this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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They can just hold the world’s supply of oil, ammonia and helium to ransom. Breaking an Iranian blockade by force would require a WW2-scale effort, with the US, Europe, China and the gulf states fighting alongside each other to take Tehran and impose some kind of regime change all parties find acceptable.
China and Russia would be fighting against the EU and US in that hypothetical wwiii scenario
Isnt china and Iran allies and already have agreements for discounted oil trades?
China aren't strictly speaking allies. They get a lot of oil from Iran and have plenty of deals in place, to the point that many people believe that the Venezuela coup and Iran war are a US ploy to destabilise China specifically.
China basically stay out of geopolitics far more than people assume. They are very unlikely to enter the Iran war on either side, ever.
Unless Dickhead drops a nuke and threatens more. Which I wouldn't put past him.
Iran also has nukes.
No they don't
Says who? Definitely not Iran or any international organisation, and even Netanyahu only claims they are two weeks away for the last 20 years.
They probably could make dirty bombs with the enriched Uranium they have, but unless they are playing the world's best feint, they aren't going to have a working nuke any time soon.
Still wouldn’t put it past him unfortunately
Have you looked at a map? Do you know how far Hormuz is from Tehran?
That's the point. You would need to conquer the entire country to a point where firing off truck-launched ballistic missiles and Shahed drones isn't viable any more.
You don't think the US army would be enough to conquer Iran if they actually started puttng boots on the ground?
Genuinely no
This combined with the domestic unpopularity of such a decision would make a full ground invasion a very desperate choice.
Also American infantry is just not that good tbh
I think they can open the strait. Conquering a mountainous country with an intentionally fragmented and cellular command structure, not a chance.
I have been told repeatedly that the mountainous country overlooks the strait with lots of places to hide small rockets and people to fire those rockets.
He could launch the invasion and use it as an excuse to declare state of emergency and postpone the mid-terms to... never.
He made several comments about how convenient it is for Zelensky that Ukraine holds no elections during the war.
He might want to do that but it's not very likely to succeed; the U. S. doesn't suspend elections during wartime. They didn't during their own civil war: no way a foreign war would have any precedent or sway anyone.
The US didn't do a lot of things until he decided they were doing it.
Who's gonna stop him?
That is correct; as I already said, I think this particular thing is very unlikely.
Edit: For whatever reason, I read your last sentence as "How're you going to stop him?" and it didn't sound like a genuine question so much just being confrontational.
Clearly, it's too late for me, right now, and I should probably go to bed but you deserve a genuine answer.
While the taped together structure of the U. S.'s government between on-the-fly institutions and convention/norm.s is clearly not the best at stopping an individual who doesn't feel the need to abide by them, it's also not the best at providing a central mechanism for authoritarianism.
Elections are largely controlled by the states and, while he was able to ride a mix of reactionary xenophobia and a more traditional strain of American conservative tradition, people from that latter group were still the people largely who'd had the control of the party before he overtook it.
This hasn't been a problem when it comes to the deference for Big Business that the Reaganite conservatism of the old Republican party favors but it's still a group that believes in restricted governance (except when providing welfare for corporations, of course) and a deep belief in representative democracy (so long as the scales are appropriately stacked so the right sort of people are able to represent the general people).
Having grown up around these people in my community, notions like straight up suspending elections is beyond the pale; going beyond the pale is what Trump excels at but politicians generally will feel comfortable with following the crowd like that when they feel they have the crowd. Trump has not built up any kind of sense of good around that concept.
Additionally, he had a habit of picking true believers; and, unfortunately for him, the conservative moment – before becoming popularist – was deeply built around this sense of reverence for the history of the nation (the real one, they'd tell you (of course), that liberals don't understand; that conveniently also favors Big Business).
If he had a court stacked with Alitos and Thomases, I might feel differently. But Gorsuch is a Real Believer originalist. And Barrett and Kavanaugh have broken with his line when it comes to things like this, as well; because, while I find their political beliefs reprehensible and incoherent, they still do believe in some of these notions. And Rogers has no spine but does believe in the court and, so, tries to find a middle ground, even if signing on to opinions he might not fully share.
And this extends to other positions, as well; the people Trump didn't appoint.
Basically, you would need to strip out the strict reading of the constitution – which leaves voting to the states – that the old Republican party built its entire identity around and all the arguments they've made for (their idea of) small governance and the many years of precedent by conservatives arguing this very point to literally move against democracy itself and I don't think true believers like the sort of Gorsuch are really there, yet.
Waging war? Sure; we've (unfortunately) been watering down the restrictions on that power for decades, now (and neocons love war so there's probably some reason they've concocted as to why it's not a violation of small governance). Etc. Etc.
But literally suspend democracy itself? I don't think, with the people he has in power right now, he could do that. Try to influence individual states on the ground (because they control their own elections)? Sure. Outright suspend elections? I don't think he's built the infrastructure and packed the various offices enough, yet (and, unfortunately for him, this isn't something handled by the Executive branch, which he has (unfortunately) largely overtaken).
It'll be harder for him to pull that one off. Possible; but I don't think likely.
The domestic unpopularity is most likely the stopping point really. If the US were to ignore a lot of laws and treaties, we could turn Iran into 90 million starving people, then walk away and offer food for drone locations.
The world doesn't really have the time or stomach for that kind of campaign, both here and abroad. People are going to be starving this winter as it is, just because of the delays that have already happened. All we're doing now is debating how many.
Tbh I disagree. Domestic unrest won't come from the immense horror of starving millions of people into submission. We've been doing that for decades and it has never been a significant issue. It will come from the frustration of feeling the detoriation of our quality of life while we all watch hundreds of billions be spent on a war that doesn't benefit the public at all.
I wish I thought Americans would act out of moral concern but palestine alone has shown this to be untrue.
World citizens don't bat an eyelash at US/Israel starving Palestinians, Cubans, Free Korea, Somalia, or anywhere else they please.
You mean the same army that spent 20 years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban? And is now under new, significantly dumber management? No, no I don't.
As an Afghan friend of mine says, it was not the fault of the US. The Afghan people is not ready to form a western-style government, as it's a land of a hundred tribes where most just think of themselves. This is why the government fell so quickly when the US left. Few are motivated to defend the country, corruption is immense.
In her words, it was totally understandable for them to leave, as they saw this and realized they would be fighting a losing battle for decades by staying.
Pretty much spot on; the only way for Afghanistan to have succeeded as a democracy would have required multiple generations of occupation, in order to permanently impact the culture through ideological immersion.
Only once the pre-occupation population dies out (or at least severely diminished due to old age) - and are replaced by successive generations that grew up in that environment - would it become self-sustaining.
It’s very easy to dismiss the Afghan people have “always been like that” - all the while forgetting that the current religious ferver is mostly due to a power vacuum following the failed Soviet invasion of the late ‘80s.
Prior to that, the metropolitan areas weren’t all that different to pre-revolution Iran.
So America can at max half ass all their decisions without thinking of the long term aside from the money the private military contractors made during 20 years? Got it make sure the USA stays the fuck out of the middle east
Shouldn't have started started a war without intending to 'win the peace', in a Marshall Plan sort of way.
Oh, absolutely. My point is more that the US shouldn't have been there to begin with, just like the US shouldn't be bombing Iranian children now.
Perhaps. The same friend is thankful that the US did try to save them from the Taliban, at least.
Winning a war and installing a lasting regime are two very different things. The US crushed the war part and fumbled the regime building.
So they won the battle but lost the war?
They won the war but failed at installing a lasting regime that aligns with their interests. A decades-long occupation is not generally counted as part of a war.
So... they lost the war?
It really is. War means you crush your enemies. We absolutely did not.
That is correct, and don't let anybody tell you you are wrong.
Given how well they did in Afghanistan and Iraq, sure.
And Vietnam. Our military isn't great with boots on the ground because that's not the point. This is for making military money and that's it.
That isn't quite accurate. The US military is very good at killing people and destroying things. To win you need a strategy that goes beyond those things. It involves aspects outside the military. You need diplomats to coordinate and negotiate with allies, diplomats to meet and negotiate with the opposition in conflicts where that is feasible, a strategy that has end goals and a reasonable way to get to those goals, political entities to explain to the US citizenry and the world at large why the conflict is necessary, and a bunch more. The military doesn't really do most of that, and the US hasn't bothered with having any of those things for a long time. The problem is the US government keeps just saying to 'conquer' some country and giving no real sense of what that even means.
And making Petrobarons* spelling richer and maintaining USD hegemony through petrodollar. We invaded Iraq because Hussein was trying to convert Iraq's UN Food-for-Oil account from petrodollar to petroeuro.
That's kind of my point. The US military is pretty good at doing what militaries are for. Its other parts of the government that decide where to point them. And where they have been pointed has been stupid/destructive/dictated by oligarchs for a long time.
Pretty sure at this point we know what it means.
It's an attempt to distract from the Epstein files.
They conquere Iraq and Afghanistan quite fast, what they half-heartedly tried and failed at was building a lasting regime that they didn't directly control.
Trump has fired a lot of our best generals, alienated NATO, and screwed over the young men he'd need to join up.
One thing that people overlook is that FDR had been helping Americans for almost a decade when WW2 broke out. And there was still a memory of the draft from WW1. Trump's already having to reduce military standards and the War hasn't gotten out of first gear yet.
Considering how bad Afghanistan was with half population and no stranglehold on critical shortcut... yeah not a chance. USA population is what 300mil+? Iran is about 90+.
How bad what was? America took that entire country in two months. Iraq was just one.
America took parts of it and camped out in the cities for 20 years. The rest of it ebbed and flowed depending on the date.
I'm all in favor of getting rid of the US military, I'm not sure I support doing so by sending American troops to die
Fuckall.