Originally Posted by
vaxedtothemax
I forget, how much did we give Ukraine?
Apples and oranges.
Iran is a war of choice that Israel manipulated the US to pursue. It has been a disaster and the US is objectively in a strategically worse position because of it while Iran has been strategically strengthened.
Ukraine is a conflict initiated by Russian aggression rather than a war of choice. Supporting Ukraine has resulted in Russia and its military being significantly weakened, a good thing given they are a chief adversary to US interests around the world.
In any case, the aid we have provided to Ukraine pales in comparison to that given to Israel over the years, so I'm not sure this point has the salience you think it does.
Originally Posted by
vaxedtothemax
How has the policies against Iran worked from ‘78 to 2/26?
Dissent against the government in Iran was at an all time high until we started dropping bombs. Who knows if the regime would have survived succession once the elder Khomeini, who was 86 and ailing with cancer, would have died a natural death in the next 6 months to a year. That probably would've been the best bet to achieve regime change.
Instead we made him a martyr and made ourselves the villain by threatening to genocide the Iranian people.
Originally Posted by
vaxedtothemax
Life was really good, gas was low… things were humming along nicely. It would seem
anyone with a modicum of common sense can conclude that to risk losing that, there was most likely a threat that a President finally had the balls to address rather than saying “Don’t”.
I'm glad you have blind faith in a President who has grown increasingly deranged and erratic, posting evermore unhinged rants. Despite your trust, all reporting indicates that he did so at the behest of the Israel rather than due to any specific threat on the ground. There was no evidence of an imminent threat from Iran.
I think it's less about having the "balls" to do it than having the good sense to recognize that US and Israeli interests are not one and the same.
Ironic though that you talk about "balls" and machismo even though he has thrown a weeks long temper tantrum about how NATO hasn't come to our aid in our war of choice.
Originally Posted by
vaxedtothemax
I’ve got between 51 and 111 days for oil to
retreat to $70, the stock market to gain about 1k, no furloughs to happen and no
a/c delivery changes. I like my chances.
I said several pages back oil would retreat 20-30% almost immediately when a deal
was reached. It retreated 17% on nothing more than a ceasefire announcement. Where are my oil” to the moon” chicken littles at?
Time will tell whether you are right. However pegging all your hopes to futures prices doesn't reflect reality. Futures pricing may have dropped significantly, but spot prices remain extremely elevated:
"The futures and spot prices are rarely exactly the same, but the gap between them has grown unusually big in the past few weeks, so much so that oil executives and analysts say futures prices no longer accurately reflect the extent of the supply shock that the world is experiencing.
“The futures market is not representing the on-the-ground and on-the-water reality of oil at all,” said Vikas Dwivedi, global energy strategist at Macquarie Group, an Australian financial services firm. “It’s quite broken.”
Mike Wirth, the chief executive of Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, expressed similar concerns last month at a Houston energy conference, CERAWeek by S&P Global.
“Physical prices and physical supplies would reflect a tighter market than I think the forward curve reflects,” Mr. Wirth said, referring to the futures market."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/b...il-prices.html