversation going, I actually think the United States and the rest of the Anglosphere should join together in one bloc. Sometimes I fantasize about how different and perhaps better history would have turned out had the American Revolution not happened.

Just a reminder you were wrong about this part: (a lot of equipment on both sides).

Secondly the regime hasn't "hugely improved their source of funds" - sanctions aren't gone, they're still en force related to Iran the country and no sanctions were "dropped" because of Iran's asinine bullet points. The US deciding to let some oil shipments through to help stabilize oil prices so everyone else doesn't have to suffer the pain as much isn't the same thing as what you are implying here. Nobody is panicking - we've dealt with high oil prices before, as recently as 2022. The US also lifted some sanctions temporarily on Russian oil - does that mean we lifted all sanctions and agreed to all of their demands? No. Be mature. These things require give and take, and tactical choices and trade offs.

> I don't know the details of their nuclear program, but my understanding is that they have a bunch of highly enriched uranium and they lost ~none of it. I would guess that they're about where they were before except now they certainly know they need to go for a bomb at all costs and will do so.

Ok that's seems to be one of the misunderstandings on your part. Iran doesn't control this stuff. Whatever uranium they have they have lost access to because if they attempt to retrieve it or move it, we bomb or we come in and take it.

> There's no choice, because the US won't stop until they do.

Right, and we won't let them have a bomb so they'll just get bombed anytime they try and build one. We can run in circles about this all day but the end result is this: Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. Period. No matter what the justification or reasoning is they'll never be permitted to have one.

> They had a deal where they agreed not to pursue a bomb, and the US broke it, and now the US keeps attacking whenever they feel like it.

There's a lot to litigate here, but suffice to say the deal wasn't working. Iran was still pursuing a bomb and denying inspectors appropriate access to nuclear enrichment facilities. They were also enriching uranium beyond what was approved and even when the US offered to supply them with nuclear material for civilian use they declined. They've never pursued a peaceful nuclear program and now finally things have come to a head. It's weird how, everyone else seems to be doing just fine except a few select countries trying to do crazy shit. What if, like, idk, they stopped trying to build a bomb and fund terrorists?

> They will come out of this with more money due to having a better excuse to exploit the Strait and reduced or eliminated sanctions.

Ok but sanctions won't be eliminated, nor will they control the Strait to enact some sort of toll. The US and Gulf States won't agree to that.

> You think we're going to just sit there and blow up every factory they build for all eternity? Then why did we propose a ceasefire?

Yea, what the hell do you think our military is for? It's exactly for doing stuff like this. We proposed a ceasefire because we think now that they've seen how badly we can damage them and how ineffective their military is, that we can find an agreement. The US doesn't actually want war, they want Iran's government to stop being bad actors.

> Will the agreement after this war include that they never get to build another factory? What do you think happens from here?

Yes, the US proposal will include limits on what missile technology they can pursue.

> I think I'm good on this discussion, have a good day. Just look at what the _actual_ outcome of this war is in a few weeks and see if Iran's regime is better or worse off than they started. I think if you actually see the truth of what happens you'll be surprised.

Over the coming weeks/months the outcome will be a ceasefire agreement with Iran giving in to most US demands and the Straight open for business without tolls or additional costs, and the US agreeing to release some Iranian funds that are held or something along those lines. That's how these things go. Some on the Internet like to think and cheer on some sort of US downfall because they're reading Iranian propaganda and taking them for their word instead of thinking through these things logically, but the end result will be pretty much most of what the US wants for now. I don't think anything we do will be permanent though and eventually Iran will be caught funding terrorists yet again (this is honestly so fucking boring) and then we'll do airstrikes or something and there will be some saber rattling and rinse and repeat.

But hey - show some courage and post what you think will happen in a few weeks/months and then we'll check back and see who was right.

This isn't a lifting of sanctions in the manner you meant or was being discussed. If anything it's the opposite! The US said we'll let you sell oil to keep prices down so your closure of the Straight has less impact while we bomb you.

> Where Iran actually exists, we're going to deploy them from where? Aircraft carriers? They're not set up for that, and if they get close enough they'll take on potshots they can't protect against until they have to move back.

We can launch missiles from aircraft, we can deploy teams to deploy drones, there's a lot of options here. We don't really need to deploy drones so much as we need just cheaper missiles to launch at drones or for air defense. Both are pretty reasonable for the US to accomplish so I'm not sure what you think is the limiting factor here. Use your imagination.

> Then why is Iran still able to shoot down our fancy jets? Their offensive capability should be already gone right? What are we waiting for?

A guy with a ground to air missile can just run around in the mountains and get lucky once in a while. Not sure how this is a rebuttal to what I wrote. Or are you under the delusion that you can attack a country and never suffer any equipment losses? Many people seem to not know too much about how war works and have set these bizarre expectations. The fact that we've only lost what we have so far while obliterating anything we can find really tells you how ineffective their military is and was made to be.

> Did they capitulate or did they break it already? Seems kind of like having it both ways.

Well initially they capitulated, but yea idk maybe they are breaking the agreement. Guess we'll have to do the 8PM plan then if they are breaking the ceasefire. It's TBD as we get realtime updates. Plus the IRGC doesn't really have complete control over various military units. Remember them launching missiles for no reason at Azerbaijan?

> In this article, this is reported to be Iran's ask, which Trump calls “workable basis on which to negotiate”:

Have you negotiated anything between hostile parties before? You say things like this to just get to the table. Did you forget the US proposal? Why aren't you touting those bullet points and talking about how Iran agreed to them and now they're capitulating and going to the negotiating table?

> If they get basically any of that it's a win for Iran. What did the regime of Iran lose? They lost some leaders, that's bad but it doesn't exactly weaken the regime itself if we just change who's on top. They lost a lot of stuff, but they gained ways to build 100x as much back.

Well to date they lost a lot of military equipment that they can't get back - we would bomb it again too. They've lost any progress toward nuclear weapons unless helped by other adversaries like China, Russia, or North Korea, and they've had their leadership destroyed.

Like, in what world does a comment like this even make sense? "They lost a lot of stuff, but they gained ways to build 100x as much back."

How did they gain a way to build 100x what they lost when they have no ability to build anything at scale that we don't allow? If they build a factory we just blow it up.

> The people of Iran lost a good amount. They're in a worse position even if you ignore all of the dead ones. Does the regime care? No, the Iranian regime fucking sucks, they're assholes. And the US helped them out by going into a war with no strategy and no achievable objectives.

The strategy and objective was to bomb them and stop them from building so many missiles that we wouldn't actually be able to do anything about them doing whatever crazy shit they want to do. If nothing else, it was all worth it just to kill the Ayatollah. Some things are worth more than the money spent. You're right the Iranian people lose, but we're just not going to let this government get more missiles, keep supplying Russia with drones, and build nuclear weapons. It. Will. Not. Happen. There's no question about this.

Well that's the Iranian logic, not my logic or American logic. They believe they own the Straight. Fine then we'll just take it over instead if they believe someone gets to own it, well, we have the bigger guns so we'll own it.

> We can't copy what they do. War is logistics. Iran can send some asshole to drag a $2000 drone down to the shore on a kid's wagon and that's an effective weapon. We have to either send a several-million-dollar missile from ages away or throw a billions-of-dollars aircraft carriers in the strait that can then become a target or invade with enough forces to control the shore (which also becomes targets). All of that would be temporary and unpopular and expensive and need constant resupply and be vulnerable as hell.

No we can just build cheap drones and missiles and we're working on doing so.

> Did you notice how many of our planes got shot down in this war, how many expensive bases and military installations got destroyed? These things are ~necessary, but they're as much targets as they are assets these days.

Any asset is a target. We've lost basically nothing while completely obliterating most of Iran's military capabilities and killing a lot of their awful leaders. There was no expectation that the US wouldn't lose equipment, and you're just keeping score on the US side because the media is telling you the dollar figures. Go count up the cost for Iran and their equipment. Why isn't anyone publishing those figures?

> We stopped no chaos here, we created chaos. Who is happy that this war happened? Who is thanking us? Russia is happy, their ally got strengthened and some of the heat got taken off of the Ukraine war. China is happy, the US got a lot weaker. Anybody else of note?

It's SO crazy to me to read stuff like this. Truly living different experiences right? I mean, I've got you telling me Iran is stronger and then simultaneously I know for a fact they're not stronger because we've gone in and blown up a lot of their military infrastructure and killed their leaders. Kind of fun to just take a pause here and look at how different the viewpoints are.

> A lot of military equipment on both sides was destroyed.

See above - totally different worlds! I wonder if anyone has a count. That would be cool to see. Then people would propagandize the count too. THat's why you gotta just do what you gotta do and ignore people who say things like this because you know you're right.

> Why did the US accept a ceasefire? Because we ~can't open the Strait on our own and we really can't win this war. We can't open the Strait because we did not meaningfully weaken Iran's ability to create effective weapons.

Doesn't make sense at all. First we can blow up any physical structure in Iran. So where will they make these weapons? Well we'll find wherever they try to make the weapons and boom! Gone in an instant. The US forced Iran into a ceasefire - remember the US demanded it, not Iran, under threat of massive bombardment, and then Iran capitulated. At least for a short while, rumors are they already broke it because their soldiers in Lebanon (Hezbollah - wait why is Iran funding groups in Lebanon?) continue to strike at Israel so they continue to get bombed.

> The sanctions are gone or heavily weakened so their can sell their oil to the world instead of selling it to China at a relative loss, they have far more of an excuse to exploit the Strait than they did before.

This is fun ok so tell me specifically which sanctions were lifted and who lifted them and when. Please provide a source. I'm excited to see what you have to say here. This really illustrates the different worlds we all live in. Ok cool - please let me know when you find out.

> The US will never recoup their losses from this unwinnable folly of a war. Nothing positive came out of it unless you wanted the current Iran regime strengthened.

Incorrect. Well, sort of. Yet again the US has to do the dirty work to keep the world safe and stop chaos from spreading and that does come at a cost we are unlikely to recuperate. But the Iranian regime has been very weakened, leaders killed, lots of military equipment destroyed. Their only card is attacking the ships in the Straight but that's not the same thing as exercising control. It screws everyone, but the US least of all which is why we are there, doing the dirty work. You'd think the international community would want to prevent Iran from continuing to build up their missile capability until they can actually control the Straight which is what they aimed to do and we're preventing, but most can't think past the latest tweet.

Of course if Iran's government stopped being so fucking crazy the US would be happy to provide economic aid. The US even offered nuclear power to Iran for free, which they turned down. [1]

I'm not believing any citation you provide because you haven't provided any. You looked at Iran's plan (which doesn't matter) and then decided that somehow they had the leverage and the US and Gulf States would agree and have but no choice to pay Iran shipping fees. This is incorrect. Nothing was agreed to. Iran's proposal is mostly worthless, and you're making stuff up.

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/us-says-iran-rejected-nuclear-offer-...

  As part of that effort, Washington offered to support a civilian nuclear program for Iran, *including a proposal to supply nuclear fuel free of charge on a long-term basis*.

They can lob missiles or rockets or whatever they want at ships in the Straight, that's true enough, but the US can continue to degrade that capability over time. And if Iran doesn't stop we can just escalate further and maybe they won't have any fuel or electricity or running water and as they sit there and launch projectiles they continue to run out of them until they really can't do much. Of course there is pressure from the global economy to get Iran to stop this, but the US is largely immune to that pressure, excluding the desire to keep allies happy and stable. Who cares if gas is $6/gallon life goes on. Maybe MAGA anti-war protestors can trade in their trucks for Hondas.

Iran -> Ok we will agree to that.

The situation in the Straight already occurred. The US doesn't give a hoot about the short term economic base of these vassal states.

> Which one explains Trump abandoning all original demands regarding regime change and even threats to destroy civilian infrastructure?

The one I wrote does.