Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 07/25/2026 1:44:14 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
ISTANBUL—The conflict between the U.S. and Iran is escalating just as the two warring parties are running up against the limits of what they can achieve through military force.
The conflict widened this week after Iranian-allied militants in Yemen began striking ships transiting a key Red Sea chokepoint, helping drive oil prices above $100 a barrel for the first time in two months on Thursday.
The U.S., meanwhile, has escalated its bombing campaign in Iran in recent days, striking throughout the country during the most intense period of fighting since President Trump and Israel began bombing Iran in late February.
Trump and other administration leaders have threatened to ratchet up the military campaign against Iran, including by striking a suspected Iranian nuclear facility at Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain or by attacking Iran’s national infrastructure such as power plants in response to Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The price will continue to get higher every single night until they come to their senses,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Thursday at a summit in Manila, citing Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s description of Tehran’s approach as “an eye for an eye.”
“The president’s policy is a head for an eye,” Rubio said. “I mean, honestly, that is what it is going to be.” He added that Trump would decide whether to escalate in the coming days.
The challenge facing Washington and Tehran is that both governments have shown a willingness to escalate, but neither is capable of achieving a decisive advantage over the other. The stalemate heightens the risk that the U.S. and Iran could be drawn into further months of war as both sides attempt to generate leverage, military analysts say.
“There is an escalatory dynamic now,” said Alan Eyre, a former...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
You need to learn more about Iran. If you did, you wouldn’t say such silly things.
Dear President Trump—ask yourself, how would Queen Victoria deal with Iran’s Mullahs? Or if you need an American view, How would President Teddy Roosevelt? It can not be done bloodlessly for our side. You have no choice but to rain hell upon them and use troops on the ground. How? I will take the liberty to suggest some options. 1. Attack and seize the islands along the deputed straight —they are claimed by other lands and would be easy to hold. 2. Invade southern Iran that has weak loyalty and would be easy to hold from the sea. or 3. Do as we did to Saddam, large army, march too the capital and take it over. OR— use nukes to cut out a canal and avoid the debated straight altogether.
I am shocked that there are so many people on this website who are so ignorant about what is really going on with the Iran situation.
I thought our people were more knowledgeable and intelligent than many have shown themselves to be.
He can never admit it, but he knows.
That's why he keeps running his mouth and lurching from ceasefire to kill 'em all to Iran-is-just-begging-me-for-a deal.
It's all damage control
You're not going to get to fight WW3 because you're going to lose the midterms and any hope of continuing to escalate the war. If you wanted to have the fight now you blew it by not getting the country and the Congress onboard before finding out we didn't have the assets on hand to accomplish the mission.
If we lose the midterms, so be it. Iran must be deprived of the ability to make nukes.
You're going to cause the loss of the midterms AND drive the Iranians into having a nuke.
Congrats, dumbasses.
As the choice is between that possibly happening and 100 million people being murdered, I will have to accept the unpleasant political difficulties as the lesser of two evils.
Iran has been claiming that it has had 60% enriched uranium since April 2021.
Between determined opponents, wars are won by the side that brings the most force to bear with the greatest effectiveness for the longest period of time. Between the US and Iran, the US has the most resources and the far better and larger military force. Like the Confederacy and North Vietnam, Iran's hope is that domestic US politics results in the US dropping its war effort before success is secured.
The most likely outcome is that amped up US bombing and blockade break the Iranian regime beyond recovery in a matter of a few more weeks or a month or two. Based on the correlation of forces, I believe that is what will happen. And, by the way, the Iran war is already having beneficial collateral effects in that China, Russia, and North Korea are all experiencing stresses due to the war. All I am saying is give war a chance.
Iran doesn’t have nukes, they could deliver them to Israel if they did. You need to test to make sure you have nukes correctly configured. As far as I can tell Iran hasn’t carried out tests, Iran is being monitored. Saudi Arabia funded the Pakistani Nuclear program with the understanding that Pakistan would fork over nukes if Saudi wanted some. Who is the big cheese in the Muslim world is what is at play. Obama and Biden backed Iran.
Thanks for info. I wonder how feasible it would be for a country opposed to the US to smuggle a crude nuclear device into our country by container ship and offload it. Even shielded by lead does such a device still emit a detectable signature result that we could pick up and track? Rhetorical question as I am sure more technical experts have been working on this a long time. Since it hasn’t happened yet, I am assuming it would be reliably detectable and neutralized swiftly but not certain.
The Iranians would get a nuke anyways if we do nothing. The current scenario is the *ONLY* scenario in which they don't get a nuke.
And we may not lose the midterms, but if we end up with the worst case scenario, I see no other way it could have been avoided. Iran can go to 90% in two weeks, and a working bomb in a month.
I told people we should have dealt with this 30 years ago.
"Congrats, dumbasses."
Thanks for info. I wonder how feasible it would be for a country opposed to the US to smuggle a crude nuclear device into our country by container ship and offload it. Even shielded by lead does such a device still emit a detectable signature result that we could pick up and track? Rhetorical question as I am sure more technical experts have been working on this a long time. Since it hasn’t happened yet, I am assuming it would be reliably detectable and neutralized swiftly but not certain.
The war went fine. It was the most successful war in history. Where it all went wrong was when dumbass Paul Bremmer utterly bungled the peace.
All they had to do was copy the Allied plan for Nazi Germany, but noooooo!!! They had to f*** it up!
When I heard their "plan" I said at the time, "This is the dumbest possible thing we could do. We only won the war because so many people hated Saddam, but if we do this, we will turn the most dangerous men in Iraq against us, and the war will start up in such a way that the bloodshed will be unending."
We snatched defeat from the Jaws of victory, all because of a stupid concern for the Shias. We should have declared victory, and announced our withdraw. The message had been sent, and we didn't need to get into babysitting Iraq.
The only thing i couldnt agree with you is that they havent needed nuclear weapons for decades.
Now they are convinced that they definitely need them.
Some time ago, on this site that is so full of intellectual people, i made the point you made. That Iran already has begun a nuclear weapons program and that one of two countries are helping them develope them. And it was not China nor Russia helping them. The reply sent back was “So you think Israel helped them?”
Thats the level of intellect that is on here.
No matter if they now have them or not which they likely do. Remember this. “We cant let North Korea have nuclear weapons!”
Well?
Netanyahu will be the first to use a nuclear weapon on Iran. When that threshold is crossed...
Just remember what Pakistan warned the Israelis when they learned Israel was planning to kill the entire Iranian delegation headed to Switzerland for the MOU negotiations.
Pakistan warned the Israelis that Israel would disappear from the face of the earth if they tried to do what was found out.
“Pakistan warned the Israelis that Israel would disappear from the face of the earth if they tried to do what was found out.”
Source?
No he didn't. He did exactly what needed to be done, and which needed to be done for the past 30 years, but other Presidents were too cowardly to do it!
Why does anyone listen to *IDIOTS* who think an Iranian nuclear bomb is something anyone can accept?
Are you so freaking *IGNORANT* of the nature of that fanatical religious cult that you do not understand it will result in *MASS MURDER* to leave them alone?
The people who believe as you do are either enemy assets trying to confuse the situations, or the dumbest Americans on the planet.
A nuclear armed Iran is death. It will start a cycle of death, and it will reach us too.
“The U.S. and Iran Are Stuck in a Cycle of Military Escalation”
that’s the pattern of ALL wars, and it continues until one side runs out of war-making capability, and thereby becomes loser ...
The Israelis know how much enriched Uranium the Iranians have because they have kept spies in the program since it's inception.
How do they make Iranians work for them? Bribes. Threats to kill them and their families. And to prove they can do it, they've done it to dozens of Iranian scientists. Whatever it takes.
However they do it, they *HAVE* spies in the Iranian nuclear program.
Iran lies it's @$$ off to threaten people, but now we know they finally actually *DO* have 60% enriched Uranium.
Also we can probably tell how far along they are by taking air samples in the region. That's how we knew how far along the German atomic bomb program was, and also how we knew how far along the Russian and Chinese bomb programs were.
Nuclear material releases gases that we can detect, and they are proportional to the amount and type of nuclear material.
They have no idea what the second-, third-, fourth-, etc. order consequences of that will be.
All they know how to do is wave their pom-poms cheering for the home war-team.
This very question was asked of Robert Oppenheimer during his testimony to congress on nuclear weapons. Specifically they said:
What sort of equipment would be necessary to find any nuclear bombs being brought into the country by containers?"
He said "A Screwdriver. You would have to open every container."
In other words, in the 1940s, one of the most brilliant nuclear scientists could think of no way to detect a nuclear bomb that was shielded.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.