New York Times predicts America is headed for “strategic defeat” in Iran. What does that mean for us economically?

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Photo above:  "I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.’”

U.S. Appears Headed for a Strategic Defeat in Iran

Is defeat better or worse when you put the adjective “strategic” in front of it? It sounds worse than “tactical”, for sure. America’s last “strategic” defeat was Vietnam. We had a tactical victory in the Iraq gulf war – we got regime change in a bullshit Iraqi dictatorship that turned out not matter at all, simply to prop up a few Saudi sheiks. The gulf war in Iraq didn’t do anything to improve America’s position economically or geopolitically.

This 2026 Iranian strategic victory over the USA is already costing us hundreds of billions – if not trillions. The direct cost of the war is now $1,000 per second, according to some debt clock similar to the national debt tracker. When numbers whiz by that fast they lose all meaning. CNN constantly has a “crawl” at the bottom of all their programming which shows that gas and diesel prices are up about $1.50 to $2.00 a gallon since February. Nobody believes the official CPI inflation numbers. Beef is up 12%. Texas just spent $100 million per mile to widen some highway, to accommodate all the people fleeing unaffordable California. Electricity is going through the roof everywhere because of data centers. Corporations have been duped into paying $500 billion a month for artificial intelligence because they don’t understand how AI tokens work.

Data centers costing $200 billion each are NOT an effect of the Iran War, however. But they ARE a strategic target. Who wants to spend money constructing a data center within reach of an Iranian “Shazam” missile? Iran is still blowing oil tankers, civilian airports, desalinization plants, and oil refineries in a dozen adjacent countries. They are using the internet to turn off our water. This is what strategic defeat looks like.

Pentagon generals told Trump this war wasn’t going to work on day zero. Despite Netanyahu’s PowerPoint presentation which breezily guaranteed that if we kill some bearded ayatollah, then ordinary Iranians without guns suddenly rise up and take on hundreds of thousands of Iranian Republican Guards armed with AK47s and extended magazines. Unarmed mobs haven’t defeated machine guns anywhere, at any time.

Back to the economics. America’s national debt will go up +/- $3 trillion this year. Subtract the White House ballroom, reflecting pool, and botched 4th of July wrestling show, and most of that money probably goes to fuel and munitions for the failed war. 6 months on, and we apparently still don’t know where Iran makes its drones, or launches them from. US Military readiness is so low that pentagon generals now theorize that we couldn’t come to Israel’s aid the next time they’re attacked. THAT’S what strategic defeat looks like. You can’t defend your own interests, or those of NATO, or those of other geopolitical allies. You are powerless.

America still ignores that there is no legitime Iranian government in power to negotiate with. All ceasefire agreements are immediately violated the moment the republican guards’ missile launchers are reloaded. Ships still cannot transit international waters in the gulf. Iran is still on track – a faster track – to threaten the world with nuclear weapons.

Ending Iran’s nuclear program was a good idea. So was safe shipping in the gulf. We might even throw in stopping the slaughter of Iranian dissenters in the streets as a good intention. But America – with the worlds most heavily armed, technologically advanced military – is losing lost a war to guys who pray to Allah 5 times a day when they’re not using pliers and screwdrivers to finish off their garage built drones.

And neither democrats or republicans are putting a halt to this. Both parties are still hoping that culture wars and extremist voters will hand them control of the senate and house in November. Eyes on the prize,, indeed !!!!

That’s a strategic defeat for the US constitution, and the American voter.

I’m just sayin’ . . .