Who is the winner of the Iran war? (thus far)

[noname223]

Honestly, I have the feeling there is a fight between different narratives. Western newspapers are in my opinion too optimistic about the Iran war and its aftermath. I agree here with John Mearsheimer.

I read many experts interviews and you get answers from China and the Iran are the clear winners to Israel and the US were the actual winners. I think the latter explanation is copium. And I think not a few people from the Israel lobby want to spread this narrative. I think the book The Israel lobby (of Waltz and Mearsheimer) is far from perfect. But you have to say neo-realism explains the current world affairs quite well. And from the things I read it really sounds like Netanjahu dragged/tricked the US and Trump into another forever war. Just because the Trump administration became megalomaniac after the Venezuela coup.

China also has to deal with the aftermath of increased oil prices. Especially, Asia is hit hard in this instance. Though, the enormous amounts of ammunition and resources that get wasted on the US side is astronomical. The falling empire falls into rage while it is imploding.

Another answer to the question could be Russia though.

 

[RoachClassified]

the term "winner" is subjective. i'd say it's a stalemate, neither of the sides benefits from prolonged wars like the one we're talking about. i have a slight feeling Iran prepared for such an invasion for decades, i mean, US with Israel killed few of their leaders, yet new ones keep popping up. their military is somewhat trained compared to other mid-east countries, they have enforced conscription both for men and women as far as i know

 

[Dejected 55]

Nobody really wins in most wars. I supposed in the case where you are invaded by a hostile enemy who wants to enslave you, and you defeat the invaders, then you "win" but probably at a high cost.

I "love" when our anti-war politicians jump up and down gleefully cheering a war they are in for no good reason... and then they jump through so many hoops to declare how we really aren't at "war" so they don't have to go through all the approvals and usual channels to get things approved. It seems the people most in love with war are often the ones the loudest about how they don't want wars. Weird how that works.

This thing with Iran is not a war that needed to happen now, no matter how you slice it. Even if you don't like their leaders and even if they haven't been friendly. This war is a war of aggression. Hard to tell sometimes whether it is being driven more by Israel OR by the US constant need to try and steal resources.

The US really is a bully when you look at it... not since WWII have we been in a war where we weren't the aggressor. We tend to go to war with countries we feel like we can defeat easily and bully/threaten them into doing what we want. It backfires sometimes, like the nightmare of Vietnam... but more times than not we don't learn any lessons.

So, I think everyone loses here no matter what the outcome.

 

[thousandislandstare]

I don't think anyone is really winning, but I've been amazed at the strength of US propaganda and how much people from all over the world, not just Americans, continue to underestimate and mischaracterize Iran

 

[Dejected 55]

Regarding propaganda... It's really hard to know what is going on anywhere that you don't have direct access to yourself. Even when people aren't outright lying or cherry-picking what they report to you, there is all kinds of bias inherent in how people tend to observe and report things. Tourists come back home all the time extrapolating an impression of an entire country based on the one or two cities they actually visited.

If you based your entire view of humanity on. visiting hospital emergency rooms, for instance, you'd think most people were sick all the time. Of course a lot of people are sick, but not most people. And when you go to companies' web sites you see mostly complaints and negative ratings. Why? Because people will make an effort to report when they have a problem, but are far less likely to go out of their way to give kudos. Like when the news gets a story wrong, the retraction/correction never gets the same traction as the original incorrect story did.

And, even when impressions about a country are accurate, it's still possible for most people living in a country to be less directly affected by things. Here in the US our government gets a lot of shit tragically wrong, on an almost daily basis... but it's also true that it is possible for most US citizens to be oblivious of these things and even if aware not be directly affected. So, if you ask the person who has a job how he thinks the economy is doing you often get a different answer than if you ask the struggling or homeless person. Neither answer might be wrong, but both are biased based on how well that person is doing within the society.

I dislike a lot of stuff within the US, but my success and failure often has little to do with the things I see as problematic. Sometimes there is overlap. But I can see how easy it would be to get an erroneous good OR bad impression of the US and take it back to your country and not realize you never saw the whole picture.

As for International relations... people tend to have opinions based on how fun they think another country might be to visit OR how fun it was to visit if they did go. Politicians and governments tends to base it on whether the other country does the thing that benefits them the way they want. So, right now Iran is going to be bad unless they do whatever the US/Israel wants.

I remember back to Saddham Hussein and Iraq. During the Reagan administration we loved Iraq because they helped us against Iran at the time. We also knew Hussein was a tyrant and abused his own people... but it wasn't until Hussein started not wanting to blindly support US policy that we turned on him and decided he was treating his people badly and had to go.

Also infamously, we essentially created the Taliban by supporting and training and supplying weapons to Afghan citizens in order to try to embarrass the Soviet Union when they were invading there... but once our interests in that conflict waned, we were all too happy to abandon Afghanistan and leave a sour taste in a lot of their mouths that eventually bred the terrorists that were behind 911 and some other things.

It's hard to really know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in a lot of conflicts. Arguably Germany was on the "good" side of WWI because they were coming to the defense of the country whose leader had been assassinated... but Germany was so crushed in WWI that it led to Hitler and the atrocities of WWII. Funnily enough, the US was kind of fine with Germany and had no interest in getting involved until Japan attacked us, forcing our hand into joining the war against Germany. But a lot of people in the US had been supporters of Germany until then.

It's all a big mess and people pick sides, and to some extent you're forced to support your country because you live there even if you don't agree with what they do. Think of Iran or any other country you might see as "the enemy" and all too often it's really just the government causing problems, and most of the citizens of the country would rather not be involved in the fuckery that they are forced to deal with because they live there.