On consideration, I think if the deal stands along the lines that have been reported, with Iran continuing to extract its tolls and without making any other concessions, I'd say this is probably the worst the United States has ever lost a war.

Truly a shocking outcome, if it holds.

April 08, 2026 - 01:38 UTC

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And the $2million continually quoted (with respect to the current toll) is not set in stone, so the ability for this to worsen on the "agreed" terms is baked in
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Worsen or soften, as the case may be. Don't think of $2 mil as an exuberant amount, especially for the shipping moguls trafficking liquid cargoes through the Strait. It's a minor inconvenience at best, one they will manage to off-load to charterers/receivers/underwriters... Resilience is built-in.
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For generations, Israel's conducted its foreign and security policy on the assumption that it can't afford to ever lose a war.

If the US loses this way, so does Israel.
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Nobody, right or left, is going to be remotely happy with Israel once somebody with an ounce of power in the US realizes what the new status quo means for all involved, too. Easy to wonder if Netenyahu as badly overplayed his hand.
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I think Vietnam might have been worse in terms of actual losing but this is definitely the biggest capitulation
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A whole bunch of movers and shakers are looking at this "deal" and thinking "well, we can't get a *worse* outcome so we might as well go for it."
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we won so much that we circled back to maximum loss
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we got so tired of it that we circled back to renewed civic engagement
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Unlike Vietnam, Trump didn't have a plan to get out of the war with Iran.

The outcome shows it.
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China wins. The only question is did it win everything, because UNCLOS went to shit or did it just win because US was weakened, including the Petrodollar dominance....
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yes, but it was also obvious in the first few days of the war that this administration had no idea what they had just started.

bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux.bsky.social/post/3mgdsnsawpk2t
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And there is a zero-point-zero percent chance that either the president or the SoD would even understand the words you're using if you tried to explain it to them, too lol
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That said, lots of time for things to change. "Two weeks" the mantra of madness.
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Good. The US version of Suez. Learn the lesson. Get back in your sewer and take your shitty rabid dog with you.
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It was a TACO Tuesday
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There’s no way the various hawks that pushed for the war can accept this, right?
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Even worse than Vietnam or Afghanistan?
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I'm unsure the deal will hold, Israel still seems likely to deliberately breach it, since leaving Iran to rebuild with a victory and massive toll income is a complete security disaster for them.
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New event: Olympic Rake-Stepping
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The amount of pressure to make it hold will be immense once the tollbooth opens to everyone. Iran has proven it can strangle the world economy at will by harassing traffic through the strait. Lloyd's will go so far as to require paying the toll to get insurance so they don't have to pay out.
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Key for Iran will be getting sanctions removed. More important than tolls.
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I would say a loss "the likes of which have never been seen before."
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Vietnam way worse than this. The stalemate of Korea was a defeat for many. Way worse. But the biggest strategic defeat the US ever suffered was the overturning, by legislative decision, of Reconstruction. Handing the South, and the opening West, to the former Confederates to start Jim Crow.
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Vietnam was a far more *costly* tactical defeat but in strategic terms it meant almost nothing? Domino theory never panned out, the rest of southeast Asia didn't collapse, there was no major fallout for the global economy, and Vietnam was back on friendly terms with the US within a few decades.
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Was this was the strategic genius of Major Hegseth or NYMA graduate Trump? Or a self enforcing collab of stupid between the both of them?
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Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman have supporting roles.
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I'd say the other possibilities are the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam War
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Yeah I have floated it elsewhere as a worse strategic defeat than Vietnam, if it sticks. Cheaper, less damaging at home, but man - freedom of trade and navigation is supposed to be a vital interest for us? Right? And we're punting on it after WE started the war. Beyond embarrassing.
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My big worry is that China will take this as a green light to go all in on the Nine Dash Line.
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Vietnam was not a strategic defeat - it was a tactical loss. Vietnam literally has a saying "we fought the American's for 10 years, the French for 100, and the Chinese for 1000". They are our strategic partners in the region.
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I think it almost certainly can’t hold, but yes, I’d agree with this.
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Yeah, precisely *because* this outcome is so bad, it is hard to see how it lasts.

Israel, at the very least, will have a huge incentive to see it fail and hostilities resume, unless they want Iran to have a military budget as large as theirs.
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It's certainly the most *embarrassing* defeat the US has ever experienced.

And it was for a war TRUMP STARTED, that the US didn't NEED to fight.
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The word that comes to mind right now is "Tsushima."
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BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE
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"The weak do what they can and the strong suffer what they must." I can't think of a really clever term: the Malicious Dialog?
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The words "frontier settlement" and images of Justinian with a wagon load of gold keep bouncing around my head.
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I think that "if" needs to be bold and in 24-point font.
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Horrible loss -- but in your opinion, is it better or worse outcome starting now than continuing to try to "win."
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And it was a war of choice! That we started! Like a month ago!!
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It's the old story of a volunteer firefighter-cum-arsonist starting fires became he likes fires - at nation-state scale.
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While we sacrificed one of our most important enduring policies and strategic imperatives, freedom of navigation, and while we made ourselves more vulnerable to China, by expending lots of critical munitions, we did blow up a few thousand Iranians so who's to say we were defeated?
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At least ("using minimum values for figures marked more than") 1701 civilians, 1221 military and 714 people whose status wasn't clear were alive 6 weeks ago.

bsky.app/profile/yardcg.bsky.social/post/3mixywfipic2l
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