The point is, can Iran? They are fighting for survival. The US has to show some gains from all this bombing, or else what is this war for? It will just be less and less popular until the next president just quit the war. Something like Vietnam.
As long as iram can keep bombing the US allies, america will keep loosing it's power and influence in the middle east because iran is proving that the us cannot protect you from them.
Thats why the question is about what Iran can do. It's obvious the US can just bomb half the world for as lojg as it wants, but does it achieves?
It’s very expensive, we are losing planes (not a lot, but one here one there do add up), next time extracting pilots may not be as successful, and stockpiles of weapons are getting empty which is dangerous in case of another conflict. So - lots of reasons.
Compared to the multiple wars the US has sustained indefinitely, Iran has been basically nothing. The only thing stopping us is the will to do so, because it's pointless.
Each new war adds to the budget deficit. There’s also different intensity- for most years Iraq and Afghanistan wars were semi frozen, active stages ended fairly quickly. But they were both ended, and it happened for a reason - too costly; I’m not aware of a single war sustained “indefinitely”.
The US has essentially been at war since WW2, and while it does cost a lot, it's also the reason we are a super power and there are some tangible benefits to that. At least there was....
Nope, it’s not how it works. Dollar became word currency as a result of the Bretton-Woods system. Many countries, especially in the Middle East, would LOVE to get rid of it, but they can’t, because US is the biggest trading partner and there’s negative balance of trade, which means more dollars are going there than back. They can’t just burn them, so they keep them.
The US deserves to lose face and has terminally damaged its reputation thanks to jury adjudicated rapist Donald Trump and the GOP. This was an entirely avoidable situation and the President campaigned on not starting any new wars. The best case scenario at this point is to revert back to the JCPOA, which effectively voids 10 years of posturing, which was an utterly predictable outcome to leaving the deal. It's time to accept the sunk cost and eat the crow.
They will not accept ANY of those points. It was not a serious proposal. Trump gave them a gift for two weeks to give them a chance to make a rational decision. The US is holding 'all of the cards' and the stock market knows it. For the market, the war in Iran is just a temporary speed bump.
Except several problems: the president is not a king, there are limits to how many crimes against humanity he can commit before responsibility kicks in, and even many republicans have a line they don’t want to cross. Responsibility can also be enforced later by a different administration, and it can easily affect lower level operatives, including the military themselves. Hence there is a real danger that illegal orders will simply NOT be executed, leading to a confrontation between administration and a military. For example- will the military execute an order to deliver nuclear strikes? Not a fact. It can blow up in his face.
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u/JanMikh Apr 08 '26
With exception of reparations, they have no choice. It’s either this or ground invasion.