Why Can’t the USA Bring Iran to Its Knees?
Let’s be honest about what’s happening here. The most expensive military in human history has been dropping very expensive bombs on a country with a medieval theocracy running it, and the theocracy is still standing. That’s a very loud way of achieving nothing.
Bombing from 35,000 feet looks magnificent on television. It really does. The footage is extraordinary. The problem is that footage doesn’t topple regimes. Regimes fall when their people stop believing in them, when their economy collapses so completely that the ruling class can no longer buy loyalty. You don’t get that from a B-2 Spirit at altitude. You get craters. Expensive craters.
The Iranian regime will not lose face. Full stop. These are men who have spent forty years telling their population that America is the Great Satan. Being bombed by America isn’t embarrassing to them. It’s their entire argument, handed to them on a silver platter, gift-wrapped with a bow.
Meanwhile, Trump is on Truth Social describing a campaign of absolute dominance, while the reality on the ground is quietly, comprehensively different.
The allies Washington relied on across the Middle East were not protected. The allies in Europe looked at the situation, then looked at each other, and told Washington exactly where to go. Politely at first. Then rather less politely. They are not coming back. You can empty every American base on the continent and they still won’t come back. That bridge isn’t burned. It’s a smoking hole in the ground.
Then there’s the Strait of Hormuz. A narrow waterway. Roughly 33 kilometres at its tightest point. And Iran sits on one side of it with the ability to make the global energy market absolutely hysterical at a moment’s notice. That is the regime’s ace card and everyone knows it. Blocking that strait doesn’t require a sophisticated military operation. It requires a decision. And the moment oil prices go vertical, the political cost to America becomes almost impossible to absorb.
The blockade itself is bleeding the United States dry. Maintaining that kind of sustained pressure across that kind of distance, in that kind of maritime environment, costs an extraordinary amount of money and an extraordinary amount of political capital. Every week that passes without a decisive outcome is a week in which the bill gets larger and the story gets worse.
And that’s the real damage. Not the bombs that didn’t work. Not the allies who walked away. The real damage is the image. For decades, American power was assumed to be unchallengeable. You didn’t have to fight it. The mere suggestion of it was usually enough. Iran has now demonstrated, in front of the entire world, that you can absorb American military pressure and remain standing. That lesson will not be forgotten in Tehran. It will not be forgotten in Beijing. It will not be forgotten anywhere.
The superpower that couldn’t finish the job. That is what the world is watching.
No amount of Truth Social posts changes that.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
@uncomfybrain@yrizona_@mickitiki Nein. Die Person, die auf dem Bild am Boden liegt, hat nicht versucht, den Täter festzuhalten, sondern (irrtümlich) ihn zu befreien. Die Beschriftung ist also falsch.
@uncomfybrain@yrizona_@mickitiki The text is misleading and disrespectful to the cop who was killed. He was subduing a person which was trying to subdue another person which was pressing the real perpetrator to the ground. That‘s the reason there are 4 people on the picture.
@tintingha@derspiegel Das iranischen Nuklearprogramm wurde doch schon vor ein paar Monaten komplett ausgelöscht. Jedenfalls, wenn man Trump glauben darf.
@RonDeSantis What does it mean that god is male if he doesn‘t have chromosomes or sexual organs. That he identifies as male? That he uses male pronouns?