USA Goes to War Against Iran

Overland pipelines (ideally all the way to Europe) would require infrastructure through territories Iran has controlled for most of the last 20 years. And Iran has always said no for obvious reasons. They want to maintain control over GCCs. Up to the last couple years through their Arab militias Iran has de facto controlled Syria, Lebanon, and large chunks of Iraq and Yemen. They have lost Syria and some control in the other places making the prospects of pipelines more tenable than previously; but still problematic.

Especially now that Arab Shia militias can just destroy fossil fuel infrastructure with cheap drones (at the behest of the IRGC) and Iran can claim plausible deniability of being involved.

And at this point the IRGC can probably just directly attack the GCC countries whenever and wherever they want with little consequence. Which they just did attacking the main civilian airport in Kuwait.

They have already signaled they are willing to play chicken and go all the way to mutual destruction, and the GCC's clearly aren't willing to go nearly as far. And the rest of the world (outside the US) has shown no interest or capability in getting involved, except to assist playing defense.

So the IRGC has all the leverage when it comes to dealings with the GCCs.

I think where many people have miscalculated is the level of domestic control the IRGC hardliners have over the nation of Iran. And how much they are able to make everyone else in the country feel pain with little repercussions to themselves. The last 2 years, and really the last 40, have been an absolute disaster for Iran, with no end in sight. But the people orchestrating the disaster have shown no real loss of control for it.

In most places in the word, especially the Western World, You really couldn't get away with running your nation into the ground the way the IRGC has in Iran. Even in unarmed nations, the people would eventually say enough is enough and throw you out. But Iran's domestic/geopolitical situation is such the IRGC can seemingly keep control no matter how bad things get.

How has anyone miscalculated this when your talking points have consistently been how badly Iran treats it citizens, how many were killed during the riots etc etc etc.

No offense but you're trying to weasel your way out of a situation anyone older than 9 knew was the inevitable outcome. Weren't you the one who mentioned more than once this is basically what their religious ideology is?

FWIW I still think it is premature to say it is over and the IRGC has won and this is how it is going to be moving forward. I think we (the collective we) are erroneously accepting IRGC propaganda about how well things are going for them and how stable their control is, and this might not reflect the realities on the ground. I still think it is in the cards that the Iranian govt in 10 years looks very different from today, hopefully for the better. But I am admittedly less hopeful than I was 3 months ago.

Hopefully for ours as well.

Some people in here think they project their intelligence through the use of ChatGPT or Wikipedia both of which often get things wrong. Pretending you are book smart doesn’t mean you are smart.

It’s common sense. You just like to argue and use ChatGPT. Try thinking for yourself sometime instead of living your life through AI. It’s obvious what the guy in the video was talking about. There was nothing cryptic about it. You’re just a trouble maker.

You project zero intelligence. Because you are a zero. A nothing.

Some dude says "Kill all the mullahs" and you say it's common sense he's talking about the ruling class? Replace mullahs with some other words and see if it still flies.

I’ve never used chatgpt or any other LLM to form a reply on this forum.

What’s common sense? Do you know what a mullah is? And if so what’s your source? Because it doesn’t appear that man knows or you. So when saying “kill all Mullahs” you are essentially saying kill a bunch of random religious teachers, scholars, and experts. I’m not seeing how that’s defensible.

You were just suggesting that the IRGC and trump are in cahoots pulling a pump and dump scheme. I don’t think you knew what the “inevitable outcome” is or was. Ridiculous statement lmao.

You weren’t suggesting, you were actually “convinced”. By what evidence? Who knows lol!

Still rent free I see. Gotta love it.

You posted something that shows you have very little clue about the subject at hand. I can’t even imagine how you came to your conclusion lmao.

2 completely different topics. It's not surprising the only thing you're good at is chatgpting history, it's clearly not following a conversation.

Considering how uninformed you are, this also does not surprise me.

The problem with authoritarian rule is generally how easy it is to outlaw criticism of rule and government. The illusion of competence is celebrated as strength. Free speech is messy, noisy and often dangerous, but it is the only alternative we have. While it is not a guarantee for competence to rise to the top, it at least makes it possible.

And I certainly hope the Iranian regime, whose response to young people who want change is to hang them as a warning to others, one day get what they deserve.

How well the IRGC and the regime controls the nation is still unclear. Control when they are mobilized and go after their political opposition, who is mostly unarmed, is predictably strong. How strong the control will be in the near future is anyone's guess. Peace can be difficult to control and mobilization is expensive. It will also depend on the Iranian opposition's ability to work together and organize, which will not be easy as they often represent wildly different political ideologies. Getting a monarchist, a liberal, a socialist and a monarchist and a nationalist to work together would be no small feat.

And like any other nation, it will most heavily depend on economic outlook. Unrest grows well when times are hard.

You are literally too ******ed to be worth my time lmao. Idk where you get off telling anyone else they are uninformed after what you’ve posted itt. People have no shame.

Anyways, I’m not a CNN guy but the Lebanese president did an interview and calls out Iran for using Lebanon as a bargaining chip. Iran’s interest in a ceasefire in Lebanon has nothing to do with the welfare of the Lebanese people.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/05/world/live-news/iran-trump-lebanon-israel-war-news

CNN

Live updates: Iran war, Lebanon’s president speaks out, Hezbollah-Israel attacks | CNN

Allegedly they are bringing in a lot of Jihadis from neighboring countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to keep things under control. On top of their own religious nut jobs. Between that and all the surveillance/spy tech they are getting from China and Russia, will be very difficult for anything organic to happen.

There is also the matter of so many Iranian people dissatisfied with the regime just leaving and going to the West. And they tend to be the most secular, educated people; who are in agregate very + EV for the nations they migrate too. So this relieves a lot of the internal and external pressure for the regime to moderate.

But who knows.

seems to be a response to Israel bombing the Dahiya today. earlier it had been reported that Trump and the USA had succeeded in persuading them not to. but they still did. weird. who could have seen it coming?

They each had "fun."?????

This pending deal... Trump says this every day... close, close, close, close, close....It might be time Trump just says out loud what everyone knows. Iran won't agree to anything....ever. If they were worried about wrecking a pending deal they would not be firing at Israel.

Unless Trump is willing to treat this war like other wars (i.e. thousands of ground troops), Iran can just continue to sit and laugh at us to our face indefinitely imo.

It's the weekend, so it's time for either the death of entire civilization or total peace, depending what's on the market manipulation menu.

Anthony Blinken and Hilary Clinton have both talked about how hawks in Israel and elsewhere have always proposed basically what Trump has done and they rejected it because it would obviously lead to exactly what's happened. Trump, Rubio, Hegseth were just the only people dumb enough to fall for it. I imagine this was proposed in Trump's first term but Mattis or Kelly nixed it before it got to Trump.

I have a feeling that Trump doesn't actually believe he broke his no new wars campaign promise.