Even ceasefires entered in good faith often collapse so countries always try and reposition stuff during the ceasefire for when/if that happens.
It also served as a useful way for Trump to throw Vance under the bus. If the negotiations were serious and in good faith, I think you would have seen Rubio there. Instead, you had Rubio sitting ringside at a UFC fight while the talks collapsed.
If this is the case it seems like an extremely effective way to kneecap the eventual successor to a very unhealthy 79 year old man who may die in office.
One would hope that even tangential involvement in this war would be the kiss of death for any political career in the US but it's hard to say. The American electorate is a fickle creature. It always finds new ways to surprise and disappoint.
[0] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/iran-wanted-negotiate-vance-got-17...
I did not think this was possible. The three sites that were bombed in 2025 are all pretty centrally located within the country. Even if you can get troops there, the facilities are hardened and at least partially underground. Depending on how effective you believe the 2025 strikes to be, some of the facilities may be collapsed under tons of rock. There is no way to smash-and-grab the already enriched uranium.
They could not reach their target and they had to scuttle and abandon two MC-130J airplanes and a helicopter, apparently because they were too damaged by the air defense to fly back.
The official version is that the purpose of the failed incursion was to save the crew of the previously shot down F-15E.
However, the use of a greatly disproportionate amount of people and aircraft for a supposed search and rescue mission has lead to the speculation that the true goal of the failed incursion was the extraction of the uranium and that the downed F-15E had participated to the preparation of this mission.
It is estimated that the cost of this operation has been around a half of billion dollars.
While the 2 men from the F-15E were saved successfully, it seems that this should have been easy to achieve at a cost much less than a couple hundred million dollars per head, which makes believable the hypothesis that most of the operation was unrelated to saving people, but it intended to reach the uranium deposits.
If it were so easy that commandos could drop in and dig out the site in a day - seems improbable that the Iranians would not have already done the same. If the Iranians had already excavated the tunnels, it would seem prudent to immediately move the uranium to another location.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/did-us...
Also suspicious that Iran came to the negotiating table just a couple days after the F-15 mission after insisting for the other 5 weeks that there would be no negotiating and they were not even in contact with Washington.
Minor blurb from the article:
Satellite imagery shows that the entrances to Isfahan and Natanz were badly damaged by US airstrikes. US forces would likely need heavy machinery to dig through rubble in order to locate the enriched uranium, which is believed to be stored in tunnels buried deep underground - all while facing potential counterattacks from Iran.
"You've first got to excavate the site and detect [the enriched uranium] while likely being under near constant threat," Campbell said.
Saving your men is important, but it should have been easy to do that at a much lower cost and at much lower risks of additional personnel losses, if that had been the true mission goal.
The U.S. hasn't even come close to trying to seize the uranium and open the Straight militarily. When a country had most of its air force and navy destroyed, it is not in a position to demand anything. The Iranians have some missiles and drones left, but they are increasingly isolated and on their last legs economically. These "talks" have to be understood as a negotiated surrender that would leave what is left of the regime in place in exchange for complete disarmament.
There's a reason "the U.S. hasn't even come close to trying to seize the uranium and open the Straight militarily".
If they can keep Hormuz closed, they are absolutely in a position to demand things from a president whose party will be toast if gas prices rise too much.
What legitimate reports detail their military losses? Practically every single thing the US is pushing out is pure untrustworthy propaganda on the subject. Even if those specific elements are destroyed, it doesn't mean much. Planes and boats are for forward aggression. They have primarily been wrecking havoc with missiles and drones, which they supposedly have plenty more of.
Iran is China and Russia's pivot point into the West. China isn't going to let such a massive intelligence and military asset go to waste. I'd just about guarantee they were involved in strong arming Pakistan into pushing for peace talks last week to avoid the threatened total destruction. Short of a nuke being dropped or the entire country being bombed to shreds, Iran isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Yeah, Iran is just front face, this is Russia and China’s war. Latter entity gets to test all their technology, ammunition without actually being in the war. They did the same thing by using Pakistan while they were fighting India.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/11/politics/us-intelligence-iran...
This isn't just about the current regime wanting to stay in power, do you think the average Iranian is going to trust the side that literally threatened to end their civilization overnight? That goes far beyond calling for regime change.
That's true, but also irrelavent.
USA probably could do these things if they tried, given enough time and resources. It seems pretty clear that Trump doesn't want to spend the resources (and lives) required to do so. Hence negotiations. Iran probably sees that the war is incredibly unpopular in USA and figures trump lacks the political capital to continue, so they are probably trying to drive a hard bargain. In turn, Trump might in turn decide continuing is cheaper than the onerous terms iran wants and continue the war.
I predict more war, since as much as this war is politically bad for trump, he also hates "losing".
The only options left for US are large scale bombing, like in Vietnam or Cambodia OR putting soldiers on the ground. Going on for years. Or drop a nuke.
Bombing will be of limited use and extremely costly, because is Iran is too large. Its a geographical fortress, mostly large mountain ranges, or deserts.
Soldiers on the ground means a large scale logistics setup, bases, buildup, etc. Its costly and deadly. US soldiers will start dying from day 1.
And then, Iran has total control over the strait. It can decimate the livable conditions in the GCC countries. Mind you, Iran gets about 5% of its water from desalination plants. Almost all GCC countries get more than 50%, sometimes upto 85% of their water from desalination plants. Couple that with hits on their power infra, and the population will be left thirsty in the middle of the desert. None of them can survive without their Air conditioners and water supply. With those countries dying out, Iran emerges as the super power in the region.
Arguably, in a continous war setting Iran eventually runs out of money to pay its soldiers or build new misiles. Especially if their oil facilities are bombed.
I dont think iran can physically keep this up long term. The counter balance to that is usa cannot keep this up politically even in the short term.
Iran is collecting about 2 million USD from each vessel through the strait. And they are about 50 passing through them each day. That's 100 million USD per day. Or about 30 odd Bullion USD per year.
Plenty of money to spend on war and some more. Not to mention the money it earns from selling it's oil and blocking GCC oil.
Bombing has limits but can also do a lot of damage. It's true not every single IRGC member or leader can be bombed out of existence. But many can. It's also true that some infrastucture is buried. But a lot isn't. Specifically all the energy infrastructure that accounts for half of the country's revenue and about 25% of GDP is easily bombed.
There is leverage. That said your leverage over someone who is willing to die and not give anything up is always somewhat limited.
Iran also has leverage due to its control of the Strait of Hormuz and its remaining ability to fire missiles and drones across the region.
The GCC and their allies has no problem flying drinking water in if that's really needed. But it's true that Iran can hurt them some more. They are sitting on some extraordinarily large cash reserves and other investments so they may be willing to take some pain. Supposedly some of them were asking the US to keep attacking Iran. Also keep in mind none of these countries have actively joined the war yet and that may change if Iran keeps attacking. They have small but very well equipped armies.
In the last half century, we tried that in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran. When is it going to start working?
The problem is that blowing stuff up creates enemies, not friends, so each time you kill one senior leader you create incentives for the other people those bombs killed to decide you’re worse than the target.
Then the government of Iran murdered thousands to crush protests and retain power. Why would the people of Iran still be upset at the death of senior government leaders? (Apart from the minority who already supported the regime, continued to support them even as they killed protestors, and are very loud now.)
1: https://gamaan.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Iranians-Polit...
You have no leverage.
The Vietnam war ended only 50 years ago and you behave as if it never happened.
That also substantially weakens any leverage the US has.
A mere slight increase in gas prices and slight threat to the economy can already substantially weaken US will to fight …
You can continue to nuke Iran to oblivion and it will not make a difference.
IRGC welcomes it, you think they care about Iranians? All you are doing is bombing hospitals, schools and civilian areas.
By the way, in all those countries, you had full air dominance, in Iran you barely have air superiority. The crowning jewels of America has been hit and many other aircraft shot down: F35, F15, multiple drones, etc. All your assets in GCC are heavily damaged, expensive aircraft carriers were hit and forced to retreat..
All the IRGC military assets are underground, air strikes alone will not penetrate it. Also IRAN has the proxies that will cause even more pain you for.
Now that you lost IRAQ, IRGC gained yet another militia.
You'll have to launch a multi year ground war, to even have a shot at attempting to take the nation.
I promise you that a nation of 90M people is not going to welcome you.
A near term power vacuum and civil war might not be unlikely right now. This war started (on purpose) when Iran was the furthest thing from "united".
They are a civilization going back centuries. No matter their internal fights, they will come together against a common enemy, an enemy for 45 years that is.
I am guessing the IRGC will also be careful enough to not rile up the populace until this war is over.
It was hard to imagine America kidnapping a head of state, the president of Venezuela
It was very hard to imagine Amercia threatening annexation of Canada and Greenland
Your difficult to imagine world is closer to reality than I think either of us would like
They seem to not be satisfied by causing global economic harm, they want nuclear annihilation as well.
> GEN. MCKENZIE: Well, let me, let me say, first of all, we do have the ability to open the strait. Should we choose to do it in what you're seeing now are the- what I would call the precursor of the initial steps in such a campaign you want to reduce Iran's ability to fire short range rockets and missiles into the strait against warships. You want to take out their fast attack craft. Think of them as cigarette boats, large, powerful outboard engined boats that can race out and get among ships and cause direct damage that way. What we're doing is we're going after all those vessels. And that's where a 10s attack aircraft, attack helicopters and other slow moving, low altitude platforms are so very effective. So we're in the process of removing those right now. At the same time, we're working to get rid of Iran's mine stockpile. The mines are very dangerous. They had thousands when the war began. I have no doubt we significantly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) them, now. Of course, it doesn't take many mines to cause a significant blockage to world shipping. So all of that is underway right now, and you want to reduce those to a low level before you put your warships up there to actually sort of test the waters in that strait. I have no idea what Admiral Cooper's decision making process is going to be for that, but I think we're well on the way to achieving those goals.
Here's Admiral Cooper in 2025:
> "Senator Peters: So what is your assessment? How quickly could the U.S. and allied naval forces secure freedom of navigation if commercial shipping is indeed attacked in the straits?
> Admiral Cooper: Senator, the specifics of this are highly classified. But historically, in mine warfare, nothing happens quickly. I think we would think of this in terms of weeks and months, not days."
To an outside observer, it looks like nothing is happening. But what we currently see is a large concentration of fires around the coast, A-10s and Apaches, lots of reaper drones for ISR, attriting the USVs, anti-ship missiles, mines and mine-laying vessels. According to the former CENTCOM commander, you don't need to occupy this land to reopen Hormuz, at most you need fires and short raids. Only after this shaping process can the US Navy run escorts through the shallow and narrow littoral safely. It's a gradual process, a plan that multiple former commanders have commented on publicly going back decades, and this is what the first steps look like. And unlike public perception that the strait needs to be 100% safe beyond any doubt before commercial shipping resumes, the precedent during Operation Praying Mantis proves otherwise. The situation in the Red Sea is somewhat different only because there's an alternative route.
Secondly, the assumption that GCC are deterred is not right. The GCC desire escalation, see for example:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-saudi-arabia-mbs-gulf-...
> Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough by the monthlong U.S.-led bombing campaign, according to U.S., Gulf and Israeli officials.
This is despite the threats to their critical infrastructure. To know why they want this, you need to understand the regional history in some detail. It can be summarized like so:
- UAE has a territorial dispute with Iran and stands to gain sovereignty over a number of islands in Hormuz.
- Saudi Arabia stands to gain control over Yemen and therefore over Bab al-Mandab if support for the Houthis is cut off.
- Saudi Arabia has a history going back over 10 years of asking the US to bomb Iran despite threats to their infrastructure, such as in 2015, and in 2019 when Soleimani organized attacks on Saudi oil and gas infrastructure.
- Iran is a competing imperial power and wants to obtain suzerainty over Arab states through satellites, to export the revolution. This is why Saddam invaded Iran in the 1980s. The fear among Iran's Arab neighbors is still there, and they won't accept the US just declaring victory and walking away. It's hard for people outside of the region to understand this because the facts that create this perception don't enter the news cycle in the West.
Even though the cost to the GCC is incredibly large, Iran does not have escalation dominance in this situation, because the political will among the GCC is commensurately larger.
The third aspect here is that Iran's defense industrial base is gone, which means their current stockpiles are all they have. Various estimates have been thrown around about their remaining missile stockpile from experts: "1/3 left", "30% left", "over 1000 left". But the common denominator is that they cannot sustain the current tempo (~1200 missiles/month) forever. This is not like the Ukraine war (or most other wars) where both sides have an active industrial base pumping out material to replace the lost material. This puts a hard ceiling on what Iran can achieve against the Gulf states, certainly below total destruction of all their critical facilities. If this wasn't true, the Gulf states wouldn't be pushing the US to escalate.
The fourth aspect is that Iran still has much to lose, and the US can easily deliver those losses to Iran. Their oil exports are the most obvious next step, 10% of their economy can be temporarily removed with a naval blockade of Kharg or equivalent reversible means, which is revenue they use to pay IRGC wages and stave off civil unrest like what we saw last year.
Finally, as committed as the IRGC is (or as committed as they portray themselves to be through a concerted information warfare campaign via their centrally controlled media), there is historical precedent of hardline regimes "surrendering" when faced with a belligerent that has the combination of political will and capabilities. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Khomeini's "drinking from the poisoned chalice" in the 1980s, the one-sided ceasefire agreement that Hezbollah agreed to in 2024, the Japanese surrender in WW2. If the IRGC feels it needs to commit to zero enrichment to preserve the revolution, they probably will.
Even if the US manages to occupy all the coastal areas, then those areas become the new targets rather than the ships, so it'll end up being extremely costly to the US in terms of people and resources.
It's such a huge strategic mistake to attack Iran just to keep Israel happy.
“So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/12/jd-vance-says-...
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It was clear the U.S. was not serious about these negotiations when they sent Vance. It's also clear the U.S. doesn't have the cards to end this conflict by force. They can use drones to clear the straight of Hormuz of mines, but that won't address all the other methods Iran has to threaten shipping. Any military measure short of the full occupation of Iran will likely fail to reopen the straight. The U.S. plainly lacks the resources to occupy a country four times the size of Iraq without allies, and the Iranians know it. The U.S. is going to have to bend on some of its red lines and actually negotiate in order to reach a deal.
Many countries are standing back and waiting for the Americans to fix their own mess, but for how long will they wait? At what point do these nations lose patience with the constant economic disruption and look for coercive measures to force the U.S. back to the table?
It was Iran's demand that they will not speak to Witkoff or Kushner, who were the original morons in this fiasco. They wanted only Vance on the table, most likely because he was against this war and has kept himself away from the whole thing.
> They can use drones to clear the straight of Hormuz of mines, but that won't address all the other methods Iran has to threaten shipping
Iran does not have to even mine or bomb the strait. Them just declaring that they will hit is enough to stop traffic.
> Any military measure short of the full occupation of Iran will likely fail to reopen the straight
I highly doubt even this. Iranian drones have a range of about 1000 km. They can continue to block the strait, even with a ground force. Not to mention that ground forces blitzing through the whole territory will take at-least a year, if not more. That is enough time to plunge the whole world into a recession.
> At what point do these nations lose patience with the constant economic disruption and look for coercive measures to force the U.S. back to the table?
Most nations cannot coerce the US, at least not Trump. What they will most likely do is have secret or open deals with Iran to let their oil through, with a toll tax of course.
Israel is vile enough to want to do this, but probably not suicidal enough to actually do this.
Iran knew what an oil disruption would do, that’s why they did it.
China knows what a semiconductor blockade would do. That’s why they’ve done a dozen practice runs.
Not to mention the constraints US is under from its partners. Even if US wants to wrap things up and is willing to give Iran whatever it wants to get that, i can't imagine that gulf countries would be thrilled by iran essentially taxing their oil exports, and Israel seems pretty intent on finishing off Hezbollah. USA might have significant influence among its partners, but they aren't its puppets and are unlikely to go along with plans significantly against their own interests just because america said so.
And I really don't think Trump looks worse than before. If they reached an agreement that allows Iran to take tolls for all the tankers passing, that would look really bad.
Vance has a big mouth about isolationism, but will follow the permanent bureaucracy like anyone else. The Iran war was on the agenda since 1979, they just needed someone crazy enough to do it when Russia is weakened.
The agenda 2025 wants to hurt Europe and China, so that goal is reached by a prolonged war. The EU leaders are children who are too stupid to negotiate on their own. The EU press is owned by pro-US corporations, like Springer in Germany that makes journalists sign an agreement that "Atlanticism" is one of the core values of "Die Welt" and "Bild". Previously Green party anti-war magazines like TAZ have gone neocon. Unfortunately, "Atlanticism" is a one way street.
We are now in the situation that the US threatens the EU to withdraw from NATO when it cannot even protect the Gulf States. The EU "leaders" nod fearfully and isolate themselves from all of Asia and the Middle East instead of negotiating on their own.
Attempting to deny a country security in the form of controlling their own water ways, controlling their own energy independence or holding a deterrent to prevent genocidal neighbours from attacking is simply wrong.