How Iran Committed Suicide › Victor Davis Hanson

[mystery-ak]

How Iran Committed Suicide › American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson

How does the supposedly most fearsome regime in the violent Middle East now find itself on the verge of an utter economic and military collapse?

Iran’s half-century-long deadly terrorist reputation peaked with the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel that it helped fund and coordinate.

Iran’s terrorist ambitions of running the Middle East had accelerated after witnessing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and his administration’s distancing itself from Israel. Biden’s humiliation by a series of Chinese slights and the Russian invasion of Ukraine further eroded American deterrence. European appeasement was another force multiplier of Iranian hubris.

The theocracy apparently assumed that its supposed “ring of fire” terrorist proxies—in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen—could lethally squeeze Israel, now reeling from the greatest single-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.

The theocrats further conjectured that, like most incumbent presidents, Biden would be reelected and continue to revive the disastrous Obama-era appeasement.

Once Biden had begged Iran to reenter the Iran deal, lifted sanctions, sent cash, and removed terrorist designations from some of its proxies, the Khamenei regime, now flush with new oil revenues, logically stepped up its nuclear enrichment.

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https://amgreatness.com/2026/04/23/how-iran-committed-suicide/

[Bigun]

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[rustynail]

Iran leading Trump around by the nose is suicide?

[Cyber Liberty]

Iran leading Trump around by the nose is suicide?

Iran is not leading Trump around by the nose.  Try reading the article!

[DefiantMassRINO]

Iran is not dead yet, and appears to only have flesh wounds.

[DB]

We don't have control of their enriched uranium. That was the claimed goal. Until then, this is not a success.

[Cyber Liberty]

We don't have control of their enriched uranium. That was the claimed goal. Until then, this is not a success.

It's buried pretty deep.  We'll have to dig it up.  Until then this is a failure?

[IsailedawayfromFR]

We don't have control of their enriched uranium. That was the claimed goal. Until then, this is not a success.

With no one having control of buried uranium, this appears to be a success in denying it to Iran's terrorist goals.

[DefiantMassRINO]

Blow up / permanently seal the access points to the enriched uranium facility and entomb the material in the mountain.

The Iranians have Trump by the stones because they can cause global economic disruption by threatening maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

Why would Iran give up now?  They have the West right where they want us - groveling for them to allow free passage through the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran has the upper hand and the leverage heading into the Congressional midterm elections.  The War Powers Act clock is about to run out.

Trump has fallen into Iran's trap.

Iran doesn't give a $h!t about making money.  They care about living another day to further spread their revolution.

Western profit and loss logic is not applicable to the Iranian regime.  They are seeking to draw the United States into Armageddon.  Bombing won't work.

We need to engage in asymetrical warfare and use non-conventional personnel on the ground to start neutralizing the various facets of the regime - economic, military, police, information, and IRGC.  We need to destroy their command and control of the civil population just as we did to their military command and control.

The Iranian people won't spontaneously rise up at the urging of the West because they know they can't count on the West to follow through with their uprising through the end - regime change. 

America has proven itself to be an unreliable ally, to the point it has an acronym - T(rump) A(lways) C(hickens) O(ut).

Trump will pivot from dealing with foreign enemies he can't control towards internal enemies that he can intimidate.

[Cyber Liberty]

Blow up / permanently seal the access points to the enriched uranium facility and entomb the material in the mountain.

The Iranians have Trump by the stones because they can cause global economic disruption by threatening maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

Why would Iran give up now?  They have the West right where they want us - groveling for them to allow free passage through the Strait of Hormuz.  Iran has the upper hand and the leverage heading into the Congressional midterm elections.  The War Powers Act clock is about to run out.

Trump has fallen into Iran's trap.

Iran doesn't give a $h!t about making money.  They care about living another day to further spread their revolution.

Western profit and loss logic is not applicable to the Iranian regime.  They are seeking to draw the United States into Armageddon.  Bombing won't work.

We need to engage in asymetrical warfare and use non-conventional personnel on the ground to start neutralizing the various facets of the regime - economic, military, police, information, and IRGC.  We need to destroy their command and control of the civil population just as we did to their military command and control.

The Iranian people won't spontaneously rise up at the urging of the West because they know they can't count on the West to follow through with their uprising through the end - regime change. 

America has proven itself to be an unreliable ally, to the point it has an acronym - T(rump) A(lways) C(hickens) O(ut).

Trump will pivot from dealing with foreign enemies he can't control towards internal enemies that he can intimidate.

Keep dreaming.

[DB]

It's buried pretty deep.  We'll have to dig it up.  Until then this is a failure?

It can't be known with certainty where the uranium is unless we have possession of it. They dug the tunnels to hide it to begin with, they can dig more to remove it, if that's really where it really is.

[DefiantMassRINO]

Need to change the regime to get the nuclear material.

The regime could be using the nuclear material storage depot as a honeypot to draw in US ground forces.

The most secure strategy for the regime would be to disperse the enriched uranium among several different geographic locations.  So, Israel and the US may seize some enriched urnamium, but not all of it.

Better, yet, hide it in Pakistan or Afghanistan.  Saddam Hussein hid Iraqi weapons facilities in Syria.  Osama bin Laden hid in Pakistan.  Why hide the material in a single location where they know to find it?  Geographic dispersion would be a better risk mitigation strategy for the Iranian regime.

[cato potatoe]

The Trump admin committed suicide when it left the JCPOA.  Don’t think the Iranians are oblivious to American politics.  They will keep this war going long enough to bury Trump in a mountain of democrats.   

[Cyber Liberty]

The Trump admin committed suicide when it left the JCPOA.  Don’t think the Iranians are oblivious to American politics.  They will keep this war going long enough to bury Trump in a mountain of democrats.

You mean the agreement Iran cheated on since before it was even signed?  Damn, there's no teaching some people!  There must be something in the water....

[cato potatoe]

You mean the agreement Iran cheated on since before it was even signed?  Damn, there's no teaching some people!  There must be something in the water....

[DB]

Wow, a magic graph based on lies.

Remember North Korea... Obama stopped that development too... It was a similar agreement until they tested one underground...

[Cyber Liberty]

I don't believe data provided by IAEA.  They have a vested interest in fudging the numbers to make themselves look useful!  Instead, look to the boasts from the Iranians themselves about how much Highly Enriched Uranium they had before we bombed them last year.

[cato potatoe]

Wow, a magic graph based on lies.

Remember North Korea... Obama stopped that development too... It was a similar agreement until they tested one underground...

So you wanted a regime change war, no matter what the inspectors found, and no matter the political consequence at home.  Well, live it up ... after all, Trump claimed that hundreds of millions of people would have died.  I suppose you find him to be more reliable than Kim Jong Un.  Somebody must, or he wouldn't have a thirty some odd percent approval rating.

[DB]

So you wanted a regime change war, no matter what the inspectors found, and no matter the political consequence at home.  Well, live it up ... after all, Trump claimed that hundreds of millions of people would have died.  I suppose you find him to be more reliable than Kim Jong Un.  Somebody must, or he wouldn't have a thirty some odd percent approval rating.

I want Iran to not have nuclear weapons. They've told you over and over their intent if they acquire them. Perhaps you should listen.

[Cyber Liberty]

So you wanted a regime change war, no matter what the inspectors found, and no matter the political consequence at home.  Well, live it up ... after all, Trump claimed that hundreds of millions of people would have died.  I suppose you find him to be more reliable than Kim Jong Un.  Somebody must, or he wouldn't have a thirty some odd percent approval rating.

Speak for yourself.  We just wanted the terrorism and nuclear ambitions to stop.  The Iranians are choosing regime change.  That was not our goal at the outset, but it's most likely to be the eventual outcome now.

By their choice, your protestations to the contrary.

[Bigun]

So you wanted a regime change war, no matter what the inspectors found, and no matter the political consequence at home.  Well, live it up ... after all, Trump claimed that hundreds of millions of people would have died.  I suppose you find him to be more reliable than Kim Jong Un.  Somebody must, or he wouldn't have a thirty some odd percent approval rating.

I damned sure did and hopefully I shall have it thanks to the crazies currently in charge over there.

[cato potatoe]

Speak for yourself.  We just wanted the terrorism and nuclear ambitions to stop.  The Iranians are choosing regime change.  That was not our goal at the outset, but it's most likely to be the eventual outcome now.

By their choice, your protestations to the contrary.

A shrinking minority are buying the self defense rationale at this point.  Netanyahu and the Director of Mossad delivered a regime change proposal on Feb 11 in the Situation Room.  Ratcliffe called the intelligence farcical and Rubio referred to it as total BS.  We have learned the Israelis made a similar pitch to prior administrations but none of them fell for it.  Trump called for regime change the morning after he assassinated their leader (which in itself broke a longstanding policy).  He made no serious attempt to avoid war.  Jared Kushner, son of Charles Kushner was selected to lead a sham negotiation.  There were no nuclear weapons, no stated intent to develop nuclear weapons, and no threat to use nuclear weapons.

You do realize that Trump opposed the JCPOA not due to its shortcomings, but out of spite.  This after predicting Obama would start a war with Iran because of poor negotiating skills.  Leave it to Republicans to find one of the only places where Obama did a decent job and lose an argument over it.

Now that things are not going as planned, Trump is trying to find an offramp while claiming victory, but the Iranians are determined to deny him of both until a steep price is paid.  Meanwhile the Israelis are terrified of leaving Iran in once piece and will do everything they can to make us escalate to full regime change.  If Iran disintegrates into a failed state and exports 20 million refugees to the west, the Israelis are fine with that.  If the conservative movement is relegated to the political wilderness, they are more than happy to buy off the Democrats.  They aren't the least bit concerned about their allies and never have been.  It's time we started looking after ourselves.