askchapo

Ben Norton brings up in one of his recent videos that one of the big reasons for the war is America's absolute necessity for the dollar to be the global reserve currency, and in this case the petrodollar. Our trade deficit is so much higher than most countries that we would normally have mass inflation if it weren't for the fact that the world is required to trade in dollars. Iran and Russia have been trading oil in Yuan, currently 1/5th of all global oil is traded without US dollars. That figure is rising every year. If it reaches a point where the majority of oil isn't traded with dollars. America loses their dollar hegemony. Brings the whole American banking system crashing down (which is the apocalypse for American ruling class). So long story short they need to destroy Iran, control the strait of Hormuz and control all of the oil trading out of the middle east. Otherwise letting things just continue to function as they are will cause America to collapse.

The Zionist settler project is dying. New settlers aren't moving there anymore and the settlers are trying to leave. This is an attempt to resuscitate the settler project, because they think that Iran is the source of all resistance and removing them from the board will solve all the contradictions for the project.

Securing major trade routes in preparation for an effective blockade of China. They want unilateral control of the Strait of Hormuz in order to specifically ban China from using it. It goes beyond Iran's own energy supplies, because the other Gulf countries supply much more to China than Iran does.

It's also why there is a focus on the Panama Canal, Greenland, Israel's "Somaliland" base, etc.

Trump's people genuinely believe their own bullshit, that all they needed to do was be "unwoke" and that they would crack the nut of winning a war in the middle east. As of George W lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because he was too busy doing land acknowledgements or something.

I think adding to "to slow China's rise", to go beyond just fossil fuels, Iran is a key strategic position for China's Belt and Road Initiative, enabling direct on-land geographical access to Europe and Russia, as well as a key maritime shipping route, according to their plan.

I think to some extent, this is a desperate ploy to destabilize Iran and delay BRI

They hate them for their freedom

Also to undermine Europe's sovereignty. Fucking with their energy access, pushing them to shoulder more costs of the MIC, etc.

Sometimes the US just does that.

One of the important things to understand re: political class "decisions" is that it is nearly always a de facto collaboration with the ruling class and the state bureaucracy. Even if they don't consult the latter (and they always do), the limits of their actions are set by the latter. The "guardrails" are set by them essentially threatening to destroy "the economy", pull support, assassination, and so on. So every action taken for any substantial period of time happens with the consent of all 3.

But all 3 don't need to have the same motivations. They are all interested in their own outcomes, they only need to see something in it for themselves. And even then each group is subdivided, they only need to predominately see something in it for them.

So as a result, you can see the proximal reason(s) for decisions quite clearly fairly often. Of course they're going to boost cops' funding, for example. They're the state violence beloved by bourgeois interests. They're the state apparatus that feeds the bureaucracy and much of the bureaucracy sees a need to control a population that will be increasingly desperate. Every politician sees police as in their own personal interest, even, thinking they're the only thing between them and assassination (or may literally be their assassins if they don't play ball). The funding going to cops often feeds the MIC, as the "donations" of "excess" coincide with "modernization" pushes, i.e. more procurement.

So, with Iran, the answer is surely "many reasons", many of those you list and others here list are likely true. Iran poses a "threat" due to its long-term intentional isolation by imperialists beginning with its successful attempt at independence from them. The US and its cronies constantly go after such states and it has nothing to do with principals. They go after communists, monarchies, countries de facto run by clergies, and bourgeois democracies alike. That "independence" is always perceived as a threat because what it really entails is a move away from domination by those imperialists when they need to move chips around to maintain their status, and most importantly, ruling class status. A free Iran began mostly as a threat to oil interests, imperialists fought each other over it, from the British to the fledgling imperialist tsars to the US. Without imperialist ownership, profits through exploitation go to Iran, not the imperialists. And oil itself became a means of domination, a monopoly on energy and industrial production that could be turned into a financial weapon, largely by the imperialists. Isolation imposed by the imperialists also meant that Iran needed to maintain militarization and basic sovereignty as they were encircled, so constant action/reaction reinforced the designation of enemy state and the drawing up of plans of military and economic ruin.

The real question is "why now?" and honestly that truly could be that the Rubio faction is going ham and got full of themselves regarding their desire to do smash and grabs and just generally go after its list of enemy (read: independent) states. And Trump is fairly stupid and decrepit on top of all the abhorrent and violent things about him. It really could be a political class blunder, but again, it's all within the guardrails of the ruling class and bureaucracy. Otherwise there would be, at minimum, signs of fracture. The bourgeois press would be running constant attacks on the war, they'd be pushing for ways out, they'd be blaming Trump, etc. Donors would be pulling out. Capital flow would be changing in unique ways. Generally speaking, none of that is happening.

In my view, there are 3 overarching options that are abstract and then we have to get more granular.

High level option 1: This was the optimal strategic move for the US based on the state of play.

High level option 2: This was incorrectly believed to be the optimal strategic move for the US based on faulty or incomplete intelligence and analysis.

High level option 3: This was correctly believed to be a suboptimal (or worse) strategic move for the US but the military is unable to prevent itself from throwing the game.

If it's 1, we have a lot of thinking to do. Maybe it was a "now or never" sort of thing. Maybe there's value in destroying the world's energy economy. Maybe there's a wunderwaffe on the way. Maybe they needed to neutralize Iran before they went after China.

If it's 2, we have a lot of thinking to do. What would it mean for the US to lose ground here? How will they respond? What opportunities does it open for other adversaries and will they take it? Where did the faulty intelligence come from? Is the intelligence community blinded by ideology and incompetence or were the counter-intelligence capabilities of the axis of resistance that much better?

If it's 3, we have a lot of thinking to do. Is POTUS and SecDef actually running the show from a position of ideological blindness? Did they purge enough top brass that the system is incapable of self-correction? Are we at the stage where everyone is lying to the chain of command to keep their jobs, and thus top brass, through their own ideological blindness, have created a death spiral for their own situational awareness?

In any case, it's not the Epstein Files.

If it was optimal, then the US thinks this hurts China or they think it makes their own position stronger for a hot conflict with China. That could mean they have to protect Israel at all cost and it was now or never, or it could mean that Iran would join in China's defense with full capability and the US needs to degrade Iran's capabilities on a schedule before the US attacks China, thus reducing the threat Iran poses in that scenario. Perhaps US/Israeli intelligence is deeply infiltrated into Iranian operations and it's only a matter of time before the US fully disables Iranian power and turns the place into a protracted civil war.

If it was suboptimal, perhaps Israel is going rogue and feeding bad intel to the US so that they can expand their territory, not realizing Iran was as strong as they are. Perhaps Israeli intelligence is subverting Israeli leadership deliberately. Perhaps Israeli intelligence has been fooled or compromised by resistance counter-intelligence and made to believe Iran was far weaker than it was. Perhaps US intelligence was fooled directly.

If the military can't control leadership from taking actions that are known to be deleterious to US strategy, then perhaps it means that Trump personally fired everyone that could stop him. Perhaps Trump's team is composed of sufficiently effective people that they soft-couped the country. Perhaps the military leadership was always mostly eschatological and just a few key purges were all that was needed to establish a leadership that would knowingly order the US's own destruction if it aligned with their vision of holy righteousness.

There's a lot of known unknowns. There's a probably a bunch of unknown unknowns.

Don't try to be precise and accurate. Just try to be accurate and allow your understanding to have a broad enough scope to be flexible as more evidence emerges. This is a situation to navigate dynamically, not to pin down and examine surgically.

We need to remember there are multiple competing viewpoints and factions so a lot of contradictory views can be valid at the same time. Different people with different motives were whispering into the mad kings ear at different times.

Anyway adding onto the oil point, the US does just want control of all global oil to support the petrodollar. Easy to forget but Trump probably did actually think this would be over quick. Since this isn't a short war it then leads into the higher prices for American oil and gas.

Some bloodthirsty fascists probably also considered that this would be a controlled demolition of the global economy on the US's terms. A global crisis to destroy capital stocks and boost profitability for American firms that have access to energy.

I think there is not just only one reason because there are many people involved and each person who is involved has their own reasons.

• 'The Greater Israel Project' There are Israelis who believe that they Zionists are not only entitled to Palestinian Land but also to the land of other countries in the Region. For example, Golan Heights is a portion of land that Israel annexed from Syria in 1981. One week before US attacks on Iran, Tucker Carlson interviewed the US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. In the interview, Tucker asked about expanding Israel and Mike Huckabee said that Israel was entitle to Annex the land of surrounding countries. This upset US ally countries in the region.
• Christian Zionists believe that this Iran war will make Jesus come back to earth and trigger the rapture, which sends all Christians on earth to heaven and is the end of the earth. A recent example was the reporting from MRFF which alleged that US troops reported that their commanding officers spoke about biblical prophecy in relation to the Iran War. Christian Zionists are maybe the largest backer of Israel in the US. There is a large Christian Zionist lobby group called CUFI. The founder of CUFI is a Pastor named John Hagee who has a megachurch in San Antonio Texas. Israel Government officials have given speechs at his megachurch on multiple occasions to reinforce Israel's political goals.
• Miriam Adelson - Miriam Adelson is a top donor for Trump. She claimed to have donated $250 million to Trump's recent political campaign. In 2019, Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation that the US recognizes Golan Heights as Israeli owned land. Trump said that he did this on behalf of Miriam Adelson's husband Sheldon.
• Military Industrial Complex - War makes money for the US weapons companies.
• White Supremacy / Christian Nationalism - There are a lot of bigoted Americans who just want to kill Muslims.
• Benjamin Netanyahu is possibly afraid of prosecution for war crimes. The liberal Zionists want to make him into the Sin Eater. There are some Zionists who want to wash Israel of all the crimes committed in Gaza by blaming it only on Bibi. By getting Israel into a new conflict, he won't be open to prosecution.
• interference with 2026 election - This is one reason that I've read that I'm skeptical of. Trump is also trying to pass the SAVE act, which mandates voter ID. The purpose of Voter ID laws is to suppress voter turn out. It gives polling places an arbitrary reason to reject people who show up. There is some possibility that Trump will say that Iran is interfering with the Election to say that he needs to have the SAVE act passed. There was some extreme speculation that Trump will cancel the 2026 midterm election but I am doubting this.

I see a LOT of overthinking in this thread.

This is a cult of personality. They aren't playing 3D chess.

Trump wanted a war. There's a lot to gain with war, as you listed above. (But also, an important point you missed - Trump's followers want Armegeddon. He's been hanging out with fundamental Christian zealots. And if Trump can arrange to drop a nuke on Iran, he'll be their hero.)

And it really is that easy. Trump did it because he could get away with it and he stands to gain a lot.

Now, I’m not the most in-the-know person in terms of geopolitics so my take is like 50% vibes-based, but honestly, I think it’s equally likely that it’s also a mix of Kushnerd and Litcough’s incompetence and conflict of interests and Isn’treal’s leveraging of that incompetence and conflict of interest against Drumpf’s need to be perceived as strong and mighty and the rest of the administration’s mix of Zionism, christofascism, and bloodlust (long sentence is long).

My weird hope is that this is actually some sick underwater 5D long-game chess move engineered by BRICS & Co. to further destabilize NATO and the U.S., ultimately bringing an end to western imperialism and amerikkkan hegemony.

My "fun", non-material, tin-foil-hat-wearing, crackpot hypothesis is that it's to provoke a 9/11 style attack (or false flag) on American soil.

If that were to happen, the fascism dial would immediately be turned up to 11. They'd get a whole new population for ICE to target, a bunch of people frothing at the mouth to go slaughter brown people, and plausible-enough justification to crack down on whoever they decide is "antifa".

I could see their plan being:

1. Bomb an elementary school
2. "Mission accomplished" and disengage
3. Wait for blowback
4. Yee haw

Step one already happened :( it was unprovoked. The cruelty was the point.

Now we're seeing folks trying to declare things over, so it seems like step two was to disengage. Fortunately, it isn't really working bc Iran rules. I think US leadership made a mistake here and put their dick in a hornet's nest.

Now there are whisperings about "Iranian sleeper agents" and the Iranian leadership explicitly saying "we have no beef with the American people" and the US is making clones of Shahed drones. It smells a bit like a metanarrative is being constructed...

Again, I don't think it's good analysis, but it's what I'm going with for now - mostly bc I don't have any clue about the material conditions that'd actually be a good explanation.

vibes

The one thing that I think can best explain the timing is that the American NatSec apparatus knows that its dominance is coming to an end, unless they pull off a military victory that staves off the trend and bolsters American global power projection for another few decades.

Faced with a choice between a slow landing and an abrupt change with a slim chance of winning big, the new and more daring chief executive went for the gamble.

Same pillaging as usual, and the overall ignorance is driving me mad. Like I often hear fuck faces at work talking about this like it’s a war that we need to be engaged in or some shit. I am seriously at a point where I wouldn’t mind seeing this country fucking crumble and the American project failing once and for all. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I get my wish because I truly don’t believe this country is competent enough to stop Trump from using nukes

If you consider yourself a serious person and talk about the war like a sporting event, I truly believe that you should be forced to fight on the frontlines

"It'd be mad funny bro"

I'd assume they want more Emirates.

The frequent change of course indicates to me that someone is getting rich from market manipulation.

I don't think it's much like Ukraine. More like other wars in the middle east. The US has let the Ukraine do almost all of the work in the Ukraine war. Maybe some parallels to Israel but US seems more active.

It all started with a fat guy getting recorded on jeffrey island.

The AI bubble is a big part of the west's recent belligerence I believe.

1. AI needs huge quantities or cheap inputs (energy, compute and manpower) to create the fully automated workerless dystopia the capitalists want. Where to get all this from except by colonising the most energy rich and unstable region on earth?

2. AI is sucking up a truly enormous portion of western and petrocapital (GCC countries invested heavily into American tech). All this capital needs returns. So where to get returns from? Ordinary consumers don't pay nearly enough to make AI profitable. Only the government's war and surveillance branches are reliable enough customers. Corporate customers have their own profits to care about. But the government just wants inhuman unaccountable kill bots. And with such new toys, the government's barrier to violence is lowered. Just in time for managing the current revolutionary juncture.

3. The less workers there are, the more valuable workers become. The less capital there is in the world, the more valuable capital becomes. And the capitalists know right now know that capital is overvalued compared to labor. Have you seen the nonsensical stock prices? And have you seen the low birthrates? The massive inflation/injection of capital in the recovery after covid was great. Free money for capitalists! But there is a fear of a market correction. If companies are overvalued, there is room to go down. But if you destroy or damage competitors and cement your monopoly capital status again? What better way to do this than seizing control of Industrial inputs for yourself and deny them to others.

4. The Ukraine war and Al-Aqsa flood operations opened the floodgates for further escalations in war. White supremacy is no longer safe! Anyone paying attention can tell this. So the calculus on war has changed. Losses and chaos becomes more accepted. A conservative geopolitical strategy is no longer favoured.

Last point is not related to AI

Putin told him to, to drive up prices and dependence on Russia oil, minimizing political fallout when he dropped Russian oil export sanctions.

They want greater control over world oil supplies, to undermine anti imperialist countries that set an example that you don’t need to engage with dollar hegemony and US exploitation, and they want to strengthen “israel”.

I think the primary reason is that Israel wants to cripple Iran and stop it from projecting power, so that it can create Greater Israel. The rest is just stuff to persuade the Trump administration.