So, now Project Freedom too has been ended. Instead of deterring Iran, Trump is pretending nothing happened and backing down from the thing he announced like 30 hours ago. That means... a grand total of two ships made it out during the operation, which is less than 1% of the ships stranded there. The government continues to maintain that the Strait of Hormuz is open & there is a safe corridor, ignoring the numerous daily reports of the IRGC bombing ships.
I don't remember the last time the US launched a military operation and then halted it a month in without achieving any objectives.
If anything, why not just continue the war campaign until their missile stockpile was more critically damaged...then at least there'd be one completed objective to point to, but no. The campaign was halted without accomplishing a SINGLE objective, and the US pivoted away while conceding constantly to Iran.
Iran's missile programme is clearly not "destroyed". It just bombed the UAE two days in a row with its missiles, and will probably do so again given the US has given them free reign to bomb US allies, shoot at US Navy ships and civilian vessels & attack American forces and show them there will be no retaliation and the US government will simply bury its head under the sand and pretend nothing happened. It's sad to see that the US has chosen the path of lying that they have accomplished all their objectives, and claim victory when this has verifiably not taken place. No better than Russia, really.
The long term effects of this will be disastrous. If you were Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, or the Baltic states, what would you see? You would see that the US is unwilling to defend you if the escalation is "mild" enough. What does this mean?
The Gulf countries will almost certainly abandon their ties on the US and try to build military ties to China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and other countries.
The US military buildup still indicates Trump is asking the Pentagon to prepare him options. But Trump has consistently rejected those options since mid-March. And he is also preparing diplomatic options for himself as well.
You shoot back if you AND your allies are shot at, it's simple as that. And you don't start a war if you don't have the will to see it through all the way.
The world has regressed and is in a worse position than it was before the war. The war enabled the IRGC hardliners to take complete control of Iran and removed whatever little grip the civilian government had on the situation by bombing people like Larijani who could actually control the IRGC.
It then proceeded to allow Iran to take complete control of the Strait of Hormuz which will cause a global economic crisis and lead to countries collapsing. The missile programme was not eliminated, the Iranian people were not freed from their dictatorship, the Iranian Navy is still able to project power, and the Iranian Air Force was already in a state of ruin. And the nuclear programme is in the same state as it was before the war, but now the IRGC knows it must pursue a nuclear weapon to deter further strikes.
A loss by every definition.
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