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Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way? Without a war US would still have aircraft carriers, they would just be floating somewhere else.

On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.

[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]

A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now.

(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)

Carriers aren't meant to hang out at port at home. The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.

> The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.

But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.

The idea that the war isn’t costing money for personnel because those people would be doing something anyway makes no sense. They could be doing something else. In fact, they could be doing something that increases the wealth and wellbeing of the world, rather than destroying things. So from that perspective, the cost is far higher than what is shown here.

Then there’s the loss of innocent lives. It would be unconscionable to put a price tag on the lives of dozens of Iranian girls killed when their school was flattened and to show it on this website, and yet, this is not “free” either.

> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.

Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.

Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.

The first gulf war was 1990. The US has been at war with various factions of the Middle East more or less continuously for thirty five years. The current president specifically campaigned on no new foreign wars and repeatedly tried to bully the Nobel committee into awarding him a peace prize before accepting a second hand one from another world leader and a sham one from FIFA of all things.

What makes anyone think that this latest attack is the "end game" vs just the latest expensive chapter?

As an aside, I remember before the 90s when the Iran/Iraq War was called "The Gulf War".

The only end game here is distraction from the Epstein files and a potential coup to prevent midterm elections. The whole war is just plain stupid.

Me-of-2000 would be utterly incredulous at just one auto-coup [0] in the US, let alone the potential for two in 6 years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

If it were that straightforward, right now the US would (A) have a consistent set of demands/goals that include shipping security and (B) a large international coalition of support.

Neither are true.

P.S.: Plus, of course, the whole problem where "protecting global sea lanes" typically requires a different approach than "start a war by assassinating the leadership you were negotiating with."

JD vance whined that we shouldn't protect middle east shipping lanes because he believes it helps Europe more than the US.

Don't make me defend JD vance.

He said Europe should pay their fair share for protection since 40% of their trade passes through those lanes but only 3% of America's.

Why focus on the consumer side, especially when so many of the current administration are brazenly in bed with the regimes that benefit from free oil flow in the region? (Kushner & MBS)

You’re not forced to repeat his rhetoric, maybe think critically about it.

How much of the destabilization of North Africa and the Middle East is America's responsibility, and how much did Europe pay in absorbing refugees from it?

Should Germany be sending DC a bill?

If I recall correctly, America didn't even say 'Thank you'...

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You really think the US should stop supporting Ukraine?

Who's talking about Ukraine here. Have you lost your mind? The comment you replied to talks about Middle East shipping routes.

There's a war in the shipping lanes?

Yes, Iran sits next to one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.

Yes, you have lost your mind. Or you're an LLM.

The US is hardly supporting Ukraine any longer.

US messaging has been all over the place, but stop funding proxies has been one of the more consistent parts.

To be clear, im not saying protecting shipping is the primary reason for this war. I'm just saying if that is what you think usa should be doing, then this war makes sense.

As far as b) there are a lot of factors. Its not like freedom of navigation is the top concern of every country in the world.

People should begin quantifying the commercial freight global costs incurred from the Houthi harassment. There is a basic ROI one can do that impacts not just US interests, but global interests.

> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic

gee, I wonder why they're doing that.

A total mystery!

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"terrorism"

who bombed them first and repeatedly? and embargoed and sanctioned them before that? and tore up the nuclear deal? and before that installed the shah so we could get the oil?

> who bombed them first and repeatedly? and embargoed and sanctioned them before that? and tore up the nuclear deal? and before that installed the shah so we could get the oil?

Not the people they are attacking. Intentionally attacking people unrelated to those you have a grievance with is terrorism, Iran has a terrorist regime. Russia doesn't do that, Ukraine doesn't do that, and so on.

My point is that the US and Israel especially are committing terrorism. (See examples given)

Who are they attacking that isn't attacking them?

"The terrorists hate our freedoms."

This seems like a perfect opportunity for a revival of David Cross's standup career.

The end game is when the US backed dictatorships collapse, this is the end of American power, not the beginning.

That seems pretty unlikely at the moment.

Houthi harassments was also a byproduct of the Israel-US "self defense" against the Iranian backed hamas attacks. Maybe it is pointless to pontificate whether the the tic-for-tat would have been initiated had the Israel-US coalition had stopped at punishing the Oct. 7 terrorists rather than leveling half of gaza, although I'm not convinced it was an inevitable byproduct.

> Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.

Such a strange take. Can you share number of attacks by Iran in the last 10 years in sea lanes, where it was started solely by Iran?

> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic

As a response to attacks, Iran AFAIK wasn't harassing anyone in the ocean traffic up until 3 days ago

What about tens of thousands of peaceful civilians who have been killed by the Iranian regime during past decades? The alternative to this war is allowing the Iranian government to keep doing that, business as usual.

In my opinion bombing people responsible for these atrocities increases the well-being of the world. Most Iranians seem to agree.

I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

The US had air supremacy, troops on the ground and a friendly regime in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and it did not work. (I am not sure if Iraq was a success, but I am sure that people were super tired of it, and did not want something like that again)

What is just bombing going to do? They just rebuilt their weapons and you have to bomb them again in 1-2 years?

The administration has already suggested sending troops as an option. It does not help that they are just making things up as they go.

You’re right that airpower alone will not change anything. But as you pointed out, putting troops on the ground does not automatically change the outcome either. If there is a lesson from the last few decades it is that the military is good at two things. Killing people and breaking their equipment. What it can do is create opportunities that political or covert efforts have to capitalize on.

Any military campaign needs a clear objective and an achievable end state with contingencies planned. Even then something unexpected will still happen. Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Iraq were all very different conflicts and the current situation is different again.

As for rebuilding their capabilities, that is not trivial. Iran is still operating aircraft that we retired decades ago, which says something about their supply constraints.

The outcome also does not have to be installing a perfect government of our choosing. A more realistic result would be a government the United States can work with and one that the Iranian people actually support. That could still include parts of the current system if major and unpopular things changed.

I am sure someone in the current leadership would like to be the person who reduced the influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, loosened the grip of the religious leadership, and ended the country’s pariah status while getting sanctions lifted and money flowing back into the economy.

That would probably be a better outcome than trying to export our model of government to yet another Middle Eastern country.

The issue is that no one is going to defect without protection. That is the reason you put troops there. Democracy building is nice, but that is not the real reason you sent troops.

Defection happens without protection if the regime gets weakened enough, and in addition to that USA is supplying weapons to Iranians so they can take up arms against the regime.

Iran has mandatory military training so if the people gets weapons they can fight for themselves.

Defection within the regime is never going to happen. If there is one thing that will unite a bunch of egos and put their personal grievances aside is a war. Anyone who smells like a traitor is shot. They become more fanatical, not less.

Only option is outside rebellion. But weapons and rebels are not created out of thin air. You need to sent weapons, trainers and troops. Syria 2.0 but worst.

> Syria 2.0 but worst.

A big difference here is that the Iranian leaders are being blown to bits every day currently, so its a bit different from Syria where the rebels barely had any support.

> I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

Their goal is to kill the leaders until a sensible leader appears. They haven't tested that before, so we will see how it works out.

Installing a puppet regime doesn't work well, but killing them until they put forward a reasonable regime might work.

They killed Taliban leaders all the time. Did not work. And that is with troops on the ground and a friendly regime.

But at that point the Talibans had Iran supporting them. Now they have no regime supporting them since the Iranian regime is constantly killed and no neighbor supports them. With 90% of the people not supporting such acts and no external country supporting them with weapons such acts quickly fizzle out into something the police can manage, it never completely disappears though.

Trump is at his best point to save face right now. It's now or never, IMO. He killed an entire leadership lineup of Iran. If he pulls out now it is a clear victory for him. If he continues the campaign 2 or 3 more weeks it's tough for me to find another out for him that doesn't involve a lot more risk to the USA.

Given he did take this clear victory and cash in, in Venezuela, there is some hope he'll do the same in Iran.

Now turn your argument towards Saudi Arabia, or any of the human-rights violating countries that the US supports or has supported recently.

Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.

The point being that eliminating a murderous tyrant is bad, because there are other murderous tyrants?

Your president is a murderous tyrant, so how about eliminating him?

Killing a murderous tyrant, while maybe cathartic for a few minutes, when done in isolation, rarely results in better outcomes.

sometimes there are more than two options between

"do nothing"

and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.

Sometimes yes, but is there in this specific case?

Because from my vantage point it looks like the choice is, status quo or bomb them. Its not like america can double sanction iran, they are already fully economically sanctioned. What is the middle ground here?

You could relax sanctions in exchange for other priorities. A persistent pain is less effective than an acute one anyway. There’s carrots too in negotiations. But no, we cannot do what a previous president did.

How much of the current situation is a result of that previous deal?

The deal basically stopped iran's nuclear program but allowed the regime to better send money and guns to its proxy network.

The current war is effectively the downstream consequences of Iran's proxy network going off the leash.

Ultimately, negotiations work best with both a carrot and a stick. If its just a carrot, and no deal would be unacceptable to one of the parties, then the logical thing for the other party would be to always hold out.

----

In any case, in this specific situation (regardless of how we got here), its hard to imagine that Iran could have made a deal and survived. The regime is very weak at home and its questionable if they could have survived the loss of face to agree to what usa wanted.

I’m sure the welfare of the Iranian people is a top priority for Trump.

This justification for bombing Iran is dumb as fuck. In a few days the number of civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings will surpass the number of civilians killed by the regime in decades.

Possibly.

What is that threshold? I've heard anywhere from 3k to 300k. You can definitively answer this question?

300k? You mean 30k right?

Iranian official numbers are 3.5k. the OSINT community say at least 15k in the 3 biggest cities (including peo-regime guardias of the revolution), and 'local' journalists (a lot with CIA ties though), not friend of the system say 30k.

I wouldn't trust Iran with a butter knife, so I imagine between 15 and 30k, including 1 to 2k 'guardians'

> 300k? You mean 30k right?

30k was just the last protests, they talked about the entire regimes crimes which is much much more.

Let's count. Power consolidation (post-revolution): 10-20k. 100k during the first gulf war, but I think you should put that on the US (and maybe Irak, but it's the US that pushed Irak to attack Iran), then a bit more than 50 execution per year on average for 30 year. 100-300 in 2019/2020, and 15k-35k for the 2025/2026 protests. So even if you take the higher bound, that's 66k max, and if you count the gulf war (which was defensive, against US-led Iraki), 166k. But a reasonable estimate would not count the gulf war, and would be 35k over 40 year.

Weirdly, that's less than the number of saudi Arabia slaves who died in the last 20 years. But most of them are African, so they don't count, if I understand why Saudi Arabia are our allies.

The 15-35k for protestors killed is a complete fabrication. No verifiable sources corroborate that figure. Media has a tendency to report figures based on nothing. Then those figures get established as the truth, which shifts the burden of proof. Thus, unless one can prove that 15-35k protestors wasn't killed the myth lives on.

Killing more people won't bring dead people back to life! I can't believe I have to spell this out.

> This justification for bombing Iran is dumb as fuck. In a few days the number of civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings will surpass the number of civilians killed by the regime in decades.

I was just curious if you had information that I don't have. I suppose not.

wonder what your view is of ICE actions against peaceful protesters in MN?

But what you describe was not the motivation behind the decision by Washington to bomb Iran. The motivations were Tehran's nuclear program and Tehran's support for groups like Hezbollah and generally Tehran's promotion of violence and instability outside Iran in the Middle East.

> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.

With Iran's support of the Houthi I think you'll find they are exactly the same thing.

The strait of hormuz is the opposite of protected right now. Insurance companies aren't willing to cover ships if they enter the strait to pick up a load of oil, so little commercial traffic is occurring.

The real cost should include the spike in oil prices, the world consumes about 100 million barrels a day, so every $10 increase costs the world a $1 billion a day. We're already up ~$10, and it might continue to rise depending on how things go. You probably should include LNG in there too. If this oil halt is protracted, your stocks and bonds will be dragged down as well.

We have surplus carriers specifically to allow them to average a large percentage of their time at home unlike container ships who spend the vast majority of their time in service. Many systems that are both bespoke and complex means lots and lots of maintenance issues.

Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.

We don't have a surplus of carriers. We have a shortage, at least relative to their current tasking. They're overstretched and behind on maintenance. This is unsustainable so the civilian leadership will have to either cut back on missions or build more.

That is a good reason to focus what you have on Iran since Iran is causing a lot of that demand for power projection. If you fix it at its source there will be much less demand for them in the future.

There’s always an argument for more equipment, but you need to start building them long before they enter service and need to set budgets long before any specific crisis.

Funding for Nimitz was authorized in 1967 they started construction the next year and it was in service in 2025. The US has a very large and very expensive carrier fleet today because people decided it was worth having X boats a long time ago and they calculated X under the assumption that a significant number would be spending time docked / on the other side of the planet from where the conflict is.

Obviously, part of that equation was based around warfare and the likelihood of losing some / extending deployments etc, but what we want today has no barring on what we actually built as all those decisions happened a long time ago.

TLDR; Having more than strictly needed for normal operations = having a surplus when something abnormal occurs.

There is literally no surplus. There hasn't been a surplus for 15+ years when funding priorities shifted to sustain the GWOT. There haven't been enough carriers to meet requirements for the combatant commands during normal operations, let alone when something abnormal occurs. So they try to make do with other platforms but the cracks are really showing.

Your “requirements” aren’t actual requirements here.

Exactly: that protection isn't happening right now because those resources are doing something else. The money would be spent anyway, but doing something that is normally considered useful, and that useful thing is not happening to the same capacity as before. Therefore there is an opportunity cost to consider.

The Houthis have been doing a lot of shipping lane disruption, recently. They have sunk several ships.

Iran's Islamic regime has provided material and monetary support to the Houthis.

Crippling their capabilities aligns with the goal of protecting global shipping.

They haven't exactly been sending aircraft carriers after pirates. It's a huge excess of firepower for any traditional threat to shipping.

The US has liked to portray itself as the world's protector, but often that's just spin. The carriers are big weapons of war, meant for waging war.

They aren't all deployed at all times and the Ford is more than overdue to be in Port. The sailors are notably suffering on this deployment and there is a ton of deferred maintenance.

True.

Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.

Carriers routinely engage in war gaming and cruises. They dont port if they are not actively engaged in war.

WSJ: https://archive.is/IB7H2 Missed Funerals and Blocked Toilets: Iran Deployment Takes a Toll on U.S. Sailors The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford’s lengthy mission is causing strains for crew members and their families

Overtaxed crews can be a problem across the Navy’s fleet, beyond just the Ford. In April and May 2025, near the end of an eight-month deployment, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman lost several jet fighters while countering Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea. A Navy investigation blamed the high operational tempo of the mission.

One sailor on board the Ford told the Journal that many crew members are angry and upset, with some saying they want to leave the Navy at the end of the deployment.

> Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way?

This is a fair way to account for the cost, because the assets were procured and personnel hired years ago for just this purpose.

Put another way: we would not need this fleet at all if we did not expect to use it in a manner like this. (For example, Spain did not choose to have this capability and so has not borne a cost of maintaining this option for the preceding decades.) Through that lens, the true cost of this war would involve counting back to before this round of hostilities began.

It's only fair to count _at least_ the "time on task" for all the assets.

Yes, the actual accounting is quite poor and makes bad assumptions. Don't use this info for anything important or serious.

Right, consider the personnel costs that are displayed here. They were already getting paid this past weekend either way (admittedly the military may have had to hire some last minute contractors to help with the operation).

I think that's true, but I like that this site includes a "ESTIMATED MUNITIONS & EQUIPMENT COSTS" section that shows the value of actual, expended munitions which are all one-time costs directly resulting from the war.

Seems like a massive understatement given how much of this war has been shooting down iranian missiles. According to wikipedia, a single patriot missile cost 4 million, and you often have to use multiple to get a succesful shoot down.

This. 220 mil/day is 55 PAC3-MSEs. Iran has fired ~100 ballistic missiles alone per day. Probably spending that on interceptors alone.

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There's someone quoted here who estimated UAE by itself cost in fighting off the Shahed drones at $23-28 per $1 spent on Shahed drone at $55000 (they know how many got through and the claimed success rate and the methods they are using to defend UAE) https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/shahed-drones-iran-us...

Also, the taking the production/purchasing cost of some F15s that were 25 - 35 years old doesn't make a whole lot of sense, or does it?

They still work, if they get shot down, you will have to pay to replace them. (also using them is expensive and causes wear, especially under the stress of real action, where the limits are pushed)

Yeah my 2004 3-series BMW also still works, but if it broke down, I wouldn't think I lost the price that it originally cost.

Maybe, its opaque how its calculated.

But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...

it's also doesn't take into consideration the revenue opportunities, like USA-branded apparel, FanDuel parlay wagers, and I assume that Epic Fury is a summer Marvel franchise, or Wrestling PPV?

Munitions, fuel, and combat pay are additional in combat. Also maintenance. Some costs are there anyway, sure. But war is far more expensive than peace.

Sure but having a bunch of resources for "defence" is very different from having a bunch of resources for "attack" in most people's mind I imagine.

Also NATO requires a certain percentage of GDP to be spent.

And I just read the U.S. may be sending the Navy as escort for oil tankers in the region.

Yes but right now it’s doing this war. It can’t be anywhere else, so the costs are for this deployment specifically.

I think when people are asking about the cost of a war, they are asking about excess costs. How much extra money would be saved if the war didn't happen.

Yes, it's quite humorous to try and factor in opportunity costs for aircraft carriers, "but we could be bombing someone else!"

Doing actual bombing is more costing than just patrolling relatively peaceful seas, no?

Yes, but not at the cost of the construction of an Aircraft Carrier. This is why the military uses "operational costs" (fuel, munitions, activated duty pay, equipment losses, etc) to factor the cost, not the total amount of every dollar ever spent to build+sustain a military force.

Iran probably wouldn't have blown up the $300m radar installation if we hadn't randomly attacked them.

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History really doesn’t say otherwise. Tensions were mostly cooling after the Obama nuclear deal.

Now the message we’ve told the world is: If you don’t want to eventually be at risk of the US attacking you, you better be nuclear armed.

Of course they cooled Iran kept enriching uranium and the rest of the world agreed to ignore it.

because enriching uranium worked out so well for Iran?

because it worked out for North Korea

Largely because they didn't actually need it. Their conventional artillary pointed at south korea was already (and still is) more of a deterrnt than the nuke is.

Nobody was desperate to invade North Korea prior to their acquisition of nukes. It's a horrific war field and combat prospect. Iraq and Afghanistan were each a cakewalk next to going into North Korea (again). North Korea was safe as they were.

The primary threat to Gaddafi over time was internal, nukes would not have protected him. What was he going to do, nuke his own territory? The same was true for Assad.

The primary threat to Iran's regime is internal. Nobody is invading Iran. It's a gigantic country with 93 million people. It can't be done and it's universally understood. Trump won't even speculate about it, even he knows it can't be done. What would nukes do to protect Iran's regime? Are they going to nuke their own people? Are they going to nuke Israel and US bases if the US bombs them?

So let me get this straight: the US bombs Iran, Iran nukes Israel and some US bases, maybe even a regional foe - then Iran gets obliterated.

That's not what would happen in reality at all. Don't take my word for it, ask Pakistan: the US threatened to bomb them [0] - despite their possession of nukes - after 9/11 if they didn't cooperate. Why would the US do that? Because the US knows that MAD doesn't work like the online armchair crowd thinks it does.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/9/22/us-threatened-to-bo...

"The primary threat to Gaddafi over time was internal, nukes would not have protected him. What was he going to do, nuke his own territory? The same was true for Assad."

Have you checked, how many outside interventions both countries had and still have?

Labelling this as "internal" is pretty missleading. If both dictators would have had nuclear weapons ready to launch, no foreign bomber would have dared going in against the regime.

> That's not what would happen in reality at all. Don't take my word for it, ask Pakistan: the US threatened to bomb them [0] - despite their possession of nukes - after 9/11 if they didn't cooperate. Why would the US do that? Because the US knows that MAD doesn't work like the online armchair crowd thinks it does.

That isn't a MAD situation.

Pakistan has nukes but they can't launch them on the US.

Because NOT enriching uranium worked so badly for Gaddafi.

Doesn't mean the direction wasn't correct.

Take any American, and treat them the way Americans treat others, and they would be forming terrorist cells (gorilla war), building nukes, basically every single thing they could to fight back. To never surrender.

Remember Red Dawn? That would be an American Response, to what America is doing.

That is it basically. If shoe was on other foot, Americans would never surrender.

So, why are we expecting others to give up quietly?

> So, why are we expecting others to give up quietly?

We're not. That's why we're bombing the regime and associated military targets. Iran was never expected to give up quietly.

Think you are missing the point.

They aren't going to just give up after a few weeks of bombing.

Will need boots on the ground versus a resistance/multiple sides of a civil war, and now we have another 20 year war.

People don't just shrug and go "all shucks, yuck yuck, guess you got us, i'll roll over"

Giving up their nuclear weapons did not work out well for Ukraine.

History does not say otherwise. The US however has a history of attacking Iran, including murdering 190 people on a civilian flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

Not sure why this comment is downvoted: the facts are established, as is (among others) the Mosaddegh coup d'état co-organized by the US:

> On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état that strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. It was instigated by the United Kingdom (MI6), under the name Operation Boot[5][6][7][8] and the United States (CIA), under the name TP-AJAX Project[9] or Operation Ajax. A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mosaddegh nationalized the country's oil industry. (...) > In August 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. (...) was in charge of both the planning and the execution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Or the US backing of Saddam Hussein from 1982 onwards during the Iraq-Iran 8-year war of aggression, with “massive loans, political influence, and intelligence on Iranian deployments gathered by American spy satellites”. During this war, Iraq employed chemical weapons leading to 50.000 - 100.000 Irani deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

This (and other pieces of historical context) help very much understand the Iranian insistence on a ballistic missile program.

*290 people. Mistook an Airbus A300 for an F-14. Maybe it's an easy mistake to make on radar back in the day?

Back in the day, or even now. Kuwait’s US-supplied air defense shot down three US F15s this weekend.

History doesn't say anything, because there is no precedence Iran attacking the US assets first.

Iran has never carried out an attack against US military infrastructure that wasn't clearly retaliatory.

Look it up. Every case of Iran attacking US infrastructure has been in direct retaliation to the US blowing up some Iranian stuff.

Sure Iran has funded tons of proxy attacks by anonymous militias but these are generally not at the same kind of scale.

Is there good evidence for this?

Confirmed.

$1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 radar hit, likely by a $50,000 Shahed drone: https://x.com/sam_lair/status/2028961678776488111

Holy shit.

The coat asymmetry with drones is crazy, they are stupid cheap to deploy on a nation state level. I feel like it’s going to be years until we fully learn the lessons from the Ukraine Russia war.

Yes. Their repeated warnings that Iran would no longer tolerate the kind of back-and-forth blame shifting that think-tank policy papers openly described years ago as a strategy to keep Iran off sides, and that any attack by Israel would be considered an attack by the USA too and that American assets that surrounded Iran would be attacked; since under all the clownish “who? Meeee?”act gaslighting and stupid pathological lies, everyone knows they are one and the same.

It’s like dealing with psychopathic toddlers who think people aren’t smart enough to know they are lying when they deny killing the family pet even though their hands are covered in blood and you just watched them mid act of slaughtering the family pet.

It'd been there for decades. And Iran stated that if attacked by the US and Israel they'd retaliate against US targets in addition to Israel.

This doesn't include generational damage in sentiment:

* Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas

* Japan is in trouble because Middle East supplies its 75% of oil, which is blocked now

* Ukraine is in dilemma, because US giving every support to Israel, but not to Ukraine

* Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them in the future, they're scared even more (except UAE) that people might overthrow those kings if things continue this way

* Africa understood its better to work with China, than with US

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. People here seem to also have no perspective, since it is not in the wheelhouse of most tech people, on the fact that this is all a part of a 40 year strategy (as Netanyahu himself has openly stated) that some refer to as the “the Clean Break Strategy” or the “7 countries in 5 years memo”[1]. It clearly took longer than 5 years, but they definitely tried and even the likes of Hillary “we came, we saw, he died” Clinton was a party of that.

People always squabble over blue team vs red team, never realizing that the whole game is just a ruse to provide a sense of democratic control to placate the public, and also give the apparatchiks if the regime a sense of autonomy, when in fact they’re just all pulling at the same continuity of agenda like beasts of burden, being whipped and rode by a very small group that hold their reins.

[1] https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1819709215352438921?lang=en

Counterargument: squabbling about "blue team vs red team" is legitimate domestic politics about issues important to voters. You're just upset because what you think the "the whole game" is about is a rare area of general agreement[1] and you happen to be on the "other side".

To wit: when you disagree with everyone, it looks like they're conspiring against you to control the masses, yada yada yada. They're not, you're just in a small minority (or an epistemological prison).

[1] Hardly surprising, since international geopolitics is exactly where you'd expect their interests to align.

How my tax dollars are spent is a domestic issue. As is not implicating me in war crimes.

> They're not, you're just in a small minority

The majority do not support this war, nor do they support Israel. Our politicians refusing to listen to the electorate is also a domestic issue. As are the many attempts that Israel has made to strip us of our fundamental rights.

For clarity, I'm not saying the minority position is "wrong". I'm saying that holding a minority position is not a priori evidence that Deep State Illuminati Elite Power Centers are conspiring against you. They're not. You're just weird.

I'm talking about the majority position, not minority.

So, no, you're not. Or you're misunderstanding how this works. "Stop the war in Iran" is a majority position in polls. People don't vote on that, because people don't care about the war in Iran. Instead, wars at the ballot box are fought over which ethnicity needs to be the target of state violence, or whether or not it's a good thing for citizens to have health care. And those wars are serious, and hard-fought, and occasionally slip off the edge into non-democratic authoritarianism.

But voters don't care about Iran. So Iran policy is dominated by the interests of non-voting/non-democratic power structures like US business interests and geopolitical long-term desires. And on these issues, those power structures show marked agreement. So that's what we do, modulo tactical considerations (e.g. the Obama administration pursued a policy of containment and treaty engagement out of conservatism, where Trump installed a bunch of trigger happy cowboys who want to watch bombs on TV; but both viewed Iran as an enemy to be opposed, and for the same reasons).

So I repeat: to you, if you happen to view Iran policy as extremely important, it must feel like The System is conspiring against you to manipulate public opinion. But it's not. It's operating as designed, and 100% democratically. You are just in a minority, and this is what being in a minority feels like.

> "Stop the war in Iran" is a majority position in polls. People don't vote on that, because people don't care about the war in Iran.

This is simply incorrect and pure wishful thinking on your part.

> You are just in a minority, and this is what being in a minority feels like.

Once again, I'm in the majority. The majority of people do not support Israel or the war against Iran.

red team was against endless wars in Middle East, red team specifically elected Trump to be America first and to stop all wars.

if it was indeed about domestic policies, why promises were not held given to the "team"?

Even back in 2016 when Trump criticized prior wars he always said he would have done it better and without warning. Not exactly a pacifist position.

> Trump was not a conventional anti-war candidate. His message was a variation of the “peace through strength” ideology of the right, plus Richard Nixon’s “madman theory”: a belief that the more other countries fear the retribution of the United States, the less likely war would be. - The Nation

If anything he's anti-invasion because he doesn't actually care about the countries, he only cares about American interests which is projecting power, scaring off adversaries, and isolationism.

Sorry, no. The republican party of the last three-quarter-century has been consistently and reliably pro-American-exceptionalism. That the republican power structures backed a candidate who claimed not to believe these things is interesting, but it happened because they believed, CORRECTLY, that he was lying about this.[1]

There has been no significant realignment of US geopolitical positioning between the parties, nor should you expect there to have been. That you thought there was is, to be blunt, on you. You followed a charlatan and got burned. You should have known better after you got burned the first time.

[1] Again, hardly surprising. He lies about everything.

Sometimes the divide feels like it's between people who vote based on what people say and people who vote based on the actions and track records of the candidates.

I think citizens in those countries recognize that allowing a repressive regime to exist simply for cheap oil costs is not necessarily a good solution, either.

until your energy bills impact your pocket directly, while you were laid off from your manufacturing plant, because their cost structure is not competitive without cheap Russian oil/gas

Look at the correlation here starting from 2022: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/recent-weakness-german-manufa...

This is akin to someone in 1861 saying US cotton plantations, and by extension the entire Southern economy, aren't viable without slavery, so let's allow slavery to run.

Western liberal civilization has theta decay without occasional violent intervention.

Imagine if we didn't go all-out against communism.

The West didn't go all out at all against communism. Europe barely spent anything, and the US spent pennies on the dollar. The communists were bankrupt trying to keep up with the collective West spending loose change on military and intrigue.

By the way, I am not saying we should exploit people, I am just saying majority of people don't care about what they are not seeing face to face or feeling face to face, majority people care about direct impact on their pockets and lifestyle.

People can speak for themselves.

> ... so let's allow slavery to run.

Obviously we look at world differently, but I was under impression that slavery wasn't abolished, it just got different form with slightly more rights.

Late-Capitalism as slave owners, workers as slaves, because their health insurance tied to their work, they can be punished without notice (at will employment), wealth gap is 50-2000x between Lord in feudalism (CEO / rich / ultrarich) and slaves. Lord can rape (Epstein class), avoid taxes, bribe each other, the moment slave does the same, goes to jail for 10 years

Same nature, different form, more modern form

No offense intended, but that is an ignorant take. The law of the land in the U.S. was that one human could literally own another human being (with all the implications of property ownership, including disposing of it and abusing it at your leisure). How such a despicable mindset took hold and was allowed to go on for so long, is beyond modern comprehension.

You mentioned many other injustices but none of those are "slavery but just different with slightly more rights."

you are just describing the shades of grey, even if one looks brighter, doesn't change the fact that it is still grey, I think your take is too simplistic.

Human nature didn't change, it is still power hungry, small percentage of narcissistic people want to control the masses and exploit, give them a chance (I mean to current capitalists), you will become a slave.

Look at the Elon and what he did to X employees, some were sleeping in the office "proudly", who still got laid off anyways, look at the Bezos, who fought against forming unions. So you think those people are different then slave owners? deep inside they are same, power and capital hungry, ready to do anything to get more powerful (see any big tech corporate, blood bath of politics at the top to fight for staffing and stack ranking to show "impact")

Because they all live themself in repressive regimes?

If you're talking about the Qataris, Kuwaitis and Bahrainis, they generally don't consider themselves[1] repressed, even though it looks that way from say an American perspective. (Women's rights are definitely a huge issue still) Those countries are very quickly becoming enormously Westernized, though. Just don't ask how many women politicians there are.

[1] only speaking of the natives, immigrants of all flavors have a very different situation

If you ask iranians, it also strongly depends who you ask, whether they confirm or debate the claim that they are repressed.

I remember watching a TikTok Live from someone walking the streets of Tehran a couple of weeks before the big protests started and it reminded me of those photos [1] of the Middle East from the 1970s. Most women were without any hair coverings, and it looked like the much more Westernized Arab areas. It was clear that the authorities had started to lose religious control of the major cities or had simply let it lapse at that point. You'd be hard pressed to see anyone who looked repressed on the surface at least.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829

No, we realize US americans elected gerontoidiot Trump, and we constnantly ask ourselves what the actual fuck after every third act of this senile imbecile. Do you not have young (like at least < 60) people who can still actually think critically, have strategy, hold ideas for more than 30 seconds. Are you impressed by senility? Why do you support someone who attacks european countries frequently just on the basis of whimsy shit like not wanting to go with you into wars of aggression agaisnt third countries, like you attacked Spain most recently? What the actual fuck?

That people think in terms of good/vs/evil and that US will somehow come out of this as a liked country that did good is beyond me. The constant attempts at painting some morals or grand strategy over the constant random unhinged acts of senile imbecile that gets bootlicked by everyone around him just comes out as insane.

That's what at least this european thinks of US, yeah. :)

Unhinged country with unhinged lunatic at the top, all this is. That's what americans should be thinking hard about, not about another new ways to rationalize his insanity and insane criminal acts.

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Oppression is a spectrum. I wouldn't compare "taxes" to something like, I don't know, killing gay people and forcing women to cover their bodies and hair.

Taxation is slavery

Almost nobody thinks like that, what are we 5 year olds? Especially when most left leaning folks in western world has hard sympathies with hamas which are just left and right hand of the same regime (maybe not US left which is far from left elsewhere).

Did US population en masse lost sleep during past decades till now and some future due to sweatshops full of kids making their jeans or iphones or Christmas toys for their kids in highly undemocratic regimes?

> Especially when most left leaning folks in western world has hard sympathies with hamas

I'm not going to take your comment seriously due to this wild opinion.

> Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them

Where are you getting this information? The UAE, for instance, is relying heavily on missile defense - and it's working out for them:

https://gulfnews.com/uae/uae-intercepts-186-ballistic-missil...

It's all US technology, too:

https://www.wired.me/story/inside-the-system-that-intercepte...

> Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas

60% of it comes from the US, a lot from northern Africa too, not much comes from the middle east

The price of oil has skyrocketed because of the dumbfuck war. Doesn't matter where the oil comes when it costs too much and causes massive inflation once again.

The disruption in gas supply will be very short. Weeks, at most. The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone, they are living in its shadow for a long time now. Now, Ukraine and Israel need very different kinds of support, and things like US withholding intelligence from Ukraine have nothing to do with Israel.

Iran has been bombing production facilities across a bunch of US allies. It's unclear how quickly those will be rebuilt. Also, the US is probably bombing Iranian production, which means countries like China will be looking for additional sources.

> The disruption in gas supply will be very short.

Remember when W declared mission accomplished? That war was so short too.

> The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone

Would they be happy to see a devastating civil war that gives rise to a successor of ISIS or Taleban? Will they happily accept tens of millions of refugees?

Absolutely nothing good will come from this dumbfuck war. We all will pay the price of it one way or another.

I wonder why Israel should get any support, do you support killing children and bombing schools?

Ukraine, I understand, because it was attacked, but Israel, who was oppressing people for so many years with prisons full with Palestinian kids and teenagers long before Oct 7th, I really don't understand.

Except, for Epstein reasons (blackmail), other than that, there is no reason US should support Israel, in any way

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Israel should get support because supporting Israel right to exist, for me, is the right thing, and because its strategic goals and values align with those of the US.

There is no moral justification for Israel's right to exist. Israel does not have a right to exist. They exist purely as a foreign invasion force originally started by European Jews - who didn't even practice or believe in Judaism - in order to make their own private racist mediterranean resort state by killing the native people and stealing their land.

What makes you think anyone would want support their existence over the rights of the existing Palestinian people that lived there and are currently fighting to reclaim their homes?

Religions do not have a right of inheritance. A person can't claim your home when you die because they also happen to be Christian. The only legal inheritance are those with title. And no one from Europe that decided to attack and invade Palestine can show any deed or title to the land they claimed to "own" 2000 years ago when they decided to move to Europe.

So, no. The state of Israel exists purely as a criminal enterprise of murder and theft. Let's not encourage its continued existence.

I wonder if perhaps something has happened to European Jews in the 1930s that made them look for a place to re-settle

> made them look for a place to re-settle

re-settle is fine, Palestinians and Jews were living together in those areas for thousands of years.

Massacre, oppression and take over is not, especially when the problem wasn't caused by people living in those areas: Palestinians and Jews.

If anyone owes a land to European Jews, it is a Germany.

The Holocaust made them think that lebensraum is a good idea?

Zionism started long before Nazi Germany.

You do realize most Israelis were born there? Having a right to live where you are born is a pretty fundamental one.

> You do realize most Israelis were born there?

So do Palestinians. It wasn't an empty land, right?

> Having a right to live where you are born is a pretty fundamental one.

I don't think West Bank settlers agree with you on this

"I don't think West Bank settlers agree with you on this"

So? Did I said something that makes you think I agree with them on many points? There ain't just 2 extreme sides in this conflict.

President Trump would hard disagree with you on that one

Fortunately he is not undisputed king of america, yet.

lol the Israelis would also disagree, otherwise they would have let the Palestinians live with them instead of literally going village-to-village, and door-to-door to forcibly remove the Palestinian residents or be killed if they didn't.

If the state of Israel doesn't believe in native rights, then you shouldn't believe in supporting their native rights either.

Thank you, but I choose for myself what rights I support and yes, it is rights on both sides.

No... thank YOU for believing in the right of Palestinians to return to their homes.

Oh, I do. Do you believe in the right of the Israelis to stay safe in their houses?

> Do you believe in the right of the Israelis to stay safe in their houses?

Yes, only if you clarify which house you mean, because some of them think Palestinian houses are theirs, Lebanon is theirs, Jordan is theirs, parts of Saudi Arabia is theirs, parts of Egypt is theirs.

Houses they build or bought from the owner. But in general the situation surely is messy.

> supporting Israel right to exist, for me, is the right thing

1. Does US fight to support only right things?

2. Is Palestinian right to exist is the right thing as well?

> values align with those of the US

Some values those are. Yikes.

More chances than not that you live in a country that benefitted from the American propensity to do the right thing, even at a huge cost to itself. Yes we have a different and more selfish America now, but all said, America still protects the world order that allows this conversation to exist.

For Iran the wrong th8ing they did was to stop giving all oil profits to others.

Everyone is the hero in their own story - that's why nationalism can be so dangerous - yet seeing how it plays out in individuals is endlessly fascinating to me.

we don't need good boys, we need good laws where everyone is equal and punished equally for violating the common moral principles, e.g. for being a pedophile

This seems really low considering one of the early warning radars taken out cost around $1bil on its own.... and it's possible a second one was at least damaged. (one in Qatar the other in Bahrain)

NSA (Naval support) Bahrain lost a ground station (maybe two), not a radar.

I believe Qatar(?) lost part of a THAAD system which is expensive. But that money has already been spent.

The contract to rebuild it will mean huge profits too. The circle of life (MIC).

This is a Keynesian argument, which has largely been disproved. Keynes famously said if you just paid people to dig holes and fill them back up again, that this would be net stimulative to the government. It works until it doesn't work, because digging holes, as you can reason from common sense, does not actually create value.

This U.S. operation is meant to bomb the Iranians into the Stone Age, so presumably THAAD-level air defense wouldn't be needed again. The Qataris, Saudis would have sold off to South Korea, Taiwan if they wanted.

Possibly. There are a lot of things around that story that seem very off

Aside from the obvious bad AI images floating around the one credible looking video shows a shaheed flying into a radome. A Radome in the middle of a bunch of buildings. You don't put radars in between buildings. And if it's a phased array I don't think it would be in a round Radome either.

They seem to have hit something of value, but don't think it was a 1bn radar

Everything around this smells like the Iran hilariously oversized F35 misinformation

https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/1ldffvd/its_confi...

The only footage I've seen is damage to maybe a satellite receiver. Have you seen proof of the radar damage

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Not helpful, this is an AI generated post.

We do have actual video of that one radome in Bahrain getting directly struck (from multiple angles). It's possible it was a satellite communication antenna and not a radar.

But the still images shown with before/after are AI generated. (the surrounding buildings are completely different in the before/after image).

The radar that is likely to have been damaged is the one in Qatar, here is reporting from an NPR editor using Planet satellite imagery: https://nitter.net/gbrumfiel/status/2028227786750476627

Next time someone asks how we're going to pay for, eg, free school lunches, keep this site in mind.

Given 50 million schoolkids in the US and a cost per meal per child of $4, the current number represents 10 meals. At 1 meal a day that would be 2 school weeks, at 2 meals a day that would be 1 school week.

We've been at this for 2.5 days, and the president is suggesting this could last a month or more.

I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.

The government's job is not to maximize its ROI. For example, (and I make no argument about whether the current situation does this), protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance, even if it's very very expensive and unlikely to somehow feed back into the economy in a way that recoups the cost long term.

Then surely universal health care, strict anti-pollution measures, and worker safety efforts are next on the list, alongside access to healthy food and efforts to reduce the number of miles the average person needs to drive daily.

Surely? It's far from clear that the benefits of these initiatives would be net positive.

The poster above asserted maximizing ROI wasn't a goal - that, and I quote:

> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance

Given the number of our citizens that die from, eg, preventable diseases, that seems like a far, far higher moral call than a war against Iran.

> protecting its citizens is of extreme moral importance

If you are relating protecting citizens with current situation, NO country dares to attack US citizens in the US soil.

US, at this time, doesn't need to protect its citizens, especially in the US, from attacks by other nations, 0, none. No threat.

On the contrary, by starting this war the government kmjust made terrorist attacks more likely. It's laughably naive to think this dumbfuck war has anything to do with Trump caring about regular Americans.

It's less about maximizing ROI and more about proper stewardship of resources taken by or provided to the government.

I suggest that the US is putting its citizens at considerably more risk than they were in last week.

excuse me? the government's job is absolutely to maximize its ROI. I'm not paying taxes just for the money to be wasted

^ who is going to tell him…? :)

It's all about government efficiency for some folks until the time comes do drop bombs on girls schools. Then there is no need for ROI or smart spending.

99% of school lunches have zero ROI. Parents can provide them just fine.

Everyone except the president is suggesting this will turn into a regional forever war.

He was posting on Truth Social yesterday about how the US has enough materiel to fight forever.

The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better - As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought "forever," and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!). At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be. Much additional high grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries. Sleepy Joe Biden spent all of his time, and our Country's money, GIVING everything to P.T. Barnum (Zelenskyy!) of Ukraine - Hundreds of Billions of Dollars worth - And, while he gave so much of the super high end away (FREE!), he didn't bother to replace it. Fortunately, I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Obviously he's full of shit but he's actively trying to balance the idea tht it will be over quickly wit the idea that the US has unlimited warmaking capacity. Neither is true of course.

It already was a regional forever war. The US just decided to partake in the festivities.

The same "everyone" that said Ukraine will be taken in 2 weeks max?

No one knows how this will end. Anyone claiming to is either lying or stupid or both.

This is not a good take. Obviously no one knows, but there very serious and good reasons to believe this will not end easily or well.

I'd be curious to know what group thought that Ukraine would be taken in 2 weeks, but also thinks that the Iranian war will be a quagmire.

Either they have a lot of information I'm missing, are complete idiots, or are being dishonest.

You’re missing my point.

No one can know at this stage. It’s called fog of war.

Those who pretend offer easy explanations because people crave easy answers.

It’s not satisfying to say: "it’s very complex, we can’t know, here are the odds". But that’s the current state of affairs.

2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on.

2 weeks of meal for every school kid in the US!

Can you imagine the scale of this number?

3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid

Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network

The Sentinel ICBM project (already at 2x initial budget, and set to balloon further) will be the most expensive project since the interstate freeway system was built.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/the-air-forces-new-icb...

So, an all-city high-speed rail network would certainly be achievable for a small fraction of the total US military budget.

well yeah. the pentagon wastes 1 trilly per year. a lot of stuff can be paid for with that kind of money.

Like Medicare, Medicaid, and social security.

The fact that all three are looking at cuts and reductions while this war is fully funded is the major problem with America.

That is the thing that is the most disappointing—that we could have had it so much better.

How many subsidized meals would it represent if you only account for the kids that need one?

Honestly, a lot of these programs become substantially more expensive when you add the bureaucracy and hoops required by means testing. The economics are easier if you just give kids food and skip sorting out whether they deserve it or not.

Those meals would most likely help a lot of kids become healthy productive members of society. That money would be saved by the families of those kids and used in other parts of the economy. A lot of the cost would therefore be returned. The money spent of this war is producing only destruction.

When would it ever be 2 meals a day?

With a school breakfast program and a school lunch program.

The question is fundamentally poorly formed, and as a consequence, so is the rebuttal. A state can pay for anything, since it doesn't have to be in a budget surplus.

Household budget analogies emerge any time someone wants to limit spending, or criticize spending, but one of the biggest points of Wealth of Nations (which is the foundation for modern macroeconomics) is that the budget of a state is fundamentally different to that of a household.

If a household fails to maintain its budget, it's game over. People know this, which is why it's a punchy analogy. But it's also a bad analogy.

If a state fails to maintain its budget, it can either print more money or raise taxes. Neither is a great long term fiscal policy, but it's not the end of the world either, and budgetary deficit something most states utilize fairly regularly.

What's missing with the school lunches and present with the Iran War is political will. (I get that is what your point was all along.)

This is not exactly true on the scale of these interventions. The state can't run out of money but it does run out of the time and talent of its people, the resources of its land, and the patience of its partners. State capacity is a real limit, and where we direct the money is a pretty strong proxy for where we spend these, the true resources of the state. We don't pay for bombs with dollars, we pay for them with schools, roads, and hospitals.

Yeah, I mean, it'd definitely be better if we could just tell the deficit weenies to fuck off, but given that we keep having to have that argument with everyone to the right of Bernie, it's nice to be able to throw it back in their faces in their own language, too.

Where do you see a question?

> Next time someone asks [...]

he was saying the state should be paying the school free lunches, what are you on about

I wasn't making a rebuttal.

Israel => 2.7 bil dollars per week, that is roughly 0.4 bil per day (from news) US => 60 mil per day just operations (from news). Likely around 0.1 bil per day, or more. World => 80 mil barrels oil/day x 10 dollars = 0.8 bil per day (from news), on the increase.

5 days of war generated at least 6.5 bil dollars in cost !!! The majority of which is paid by every human on the planet :-)

The results include the killing of an 86 year old man who had cancer, about 150 school girls, some 40 radical idiots and various by-standers.

United States involvement in regime change: 1952–1953: Iran [BP], 2026: Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

2025 United States strikes on Iranian nuclear sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_strikes_on_...

2026 Iran massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres

2026 Iran conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_conflict

I saw the cost of the three downed planes somewhere else and thought the price was huge. Now I see that it’s comparable to “First Tomahawk salvo”.

not providing universal healthcare is a choice, as seen directly here. Its distressing to have US politicians make false claims that Europe's universal healthcare being something they "indirectly pay for", because even if Europe spent all their money on defence the US (albeit mostly the GOP) would still resist providing universal healthcare both tooth and nail.

Universal healthcare is cheaper than our system of healthcare by a factor of 2 (comparing other OECD countries). If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year.

Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.

I've looked into this for work and no way. You must unfactor the European models getting subsidized by the current US model.

Some very smart people have looked at fixing the system, and there's no golden goose (except ozempic maybe). We'll need pharmacological breakthroughs.

Also, regrettably - A LOT of medical care is unnecessary but we love grandma.

The Europeans don’t get subsidized by us. Not sure what you’re talking about.

We don’t “need” pharmacological breakthroughs to provide the current standard of care. That’s why it’s the current standard of care.

> You must unfactor the European models getting subsidized by the current US model.

But they don't. This is clearly a pro-insurer talking point. Europe just negotiates on a state based level so therefore is able to negotiate better prices.

Hypothetically, the amount of money that could be negotiated away is something like the sum of net incomes of US pharma/med device/insurance/healthcare, which is something like $100 billion annually. which sounds like a lot but it's only about 2% of annual $5+ trillion spend. You can't negotiate prices to be lower than the associated costs, the companies will just close up shop instead of being forced to take a loss.

At the end of the day, the fundamental drivers of high healthcare costs are (a) high labor costs of high-skilled doctors, pharmaceutical researchers, etc. (b) high cost of procuring land and construction of new hospitals in major metro areas. The first requires you to fix education first so that doctors etc. do not need to take out and later pay back what can now easily exceed $500k in combined tuition and living expenses. The second is politically unpalatable.

Medicare also negotiates on a state based level and represents more people than most European countries.

Right now the US governments collectively spend more than most European countries per capita on health care. The states and Feds. Totally exclusive of the private market spending. Expanding Medicare/Medicaid may be great for other reasons but does not solve the underlying cost problems in the US.

> but does not solve the underlying cost problems in the US.

sure but neither does blaming the EU for its healthcare system as some odd mental gymnastics into twisting it into a rationale about why universal healthcare "isn't possible" in the US.

Its a choice the US makes, while creating huge deficits fighting pointless wars at the same time.

> If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year

If it saves $1T, then why does it require raising taxes?

Healthcare Spending in the US is split across private and public expenditure. Under universal healthcare the public would pay more, but net spending would decrease.

Because currently the working population pays what is effectively a tax for health insurance. I pay over $450 a month for a family plan, and that's cheap and subsidized AND I need to pay for copays/deductible/coinsurance.

So taxes could go up $5k/yr but if I got health insurance, I'm better off.

The savings would take longer to realize because they come from better contracts, better preventative care, increased screenings etc.

idk maybe those savings are not upfront but are more around productivity improvements and so on.

Could add: Civilian casualty ratio by party

(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)

But universal healthcare is too expensive.

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This is a valid criticism. Whenever there is a push to improve life for US citizens, we are told that we do not have the funds. Yet, here we see an essentially unlimited budget to fight Israel's war of aggression against Iran, with zero benefit to US citizens. In fact, the costs (financial, moral and human) that we will pay for this excursion will be astronomically high.

If budgets are what interest you, maybe consider why Iran spent over $500B developing offensive nuclear weapons. Instead of peaceful pursuits or defenses against its supposed aggressor over 1,000 miles away.

Budgets using my money interest me. Do you have a source for that $500B claim?

"Offensive" nuclear weapons are necessary for MAD to work. North Korea, even with a starving population, is untouchable just because they managed to steal nuclear tech from U.S. many decaddes ago.

> maybe consider why Iran spent over $500B developing offensive nuclear weapons.

To protect themselves from the exact scenairo happening right now? The reason why Putin is sleeping peacefully in his bed while Khamenei is dead under rubble is that one has nuclear deterent while the other din't have that protection.

> supposed aggressor

I don’t know if there is anything “supposed” about that aggressor given the present situation.

Right. Because Israel is finally fulfilling its aspiration to annex a country 1,000 miles away. Do you think history started two days ago?

Maybe the Israelis are idiots, but it would seem so much more practical to attack closer countries first - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. I wonder why they aren't?

Iraq and Iran has been netanyahus goal for 4 decades. Remember him lying to congress about wmd as the Iraq invasion started.

Reductive tropes?OP is pointing out a serious flaw in US federal spending. Namely our lack of spending on healthcare and our intensive spending on killing people from a distance

> Namely our lack of spending on healthcare

The federal govt spent about 2.6-2.8 trillion dollars[1] on healthcare in 2025 - including Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, VA/DoD health and federal employee benefits). In what world is that "lack of spending" ?

[1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/healthcare-spending-will-be-one...

> Low effort comments

Thank you for your very high effort, insightful and valuable comment on this matter.

Agreed. Considering this attack is also biblically sanctioned, commenters should keep that in mind else they incur the wrath of God.

Your reply is even worse, no facts, no reply just rant and diversion, a proper low effort too.

What would have happened if the US dis not get involved in WWII. We would probably not be here... Not everything is short sighted bean counters. Having major cities explode by nuclear devices in the US will surely cost more.

Iran has been weeks away from a nuke for decades. What evidence is there that they were any closer this time, or that this war was necessary to delay or block their progress?

The war is for Israel, sorry I should say Greater Israel.

I vaguely remember a similar situation last year, where Trump said, Irans nuclear program is now destroyed for years to come.

Yep, the Iran chicken hawks can't keep their stories straight.

Trump's chicken hawk fanboys:

- Iran is weeks away from nukes, but our bombing runs last year were so successful they're now years away. But now they're weeks away again, got to attack!

- We're not the world's police, but Iran killed 30k of their own citizens, we need to help them and be the world's police!

- The Iranians were going to attack US bases because of an Israeli attack, so to prevent those attacks we attacked first. Thus giving them no reason to bomb our bases. Oh god, they're bombing our bases! The fiends!

If Iran had nuclear weapons we would not be bombing them now and the world would be a more peaceful place. I certainly trust Iran with nuclear weapons a lot more than I trust Israel with them. We need Iran to keep Israel in check.

I'm sorry but this is a braindead take. Trump is exactly a short-sighted .. well not a bean counter since I doubt his ability to count. But short sighted for sure.

Thinking an Iranian nuke is threatening a US city is probably a Fox news talking point, so dogshit by definition.

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We had a nuclear deal with them, which was ripped up by the same man currently in charge of the US.

The alternative was not bombing them in the middle of negotiations.

Persia's only singular civilizational goal right now is nukes.

What's funny is, all nuclear engineering programs in US universities (undergrad and grad level) are disproportionately filled with Iranian/Persian students (even as far down as 3rd generation immigrants i.e. those whose parents emigrated during the Shah Pahlavi era).

It's unreal how determined that entire culture is to getting the bomb. It's a big hit to their ego that all the other great "academic" civs of the world (Western European, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Jewish) have it except the Persians.

And they'll get it eventually. The question is only under what regime.

https://bsky.app/profile/rbreich.bsky.social/post/3mg4ige7o7...

the lives lost though. the children killed.

Is this missing interceptors? My understanding is those probably dominate total costs at the moment, especially if you include the costs of allied Gulf State and Israeli interceptors. Thousands have been expended already on ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Those range from hundred of thousands to multiple millions per shot.

Oh boy - defense accounting I LOVE this game.

Quick quick, give me a quote on the coffee maker on the AWACS.

Maybe Im missing something, but the US armed forces had a budget of $850B last year, so thats already $2.3B a day baseline in peace time.

Wouldn’t most of these costs have been going for a few weeks, given the build up?

Which contractor is selling the most munitions? LM, Raytheon, etc..

neat! I made (vibecoded) and deployed something very similar yesterday https://iranwarcost.com

Where does this money go? I see that some is lost value, like in the downed aircraft, but what groups are profiting off this crazy flow?

Defense contractors, the oil companies who get to rebuild, private security, etc. You can do a web search for who profited from the Iraq war. It's mostly all the same. This war also has a religious component to it, as a US combat unit commander has said "the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth": https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-ir...

What about reparations? :)

This is an illegal war of aggressions after all.

The justifications all remain fanciful. I mean at least Bush bothered to make it appear legitimate.

2 billions in 4 days. Have you said thank you once?

tracking cost is a false equivalent. the cost is measurable but the benefit is intangible. This is a Goodhart’s Law in practice

Cost is not the first thing I care about in war, but I felt like this is a useful site for tracking the money we're lighting on fire in order to pursue this conflict

Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.

That’s good. But it seems that the American anti-war discourse is slanted towards the cost of it. Maybe because the whole political spectrum can relate to “our tax dollars”, while (1) the cost for the military personell might not be a concern for all because it is all-volunteer, and (2) some Americans don’t care what happens to people in other countries.

Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.

Remember: The opinions of people that either didn't vote or voted for Trump are all that really matter this November (unless the Democrats somehow lose voters, but the polls suggest that is unlikely).

Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.

Why are the fonts so small? I have a hard time reading anything.

For the prospects of the freedom and subsequent prosperity of the oppressed Iranian people, peace in the Middle East, and safety of the commercial shipping routes, I fully approve my tax dollars to the matter.

Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people?

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/middleeast/girls-sc...

That news piece was officially dismissed after investigation by the IDF and CENTCOM. I would bring to your awareness that you're using an emotional argument with no substance, and it discounts the decades of complex history in the region.

after investigation by the IDF and CENTCOM

Neither of those can be considered reliable sources. It's possible that it was an Iranian misfire, but it would be a big coincidence that that happened right as we launched an attack on them and an even bigger coincidence that someone just happened to take a picture of it and post it on the internet to immediately exonerate the IDG and Centcom.

This has strong vibes of "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing".

IDF has constantly rejected their war crimes in Gaza, while independent reporting (from different sources) has found multiple evidence of them.

The IDF has burned through all credibility during their assault on Gaza. I do not think the US and Israel waging a war on Iran will result in a positive outcome for the Iranian people or the region. The end result will be chaos, misery, and suffering. The latest news is the US attempting to foment some sort or civil war[0]. I sincerely do not understand how anyone could advocate for this.

[0] https://www.itv.com/news/2026-03-03/united-states-seeking-an...

A falsifiable prediction. Thank you.

175 dead children is already far too much suffering and if you're incapable of understanding that you are operating with a fully broken moral compass.

I think it is a hard problem to discuss clearly, but it not automatically a deal breaker. What about 175 children vs 30,000 protesters? What about 30,000 protesters a year in perpetuity?

Exactly, a real moral calculus needs to be made, not a hysterical "But the IRGC said 175 children died." And a real moral calculus involves weighing the value of the deaths caused by removing the IRGC against the deaths caused by the IRGC.

My antagonist said I have no moral compass. Of course I care about the death of children. But that doesn't mean I swallow IRGC propaganda wholesale, as they apparently do. The IRGC lies constantly, it has provided no evidence that so many children died, and hasn't brought forth any evidence to indicate the destruction of the school was caused by western munitions as opposed to a failed launch of their own (which we've seen happen.

US and Israel killed more civilians in war last year than Iran in decades. So by that logic, US and Israeli terrorists must be terminated?

Well, just in the past two months, iran is thought to have killed more than 30,000 of its own citizens, while the whole civilian death toll in gaza is about 40k or less over more than two years (out of roughly 70k killed), so i'd say you just made that up.

Demographics: Approximately 70% of the 70k verified fatalities are women and children. International observers, including the OHCHR, have noted that children alone account for roughly 33-44% of the death toll.

Your information is false and out of date.

>investigation by the IDF and CENTCOM

this has to be bait, right?

Perhaps the original comment, putting forth debunked IRGC propaganda, and presenting it as definitely true, was bait.

What part is debunked? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike

The main source in that Wikipedia article is "According to the IRGC." Trusting any belligerent in a war is silly, but given its history, trusting the IRGC during wartime is even sillier. No independent body like the Red Crescent (which is counting casualties in Iran) verified this. It's all "trust me, bro."

USCENTCOM and the IAF both rejected these assertions.

You should demand some evidence for the IRGC's claim. If the claim is that the US or Israel did it, why doesn't the IRGC show the munition used? Or any OSINT data, like where the munition was fired from, its trajectory, etc. The IRGC has been firing from the IRGC base where this school was located. It could just as easily have been a failed IRGC munition.

Also, was this "school" by an IRGC base actually a school, or did it serve a military purpose? Surely you can't know the answer to this, so it's tough for you to judge the military necessity of the strike.

Finally, what's the claim, really? That western powers intentionally struck a school and killed these kids to advance their war aims? Or that it was an accident? If the former, an explanation for "how" is required; and if the latter (and if it did indeed happen) it's the kind of collateral damage that occurs in all wars.

This "debunks" nothing, it's merely a demand for more evidence.

Step 1. OP makes a positive claim, repeating an IRGC narrative.

Step 2. I point out there’s no good evidence supporting it.

Step 3. You reframe that as "you’re just demanding more evidence."

That’s backwards. If someone claims something extraordinary happened, the burden is on them to provide evidence. Showing that the current evidence doesn’t support the claim is a perfectly valid rebuttal.

Otherwise we could do this with anything:

kid: "There’s a ghost in my room." dad: "I don't hear a ghost. I don't see one. There’s no heat, sound, footprints..." kid: "That doesn’t mean there's no ghost. You’re just demanding more evidence.”

>> what's the claim, really? That western powers intentionally struck a school and killed these kids

Israel or US or both struck a school and killed these kids. Nobody knows whether it was intentional or not. And this is not the first time Israel bombed schools or hospitals.

Mental gymnastics done to skew facts is amazing.

nzrf wrote: "Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people?"

The implication is that someone thought that it would. I am saying nobody in the US or Israel thought bombing a children's school would bring peace to the iranian people. In fact, both the USAF and IAF deny they hit a school. There is no evidence the IRGC has put forward to support its claim. Without such evidence, it doesn't make sense to believe it.

Also, you talk about mental gymnastics while defending IRGC propaganda and spewing nonsense like "Israel bombed hospitals." If you're so confident that Israel has bombed hospital buildings, can you tell me which they bombed, when they did this, and any OSINT details like the munition used?

Always gaslighting.

Here is a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_health_facilities_d...

And here is a detailed report: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israeli-soldiers-tel-sultan-g...

Evidence is clear: the people of Iran do the Trump dance, alongside the Jews, and lay flowers by Israelis with tears of thankfulness.

Iranian civilians love the US and Israel for setting them free.

Stop believing terrorist propaganda.

You're just linking me to lists from highly unreliable sources. I'm a simpleton, make a claim like this: "I think Israel bombed this hospital building on this date using this ordinance. Here's the evidence."

I do not know what to say. Just look at the pictures in the Wikipedia page.

Israel left newborns to rot in hospital beds, shot many children in the head & chest. Everyone, including Israelis know this. Evil, evil people.

You are being bigoted (“evil, evil people”) and if you believe what you say you can just answer my question directly. You won’t because it hasn’t happened.

No amount of proof will change your position, unfortunately.

Actually a simple statement you can actually support would: Israel bombed this hospital building on this date using this munition. You can’t meet that simple standard because it never happened.

> CENTCOM

I haven't seen anything to that effect yet. They've just said they wouldn't deliberately target a school, which I believe, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an accident based on faulty, likely outdated intelligence.

Where did you get the 175 children number. Even the article does not say that.

Do you believe that those goals will be achieved? Given the historical track record of these kinds of interventions, I do not.

OK, I don't. I wonder if we could set up some sort of legislative system that could debate this on our behalf and make a reasonable plan that accounts for our differing viewpoints.

I've found that if two people sit together and are willing to talk long enough, they'll eventually be able to actually hear each other, and usually they are more in agreement than the media-installed reactions and assumptions we have. Only with a few would we vehemently disagree. I'm talking about reasonable people though, like your calm reply.

You completely missed the point: Trump unilaterally started this chaotic war without going to Congress. This isn't a matter of "if we just talk we can be friends" type of situation.

He stated a war on his own (after campaigning on the opposite no less) meaning our representatives had no say in this. It's completely unacceptable.

I did not miss any points. You are uninformed. Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke, and they've been swearing to use it against America and Israel for the past 47 years. In the last set of negotiations, Iran refused to rule out building the nuke. That's the official information, and if you think they're lying, you have no alternative sources of trustworthy information besides terrorist-aligned ideologies.

Presidents can take such defensive actions. It's legal.

> Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke

Oh, I see, you've bought the propaganda that Iran is close to a nuke. That's been the scare tactic for decades. Did you already forget the strike we did on their nuclear facilities months ago that supposedly set them back?

There was no justification for this war, the official US position is that we needed to get involved because Israel striked first and Iran was going to retaliate against us.

Israel is wagging the dog here since this is likely the last puppet they'll have in office and Iran threatens their power in the ME.

Again, you are misinformed. The nuclear capabilities were real. They had secretly moved facilities and those struck by the US were a detriment but didn't hinder development. The attacks were unsuccessful at their primary objective, per all official information.

But there's no argument against someone who thinks everything is a conspiracy. You will always come up with a creative argument, however false it may be.

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It's genuinely difficult to see this sort of claim as being an honest statement, given that everyone knows the outcome with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Would you still approve if the cost is 20x, the Iranian people are worse off, and the shipping routes and Middle East are dramatically less safe due to drones?

Because that is a realistic possibility.

No, I would not. But so far I don't see that outcome.

Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq, again. Syria. Libya. Iran. Iran, again. Yeah - this is totally gonna work this time.

In theory it could work. In practice you'd at most get a bloody civil war that would give rise to a new form of ISIS. But if you believe what Fox News tells you, it's probably too late to argue about it.

Let's re-evaluate in one month; the projected time-frame given by POTUS and Israel for Iranians to reclaim their country.

That is an unrealistic goal.

Likely the actual goal, as dictated by Israel and the Jewish Lobby in the US, is to destabilise Iran long term in a sort of Syria situation, so they cannot threaten Israeli hegemony in the region.

Remember even a non Islamic Iran is still a threat to Israeli power if it remains unified and intact.

I don't agree with your perspective, but I do support Iran no longer being a threat to anyone else in the region, no matter what.

Do you support Israel no longer being a threat to anyone else in the region, no matter what?

Last I checked Israel was only a threat to terrorists and people with terrorist aligned ideologies. And please don't respond with "that one IDF soldier who did something bad".

Last I checked, International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court tend to disagree.

To say nothing about overuse/abuse of the term 'terrorist' and weasel words 'terrorist aligned ideologies'.

To say nothing about being randomly in the vicinity of a person Israel might consider terrorist might put you in mortal danger, simply because they do not care about 'collateral damage'.

To say nothing about being Palestinian child being a 'future terrorist'.

To say nothing about trying to document what they are doing might put you in mortal danger (just look up the number of journalists killed by Israel).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_famine

Is every death at the hands of Israel against someone who is terrorist or has "terrorist-aligned ideologies"? If not, is every unjustified death of a civilian just "one IDF soldier doing something bad"?

You are handwaving away any sort of accountability from Israel. It is impossible, given your framing, for Israel to ever do anything wrong.

For Pakistanis as well ?

I'm honestly not informed about what's happening with Pakistan. I know there's a ton of tweets about this, but it's not in my scope at the moment.

Yeah that’s the likely outcome given our track record /s

Venezuela is undergoing tremendous freedom and hope. My fellow Venezuelans and I are super grateful for the well-planned, surgical mission of the US. They can have all the oil they want and help restore our industries in exchange for their financial benefit and partnership, which is the most recent track record.

I think that interventions in the region of interest, the middle east, are more relevant data points than Venezuela.

should also track all the profits made

war is good business

$2b is a rounding error in the USA budget

Analysts from the Penn Wharton Budget Model and other experts suggest the total drain on the U.S. economy could reach $210 billion due to supply chain disruptions and energy spikes if the conflict is not resolved within the month

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The cost doesn't really matter. The US led financial system (which is a glorified Ponzi scheme) is on an unsustainable path. The war in Iran is about resources (force Iran to use US dollars to trade oil, give US more leverage in dealing with China...etc.) and to delay the collapse. You build "digital pyramids" like AI data centers and consolidate power/resources while you still can. Financial cost of the war is largely irrelevant. Whether the outcome will be to your advantage is a different issue but pattern is predictable with historical precedence (Romans...etc.). Unfortunately innocent people pay the price.

Literally anything but healthcare.

What’s the price tag for keeping your empire?

IMHO:

The US is doing what Russia did 2022 – Act before the window of opportunity closes. Not just vis-a-vis China. Russia being entangled in Ukraine leaves extra opportunities on the menu. Temporarily.

Why is the US at war?

Israel attacked Iran and dragged us into the war as per Rubio: https://x.com/Acyn/status/2028573242173366282

More accurately, Israel was going to attack Iran, and US intelligence stated that Iranian retaliation planning was to target US forces, along with most gulf nations and shipping lanes, so US preempted that retaliation.

If the retaliation was preempted they wouldn't have retaliated, but they have. What the US actually did was provide justification for the retaliation against US bases in the region by joining in the opening salvo.

> If the retaliation was preempted they wouldn't have retaliated, but they have

Most of the retaliation was preempted but they didn't get all the missile launch sites. They have blown up most by today though so you barely see any Iranian missiles coming out of the country now.

If they didn't do the opening salvo you would have seen much more death and destruction than we saw now.

> They have blown up most by today though so you barely see any Iranian missiles coming out of the country now.

That's not true at all, the only reason we don't see any footage is because Israel is censoring it. Here is CNN last night admitting that they're not allowed to show you the impacts:

https://x.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/2029173685563564407

Preempting Israel seems like it would have been a much smarter strategy.

Maybe you haven't noticed but they have not preempted anything.

That's quite a preemptive form of preemption! Was the US intelligence from the same source that stated that Iraq was acquiring "yellowcake" from Niger?

America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy. If we woke up tomorrow and there was just world peace, and America got rid of its military budget millions of people would probably instantly lose their jobs.

That's the ultimate reason. They could just as easily declare war against Venus and spend hundreds of billions of dollars sending rocks into space and it would have the same net effect. Actually it would be a bit more positive because to my knowledge nobody's really living on Venus right now.

> America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy.

People don't realize that the Pentagon has strategically, over decades, invested and distributed its supply and manufacturing needs to every single congressional district. Basically ensuring that any representative that votes against the DoD budget will run afoul of constituents employed in some fashion by the military industrial complex.

The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower, a Republican, warned us about.

Because, like Venezuala, they were selling their oil to China, which would allow China to attack Taiwan and take the US's supply of advanced semi-conductors for its weapons and military dominance

>which would allow China to attack Taiwan

anytime now. trust me bro.

"Why?" is the hardest of the questions.

For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.

In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.

To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.

> In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.

There could be one, but it would be a book-sized answer (and probably a Tolkien one, if not more).

Every conflict is multi-faceted and happened for a variety of reason, some mattering more than other. Any conflict involving the middle east and you have to go back almost 80-years of history to really provide a satisfying answer. Control of world oil supply, trades with China, opportunistic war to appease local voter pool, diversion from problematic affairs, diplomacy with Israel (which as it own thousand fold reasons for this war), Iran being left weak after losing most of their local allied militia, internal uprising due to a economical crisis caused in part to the removal of the agreement on nuclear and the trade ban that followed ... They all probably play a part.

To bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Greater Israel project

https://youtube.com/shorts/jFRTZGgmGo4?si=0gYc8JPCzVD_TD__

Oh wow, I never truly realized it before, but his speech really used to be a lot more coherent across long sentences than it is these days.

People should be able to separate the man from his politics and look at this apolitically. I don't see how anyone can see the way his speech patterns have changed over the years and not conclude that he has had a sharp cognitive decline. It's baffling that we don't talk about it, especially after we just went through this with Biden and had the whole retrospective about how that was ignored. Now here we are doing the exact same thing again immediately.

Anybody who has observed somebody age over decades knows that there is a huge difference between being 70 and 80. And it’s another big decline when they approach 90.

The democrats denied this with Biden and now the republicans are denying it with Trump.

Maybe we should get people that are way beyond normal retirement age out of political Leadership?

Voters primarily vote for people that look and act like them, and retired people are a massive voting block. Chris Christie saying off-the-cuff that if young people voted in any significant numbers then he would care about what they had to say was a huge money quote. We get geriatrics because people moan about how our vote doesn't matter while not voting.

See, it's okay if it's the person you voted for and he's doing things you like. But when it's someone you didn't vote for and you don't like what he's doing then the cognitive decline is suddenly a huge problem.

I objected to Biden running in the first place because he was too old, and I very much objected to him running for re-election, and consider that my concerns were fully validated. I also think there should be a mandatory retirement age for politicians and judicial officers of 75 or less, because they're not going to be around long enough to experiences the consequences of their policy decisions. If they're still mentally acute they can contribute to public discourse via books and oratory.

Now that that baseline is established, the idea that Trump is mentally fit to be President is absurd.

I understand that you're making some political statement about the voters but it has to be pointed out the mental health of a president is a problem or not a problem independently of what the voters think. Sorry for pointing out the obvious, it just seems to me that many people nowadays fall into some kind of polarization trap that hinders their understanding of the world.

Christian Evangelicals, war hawks, and a voter base that fell for the "peace ticket" talk.

because when you give someone the keys to the US military to some people, they lack the imagination to think beyond piracy and raiding.

The war in its current inception is Hamas levels of planning.

1. Do a big attack

2. ????

3. Profit!

Depends of if the Iranian state is weak enough to collapse on its own, because I imagine a land assault in Venezuela or Iran would be a horrific mistake due to the terrain.

This strike isn't even close to Hamas-levels of planning.

If anything Hamas got the US to make an unforced mistake in a game of checkers three moves out.

According to the IDF's analysis of captured Hamas documents, step 2 was:

"Get Israel to commit so many war crimes that we actually have the moral high ground. Then, regional partners will be forced to support us again, and our recruitment numbers go back up. Do everything we can to ensure the conflict expands across borders to secure future funding and alliances."

The crazy thing is the IDF knew this and published the report. Only after acknowledging that it was their only losing move did they start committing a bunch of war crimes!

Hamas' public support, funding and recruitment levels were rapidly approaching zero until the Palestinian genocide started. Now they're part of a regional conflict and arguably still hold the moral high ground, depending on how you tally things up. That was fantasy-land for them before the strikes.

It's almost like the IDF's funding is contingent on Hamas' continued existence, and, barring that, perpetual regional conflict.

It's too bad that civilians always lose in these conflicts, and right-wing criminals almost always win.

> This strike isn't even close to Hamas-levels of planning.

Yes it is, its an attack without any surefire plans for later stages of the war. While they might fluke it, I don't see how just missiling a bunch of targets and murdering a nation's leader really achieves tangible change. Its like a bully taking a swing at someone in class, they can, so they do, but there's no thought about end outcomes. They might get lunch money, or get away with doing it, but they could also get detention, or be suspended or expelled.

The Hamas plan was something like:

1. we murder them

2. they retaliate horrifically

3. ???

4. the intifada goes global and lebanon and syria and maybe other arab nations all rise up and attack israel.

and that remains my issue with the US plan, there isn't one. Either have ground troops ready or militias in place and armed. Don't just start a war for a laugh and if you do; then take it seriously. We're talking about worst case outcomes for hundreds of thousands if not millions and the US is currently just treating with the seriousness of a casual hand of poker.

Distraction

Midterm elections later this year

To occupy media cycles? To start the rapture?

You're asking dangerous questions, comrade.

According to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, we are at war because we knew Israel was going to assassinate Iranian leaders and we would be expected to defend them (and our foreign bases) when they go to war, so we might as well go to war right away. 4D chess.

I love that this was downvoted and greyed out. Don't think, don't ask questions. Since when was that part of the hacker ethos?

because of Epstein tapes and blackmail by Israel

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How is it in comparison to Ukraine, that’s what interests most people. I recall the last admin spending like no tomorrow on Ukraine but obviously Russia is a bigger opponent than Iran.

Can we subtract the number of dollars that it would cost not to start a war?

We can't. That would require a carefully conducted cost-benefit analysis of potential outcomes including the costs and benefits of not starting it, with estimates for short-term (3 years), ten years, and twenty year outcomes. Such a study doesn't exist publicly and there is no way you can convince me it exists at all other than showing it to me with evidence that it was written before the US attacked Iran. It's also not usual to make such analyses because the costs of a human life lost are calculated very differently in each domain and are hard to assess. For instance, 13.7M per life is assumed in airline safety but that's not a figure the military would use.

*for the US.

> $2.1B

so $7 per person?

We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.

We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.

I suppose pick either, and it was successful.

My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.

There's next to no chance that whatever comes out of the end of this will be a "liberal democratic Iran government". Obama started a route in that direction with the lowered sanctions and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from 2015. Iran having a democratic government doesn't really help the GOP war hawks so of course they trashed it. The same happened with North Korea in the 90s with the Agreed Framework that had some promise before GWB torpedoed it to please his oinking base.

I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.

> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.

> We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.

Neither of those things is a guaranteed outcome of this. Depending on who you ask, it's not even a likely outcome.

The IRGC remains the most powerful group in Iran. Probably a military junta is a more likely outcome, plus or minus a civil war to establish it.

Unfortunately, I think "Theocratic Iran with the bomb" is on the "good" side of the distribution of potential outcomes here.

You're right. It is unfortunate that you think that.

> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.

I doubt it. US intervention seems to have a habit of creating weakened nations for its rivals to benefit from. In Iraq's case: Iran and in Iran's case maybe the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I'd be happy with the permanent removal of US bases from the Middle East.

The Middle East does not understand Democracy. It will just be another strong man in power. The diaspora is pushing for a new shah

it's probably one shot claude creation, all my claude side projects look about the same (so basically ai slop).

There are a bunch of videos showing how expensive it is to fire certain weapons eg [1]. Not only are there our direct costs but we're also supplying several allies with munitions and weapon systems and paying for them ourselves.

Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.

Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].

President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.

Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.

Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6mWI8Q6IwA

[2]: https://www.tiktok.com/@therecount/video/7612744750713589023

[3]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...

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US has tons of interests in the region. This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.

"Interests." I'd love to know what the price per barrel the U.S. has paid in the last few years when you factor in additional costs incurred due to involvement in Iraq and Syria.

While oil is a major interest its hardly the only one.

USA is still playing at being world hegemon in competition with china and to a lesser extent russia. Maintaining alliances is a part of that.

> USA is still playing at being world hegemon in competition with china and to a lesser extent russia. Maintaining alliances is a part of that.

The US has been actively disrupting its most critical alliance, NATO, recently. Threatening to invade an allied nation's territory or force them to hand it over to us to prevent an invasion. Now threatening to block trade with NATO nations. The current administration is doing a terrible job of maintaining alliances.

I didn't say they were doing a good job at it.

I would agree, american foreign policy and especially how it is communicated has been all over the place.

We're certainly paying more than it'd cost to just drive EVs.

Retail fuel prices are already higher than that, even ignoring subsidies, military operations and environmental externalities.

This is not in the US's interest at all. What do we get out of destabilizing the region? This is entirely for Israel.

This won't help Israelis.

It will help multiple industrial military complexes on both sides of the conflict.

> This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.

Citation needed.

Almost all of our representatives have been bought by the Israel lobby. We will spend many billions more, and questioning it will continue to cause people to be labeled as antisemitic.

Israel is seeking a new Memorandum of Understanding now which will guarantee them aid for twice as long as normal (20 years instead of the usual 10).

https://www.stimson.org/2025/a-20-year-mou-with-israel-is-no...

The Israel lobby is the most powerful and feared lobby in Washington. As a politician, getting on their bad side means almost certainly losing your next election. Just look at how much money they are putting into trying to replace Thomas Massie.

Their power and influence has a huge chilling effect on all criticism of Israel, even representatives who represent people who overwhelmingly are against Israel like AOC and Omar, largely remain silent on the genocide and our foreign policy toward them because of this chilling effect.

I highly recommend the book "The Israel Lobby" by Mearsheimer and Walt. It was published in 2007 and detailed this entire thing almost 2 decades ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

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At this point the media apparatus that shaped all these people's brains in the comments here must've cost more than the wars they simp for.

How much money was set on fire for Ukraine?

Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?

It was not set on fire, it was ”invested” in dead Russian soldiers.

Analysts from the Penn Wharton Budget Model and other experts suggest the total drain on the U.S. economy could reach $210 billion due to supply chain disruptions and energy spikes if the conflict is not resolved within the month.

Ukraine has been $200bn over 2+ years

Certainly a lot less per day, but regardless, the two wars have very different aggressors. If the US has an argument that Iran was a real threat, it certainly hasn't tried to make it yet. Conversely, Ukraine had no choice about whether to be in a war.

It's easy to be cynical around "righteousness" but morality means something. I hope Americans with any kind of influence or vote are introspecting hard right now on what they feel confortable with.

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I'd rather have a tracker to show how close the Orange One is to his coveted Peace Prize.

He stole María Corina Machado‘s and has the much coveted one from FIFA too.

Wow. That escalated quickly.

It's hard for laypeople to comprehend such large numbers. Could you add a counter that measures it in miles of California high-speed rail? It's got to be over three miles by now at least.

Orange clown has a strange way of looking at things. He's now saying - He's not starting a war, but rather ending one.

At this point he could say 'we have always been at war with Eastasia' and his base would uncritically repeat it.

It's not strange, it's perfectly intelligible doublespeak.

Doublespeak

Dear Americans, what are the costs of the 165 killed children of the Minab school airstrike[1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike

low, if the claims are true iran has 1000ish lbs of 60% uranium.

we shall see

Maybe it will be offset by selling LNG at 50% higher prices to the dumb Europeans. Blowing up Nordstream was the first step, Qatar stopping LNG production the second. Perhaps take Greenland while the EU is completely dependent.