Iran War Cost Tracker(iran-cost-ticker.com) |
Iran War Cost Tracker(iran-cost-ticker.com) |
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike
we shall see
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...
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/middleeast/girls-sc...
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.
Because that is a realistic possibility.
war is good business
so $7 per person?
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.
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 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.
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.
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
(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)
Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?
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.
Ukraine has been $200bn over 2+ years
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.
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.
anytime now. trust me bro.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Presidents can take such defensive actions. It's legal.
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.
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.
Trump doesn't even seem to know what the US's objectives are in Iran. It changes every time anyone in the administration opens their mouth.
True, although I would imagine they had hoped the Arab nations would be against Israel as opposed to potentially fighting on the same side, especially since I imagine they gain a level of funding from within the UAE who are now apparently seeking to retaliate against Iran putting them on the Israeli side.
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.
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:
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?
Now that that baseline is established, the idea that Trump is mentally fit to be President is absurd.
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.
[0] https://www.itv.com/news/2026-03-03/united-states-seeking-an...
this has to be bait, right?
IDF has constantly rejected their war crimes in Gaza, while independent reporting (from different sources) has found multiple evidence of them.
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.
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]
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.
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.
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.
But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...
* 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
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.
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...
Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.
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.
If it saves $1T, then why does it require raising taxes?
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.
Thinking an Iranian nuke is threatening a US city is probably a Fox news talking point, so dogshit by definition.
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.
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.
Quick quick, give me a quote on the coffee maker on the AWACS.
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.
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
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.
Look at the correlation here starting from 2022: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/recent-weakness-german-manufa...
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.
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?
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...
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
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.
60% of it comes from the US, a lot from northern Africa too, not much comes from the middle east
I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.
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
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.)
https://x.com/stinchfield1776/status/2029365225426649346
That's the guy who met to negotiate with the Iranians. They admitted it. You won't get clearer evidence than that.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) on Monday said the Trump administration has not effectively explained the U.S. military objective in Iran, accusing the White House of giving “multiple definitions.”[0]
0: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5765223-warren-davidson-t...
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.
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!
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.
I'm not going to take your comment seriously due to this wild opinion.
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.
$1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 radar hit, likely by a $50,000 Shahed drone: https://x.com/sam_lair/status/2028961678776488111
Holy shit.
Your willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt is mind blowing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We don’t “need” pharmacological breakthroughs to provide the current standard of care. That’s why it’s the current standard of care.
[1] only speaking of the natives, immigrants of all flavors have a very different situation
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.
The fact that all three are looking at cuts and reductions while this war is fully funded is the major problem with America.
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.
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.
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?
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.”
Western liberal civilization has theta decay without occasional violent intervention.
Imagine if we didn't go all-out against communism.
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
You mentioned many other injustices but none of those are "slavery but just different with slightly more rights."
> 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.
if it was indeed about domestic policies, why promises were not held given to the "team"?
> 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.
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.
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...
Israel left newborns to rot in hospital beds, shot many children in the head & chest. Everyone, including Israelis know this. Evil, evil people.
Iranian civilians love the US and Israel for setting them free.
Stop believing terrorist propaganda.
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")
You said "slavery wasn't abolished." Now you're comparing X and Amazon employees to the experience of American slaves. Those aren't shades of grey, they're not even in the same color space.
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.
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.
What makes anyone think that this latest attack is the "end game" vs just the latest expensive chapter?
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."
gee, I wonder why they're doing that.
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
In my opinion bombing people responsible for these atrocities increases the well-being of the world. Most Iranians seem to agree.
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.
Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.
"do nothing"
and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.
With Iran's support of the Houthi I think you'll find they are exactly the same thing.
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.
Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.
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.
Iran's Islamic regime has provided material and monetary support to the Houthis.
Crippling their capabilities aligns with the goal of protecting global 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.
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.
To wit: there are I issues and P positions for each issue, yet there are not I*P ballot choices, so people inevitably get something they don't want.
The logic also falls apart when you realize politicians can do whatever they want after getting elected, including flipping their positions on issues that got them elected (like no war), regardless of what the voters want.
Sigh. I hate the internet. That was exactly my point. Thank you.
The democratic process inherently produces outcomes where not every action taken by a government has majority support. Always. Inevitably.
And, precisely because this is an inevitable result, arguments of the form that such actions represent the manipulation of the government by a conspiracy of elites suppressing the will of the masses are, in the jargon, batshit.
There is no conspiracy. You're just, to repeat for the fifth time, in a minority. Not on the issue itself, but on your prioritization. Sure, lots of people might "agree" with you, but no one gives enough of a shit to change their vote. So the government chases the votes instead, and the interests of those who can deliver the votes.
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.
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.
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.
So, in a surprise to no one, your last paragraph has already been confirmed.
It's kind of crazy that he's already blaming the loss of the war on Biden.
If the US wins, then Biden balanced things with Ukraine pretty much perfectly. If it loses, then Trump should have known better to strike before rebuilding the stockpile.
He probably should have waited at least a month or two to blame Biden if he wanted to convince anyone with an IQ > 80.
No one knows how this will end. Anyone claiming to is either lying or stupid or both.
Either they have a lot of information I'm missing, are complete idiots, or are being dishonest.
> 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.
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.
8 weeks is the absolute upper bound of the estimates from the officials of both countries. The officials are clearly lying.
Precisely -- you are repeating my point. And precisely because this is an inevitable result, arguments result of the form that such actions are what people want, because they voted for that politician, and that politician did that, therefore the people must have wanted it, therefore anyone who doesn't want it must be in the minority. This was your argument.
For the 6th time: This is not the case. Just because a politician did something does not mean it has majority support. Polling shows this particular position (pro-Iran-war) does not have majority support, but rather majority opposition [0], contrary to your argument. Because of the aforementioned I*P limitation, polls are the way to determine this, and that is what they determined [0]. If you think there is majority support for the Iran war, you are in a bubble. Your own personal "batshit" conspiracy theory about "elites" or whatever has no bearing on this.
0 - https://time.com/7382231/iran-us-israel-war-support-polling-...
... who are you replying to? Not me. I certainly didn't say that.
0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47250233
1 - https://time.com/7382231/iran-us-israel-war-support-polling-...
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.
You’re not forced to repeat his rhetoric, maybe think critically about it.
Should Germany be sending DC a bill?
If I recall correctly, America didn't even say 'Thank you'...
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.
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?
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.
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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.
What is that threshold? I've heard anywhere from 3k to 300k. You can definitively answer this question?
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'
30k was just the last protests, they talked about the entire regimes crimes which is much much more.
I was just curious if you had information that I don't have. I suppose not.
You're arguing with a strawman, or a mistake. You agree with me.
Yes it is. Here is the exchange in question:
>> I'm talking about the majority position, not minority (opposition to Iran war)
> So, no, you're not. Or you're misunderstanding how this works.
> people don't care about the war in Iran.
They were talking about the majority position (it is opposition to Iran war), and they weren't "misunderstanding how this works", and people do care about the war in Iran.
>I said people who care about Iran (in the sense of it being a primary driver of voting preference) are in the minority.
Close -- you were talking about people who care about the Iran war, and you omitted everything in parentheses. In contradiction to that thing which you said, however: People who oppose the Iran war are in the majority.
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.
Iran has mandatory military training so if the people gets weapons they can fight for themselves.
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.
Given he did take this clear victory and cash in, in Venezuela, there is some hope he'll do the same in Iran.
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.
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.
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.