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 ...
VDH ping
FReeper anti-semites deeply saddened.
Hardspunned’s stipend is at risk.
Satan promised them power and prestige in exchange for killing Jews and does not care if Iran is Destroyed in the process.
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!
Bullies are always stupid.
“ 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.
The Mullahs in Iran thought Trump was another President constrained by the Deep State and Media.
They were wrong.
Clearly, you don’t know who I am.
Let me help:
https://freerepublic.com/tag/unclemiltieadventure/index
Valerie Jarrett certainly is not in the decision loop any more.
Iran: Alligator mouth...gerbil stones 😁
Good reading article!
They played the bluff for over 20 years, why would they think it would not work for the next 20.
Hopefully a death spiral they are now clinging on the 72 virgins they were promised and with any promise these virgins are goats
Thanks for the reminder about Valerie Jarrett’s “contribution” to Iran’s buildup.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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