Iran looks increasingly like it might pull off a stunning “win,” while America edges toward something closer to a historic defeat and humiliation Not quite Suez 2.0 but you can almost hear the echoes. Pax Americana drowning in the Straits of Hormuz. A group routinely dismissed as “mad mullahs” has absorbed serious punishment and still hasn’t blinked. Whatever else you think of them, they’ve shown a willingness to take hits and keep going something the West, for all its hardware and rhetoric and borrowed cash no longer can. We used to do that dig in, take the pain, call it resolve. Now it’s more about optics, timelines, and exit strategies dressed up as victory. Empires don’t collapse in a day. They just start sounding a bit more like press releases and Trumpoian bluster , lies ,defection and corruption and future President's of the US won't be going down this avenue with Israel ever again. The reality in the air, is that the US fighters on search & destroy missions only have less than 60 minutes of loiter time over Western and Southern parts of Iran. Leaving vast swaths of Iran untouched by search and destroy missions. This allows Iran to hide missile launchers and critical systems. The images of strikes deep into Iran are done by standoff munitions hitting stationary targets. Not Search and Destroy missions that is needed to deal with mobile and popup threats like missile launchers. Made with help from AI and user query; 1️⃣Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan; --Distance to Western Iran: ~700km to 900km. --Fighters on base: F-15E; Combat radius ~1270km. --Loiter time over Western Iran of 30min to 60min. 2️⃣USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft carrier; --Distance to Southern Iran: ~800km to ~1000km. --Fighters on carrier: F-35C and F/A-18 E/F; Combat radius 1220km and 700km respectively. --Loiter time over Southern Iran, extremely limited. This hard restriction means the US can never destroy all the missile and drone launchers, and Iran will continue to posses the capabilities of shutting off the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely. This point alone means Iran WILL outlast the US, because Trump cannot afford to have high oil prices which will cause spiraling inflation and that's why Iran has been able to fire missiles evry night. Telegraph - David Blair - Iran now has a clear path to victory Despite being hammered by aerial bombardment, the Islamic Republic could yet survive the war and rebuild https://archive.ph/tNI2f For more than three weeks, American and Israeli jets have rained bombs from Iran’s skies with seeming impunity. Their intelligence agencies have spent years undermining the Islamic Republic from within. Yet, incredible though it may sound, Iran’s remaining leaders now have a clear path to what they would see as victory in this war. FT - Trump’s Armageddon-Taco shuffle One minute he threatens death and destruction, the next he says the US and Iran are engaged in negotiations https://archive.ph/rSgZU Here is what Trump expected when he started bombing Iran: its regime would collapse or unconditionally surrender within 72 hours. That was Plan A. Plan B did not exist, which means Trump is scrambling to get back to what existed before Plan A. His war aim is the status quo ante. Had Plan B existed, Trump would have readied allies, put US minesweepers and Marines in place, built up oil reserves and flooded the Gulf states with interceptors. “Nobody was even thinking about it,” he said on Iran lashing out at other Gulf states. Everybody was expecting Iran’s response except him. Indeed, Gulf rulers directly warned him against it before February 28. Nor does it matter how carefully the deep state laid out the risks. What Trump will not hear did not exist. NYT - Everything After This Will Be Harder’: Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Iran David French talks with the retired general about the “great seduction” America fell for in Iran. https://archive.ph/o1Fgz We have a tendency in America to view things in very short periods — our year in Iraq, or in my case, five years in Iraq. We tend to come in and say we are going to fight the war to end all wars, at least in our minds. But for the Iraqi about my age — I’m 71 now — for an Iraqi, it really starts in 1953, when the U.S. and British intelligence services overthrew the constitutionally elected prime minister and put back into power the Peacock Regime of the Shah. They oppressed the people tremendously, particularly through Savak, the secret police. So, when the Iranian revolution erupts in 1978, we may have been surprised, but the Iranian people were not surprised. When they suddenly say “death to America,” most Americans are saying, “What’s your problem? Why are you angry at us?”
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