In several really important ways, yes: it has demonstrated to Iranians minded to push for a popular uprising that it can kill tens of thousands and no-one is going to invade to help them. It has demonstrated to the world at large that it has layered leadership and succession planning that is resilient enough to survive decapitation strikes. It has shown both itself and the world that it can impose a huge supply shock on O&G, H2 and N both from the Straits closure and infra attacks. And it has shown that the US is not willing to pursue a ground war. All of that was uncertain six months ago. Perhaps elite cohesion is falling apart, but I wouldn't bet on it. There's certainly no armed insurrection capable of seizing power as there was in Libya.

“It hasn’t failed yet” reminds me of the Keynes quote about what happens to us all in the long run.

As for this being the best treatment anyone has thought of, you have got to be fucking kidding me!

Even on its own terms, ie just going along with the idea of launching the attack in the first place, the US could have:
1. Prepped the economy to ride better through the obvious asymmetric counter-measure of closing the Hormuz straits. The SPR was not topped up in advance, quite the opposite. There was no coordination of release triggers with nominal US allies, US shale was not surged in advance, naval escorts could have been pre-positioned, insurance frameworks put in place for Cape of Good Hope re-routing
2. Degraded proxy networks in advance. Israel did some of that with Hezbollah, but the US could have done it with the Houthis and helped with Hezbollah, severed Iraqi militia command chains etc.
3. Built up the coalition of allies in advance so that closure efforts by Iran would be less successful, as well as activating its own plans that doubtless included minesweeping sequencing, escort corridors, rules of engagement for IRGC small boats, pre-positioned mine countermeasure vessels, etc
4. Covertly interdicted or pressured China and North Korea to cut resupply lines in advance of attacking
5. Systematically hardened US bases in the region against drone attacks
6. Built the base of support with Iranian citizens directly, via low-profile investments in civil society, Persian-language media, and internet access tools would have strengthened the substantial domestic constituencies for reform and weakened the regime
7. Financed and armed its own proxies inside Iran at scale, to create actual conditions for toppling the regime
This is no kind of attempt by me to be comprehensive, either. It’s just a few sensible measures.

And obviously, all this is based on accepting a premise from you that I utterly reject: that the US could even define a clear set of strategic objectives and measure success against them, which I reject because it has self-evidently been unable to describe success measures for this adventure ever since. Regime change or not? Control or elimination of nuclear ambitions? Etc. Who the fuck knows. Not you, not me, not Trump and not Iran. It’s a dogshit dinner and is not made any more palatable by your insistence that it’s actually free Iranian osietra

"Just because Trump is an idiot doesn't speak to the future"?? Are you fucking kidding me? Here's but one way that Trump's idiocy directly speaks to the future: The 1973 oil shock led to a 3.2% peak-to-trough contraction in GDP in the US. Industrial production fell 13% and unemployment doubled to 9%. Inflation peaked at 12%. The S&P halved in value. The 79 oil shock led to a 2.2% contraction, inflation peaked at 15% and unemployment peaked at 11%. The 2026 oil shock is bigger than both of those combined, and as well as about 14% of net global oil supply being lost, large quantities of helium for semiconductors and nitrogen for fertilizers pass through the Straits (or rather, don't). So the result of Iran exerting its leverage over the Straits as a result of the US / Israel attack will be a severe economic contraction around the world, including the US. It takes 6 to 18 months to hit fully. And it is going to happen in the future and it's the result of Trump being an idiot.

There is reliable evidence that the regime painted at least one missile pink in a propaganda stunt. So what? It doesn't speak to the regime's stability
There is no reliable evidence that the regime has imported 5000 of its proxy fighters, and anyway such a number is absolutely paltry in comparison to the size of the regime's own coercive apparatus. Artesh = 350k; Basij = 100ks; police = 10ks.

You are kidding yourself if you think the regime is close to collapse. It has been *more entrenched* by the invasion, despite the undoubted impact on leadership, the country's finances, and some miltary forces. Asymmetric warfare for Iran requires only drones, fast boats, and mines, plus insurers charging millions more for vessels and flatly excluding traversing the Straits, and none of those are in danger of running out any time soon.

All of that can be true at the same, and it is also true that a correct diagnosis does not mean that a proposed treatment is ineluctably correct. And in this case, the treatment attempted has very obviously failed.

But this attempt at regime change has patently failed. You have not accounted for the executional incompetence of the Trump admin. Previous admins have been able to effect many regime changes, including in Iran, but they weren't idiots. This lot, though... they were so stupid they were taken by surprise by Iran's closure of the Straits because they didn't want to believe what they were being told by their own military analysts.

C'mon, it's not unreasonable to assume that the intention was to discuss the limits of the US's ability to exert power that is not an immediate and giant war crime. Attacking civilian infrastructure in the way you describe would be a huge war crime, and on top of that, would also not be any sure path to strategic victory, because it would not dislodge the regime with certainty, and would massively (further) undermine the US's alliances which are already tottering.

And what no-one seems to acknowledge is that Iran has laready struck an absolutely enormous asymmetric blow against the US with the largest oil supply shock in history. It is months away from really kicking in, but when it does, forget about gas at 5 bucks a gallon in the US, the price is going to be much higher than that, and that's merely the start of the problems the US will face. Frankly, the regime most likely to fall as a result of this war is the Trump regime, not the IRGC.

No-one in the UK has a car set aside for dirty tasks. Farmers might have a car they use for dirty tasks, but that will just be their car!

I'm guessing the mid west somewhere? Such an incredibly harsh climate compared to the UK! Absolutely no need to have a winter car here.

Yeah, no worries.

The change is meaningful between the 70s and today, and it's not just about population increases. If anything, population increases typically make adoption of non-car options easier and more attractive in a country, not less, because greater densities support more transit more readily and make driving more congested and painful. But policy is more important, and policies in the US have pushed cars above other options. And as you point out, cars are potent emotional and cultural symbols. What's striking is how different it can be elsewhere. For me in Manchester in the UK, a car had that same meaning as it did for you when I turned 17 and could start driving. But my kids grew up in London where transit is excellent and they already felt they had tons of freedom to move around the city from the age of 11, jumping on buses and tubes. My daughter is 17 and hasn't bothered to learn to drive because it just doesn't matter that much to her.

The US is truly more car dependent than 50 year ago: that's why vehicle miles per person have nearly doubled (from about 5k per year to about 10k), why you've moved from about 1.2 cars per household to 2+ on average, and commute distances are up from about 8 miles then to about 15 today.

These changes happen over many years, so it can be difficult to spot. But they're very real

It would be good for the US and the world if I were wrong and you were right, but go see what the LLMs predict when you ask them. Gas in some places in some states is already at $7 or higher from time to time, I was really genuinely talking about national average. But you have to feed in all the context: remind it that the Straits were first closed on March 2nd and haven’t really opened up, and then ask it to consider comparable oil shocks.

I’m saying the US is more car dependent now than in the 70s. Roads infrastructure has been developed more fully, and public transit infrastructure has been damaged, looking across the country as a whole. Just take a look at a picture of an American city in the 70s compared to today: massive suburbs, freeways everywhere, giant parking lots, lack of sidewalks, retail pushed out.

SPR = strategic petroleum reserve. The yikes is everywhere.
https://x.com/JavierBlas/statu...
https://tradingeconomics.com/u...

I don’t want to be immodest, but I live on a road where the average house price is way above £1m and literally no-one on this road has a summer and winter car. Nearby in the very poshest roads in Hampstead there are houses worth £10m or more, sometimes a lot more, and people still don’t do that. They may have a weekend fun car, eg a Lambo or a McLaren, they may have a fleet of cars for the household, but there’s no such thing as winter cars here. My kids were schoolfriends with the kids of at least four billionaires and countless other super-rich people, and went to their houses from time to time, so I am really pretty confident on this. It’s just not a thing.

I dunno, I think Renault, Kia, Hyundai and BMW are all doing pretty well at weathering the storm of the Chinese OEMs.

It's going to get substantially higher than $4. I think it could end up pushing 7 bucks. Historically, the US has tolerated recessions more lightly than it has gas above 5 bucks. So this is a really really big deal, not least because demand destruction through mode shifting is much less tenable than in the 70s due to greater car dependency, and the SPR is already extensively drawn down ahead of winter. A whacking great recession may well be on the way.

You love to take on this persona of someone able to step back and see the bigger picture, but you are so wildly parochial and US-focused and ignorant about the rest of the world. Low cost EVs that are as cheap on a like-for-like basis as ICE cars are common across almost all non-NA markets. Here in the UK, we have the Citroën ë-C3, Renault 5, BYD Dolphin, Hyundai Inster, Dacia Spring, Kia EV2, GWM Ora 03, BYD, Fiat 500e, Vauxhall Frontera, Leapmotor T03, Cupra Raval, Nissan Micra, BYD Atto, Skoda Epiq, and we're about to get the Renault Twingo and VW id.Polo and a bunch more Chinese models. I'm sure my list isn't comprehensive, either. This might be hard for US OEMs to replicate (although Stellantis owns several of these brands), but it's not hard in principle and it certainly doesn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

For this kind of use case, best is an LFP or sodium battery stored at 80% of charge. But this is completely unimaginable from the UK, keeping a summer and a winter car.