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What Exactly Was Iran Thinking—Or Not?
American Greatness ^ | 16 Jun, 2025 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 06/16/2025 4:42:14 AM PDT by MtnClimber

Iran bet on bluff and delay—but lost its proxies, deterrence, and leverage, leaving a regime rich in threats but bankrupt in power.

Iran apparently had not adjusted to its new 2025 status—or maybe it had. Most of its bought terrorists are currently either destroyed or anemic.

There is no more ascendant Iranian “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. Russia is no longer a Middle East power, patron, and protector.

The Assad dynasty imploded, flipping Syria from an Iranian proxy into a likely Iranian enemy. Hezbollah, once supposedly the most fearsome of all the Iranian terrorist tentacles, was humiliated and neutered by a series of surreal Israeli operations.

Hamas has been reduced to a subterranean terrorist remnant.

The Houthis’ tit-for-tat encounters with Israel and the U.S. are systematically turning their Yemeni enclave into an impotent dump. At its present rate, the Houthis will likely soon launch their last rocket at Israel or the Red Sea in a country without fuel, electricity, and ports.

Iran itself, last year in a disastrous air war with Israel, lost its air defenses and is now more or less impotent and defenseless against Israeli air incursions. Its oil income has been slashed by 70-80 percent by the renewed Trump sanctions and ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Israel can destroy all of its oil industry if it wishes and, apparently, send operatives inside Iran itself as it pleases.

Most of the Arab Sunni world is now losing its accustomed fear of Iran. While the weary pan-Islamic solidarity boilerplate of the Middle East remains the same, privately, most Arab nations rely on the U.S. or even Israel to deter Iran—and predicate their own foreign policy on the degree to which they do just that.

With the end of the Biden administration and Obama a distant memory, Iran lost all hope

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Iran; Israel
KEYWORDS: iran; jihad; victordavishanson
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1 posted on 06/16/2025 4:42:14 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: texas booster

VDH ping


2 posted on 06/16/2025 4:42:37 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber; hardspunned

FReeper anti-semites deeply saddened.

Hardspunned’s stipend is at risk.


3 posted on 06/16/2025 4:45:03 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 62, Hadith 88: Mohammed consummated the marriage when she was 9 and he was 54)
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To: MtnClimber
I suspect Iran was listening to the "father of lies" who would do anything to kill Jews (attempted extermination under Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler), thus Iran is just the latest in a long line of patsies.

Satan promised them power and prestige in exchange for killing Jews and does not care if Iran is Destroyed in the process.

4 posted on 06/16/2025 4:51:00 AM PDT by Psalm 73 ("You'll never hear surf music again" - J. Hendrix)
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To: Uncle Miltie
Hardspunned’s stipend is at risk.

I'm not too sure you should be to worried about Hardspunned.

My guess is he's doing okay and can probably take care of himself.

Maybe it's your stipend that may be at risk from the warmongers and MIC that keep us continually engaged in wars that we lose and can't ever seem to win. Oh, and by the way, that have about bankrupted our country with over $35 TRILLION in debt.

Yep. Them forever wars have worked out real well!

5 posted on 06/16/2025 4:56:12 AM PDT by icclearly
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To: MtnClimber

Bullies are always stupid.


6 posted on 06/16/2025 4:57:18 AM PDT by Omnivore-Dan
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To: MtnClimber

“ The only end to the latest phase of forever wars in the Middle East is for the current regime in Iran to disappear and be followed by a somewhat sane regime resembling, say, Jordan or Egypt—mostly secular states that may loathe Israel in private but are pragmatic enough never to war with it ever again.”

Suck it, losers.


7 posted on 06/16/2025 4:57:45 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 62, Hadith 88: Mohammed consummated the marriage when she was 9 and he was 54)
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To: MtnClimber

The Mullahs in Iran thought Trump was another President constrained by the Deep State and Media.

They were wrong.


8 posted on 06/16/2025 4:58:33 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: icclearly

Clearly, you don’t know who I am.

Let me help:

https://freerepublic.com/tag/unclemiltieadventure/index


9 posted on 06/16/2025 4:59:46 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 62, Hadith 88: Mohammed consummated the marriage when she was 9 and he was 54)
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To: marktwain

Valerie Jarrett certainly is not in the decision loop any more.


10 posted on 06/16/2025 5:05:17 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber; All

Iran: Alligator mouth...gerbil stones 😁


11 posted on 06/16/2025 5:06:07 AM PDT by SMARTY (In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. Napoleon Bonaparte I)
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To: MtnClimber

Good reading article!


12 posted on 06/16/2025 5:07:25 AM PDT by existentially_kuffer
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To: MtnClimber

They played the bluff for over 20 years, why would they think it would not work for the next 20.


13 posted on 06/16/2025 5:07:54 AM PDT by LukeL
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To: MtnClimber

Hopefully a death spiral they are now clinging on the 72 virgins they were promised and with any promise these virgins are goats


14 posted on 06/16/2025 5:08:50 AM PDT by ronnie raygun
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To: MtnClimber

Thanks for the reminder about Valerie Jarrett’s “contribution” to Iran’s buildup.


15 posted on 06/16/2025 5:11:07 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: texas booster

A good article as usual by VDH. This one has a reminder of Russia’s and China’s involvement in Iran and, perhaps, the weakening of Russia and China has played into Iran being weaker.


16 posted on 06/16/2025 5:12:26 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Uncle Miltie

Godspeed to you and Israel.

Ignore the icclearly goofball as most of us on FR have your back. Here is to total victory over Iran!


17 posted on 06/16/2025 5:13:35 AM PDT by ohioman
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To: icclearly; All

It is hard to decisively win wars when half the politicians want the country to decisively lose them.

There is a clear pattern: Republicans win the war, or at least, negotiate an acceptable peace.

Then Democrats get elected and deliberately lose the war.

Vietnam - Check
Iraq - Check
Libya - Check
Afghanistan - Check


18 posted on 06/16/2025 5:14:33 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: MtnClimber

No more pussy footing around with this dangerous death cult in power. Take them out and finish the job. All these past decades of negotiations hasn’t led to peace but quite the opposite. Keeping this mullah led regime in power will be a failure continued.


19 posted on 06/16/2025 5:16:17 AM PDT by tflabo (Truth or tyranny)
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To: icclearly
wars that we lose and can't ever seem to win

Well, we don't win them because our idiotic political leadership sets overly expansive or ill defined strategic objectives without correctly calculating the force needed to achieve those goals. When we set limited and well defined goals and use overwhelming force instead of gradual escalation, we win decisively, as in the Gulf War.

When I think back about Vietnam, there were plenty of US Army and Marine veterans of the Pacific War in leadership roles, yet no one stepped up to suggest that fighting a fanatical Asian enemy in mountainous jungles might not be a cakewalk.

Above all, when our leadership screws things up, we have the luxury of being several thousand miles away and can just pack up and leave, unlike Israel.

From a cynical realpolitik perspective, the US and Israel have been playing a game where each side has tried to get the other to act first against Iran. Trump has played this game very well: giving Israel enough support to encourage it but not taking any direct action himself.

The current Iranian regime is incorrigible, so what I'm afraid of is Trump will make some nuke deal that implicitly causes the US support the mullahs as a "negotiating partner" under the bad assumption that they can be controlled. They will simply wait until the next Dem administration and go right back to the nuke program; or, simply run it outside of Iran.

What we should do is keep arming the Israelis to see if they damage Iran into impotence, and then deliver the coup de grace against its deep nuke facilities ourselves if necessary.

20 posted on 06/16/2025 5:18:40 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
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