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U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

reuters.com

131–140 of 193 posts

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. - Many cannot accept its dangerous world. - Many don't understand that stewardship of nuclear weapons alone is a major undertaking that Iran cannot be trusted to manage. US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches. - Many will refuse to accept solely because 'orange man bad'. - Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity.

> Many cannot accept its dangerous world. The ballistic missiles are the danger, and Iran already has those. There is no missile or reentry vehicle in Iran's possession that can credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear weapon. > US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches. According to Seymour Hersh, Israel was close to using their nuclear weapon as well. Why not focus on their disarmament fi…

Yesterday the Iranian embassy in the UK called for attacks in the UK. Today there were stabbings. Iran likes to demonstrate that they can reach out a touch someone.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the second- and third order effects of the Marg Bar Amrika Society getting a nuclear device (and the missiles to deliver it)?

Who shredded the 2015 agreement with Iran that had stopped them from enriching more uranium? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/29/science/iran-... Oh wait, that the Trump and his war criminal friends. They make the problem, blame it on someone else, and then claim they fixed it while making life worse for everyone else. Meanwhile Trump and his corrupt oligarch cronies are profiting massively.

Flagged dead push back:

howmayiannoyyou 1 hour ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–]

Regurgitation of talking points doesn't change the irrefutable fact that the JCPOA only kicked the can down the road & Iran was cheating the entire time - as they now admitted during negotiations.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockpile/equipment costs are the bulk of what we've spent so far. Operating a carrier group in a theatre is not that much more expensive than just maintaining an operational carrier group.

For many weapon systems, we burned through a decade of inventory in a month. Rapid replenishment will be expensive.

Those stock piles are for war with China/Russia/Iran. If we end up in a situation where that has shifted to China/Russia, they will have been put to their intended/purchased for use.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#134

I would merely point out, since the operation started, global terrorism has fallen quite dramatically. Freedom isn’t free; never has been.

The Iranian embassy in the UK just called for terrorism on UK soil yesterday, and there were terror knife attacks today. The Islamic Republic of Iran has to do Islamic Republic of Iran things no matter what situation they are in.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#135
post #22

I remember before the election I read a few people on HN say Trump is the most anti-war president they have ever seen and that all the talk about him letting Israel flatten Palestine was fearmongering. Wonder how they feel now.

I muse on this as well but recently I'm struck that the entire conversation is something of a distraction. Everyone is focused on the current administration, what they're doing right or wrong, contrasting it with Biden, etc. My question is - how did we even reach this point? I understand people didn't like Hillary Clinton and the way they dealt with Biden's age was abysmal when he was in office. But I have literally…

I won't say I never see it because I do but the reason you rarely see it is Bernie Sanders. The DNC played dirty when it came to Sanders in 2016 and it tainted Clinton's entire campaign and it really continues to taint the DNC to this day. A lot of Obama to Trump voters would've voted Sanders and progressives never forgot or forgave how the DNC treated Sanders.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#136
post #22

I remember before the election I read a few people on HN say Trump is the most anti-war president they have ever seen and that all the talk about him letting Israel flatten Palestine was fearmongering. Wonder how they feel now.

He keeps claiming falsely that he's "ended 8 wars," but at this point he's actually attacked 8 different countries. Up is always down with these people.

It's actually nine wars ended now since the war with Iran was over weeks ago. Some people, smart people, some of them the smartest people, said it couldn't be done. But now leaders of nations all over the world are calling him to say "thank you, sir" for doing what no one has been able to do in the history of the world.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#137

Destroying the world is cheap compared to the cost to humanity. Now they need to share the cost that we have burdened the world and ourselves with.

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. I miss actual capitalism with actual competition and anti-trust enforcement, not the oligopolies, regulatory capture and government-picked survivors we have now.

This is "actual capitalism" which is why every economic thinker not part of Reagan's cabinet and network insists you need to enforce competition with regulation to get the benefits of capitalism.

A market without regulation is not a free market after the first few transactions.

You don't get to point to all the ways you can manipulate a market and cry foul, that's reality. If you want to play with fake markets that can't be manipulated or controlled and don't "need" regulation because competition is perfect, stick to econ 101 and go no further. Real world markets are not efficient.

What you want is well regulated markets, that purposely make it harder to be a big company. "Efficiency of scale" is vastly overrated, and not meaningful to all our IP based economy.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#138
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it doesn't count the cost of second- or third- order effects (like the cost from the price of oil going up by 50%). Since February 28, crude oil prices increases cost $42 billion in the United States alone.

It's so odd to me that people think the cost of oil going up is universally bad. It's good both morally for me and financially for many people.

What's it like living without worry?

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#139
post #66
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so odd to me that people think the cost of oil going up is universally bad. It's good both morally for me and financially for many people.

Me too. I'm surprised those in the Green Movements generally, haven't been celebrating. Not a whisper. Makes one wonder.

"Green movements" look for a planned transition away from oil that doesn't cause worldwide economic disaster. The whole motivation is to prevent human suffering, not increase it.

That this makes you wonder indicates that you fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of environmental movements.

Further, even if there was "celebrating" how would you know? Are you involved with the groups politically working towards those ends? Perhaps you should question your information diet, rather than assuming that your information diet is representative of reality.

Re: U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it doesn't count the cost of second- or third- order effects (like the cost from the price of oil going up by 50%). Since February 28, crude oil prices increases cost $42 billion in the United States alone.

What are the second- and third order effects of the Marg Bar Amrika Society getting a nuclear device (and the missiles to deliver it)?

I think the bigger question that you should be asking is what is America going to do for the next 5 years without the stockpile of munitions that the just burned through.[0]

China has every incentive to goad Israel or Iran into starting another round in this conflict so that America will deplete even more missiles. Iran destroying one of these[1] and an AWACS should startle everyone and with the right supplies from China Iran has the capacity to take out even more of them.

So if in two months this conflict heats up again and we're looking at half of these radar systems destroyed and minimal amount of missiles available, would you consider it well worth it?

Because that's a very plausible scenario and I'm very concerned about what the world will look like by the end of the summer if that comes to pass.

[0] https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPY-2_transportable_radar#

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