[csomar]

> The US could largely walk away and be fine

The US can't walk away, otherwise, Trump would have done so. That part of the world is part of the US system and "walking away" is basically giving it to anybody who is willing to exert control over it. They'll certainly be opposed to the US system (sanctions will be reverse imposed at that time).

And then what's next? Walk out of the pacific?

[CMay]

Some of your logic isn't exactly wrong, though just because someone can walk away doesn't mean they have to or want to. I simply mean that for the US alone from an isolationist stance, a lot of the primary and secondary goals are already achieved. If we walked away it would have already largely been worth it. Yes, Trump repeats something akin to this, but just because he said something doesn't automatically make it incorrect.

We didn't attack them _because_ of the Strait of Hormuz, not exclusively. We knew they could harass the strait, since we've been thinking about this for decades. The other person's argument was some kind of attempt at shaming AI and the US, with the perspective that with all the AI in the world we couldn't win a war with Iran. It's just politics, where a country losing as badly as Iran has to redefine what winning means to save face. Russia has to do the same with Ukraine. Inside their countries they largely have information control, but they still have to apply some strategy for external propaganda.

And honestly, to some extent when an opponent feels that they have some kind of leverage, that can be useful as a sort of offramp in negotiations.

Clearly there is an actual shift occurring in terms of water control, because Russia lost so many ships from drones alone. Most ships are not equipped to deal with these new threats the way the US carrier groups are and when you're talking about container ships or oil tankers it can be a big deal.

Iran relies on shipping too, though. Unfortunately, some countries don't mind hurting themselves. We see this with China and Russia a lot, where they are willing to sacrifice people, quality of life, trade, basics, relationships and more out of some kind of stubbornness or to immunize their country from a ruleset. Like if you think you can use this as leverage, we'll show you! Iran is being self-destructive in a similar way.

One comparison is what we see China doing harassing the Philippines in their own territorial waters and establishing fake islands to claim control over an expanded area of water which upsets many of their other neighbors.

[bigyabai]

> a lot of the primary and secondary goals are already achieved.

Which ones? FONAV is not restored to the Strait, attacks on shipping have not been eliminated, and Iran still possesses credible nuclear materiel according to recent Israeli and CIA reports. I'd like to hear you list explicitly what has been achieved from the United States' original goals.

> Iran has to redefine what winning means to save face. Russia has to do the same with Ukraine

The Russian Federation has a GDP that is ~10x larger than Iran, so you also have to redefine what "losing" means to make that analogy. America has a GDP that is ~100x larger than Iran, even more prestigious and strong, and it still cannot restore the status quo ante bellum. In terms of asymmetrical warfare, the US is much closer to Russia's strategy, and Iran much closer to Ukraine's tactics.

> and establishing fake islands to claim control over an expanded area of water which upsets many of their other neighbors.

It is awful. America has tried to escalate the issue in the UN Security Council, but their support for the military annexation of Syrian and Lebanese territories has cost them too much credibility to force the issue. Everyone knows that the US government doesn't care, including China. Such a shame that this double-standard costs so many people their livelihood and home.

[CMay]

> Which ones? FONAV is not restored to the Strait, attacks on shipping have not been eliminated

Neither of those were primary or secondary goals, we didn't even attack Iran for those reasons. Those only arose after the fact.

The highest goal overall was to stop World War 3 from happening or at least delay it until the metrics can shift so dramatically that China cannot deny that the environment is not in its favor. Even though there are critical differences, there are also dangerous similarities in what China is doing today to what the Soviet Union was doing that sparked World War 2. Huge military build-up, purging its military and weaponizing communism abroad. The Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Iran chain was a message that we see the network. Expanding our military operations aggressively in South America to unwind China's leftist expansion there was a message.

One aspect of that is to reduce the capacity of these countries to engage in coordinated interference or conventional attacks. All of these countries are heavily involved in interference inside the US, but they were also attacking their neighbors or threatening to.

Another aspect is simply re-establishing deterrence. There had been so much propaganda spreading that the US is worthless, evil and in decline when in relative terms none of those are true. If countries think they won't face any real opposition, they feel emboldened to do whatever they want. Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela were all establishing themselves to feel invincible. It was their time and the US is done. The international order is done. Plenty of this propaganda still exists, but the propagandists themselves now mostly know better when before they were drinking their own kool-aid.

Next, Iran attempted to assassinate the US president numerous times and even again recently. They also made attempts to assassinate Netanyahu. In addition, Iranian leadership engaged in indiscriminate mass killing of their own civilians. There was also intelligence gathering that contradicts the stated position of Iranian leadership not wanting to obtain a nuclear bomb. There has historically been an even more radical element in Iran that believed they needed to bring about something akin to the end times to cause the resurrection of their prophet. Officially they were suppressed and deinfluenced.

Beyond that, they were involved in countless assassinations around the world and essentially caught red handed, yet still denied it. So a critical primary objective was to take out multiple layers of leadership to demonstrate "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I think everyone agrees you shouldn't be running around indiscriminately killing world leaders, so usually when it does occur it is the result of them attempting to kill other leaders or engaging in some other kind of deeply condemned actions.

A follow on primary objective is to disrupt their nuclear program and ballistic missile program to prevent them from establishing a North Korea style nuclear immunity. An extension of that was to set back their space program for developing long range ballistic missiles and launching military satellites which would further allow them to identify targets and deliver nuclear weapons. Their nuclear material is buried and whenever they try to dig things up we blow them up. That can continue without requiring carrier groups. While their nuclear program was already bombed, there were other nuclear related labs and facilities which were intentionally not bombed to leave something to discuss, but that wasn't fruitful and now those have been hit too.

Neither their navy or air force were really much of a threat and they were largely useless outside of their neighborhood or managing the strait, but destroying them does reduce their conventional options for harassing their neighbors, weakens morale, deflates their internal prestige narrative and so on. Using a submarine to destroy one of the ships was unnecessary, but intentionally communicates that our silent service does still exist and have the experience to act. It was historic and would make undeniable news.

There were more primary and plenty of secondary objectives like weakening capacity to fund their radical militias abroad, attacking regime financing, complicating their industrial supply chain, slowing their drone production and supply to Russia, increasing public understanding of the links between Iran and China and so many more.

Something comprehensive would probably be many pages long.