They lose the lives of the top brass.
We won’t have boots on the ground hopefully. That means most of the Persians are hoping we win for/with them.
You are using three weeks. I am using several months. Trump was using five weeks. Eventually if the top brass in Iran want their lives…
We applied your logic to Vietnam.
Russia used the same logic in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.
We used the same logic in Afghanistan for another two decades.
Russia used the same logic in its quick and easy conquest of Ukraine four years ago.
No we did not apply my logic.
Because there is no logic. Only “I wish this would happen”, but the chances are 99.999% that it won’t, and the real world will intrude.
You are being illiterate.
We do not have boots on the ground.
My worries are that Trump will lose the narrative and place boots on the ground. But we are all being whipped up by the likes of NPR’s misreporting, “The Marines are coming”.
“No, I’m not putting troops anywhere,” Trump said Thursday at the White House when asked whether he intends to send more service members to the region.
“If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you,” he continued, before adding that the U.S. “will do whatever’s necessary to keep the price” of oil down.
Careful now…
Some are trying to redefine what that means. Kharg Island is an island, therefore it would be boots on an island, not on the ground!
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5787697-us-marines-iran-deployment/
This war is being waged by a bunch of illiterates.
Yeah, I am worried nibss(the word is not allowed) is going to lose his own narrative.
At the end of the day he is an overgrown maroon.
They’re going to lose the lives of the top brass anyway.
That’s the point. You’ve already decided to kill the top brass. Once you do that, there’s no longer any consequence to them engaging in extortion. You can’t simultaneously threaten a massive retaliatory response if they do something and then also just do the massive retaliatory response anyway. Once you’re doing the thing, you lose the ability to threaten to do the thing.
That’s part of why waging war is so risky and damaging. Once you start a war, all the stuff that countries refrain from doing because they don’t want to start a war is now entirely on the table - and often happens.
When you’re dealing with fanatics, especially religious fanatics, loss of life is not a deterrent.
You want to clarify that? It is incoherent.
It seems you think the threat of dying is inconsequential to people in charge of Iran. Meanwhile there are signs the top brass in Iran want to negotiate.
It is important Trump not put boots on the ground. Even the IRGC deaths will alienate Persian families from us and the needs of their country.
Sure.
You can try to dissuade the Iranian leadership by threatening to kill them if they extort traffic through the strait of Hormuz. In addition, one can argue (as you have) that they would be afraid to extort traffic through the strait because they’re afraid of being killed.
But you can only do that if you’re not already going to kill them anyway.
If you’re already going to kill them, then there’s no threat. There’s no disincentive. They’re already going to face the same consequence, the same massive retaliatory action, whether they extort or not. Once you’re already trying to kill them, you can’t expect that the threat of being targeted for assassination will dissuade them from extortion.
I don’t think the threat of dying is inconsequential. What I think is that once you’re already in the process of doing everything you can to kill them, threatening to kill them if they do (or don’t do) something will no longer have any effect. Because you can only kill them once, and you’re already trying to kill them anyway whether they do what you want or not. When you do that, the threat becomes a nullity.
But we are and we are not. We have pushed the regime into the third generation with their revolution in decline.
We can make peace. We can experiment in peace. Meaning leave in two weeks, and if they keep it up come back.
We are not mired in this war. Not yet and hopefully never mired in this war.
For all of Trump’s faults…sheesh that is an understatement…not miring us in war is his strength…may that stay the same.
The main things the Marines need to do is security at the embassies and bases. Assuming they will protect the Straits is not on because he has only ordered up 5000 of them. We would have to enter Iran with well over 50k Marines. Perhaps 250k in the first week of a land war. It is not on.
We can do that, in theory. In practice, we’re not leaving and going back. The logistics are too complicated. It took about a month for us to move into place all the resources necessary to attack Iran, which is a moderately large country (in size, population, and military resources).
I agree that Trump is perfectly capable of just declaring victory and coming home, even if we were never able to achieve operational control of the Straits or effectuate any materially significant change in the regime or achieve any concrete measures to impede their nuclear program. He’ll just declare that the whole point of the war was to eliminate their conventional military resources (the fearsome Iranian navy!) and their ballistic missiles (they’ll miss those for the eight to fifteen months it takes them to replenish!). That will leave us worse off than we started - the regime still in power, still just as able to get a nuke as before but now far more likely to, and still able to pose regional threats - but it might avoid a grinding ground troops war.
But what we can’t do is make credible threats to the regime to dissuade them from extorting traffic in the strait, or almost anything else at this point. The Israeli military (and probably ours as well) is still trying to kill everyone in leadership, so there’s really nothing holding them back from things like holding the strait hostage.
OK. I wonder how many generations it takes, because Israel has done that repeatedly to Hamas, and I think they’re still a potent force.
Consider the limits of assassinations as a once-and-for-all tool. I have watched the Israelis kill three generations of Hamas leaders. The first generation consisted of the movement’s founders, who were eliminated in the 1990s and early 2000s. These included the chief bomb maker Yahya Ayyash (“the Engineer”), who was killed in 1996; Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s spiritual leader, who was assassinated in 2004; and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Yassin’s immediate successor, who was killed about a month after him.A
A new tier of leaders then emerged, focusing on turning Hamas from a militant group into a governing organization with a sophisticated rocket arsenal. These included Said Seyam, Ahmed Jabari and Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, all eventually assassinated by Israel.
Then, following the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel launched a systematic campaign to eliminate the next generation of Hamas leaders. Over the last two years, it killed Saleh al-Arouri, a key link to Hezbollah; the military chief Mohammed Deif; Ismail Haniyeh, the political chairman; Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks; and Mohammed Sinwar, Yahya’s brother and successor as military leader.
Now answer this question: Who has control over the areas of Gaza today where the vast majority of Palestinians live — outside the zone controlled by Israel?Answer: Hamas, generation four.
In sum, Israel has killed the entire Hamas leadership right next door in Gaza — three times over — but it has not been able to eliminate Hamas’s control there once and for all. Think about how hard that would be to do with the leadership in Iran, from the air, roughly a thousand miles away.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/opinion/iran-israel-united-states-hamas.html
But we are not there now. We do not have boots on the ground. The Iranian and American public have not been bitten. We bombed the sites what five months ago. We are bombing now. We can bomb again.
Remember if you are talking even partially in absolutes, Trump is the wrong man for that.
Gaza and the West Bank are primarily Muslim. Arab Nation stuff is strong. Supported by the regime in Iran. Without much coming from Iran? Not so strong.
But more importantly for Israel, taking territory even won in battle is not ethical. The only reason it is happening the PA and Hamas won’t make peace and keep claiming Israel should not exist.
Israel has let them exist.
The Persians are not Muslim. The calculus is different. Islam is the invader. I still think compromise is the end game.
If you are going to decide for yourself the end game in week four, you are politicking. It is boring. We are voting the same way. Trump is a non issue or a complete reason either way.
We are there now. We’ve mobilized massive amounts of our military resources, expended tens of billions of dollars and vast quantities of materiel, and have been suffering through the energy crisis precipitated by our actions. I caution you against absolutes as well - “boots on the ground” is not the one and only measurement of engaging in serious military operations.
We are bombing now, but we’re not “leaving” and going back like this any time soon. It takes massive amounts of military resources just to do the “bombing” we’re doing now in a way that does not expose our soldiers to inordinate risk. And we’ve learned that our defensive resources that were in place were not sufficient to protect energy facilities in the region. I think it’s exceptionally unlikely that we would leave and then return any time soon, given what would be involved.
Again, I think you’re correctly intuiting that Trump is a “cut and run” kind of guy. He doesn’t want to get into a protracted ground war - so even if we fail to accomplish our goals and reach the point where a protracted ground war is the only way we could “win,” he would just declare that we’ve already won and leave. I think that’s actually the most probable outcome. But if we do that, we’re not going back if the Iranians continue to cause problems. We’ll simply declare those to be somebody else’s responsibility (because, after all, we already won the war), and the Iranians - having taken our measure - will be able to do what they will within those confines.
$200 billion? Only if you include replenishing NATO for Ukraine. Otherwise nowhere near $200 billion.
I agree it is all craziness, but if you dig up the Witkoff statement around the beginning of this three weeks ago, Iran was within a week of having 90% enriched U for 11 bombs. Take him however you like, but he did not come off as lying.
When do we do this? Because later is worse.
I fear that anyone on our side of the aisle is a bigger maroon when it comes to foreign policy.
I didn’t say $200 billion. I said tens of billions of dollars. Estimates have been about a billion dollars a day - more during the first few days of the war.
Sure - Iran has been within a few weeks of breakout since shortly after we withdrew from the JCPOA. They were within a week of having 90% enriched uranium before we bombed them in June of last year, they were within a week of having it after we bombed them in June of last year - and once we stop bombing them this time, they will still be within a week. Because they have about 400kg of 60% enriched uranium, and they have the ability to push that to 90% within a few weeks of whenever they decide to do it. Well, from whenever they did the uranium out from under the rubble.
Nothing’s changed. As DNI Gabbard pointed out, Iran had taken no material steps towards reactivating their nuclear program since the 12 Day War.
We don’t do this. Or rather, we shouldn’t have done this. Because “this” doesn’t do a single thing to materially impede Iran’s ability to sprint for a nuclear weapon. “This” does make it worse, because it vastly improves the position of the hardliners who were previously arguing that Iran shouldn’t stop short of breakout. Not just politically, but also their argument has been proven correct. Being short of breakout doesn’t provide any deterrence - but once you have a nuke (like North Korea), the Western powers won’t mess with you any more.
Only the ones who think the current effort was a good idea…
After 18 days we were at $12 billion. The first few days cost more than average.
Coming and going is cheaper. That is not lost on the Pentagon.