and all of this to support apartheid in israel.
* Demonstrated that the US simply can't offer any meaningful security guarantee to it's middle east partners.
* Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran
* Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates
* Spiked inflation at home and doubled down on pissing off pretty much every single country except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them
* Exposed the perilous state of of the defense industrial base (in spite of us spending more than the next 10 countries combined). We simply can't produce enough military hardware to sustain a sustained conflict with a country like Iran. I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China.
All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA.
I think we will look back on this as the US version of the Suez crisis, the beginning of the end of the US empire.
Witness the commodity runup from the last time we blew up west Asia - the resultant liquidity squeeze would melt down the financialized economic system. A collapse only slapshod avoided by exchanging government risk for private risk on an unprecedented scale. Did the Iraq 2003 adventure actually net more money for oil companies in a 10-20 year horizon? Debateable.
Unfortunately not the case. There are an odd number of refinery issues happening across the US lately.
So while they might have incredible man power and manufacturing capability, everyone in that first battle will be seeing battle for the first time in their life.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/16/im-on-the-fron...
Afaik official pro russian Chinese TV report broadcasts stopped abruptly when their team got a front view of a tank turret toss on a road 100km away from official front.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russian-tank-blown-up-...
After that they kept quiet recording tactics and occasionally producing some russia propaganda like this gem https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1810903-20250627.h... where dude on a front line in full camo complains being mistaken for a soldier.
Iran also basically just fought us to a stalemate, with an arguably long-term strategic victory going to Iran, just by being willing to absorb more punishment in the short term. Once we depleted our stocks of expensive weaponry we had to stop. We could win every fight and still lose the war.
https://www.ft.com/content/2e0185d1-3229-463c-8391-6dd09fe11...
Then the causal chain is War in Iran -> Oil Price increase -> Inflation & Fed Rate fears -> Treasury sell-off. Geopolitical risk creates inflation shock, and if bonds sell off on war news, their utility as a portfolio hedge weakens, and capital holders start looking for new assets (stocks and property). Also, the exodus from bonds first results in a pile of sidelined capital whose eventual rotation into stocks and property and gold leads to more market instability down the road.
Also, Russian and Iranian windfall oil profits are up along with those of Exxon, Chevron, Shell etc., the arms producers like Lockheed are booming, and for some reason, ‘prediction markets’ (gambling interests) also:
https://vestedfinance.com/blog/us-stocks/who-made-money-from...
Until this year, US military bases were seen as an asset. They were thought to deter attacks, and in the case of someone being crazy enough to attack the country that hosted a US military base, they sold the promise of a quick and decisive response.
But for countries in the Middle East, every base was nothing but a liability with nothing but a long list of detriments. The bases got attacked and destroyed with basically zero effort whatsoever, local militaries had to step up to defend the US bases on their own dime and with their own people putting their lives on the line, and the bases basically just served as provocation and ended up with the countries being attacked as "punishment" for letting the US military operate on their land. And the US put in the bare minimum effort, if any, to defend the countries being attacked. It was basically "that's on you. Buzz off".
Europe is now being threatened with having their US bases cut back/removed entirely and I'm not sure if people are even worried anymore. People have been using the term "paper tiger" to refer to Russia these past 4 years because their efforts at war have been absolutely embarrassing. Somehow the US has made Russia look competent, and despite being against all the BS America did in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, I didn't think America would somehow show itself to be more rotted out from the inside than Russia. I always assumed the US was competent, albeit war hungry. But somehow competence has completely vanished.
And right now, East Asian allies of the US operate under the very wrong assumption that the US will back them up if China/Russia/North Korea tries something. And now that those countries know the US won't do shit, there's a non zero chance that they've taken war plans from purely hypothetical plans to "we could actually do this" plans.
The US bases are also pretty expensive to set up. Lots of logistic support has to be in place to let those bases function. That require a lot of support from the host country. Normally, you would expect the US to be friendly with the host countries, but that seems lost on the current administration.
What is really wrong is that it is known that russia is fighting in Ukraine with drones designed in Iran. And we have seen how hard it is for US designed weapons to deal with those drones. To the point that a lot of development is happening in Ukraine to deal with this problem.
By attacking Iran, the US has shown the world that Ukraine is the weapon supplier of choice against future drone wars.
As a US citizen, I hope more countries come to this realization and start rejecting these.
It's such a lose-lose for everyone
The establishment and maintenance of these bases cost the tax payers so much....
If only we could refocus this massive expenditure of resources to internal domestic infrastructure...
European here (from Spain), and the overwhelming majority of people I know are hoping for the removal of the bases. They are worried, yes... worried that it's just grandstanding and it's not really going to get done (which is likely, because those bases have always been there mainly for the benefit of the US).
It was pushed out, by force.
A study a few years ago gave the US just 1 week before all its missiles were depleted with China in just a naval war.
Its really difficult to overstate the level of strategic defeat that has occurred here.
CCP on the other hand can play the nationalist card.
Ofcourse it is my genuine belief that war between the US and China would be amazingly stupid and a waste of human life.
I think Trump is about to lose patience with Iran again and we're in for a second phase of this war. What that looks like afterwards is anyone's guess. I'm not very optimistic.
It's not impossible that if the IRGC can't make payroll that things start to change from the inside, like what happened in Serbia. I'm not going to bet on that outcome though.
I think we'll have that answer shortly after trump and xi have their little meeting, but I agree with you.
Well, European partners are looking, too - and they are drawing logical conclusions, such as producing more interceptors locally rather than wait years for the first batches of PAC-3.
Just like renewables, EV's and a lot of other technologies, the expensive toys the US arms producers are hawking are starting to look like relic from another era.
(Once ICE cars fall below a certain percentage, they will have structural disadvantages to EVs because ICE engines are so expensive to design.)
Well for everyone but maybe Trump:
Maybe not directly from this conflict, but it’s becoming hard to differentiate the actions taken by this administration from solely that of seeking personal gain.
Obviously it's not NET positive, but if I had to highlight one positive for the US from their perspective, setting most of our guided munitions on fire overnight breaks the military, and the suspicion is that it breaks the military at a time when China is not quite yet prepared to invade Taiwan. It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; Increasing procurement rates for many systems by an order of magnitude on the low end. A year ago, and 10 years ago, and 25 years ago, it was in a severe munitions stockpile crisis according to everyone who's ever ran a wargame or tried to figure out deterrence policy for a non-nuclear shooting war
After the Cold War, we basically reduced most munitions stockpiles to a level consistent with a Desert Storm scale operation, but kept paying exorbitant amounts of money to keep defense contractors technically alive, producing a handful of units a year at costs that pay for the overhead of existing. In areas like naval procurement, the contradictions entailed by this approach combined with neoliberal austerity posturing and a lackadaisical response to delays, have combined to turn almost every major shipbuilding effort since the Cold War into an expensive failure. We are spending a remarkable amount of money on military equipment and probably getting 5% of what we would get if we spent twice that much and emphasized industrial performance rather than contractor sustainment.
A year ago, Congress and the Pentagon were carefully ignoring this for political reasons, while the MIC & foreign policy blob believes China was looking at it as an opportunity.
How exactly is it positive to waste munition and thus force the congress to buy new munition? You will spend a huge amount of money to ... get where you was.
I wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. The war is not over. I wouldn't even be so sure as to say Iran is in a good place right now.
Iran can absorb more pain than the US, but even that has a deadline. For the US, the only pain is inflation, which is more a matter of political capital than anything tangible. Trump is a lame duck president so I think he's more than happy to spend his political capital on this.
It's different for Iran. The main concern with a prolonged conflict is a lack of oil storage space. Once the tanks are full you have to cap the wells which is nigh disastrous for Iran because of the cost and difficulty of reactivating those wells later on.
To be clear, I'm not saying the US is going to come out victorious. But war is complex and it's a folly to predict any outcomes this early on.
It doesn't. This is the western mentality, thinking you are dealing with sane people.
I'm from Iran (now living in the West), there's a famous Shia motto: "Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala".
Around 30% of the population are die hard IRGC supporters, another 10% are neutral and the rest don't like the regime.
The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect.
The IRGC has more support than ever now. It's a battle for the Iran now against United States, attempting to destroy people's homes.
I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now.
Iranians are not going give up, right now, you will have to kill all 90M of us to "win".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura
That is not correct and the comment you replied to even pointed out several ways it hurt the US other than that
Inflation is the only Immediate pain. The other harms will play out over years.
While war games already predicted we’d run out of basically all defensive and offensive weapons almost immediately in a confrontation with China, that wasn’t demonstrated yet. Now it has been proven, but not even with China, with much smaller and less powerful Iran. We used a major portion of our stuff, it didn’t accomplish anything major, and now we’re already depleted like a paper tiger.
As others point out Iran had their own fair share of issues and there were protests but now they have a common enemy to fight. Most likely it keeps galvanizing people in the Middle East against US and then Americans wonder why people chant - Death to...But then again this shows average American has no clue about different cultures and the best analysis is - Iran is done, just like how Taliban was done right?
That and its trust and geopolitical influence even among allies being quickly eroded to the benefit of countries like China.
Inflation and ammo stockpiles are easier to fix.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/12/cpi-inflation-april-2026-.ht...
The other interesting part in that article is that excluding fuel and food still shows 2.8% inflation - only 1% attributable to food and fuel. Makes it seem like the main article and this article have different spins.
Edit: Wow people are jumping on this. The point is that food and fuel increases account for about 26% of the overall inflation number, meaning that the bulk of inflation is not related directly to fuel. The original article makes it it seem different.
What do you mean by this? If adding food and fuel raises CPI by 1%, then the food and fuel prices have necessarily raised by _more_ than the combined 3.8%.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/economy/cpi-infl...
The US has literally never honored a deal with Iran. Iran has no reason to negotiate with the US. The US either has to back down, put boots on the ground, or sit and wait.
If the government survives, they had a quiet infrastructure investment from China they can activate to rebuild their damaged facilities.
On top of that the US is further isolated from its remaining allies. Being unable to win a war or even protect regional allies against a fourth rate power is an embarrasment for a current/former superpower.
But hey we did destroy the Iranian Navy! Sort of.
It'll be better now, they killed the dad/wife/son/etc. of their new leader, this will 100% make them eager to negociate in good terms
Basically there's a lot of money out there floating around, especially after we pumped with COVID. It has to go somewhere, and mostly ends up in asset appreciation (stocks and real estate).
You're right though that the reality of shortages via a missing 20% supply of oil is a problem, and with all this cash floating around will eventually show itself as stagflation. That said, oil's pass-through to the broad indexes is historically weaker than it feels, so the pain will likely hit consumer purchasing power and corporate margins before it really shows up in the headline stock numbers.
Stocks (naturally) price in inflation before inflation becomes headlines everywhere. People uncertain about the dollar trying to shelter their wealth from inflation will move to stocks to shield themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/economy/cpi-infl...
if everyone believes the straight of hormuz is open, even if it is not, even if 20% less oil is being moved globally, what happens to oil prices? what happens to oil deliveries?
is it possible for oil to be cheap in America while Bangladesh experiences shortages, instead of everyone paying more?
is oil the same as energy? or is it more relevant to transportation?
does it matter? suburban life is quite comfortable, a LOT of people keep choosing big single family home with yard, drive everywhere. driving everywhere is VERY comfortable. a lot of people like it. are they willing to pay more for it? does buying a house that is MUCH cheaper by virtue of being far away from a city stop making sense for 250m americans just because gas is 50% more expensive?
I've seen reporting that energy prices won't return to pre-war levels this calendar year, even assuming an immediate return to the status quo basically right now (which seems unlikely).
I find the whole thing really confusing. The facts I can see with my own eyes suggest high inflation and this surely means no substantial rate cuts (which... the market has expected) if not reduced consumer spending and risk of recessions.
But the markets think everything is... fine? So... what are we missing here?
The current rally is extremely narrow, mostly just AI/Big Tech and chip stocks. But yeah, the "market" appears to believe that this will all be over soon, which seems unlikely to me.
Markets is just gambling but the gamblers wear suits and pretend things are respectable.
It doesn't need to make sense, line just needs to go up. It works until it doesn't.
You are missing that the current governance is very ready to print money to bailout any situation. The market can go down in nominal value but still up in dollar's.
Consumer Price Index (CPI) vs Core CPI
The above link is a little dumb because their own graph only goes up to March. But it looks like in March Core CPI was 2.6% while CPI was 3.3%.
Still, the details are in the text:
> Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called consumer core prices rose 0.4% last month from March and 2.8% from April 2025
Petro prices up - oil companies make more money
Interest rates up - banks make more money
Win Win! What could possibly be the problem?
If you're one of the little people paying for it all, you should be Proud™ to fulfill your role of enriching ownership...
because it took YEARS for Obama's team to get them to sign something
and he's already used up half of US war stockpiles
Iran's dictators will eat and sleep just fine for years while their people starve and get bombed to death
click on YTD here and imagine that flat-line for YEARS
https://en.macromicro.me/charts/94482/imf-strait-of-hormuz-n...
I can see sanctions though, maybe a re-shuffling of alliances where China becomes the world's default Adult In The Room.
It is funny watching economies like Japan -- where their new prime minister was fluffing Trump like crazy -- get fully screwed.
Not in the US but I'll go out on a limb and guess that gas stations aren't being littered with 'I Did That!" Trump stickers.
But they are, ha ha.
The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time.
Whether or not you believe the United States' leaders, whether or not you think there was a better way for them to achieve their goals (something something Obama deal) is up for debate. But it's very facetious to say you "can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war," when the United States' leaders have been publicly announcing it for nearly a year.
This comment doesn't make sense to me; if one doesn't agree with the US leaders then one can perfectly well say that one can't think of a single way in which the US has come out ahead. In fact that's just another way of saying that one doesn't agree with US leaders; there's no contradiction here.
The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth.
>except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them
Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate to charge spot prices, since they're in a pickle right now and depend on imports to keep the war going while not being able to sell to too many nations so they're stuck watching potential earnings go past them.
No? https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/11/iran-war-russia-putin-t...
> Data suggests that Moscow has already made billions of dollars of additional
> revenue from oil sales because of higher crude prices, as well as the fact
> that the United States temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russia to rein in
> global costsBefore using the nuclear weapons on Japan, we literally firebombed every city in Japan BUT Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And arguably the only reason they surrendered when they did was because Russia was beginning a large scale invasion of their own.
People who call themselves "foreign policy experts" but advocate for regime change through bombing are not serious people, and the fact that we have treated them as such for so long is an indictment on our collective intelligence.
Trump took a high risk gamble, that he would destabilize Iran and the people would overthrow the remnants. That didn't happen, and now Iran gets to inflict severe pain on the US.
I myself am delighted though, because everyone needs to get the fuck off oil, even if it's economically painful for a few years.
What did Bush / Obama / Biden do?
But the elephant in the room is Trump and the JCPOA. We just backed out and gave them nothing in return for them holding up their side of the bargain. Furthermore, we made such an embarrassment out of the other signatories that such a deal amongst western powers will never happen again either.
For example, your store might be competing for business using the headline price of eggs and making it up on milk and bread. In our city, Whole Foods was the cheapest non-warehouse place to buy eggs for a while. Anecdotally, it looks like one could save a relatively large % on various goods simply by going to a different store, which was not the case a few short years ago.
Relative pricing stability appears to have collapsed, shopping is more intellectually-intensive now.
There is no way I could go shop at 5, or even 3 stores a week for food, I simply do not have the time. (Spouse and I both work full-time, 3 kids at 3 different ages going to 3 different schools every day, etc)
You are on HN, the chance you are part of the american average is very low.
That 15% cost is not relevant if you don't drink milk. Its also a lot less if you are able to save money. That money saved might be for something very specific like one specific car or a house.
The house market, as far as i understand it, is more decoupled from inflation than not. Here in germany a farm costs still 600k and goes up and down based on location and other factors. My money in the bank doesn't has to be inflation neutral, it should be house market neutral for the money i only want to buy a house for.
You can also choose and change your buying power. Instead of the sports car x, you can buy y. Instead of buying the city center house, you can buy the farm outside.
You are on HN, the chance you are part of the american average is very low.
Just because you don't drink milk, doesn't mean that you'll be unaffected.
Example report https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/filerepo/sites/default/fil...
They apply random multipliers to many products to account for "quality" and "performance", it completely skew the numbers and doesn't reflect the life of most people.
They even give you an example showing how the same car but with 3 more speeds, "smartphone integration" and "keyless entry" should be 3.6% inflation but actually counts as 0.6%
Same for computers, mobiles, etc.
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/vehicles.htm
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/wireless-telephone-servic...
Yes. Bigger national and state stockpiles because the US can afford it, and many companies within the US can afford to pay for better futures contracts with suppliers that guarantee a future price in exchange for upfront payment that many poorer countries can’t afford because they have more immediate needs.
The USA is responsible for this horrendes situation, the USA people will not be the people struggling and dying.
Its the poor people in every country around the globe which literaly will die, while the rich countries will just continue doing whatever they were doing.
Holidays, traveling to visit famiily and friends. It will cost more for sure but you will still do it.
The poor can't afford the food anymore because cooking becomes more expensive. going to your daily job becomes more expensive. The likelyhood of people is getting destroyed beecause the small jobs, the niche jobs are suddenly uprooted. Like the small tuktuk or the cheap and dangerous bus for 6 people is too expensive suddenly.
We’ve had $4 gas before (20 years ago?!) and it was annoying but it didn’t end the world.
According to the US Census, median household income in 2024 was $80,000. Add federal and state income tax* of 30%, and you're left with $56,000. Rent in lower-cost areas is around $12,000 ($1k/mo.) and health insurance (assuming ACA, not fancy private plans) is another $7000. Utility prices vary wildly but average something like $450-500 (so $6000 per year). if you don't live in a particularly high-cost area and skip luxuries like home Internet service or media subscriptions.
That's just over $30,000 left over per year for all household expenses, including "luxuries" like food, clothes, and car and home maintenance. Heaven forbid you have loans (car, student, etc.) or any revolving credit debt.
The difference between $5k and $10k in fuel costs is therefore easily 15% vs. 35% of total "inessential" spending. With food and other goods consistently been driven up by inflation and tariffs, there's just no margin for an "average" family.
(Sources vary for the above; US Census comes data from its own website, rent from TIME, health costs from Forbes, and utilities from move.org. Feel free to find better reference numbers if you doubt the above.)
*- yes, not all states charge income tax; most of the ones that don't have other taxes (sales, gas, property) to make up the gap
Half of that.
a lot of people like it.
I think the US has been ramping up domestic oil production for a while, creating an interesting situation where (global) prices are high but (domestic) supply is healthy. Prices are up at the pump in the US, but I'm not sure how much of that OPEC+ price-fixing or "risk premium".
This means that "domestic production" does not mean what you imply (which is "domestic production that must be sold in the US.") If US producers can make more money selling 100% of domestic production overseas, they will do that.
This is not price-fixing, it is the predictable outcome of a market design where US drivers bid against Asian airlines for petroleum products.
Train’s move around vast amounts of freight but they got optimized for coat per ton for coal, wheat, etc not latency. Which then plays havoc if you try and do just in time manufacturing etc using them. Airfare and thus airfreight is simply dominated by fuel costs which hits many industries in ways that are less obvious but still expensive.
isn't correct. There are plenty of people on HN working in military contract industries, high tech arms manufacturing and such. They lobby Gov and benefit financially as do their employees.
Military contractors do well when the military has widespread support from the voters. Congresscritters will happily approve tax dollars going to the military industrial complex when their constituents view the US as the global protector of democracy. Wars like this one that aren't popular and make us look like thugs open the floor up to anti-military candidates. So yeah, the companies building missiles do well while the war is on, but the people like me who automate military fuel farms see budget cuts and projects cancelled.
If I worked in military R&D I’d be worried that focus might shift away from the more speculative/less delivery-oriented/fun to work on products…
The USA was doing something to guarantee that stuff can flow through it, then they start a war, now they can no longer guarantee this?
Did they suddenly loose the power to protect this flow?
Just because USA is war mongering, doesn't mean no one else would have stepped up or that it wouldn't be better without all of this involvment.
> I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China.
You ask your military experts what would happen if your border region would get invaded by your rival neighbor, and they say that any scenario where the castle there holds out and breaks the siege would require upwards of 300,000 arrows to be expended in the first month, and you say "I hope my rival doesn't invade then. I'm so happy they're friendly now after the Great War." You're also happy that the regional lords under you are happy that they don't have to pay so many taxes.
Ten years in the future, the situation has changed a bit. Your neighbor is building a massive army. You say "I hope my rival doesn't invade. It doesn't look like they're close to my military yet. I'm increasing arrow production to 2 per day," at a nominal cost of 4000 elbomarks/day, but an actual cost of considerably less. You achieve this budget change... barely. Can't ask for more - can't disrupt the regional lords right now. None of them seem to think there's a threat right now.
Ten years after that, your rival is fortifying its border and building siege equipment, but your walls are high and it would need a couple more generations of larger siege tower to reach them. You hold a jousting and archery competition, and deplete your stockpiles, shooting 9000 arrows at a target in a weeklong circus of an event. This was all your idea and basically everybody criticizes you. Former supporters start talking about you retiring.
You tell the regional lords through a budget request "We're completely defenseless now. You HAVE to give me the elbomarks to rebuild the arrow-making factories and start producing 300 arrows per day, starting immediately and for the next five years, or there will definitely be war.
I'm not saying for sure how deliberately this scenario happened. It's unlikely that it failed to occur to every single advisor to Donald Trump, but whether it was part of Trump's personal decisionmaking calculus is impossible to say.
Pretty simple - an overall increase of 1% inflation is attributed to food and fuel.
Food and fuel are more sensitive and respond first. There’s been no time for the effects to really get into the others.
And Food and fuel having huge jumps in inflation is major visible pain for consumers.
The point was that a 1% increase in inflation due to food and fuel wasnt the end of the world. Does a 1% cost of living increase hurt? Sure, for many people on the margin of making ends meet it can be bad. For most people, $1 more out of $100 is survivable.
It's also kind of wild to think that 1 out of 6 households in the US is making $200k+. I get that many of them are in higher cost of living areas where wages are higher, but still WTF. On the other hand, it's something like 1 out of 4 households are making under $50k. Makes me wonder how many of those are retirees vs working age, and what the median household income would be for 25-55yo vs the entire population.
When a buyer buys a stock, they are not giving money to the business.
Als, businesses get removed from the SP500 all the time:
https://www.bankrate.com/investing/s-p-500-stocks-list-of-ad...
They generally have to perform (profit, profit margin, revenue growth, market share growth, political influence growth, etc), and the higher the performance, the more their shares are worth (obviously).
The best strategy then would be to know when the retirement fund money stops doing this due to age pyramid collapse i would assume.
Therefore food and fuel went up more than 3.8%.
You have food and fuel, which is some fraction of the economy - call that F. You have a rate of inflation in fuel and food - call that f. And you have a rate of inflation in everything else - call that e. Then you have
3.8 = e(1-F) + fF.
I think what you're claiming is that fF = 1.0, so that e(1-F) = 2.8. And I think that's wrong. When they say inflation apart from food and fuel is 2.8, they mean e, not e(1-F).
3.8 - 2.8 = 1
The overall inflation is 3.8. Overall inflation without food and fuel is 2.8. The overall inflation attributable to food and fuel must then be 1 (this is different than rste of inflation within food and fuel as a category, f).
This difference makes China look smarter and wiser.
Define "military" first. China's infantry is less experienced than Russia's, but so is America's infantry by-and-large. Neither country envies Russia's army, or the war they chose to fight. Arguably China got the best of both worlds by sending a limited quantity of mercenaries to study the way the conflict was fought.
The war China wants to fight is in the first island chain. They don't need their infantry to swim to Taiwan to occupy it, they need their navy and air force to deny America A2/AD while their Marines fight onshore. Their army is almost purely a defensive force in this conflict, and it's unlikely that they'll be deployed en-masse if the US manages to disrupt their logistics. The pressure will be on China's missile forces and naval assets, both of which are very credible for the war they want to fight. On the other hand, America's Arleigh Burkes will be running with half their VLSes empty because the US needed to launch decapitation strikes against Iranian kindergartens.
Military-wise, China has almost every advantage they could want. They'll be fighting an overextended opponent that has limited support from their Pacific ocean assets, a miniature international coalition, and a depleted magazine depth with no esclatory strategic advantage. None of those are worth giving up to bloody your troops, especially if those troops are mostly just going to watch the war unfold on their smartphone.
Thales land radar systems always perform as expected, sometime better than expected, in land conflicts. If this is the same for their naval radars, they are far ahead of the competition.
> All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA.
But that deal also ended nearly a decade ago, and the United States has been in talks for more than a year to strike a new deal. It is facetious to say they gain nothing by starting a war, if your excuse is they could have just not blundered a decade ago. Unfortunately, the United States does not yet have access to time travel.
To clarify, in case that was not clear:
"Yes, the leaders say they gain something, but I disagree because they wouldn't have anything to gain if we could just go back in time and fix their blunders."
So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.
Interesting. So Urkaine and the EU have been denied USA weaponry, and yet Ukraine is turning the tide of the war anyway.
I guessing this isn't how the current USA administration expected that would turn out. I imagine they thought the collapse of Ukraine would reinforce the USA piston as leader of the western world.
Judging by the West's silence when Trump appealed for help with Iran, that isn't what happened. Instead it looks like the Wests reaction to Trump's USA threatening to the leave their club is "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out".
Urkaine successfully waging war with weapons that cost several orders of magnitude less than what the USA is offering probably has something to do with that, particular given they are right next door and will be greatly appreciative of the EU's support for them through the war. Friendship and helping a mate out in a time of need brings it's own rewards.
This is a positive, not a negative. It's a needed wake up call and better to get it now instead of during a war with China.
That said, it seems that the stock market is doing well in spite of this war, and not because of it. Who knows how long that will last
What's the data and how many extra billions did the make from China and how much increase is that in %?
I seem to have read an article that states that by the 1980s measure inflation hit 15%. Other alternative measures go the same way, with the famous big mac index crossing 10%.
In Europe, they seem to do the same, but seem more fans of actually falsifying the underlying figures (like the LIBOR incident, which turned out to raise mortgage payment yet lower inflation)
Asian central banks (by which we mean China) do it yet another way. They simply declare inflation, 4 years ahead of time, to be a certain value. Then inflation is that value. Of course, last time "for some reason" the economic measures that made up the definition of inflation were suddenly declared state secrets.
Of course this may just be the banks moving at different speeds. Europe used to fix it's inflation problems by redefining what inflation was. They moved on to falsifying data. I guess that's just what's in the FED's future.
They adopted a new way to adjust inflation in 1990, and since then everything has been perfect lmao: https://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-cpi.gif?hl=ad&t=
There are many ways in which inflation numbers are cooked; just one of them is the hedonic adjustment [1].
Others include an un-representative basket of goods.
The basket of goods is adjusted every 2 years, but not necessarily in a way that mirrors the way real households adapt their spending patterns to increased prices.
Owner equivalent rent (LOL) massively lags behind home prices.
Honestly, when 10s or hundreds of millions of people's perception does not match *Official Government Numbers*, then it's reason to suspect that the official numbers are a poor metric.
I can walk to my local $KROGER or drive 1min (which I do when I'm buying more than I want to carry.)
I assume they get to the store the same way they get to the stores in the cities. On trucks. A lot of what I buy (meat and produce) is grown in the state I live in. So I can make a 6-serving chicken and orzo dish for under $15 easily, for instance. I got it down to $10 when the meat is BOGO too.
The evidence of this is is literally right in front of you, how could a country with no military or capabilities hold the straight for 2+ months? The IRGC literally tweets every day about how full of shit the U.S. is, hard to tweet if you're dead as the U.S. claims.
Why does the market seem so disconnected from the general economy?
Iran had a different victory condition. All they had to do was outlast and not be completely wiped out. Trump's victory condition was... well, only Trump knows. Short of a total ground invasion of Iran and full eradication of the Iranian regime (a tall, tall order), victory for the US in Iran, in the eyes of the public, was always going to be impossible.
Yeah but all of that is orthogonal to the war itself. It's not like Trump needed to threaten to invade Greenland to go to war with Iran.
I think that's why my grocery prices haven't gone nuts. For instance, I buy whole chickens (local-grown, free-range) for 99c/lb regularly.
Looking at my receipts, I spend a few hundred/week at this $KROGER. And that includes buying alcohol and non-food items like charcoal, cat litter, diapers, cleaning supplies.
And if we no longer need the majority of fossil fuels for oil, we will have more of our own ample local fossil fuels to allocate to production of things that still require them like your afore mentioned fertilizer or lubricants.
no one is suggesting that
> nor do we have a viable alternative for making nitrogen based fertilizer
nor is anyone suggesting that
Also, at his rallies, drill baby drill wasn't exactly met with booing
Another way would be to introduce carbon pricing, which folks like Greenspan, Volker, Bernanke, Yellen, etc endorsed:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car...
You add a surcharge on carbon emissions, they raise the prices of carbon-intensive activities, which get passed onto end consumers. Companies which reduce their carbon footprint would be able to sell products/services for less money and where many people would choose because it's cheaper.
The key: the money collected is returned to consumers (why it's labelled "dividend") on an average basis. So if you use less carbon than average your refund will be more than your surcharge outlay and you'll come out ahead. If you use more than average, then it's more money out of pocket.
Sadly when Canada tried this under the Trudeau Liberals the Conservatives—which tend to be (federally) concentrated in the O&G-dominant western provinces—attacked it as a "tax" (regardless that the money was refunded), even though it's probably the most market efficient mechanism—which Conservatives even testified to: "Scott Moe says Saskatchewan considered carbon tax alternatives, but found them too costly":
* https://nationalpost.com/news/scott-moe-says-saskatchewan-co...
The gradual increasing of the price would put continued, increasing pressure to reduce emissions, but would not (net) cost people more out of pocket.
The other market efficient solution would probably a cap-and-trade, which is how Canada and the US (under Bush 41) dealt with acid rain.
Agree with the rest of your point.
Iran can't credibly threaten to nuke Israel over a threat that isn't existential to Iran. And Hezbollah or Hamas being bombed (along with a lot of civilians) is is not that.
> If a country has a peace treaty with Israel and the monopoly on violence in their territory, they experience no Israeli aggression.
Doha called about the Israeli bombing of the peace talks with the Palestinian resistance.
https://imemc.org/article/israel-bombs-palestinian-negotiato...
In fact, at $80k in some areas you'll qualify for medicaid for the family (or at least the kids) - up to $108k in CA for example: https://www.coveredca.com/pdfs/FPL-chart.pdf
The clanker says that "median family with kids" makes $105k and pays total tax (including property, sales, income, etc, etc) of about $23k.
I stand by the core point: the median household income leaves very little room for major spikes in essential costs like fuel, housing, and health care. Any single cost jumping from $5k -> $10k is potentially ruinous.
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-income-by-age-percentil...
> but I can't even imagine how good my life could be if my wife made the same amount as me so we had a combined income close to $200k.
Outside of a VHCOL, $200k mostly buys you peace of mind, if you live modestly. You get to build savings to be able to say F you to your employer and maybe take time off and spend a few thousand without worry if a family member needs medical attention.
Inside of a VHCOL, $200k merely helps you get a downpayment for a half decent home.
I would LOVE to not have to have a car. I would LOVE to live in a multi-generational home or local community with nearby third places.
People like space, and not having shared walls.
but you are more interested in making idiotic snarky comments and feel smug.
Depends on how you connect conflicts to strategic aims. The US won the cold war. Could they have done so without all the military conflicts? Further, what's the best way to maintain a strong fighting force? By fighting. The US needs wars to maintain it's fighting muscle.
We can look at the data and clearly see the inflection point where wages started rising faster once the pandemic began.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECIWAG
And looking at real wages, we can see that wages have actually outpaced inflation since ~2015
wages have actually outpaced inflation since ~2015
To put that more plainly, lower class, middle class, and upper class defining jobs pretty much stay the same.
With structural disincentives to leaving (medical coverage in the US), that is almost always a less-than-inflation amount.
Do employers even call it a COL increase any more? My employer "rebranded" the annual raises as "merit increases" many years ago.
The wage-price spiral now happens when people move. I've definitely noticed that average salaries for my role (data person) have increased singificantly since 2020 or so.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...
I say this as an anti-empirical leftist with no great sympathy for the effort, but for those proclaiming to put America's interests above all else it's just such an obvious and idiotic short-sighted self-own.
US farmers growing otherwise unprofitable crops with no buyer? Check. US exporters being able to export crops? Check. US Aid workers being able to give food to starving people in countries that have huge deposits of rare earth materials? Check. US intelligence apparatus having advanced knowledge of developing situations in strategically important countries? Check. US Aid workers being able deliver tremendous goodwill to countries that China or Russia would love to have their tentacles in? Check.
Everyone's happy, everyone makes money, everyone eats.
Yet Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't like it, so away it goes. And there's no adult in the room to say "no, you're not cutting it, here's why".
The dollar being the world’s reserve currency gives us the ability to print dollars for infrastructure projects with relatively little consequence.
This is now being threatened by our best attempts to get everyone in the world to hate us and see us as hostile, unstable idiots and unreliable partners.
I’ll also note that the America First MAGA crowd seem to also be against funding public infrastructure projects, especially the radically socialist notion of high speed rail.
I don't disagree that money should be spent here. But instead of billions spent on military contractors, using some of that money in developing countries through USAID gets us some incredible returns...such as our work in the Congo securing our rights to the largest Cobalt deposit on the planet. Or our work in Namibia giving us access to the 4th largest deposit of Uranium on the planet. The top 3 countries for Uranium exports are either under the Sino-Russian sphere of influence (Kazakhstan) or are nations that could get there due to the fact that they fucking hate the US due to the genius words of Donald Trump (Canada and Australia).
You want America's sources of Cobalt and Uranium cozying up to China and giving the US the finger?
They supported USA's hegemony, extension of soft powers - essentially (not a quote) 'we trade with USA because they're our partner, they help us with defence against tyrants'. Except, when USA vote in a fascist tyrant.
Many bridges have been burned.
USA is just like a company taken over by venture capitalists, and just like such a company those capitalists look like they'll run it into the ground and make off with all the money.
I actually do know someone who regularly hits up multiple grocery stores every week chasing deals and that does seem crazy to me. The cost in gas and time doesn't at all seem worth it.
The time saved is enormous, and the amount of money we might be saving by being more scrupulous is probably on the order of 5-10 bucks/week, which granted does add up over the course of a year. I like to think it’s a wash with the gas/car maintenance we would be spending, but who knows how accurate that is.
Works well enough for us, at this stage in life. Walmart is on the very cheap/low quality end of the spectrum, and we cook all our meals/pack lunches.
Always open to new ideas as it relates to saving money and being more efficient with time. These kiddos won’t be kiddos before we know it and we try to optimize our time with them as much as we can.
You have no idea, at all, how much my wife or I travel for work, among many other things about my life. You don't know about any of the myriad of health problems I would have, or my spouse, or my kids. You don't even know if I have a variety of stores at which I could "stop by for 3 hours a week." You don't know my work schedule, or my wifes.
Take a deep breath. I wasn't assuming anything about anyone. You however, are doing that.
The US doesn't need to fire more missiles, it just needs to blockade the strait and force Iran to cap its wells.
> The war is not over, but I would not count out the Iranians going for another strategic goal not mentioned in the GP post: make is so that the American president that attacked Iran loses the midterm big time.
I think Trump has already conceded the midterms. He's a lame duck president anyways so it's not his mess to clean up
I don't get why so many people ignore it. Does Trump look like the kind of guy who respects the constitution to you? Or more like the kind of guy who is trying to build an autocracy? Have you noticed what he does with officials that follow the law and their agency's mission, but not Trump's whims?
2) Iran has been naughty v. USA's allies for a long time, directly and indirectly
3) Iran has been naughty v. USA itself for a long time, directly and indirectly
So, in the interested of stable trade through Hormuz, someone decided to push Iran out. The intent was not to close the strait. The effect was to create a situation unsafe for trade, which is ironic and comical, but it's not the intent.
So, since principles determine intent, I think I was not being contradictory.
The point isn't to make a moral argument for Iran's position, just a realpolitik one. We fucked with them, they fuck with us. They're winning, unfortunately as it might be. Ergo, we shouldn't have fucked with them.
And yeah, USA might do dumb things that put them into a bind, but ultimately the peaceful flow of traffic through Hormuz is a goal worth pursuing for the world economic health.
The problem with US petro dollar is always the same: we don't know what would have been if it wouldn't exist.
But my main point was very specific to the strait of hormuz and how it was flowing without the help of the USA, now stoped because of the influnece of the USA and how the USA can't restart it.
So your point is not valid for the current state of the strait of hormuz.
You are also moving the goal post now as you state that the peaceful flow of traffic is worth it. Of course it is but now we have to do it and its not the USA helping some other country to fix their problem, in this case every other country needs to do something to fix US Americas problem they created.
USA also got very rich and powerful thanks to the petro dollar, which now shifts to China and now China is benefiting from this. This system was never fair though.
So, circling back to my original comment, the Iran war is in line with the principles of keeping peaceful free trade safe (perhaps only for "us"), but alas, as you say, free trade has paused while we try to do that.
That's it. I dont think that's a hugely controversial statement or obviously false.
This is not US politics. Its global politics and it affects me as well. Independent of this, hn is not a platform the avg person is visiting. It requires a certain amount of high tech expertise to understand the conent of hn which statistically pushes the avg hn reader above the avg person.
You do know how much impact the USA has around the globe right? right?!
Its not far fetched.
Have you looked at the current administration's policies regarding reality, for that matter?
This place isn't a shibboleth.
Iran in its pre Trump state existed with the Khamenei family for quite a long time.
The shared cultural context is so low that as an American, I have absolutely no idea what this means. If I had to guess, "zealotry" or "patriotism"?
I'm not talking about sanity. I understand that the IRGC is greater than the sum of the parts and that no individual life matters.
I'm talking about the oil wells. The IRGC may not care about human life, but you need money to stay in power. Money that will disappear the longer you can't sell your oil and the more oils you have to cap.
> The problem is that, the war has caused a major rally around the flag effect.
I don't believe you. Do you have proof? Iran is pretty damn closed off from the rest of the world so I have a hard time believing that you have some great insider knowledge about this.
> I'm not a fan of IRGC. My 20 year old cousin was captured and tortured in Evin prison for 6 months during the Mahsa uprising in 2022 [3]. You can't imagine how much I hate them, but I love Iran more. If I was there, I would be fighting the Americans right now.
I don't believe you. I'd believe you saying that you'd be against America, but not that you'd be fighting them. If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?
They are not entirely closed off. Apparently there is a communication going on around closures, because I have seen fairly inside Iran info in French media (about executions, about people leaving Teheran etc etc). They are more guarded and dont do strong statements as OP. It is not possible to establish general what people in general think under current conditions. The executions are still going on, no one will randomly admit they are against irgc. But, they are fairly consistent with what he said.
The other consistent thing I heard in interviews (this time by British media) is that Iran is very nationalistic. Even people who hate regime are proud of Iran itself. That makes them more prone toward rally around the flag.
And unfortunately, America made it clear it wants to harm average Iranian. Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win.
By and large this is not true. The US and Israel have hit Iran tens of thousands of times, and have never hit a pure civilian target on purpose. They've hit dual use targets, and accidentally hit civilian targets, but not ones on purpose. They could flatten Tehran if they wanted to hit civilians.
> Plus its idea of regime change is to keep regime intact and change head (see Venezuela), so there is no one who would had actual reason to want America win.
You're not entirely wrong here, and I've seen frustration from the US side that Mojtaba Khamenei is MIA (or dead).
Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you.
Re: "If that were true, why are you not traveling to Iran to join the IRGC right now?" Do you understand that Iranians living in the US have different choices than Iranians living in Iran?
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/iran-attack-qatar-lng-capaci...
It's not. The problem, which I already wrote in my original comment, is with oil storage. When oil flows, it needs to go somewhere. Before it would go on tankers and be sold to China (and a few others). Now, it goes into storage. But storage is not unlimited. And when storage runs out, the oil wells will need to be capped. If they stay capped for more than a few weeks, those wells become insanely expensive to reactivate, and might not be something the IRGC will be able to do.
This is the clock that's ticking.
> Re: "I don't believe you. Do you have proof?" - you come off as un-necessary rude and aggressive. You are assuming GP lies - and that is not a good attitude. You could re-phrase your question in a way to make people engage with you.
You made statements about what Iranians think. I want some proof, given that the internet is off in Iran and I have seen no reporting around the thoughts of the Iranian people.
The Trump admin has pretty low approval ratings. If some very hostile country bombed the US, is your default assumption that the folks who despise Trump would somehow support the bombing?
You could probably find a few crazies that would, but wouldn't you assume people would prioritize their hate towards the people blowing up their friends, family, and property?
You're missing some very important context, which is that the IRGC slaughtered between 6,000-36,000 people in January during the protests. And they would've continued for as long as the protests lasted, and still execute people to this day.
> You could probably find a few crazies that would, but wouldn't you assume people would prioritize their hate towards the people blowing up their friends, family, and property?
By and large the strikes have been against military capability, with some strikes against dual use targets and a few unintended strikes against purely civilian targets. The famous strike on the school was because the school had been an army barracks in the past and was not properly updated. This isn't an excuse, but it's to clarify the situation.
USAID somehow managed to get everyone paid and kept everyone happy. Who gives a shit if it was a CIA front?
I assume your understanding of "demand destruction" is mixing concepts.
GP said switching to alternative sources isn't demand destruction when it IS technically and relatively.
The parent's point: until you get those renewables online (decade long process now with permitting), prices will go up. You'll have people using less energy (in general) and less O&G -- both are quintessential demand destruction.
For nitrogen fertilizer (ammonia), there's already demand destruction with people cutting back due to price shocks. That's less food and ag.
My point was that the OP was myopically focusing on fossil fuel do demand when the real demand that would lead to switching to renewables is the demand for energy.
He has no political future. He pillaged the country as best he could (top notch performance so far) and will continue to do so for the next 3 years and then off to Mar-a-Largo or wherever to live out the few remaining years he's got left
What you wrote would make sense if Trump would be driven by rationale. But as everyone who has seen a news program in the past 12 months knows, Trump is driven by vanity and greed. Because of vanity and greed he will do whatever he can to win the midterms. Including doing all he can to gerrymander the red states to get more votes in the House.
Yes I fully agree
> Because of vanity and greed he will do whatever he can to win the midterms
I don't see how vanity and greed relate to the midterms. Trump is into insider trading and making billions off of crypto pumps and other schemes. Winning the midterms is not all that relevant.
And if he was willing to do whatever it took to win the midterms, surely stopping an incredibly unpopular war would be step 1?
But you're probably right, an actual puppet wouldn't be so blatantly obvious about working for Putin.
Edit: I know you'll be surprised but the current administration still hasn't spent the $400M allocated for Ukraine![0]
If we're talking context, isn't there more to include? Like why those protests were happening in the first place? Did the hostile government cripple your economy first and potentially fund and arm agitators within the legitimate protest movements?
> This isn't an excuse, but it's to clarify the situation.
How confident are you that will clarify anything for the families of those children?
There are no good guys in this situation. Just the people supporting this calamity and the growing number of people affected by it.
Claims about it not happening are a lie.
Also, double tap attacks. Even that school was dpuble tapped.
That's... not a principle though? Who else pursues geopolitics by that principle? When else has the US? It's... not a thing, unless you mess with semantics to define "bad actors" as "whoever we dislike" and "badly" as "whatever we dislike".
Iran hasn't fucked with Hormuz since before most of the commenters here were born. Arguing that we somehow "had to" goad them into fucking with Hormuz in 2026 is just madness.
I mean, look: this wasn't the plan. You know it. I know it. Trump and Bibi thought they'd get a quick win, and when they didn't their bluff was called and they don't have the cards. Hormuz opens WHEN WE PAY IRAN TO OPEN IT, and not before. We've lost. The world is just waiting for the surrender.
The entire global war on terror was basically a "We dont allow terrorist states to exist", and Iraq war 1 was pretty close to the same principles in action - feel free to shock and awe a state out of existence if it threatens global trade/oil.
And you're wrong about Iran. They have two grievous sins in USA/EU's eyes. 1) they have launched increasingly severe attacks on shipping in the last 10 years (not to mention 100s of attacks on civilians through funded terror networks), and 2) they are a key supplier and ally for Russia's invasion of Europe and former Soviet states, and their shahed drones are killing a lot of civilians.
1 https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/23/iran-deliberate-attacks-...
2 https://2017-2021.state.gov/irans-history-of-naval-provocati...
Trade was free in the gulf, pre-war.
> and some mixture of "we dont negotiate with terrorists"
Negotiate for what? Iran was making no demands.
Pithy or not, you seem to be just being obtuse. You're taking as a prior that there was a threat, something for which you (and the administration) have absolutely no evidence.
And to repeat, in a PRACTICAL sense, even nodding to your incorrectly framed "principled" stance, the EFFECT of the war was 100% opposite to the thing you claim to be... defending? It's just insane, to be blunt, and I genuinely can't understand why a reasonable person could hold these opinions. It seems like trolling, honestly.
Did you get upset when the Islamic occupiers took over Iran in 1979 and stated 'we have defeated/ended Persian culture/civilization'?
And no, it was not metaphore. Trump was threatening them and stating his intent. Israel wants exactly that too. The claim here is not that iran loves america. The claim here is that Iranians hating on country that put in hated king in 1979 is weak argument about how Trump in 2026 wanted.
For that matter, American army is still murdering fishermen, it is not like it had norms against crimes.
Israels attacks on civilian infrastructure are not random or accidental either. They are the literal strategy and goal.
> I've seen frustration from the US side that Mojtaba Khamenei is MIA.
This is just US side being dumb, honestly.
Recursing back up to the original level then I’d say who cares if demand for oil specifically goes down? We still get energy from renewables and there will still be an oil industry working at a reduced capacity for the products that are oil derived like fertilizers.
Honestly I’d be more worried about niche resources that are a minor side effect of fossil fuel extraction like helium that might skyrocket in price if the extraction was being done only to acquire.
"How" it happens is the nuance.
The point above was that people would get priced out (not by choice), lowering (read: destroying) demand. They experience lower quality of life, can't afford fertilizer for crops, lack capital to build reliable renewables, lose jobs, etc.
Interesting for someone you think won the cold war!
The effect is to (at least temporarily) cause a war, which has diminished trade. If trade was the only thing anyone cared about, we'd acquiesce to any demand anyone with a boat made. (e.g. Somalian pirates). That's clearly not the stance anyone has here.
This is an exercise in good faith. You have to assume there's a consistent set of beliefs that are not crazy that lead to this outcome, or else you fall into the trap of just assuming anyone who disagrees with you is crazy.
So, I have not claimed any effect intended or otherwise, only an intent. You can with all love of peace intend to depose a terrorist regime (even violently), and have the effect of disrupting trade. All at once, and all without violating your intent, and from a consistent set of principles about peace, love, and free trade and all that.
OK, that's just circling back to my prior comments, so I think we're done here.
Literally none of which have been addressed by this ridiculous adventure! In fact that "harassing of shipping" has been amplified immensely, with no apparent recourse on our part except to just surrender and bribe them to open Hormuz again.
Again, EVEN ADMITTING YOUR "PRINCIPLE" ARGUMENT IN GOOD FAITH, a correct (!) implementation of that principle would have been not to start slinging bombs around without an exit strategy.
Your point amounts to "This would have been a good war if we had won it." But we lost it. So it wasn't.
> He was being a bully
> But he's still alive!!
To extend your more-apt-than-you-really-want metaphor: you punched the bully like a moron instead of involving the administration, now you have detention, you'll miss your championship game, you won't get the scholarship you want, you'll have to adjust your college plans, and the rest of your career is impacted.
You shouldn't have punched the bully. "I was only pursuing a principled stand against bullies" doesn't change that fact. You can be principled and not a moron.
[1] To repeat for the third time, because you keep ignoring the point and I suspect it's because of the cognitive dissonance required in this subthread: We Lost The War. Iran Won. They Get Paid. We Get Nothing.