Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Iran War Cost Tracker

iran-cost-ticker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 486 posts

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#441

Post by Aerbil313 »

mhb wrote: post #152
gravisultra wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a valid criticism. Whenever there is a push to improve life for US citizens, we are told that we do not have the funds. Yet, here we see an essentially unlimited budget to fight Israel's war of aggression against Iran, with zero benefit to US citizens. In fact, the costs (financial, moral and human) that we will pay for this excursion will be astronomically high.

If budgets are what interest you, maybe consider why Iran spent over $500B developing offensive nuclear weapons. Instead of peaceful pursuits or defenses against its supposed aggressor over 1,000 miles away.

"Offensive" nuclear weapons are necessary for MAD to work. North Korea, even with a starving population, is untouchable just because they managed to steal nuclear tech from U.S. many decaddes ago.

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#442

Post by mhb »

krisoft wrote: post #201
mhb wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If budgets are what interest you, maybe consider why Iran spent over $500B developing offensive nuclear weapons. Instead of peaceful pursuits or defenses against its supposed aggressor over 1,000 miles away.

> maybe consider why Iran spent over $500B developing offensive nuclear weapons. To protect themselves from the exact scenairo happening right now? The reason why Putin is sleeping peacefully in his bed while Khamenei is dead under rubble is that one has nuclear deterent while the other din't have that protection. > supposed aggressor I don’t know if there is anything “supposed” about that aggressor given the present…

Right. Because Israel is finally fulfilling its aspiration to annex a country 1,000 miles away. Do you think history started two days ago?

Maybe the Israelis are idiots, but it would seem so much more practical to attack closer countries first - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. I wonder why they aren't?

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#443

Post by hypeatei »

hereme888 wrote: post #202
threetonesun wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I don't. I wonder if we could set up some sort of legislative system that could debate this on our behalf and make a reasonable plan that accounts for our differing viewpoints.

I've found that if two people sit together and are willing to talk long enough, they'll eventually be able to actually hear each other, and usually they are more in agreement than the media-installed reactions and assumptions we have. Only with a few would we vehemently disagree. I'm talking about reasonable people though, like your calm reply.

You completely missed the point: Trump unilaterally started this chaotic war without going to Congress. This isn't a matter of "if we just talk we can be friends" type of situation.

He stated a war on his own (after campaigning on the opposite no less) meaning our representatives had no say in this. It's completely unacceptable.

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#444

Post by spaghetdefects »

Jensson wrote: post #423
Jtsummers wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the retaliation was preempted they wouldn't have retaliated, but they have. What the US actually did was provide justification for the retaliation against US bases in the region by joining in the opening salvo.

> If the retaliation was preempted they wouldn't have retaliated, but they have Most of the retaliation was preempted but they didn't get all the missile launch sites. They have blown up most by today though so you barely see any Iranian missiles coming out of the country now. If they didn't do the opening salvo you would have seen much more death and destruction than we saw now.

> They have blown up most by today though so you barely see any Iranian missiles coming out of the country now.

That's not true at all, the only reason we don't see any footage is because Israel is censoring it. Here is CNN last night admitting that they're not allowed to show you the impacts:

https://x.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/2029173685563564407

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#445

Post by hereme888 »

hypeatei wrote: post #443
hereme888 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that if two people sit together and are willing to talk long enough, they'll eventually be able to actually hear each other, and usually they are more in agreement than the media-installed reactions and assumptions we have. Only with a few would we vehemently disagree. I'm talking about reasonable people though, like your calm reply.

You completely missed the point: Trump unilaterally started this chaotic war without going to Congress. This isn't a matter of "if we just talk we can be friends" type of situation. He stated a war on his own (after campaigning on the opposite no less) meaning our representatives had no say in this. It's completely unacceptable.

I did not miss any points. You are uninformed. Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke, and they've been swearing to use it against America and Israel for the past 47 years. In the last set of negotiations, Iran refused to rule out building the nuke. That's the official information, and if you think they're lying, you have no alternative sources of trustworthy information besides terrorist-aligned ideologies.

Presidents can take such defensive actions. It's legal.

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#446

Post by hypeatei »

hereme888 wrote: post #445
hypeatei wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed the point: Trump unilaterally started this chaotic war without going to Congress. This isn't a matter of "if we just talk we can be friends" type of situation. He stated a war on his own (after campaigning on the opposite no less) meaning our representatives had no say in this. It's completely unacceptable.

I did not miss any points. You are uninformed. Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke, and they've been swearing to use it against America and Israel for the past 47 years. In the last set of negotiations, Iran refused to rule out building the nuke. That's the official information, and if you think they're lying, you have no alternative sources of trustworthy information besides terrorist-aligned i…

> Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke

Oh, I see, you've bought the propaganda that Iran is close to a nuke. That's been the scare tactic for decades. Did you already forget the strike we did on their nuclear facilities months ago that supposedly set them back?

There was no justification for this war, the official US position is that we needed to get involved because Israel striked first and Iran was going to retaliate against us.

Israel is wagging the dog here since this is likely the last puppet they'll have in office and Iran threatens their power in the ME.

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#447

Post by cindyllm »

hypeatei wrote: post #446
hereme888 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not miss any points. You are uninformed. Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke, and they've been swearing to use it against America and Israel for the past 47 years. In the last set of negotiations, Iran refused to rule out building the nuke. That's the official information, and if you think they're lying, you have no alternative sources of trustworthy information besides terrorist-aligned i…

> Iran was less than a month away from having a viable nuke Oh, I see, you've bought the propaganda that Iran is close to a nuke. That's been the scare tactic for decades. Did you already forget the strike we did on their nuclear facilities months ago that supposedly set them back? There was no justification for this war, the official US position is that we needed to get involved because Israel striked first and Iran…

[dead]

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#448

Post by ajross »

gravisultra wrote: post #402
ajross wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For clarity, I'm not saying the minority position is "wrong". I'm saying that holding a minority position is not a priori evidence that Deep State Illuminati Elite Power Centers are conspiring against you. They're not. You're just weird.

I'm talking about the majority position, not minority.

So, no, you're not. Or you're misunderstanding how this works. "Stop the war in Iran" is a majority position in polls. People don't vote on that, because people don't care about the war in Iran. Instead, wars at the ballot box are fought over which ethnicity needs to be the target of state violence, or whether or not it's a good thing for citizens to have health care. And those wars are serious, and hard-fought, and occasionally slip off the edge into non-democratic authoritarianism.

But voters don't care about Iran. So Iran policy is dominated by the interests of non-voting/non-democratic power structures like US business interests and geopolitical long-term desires. And on these issues, those power structures show marked agreement. So that's what we do, modulo tactical considerations (e.g. the Obama administration pursued a policy of containment and treaty engagement out of conservatism, where Trump installed a bunch of trigger happy cowboys who want to watch bombs on TV; but both viewed Iran as an enemy to be opposed, and for the same reasons).

So I repeat: to you, if you happen to view Iran policy as extremely important, it must feel like The System is conspiring against you to manipulate public opinion. But it's not. It's operating as designed, and 100% democratically. You are just in a minority, and this is what being in a minority feels like.

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#449

Post by pnt12 »

hereme888 wrote: post #203
nprz wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people? [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/middleeast/girls-sc...

That news piece was officially dismissed after investigation by the IDF and CENTCOM. I would bring to your awareness that you're using an emotional argument with no substance, and it discounts the decades of complex history in the region.

This has strong vibes of "we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing".

IDF has constantly rejected their war crimes in Gaza, while independent reporting (from different sources) has found multiple evidence of them.

Re: Iran War Cost Tracker

#450

Post by incognition »

slumberlust wrote: post #369
joecool1029 wrote: post #13

This seems really low considering one of the early warning radars taken out cost around $1bil on its own.... and it's possible a second one was at least damaged. (one in Qatar the other in Bahrain)

The contract to rebuild it will mean huge profits too. The circle of life (MIC).

This is a Keynesian argument, which has largely been disproved. Keynes famously said if you just paid people to dig holes and fill them back up again, that this would be net stimulative to the government. It works until it doesn't work, because digging holes, as you can reason from common sense, does not actually create value.

This U.S. operation is meant to bomb the Iranians into the Stone Age, so presumably THAAD-level air defense wouldn't be needed again. The Qataris, Saudis would have sold off to South Korea, Taiwan if they wanted.

Post reply on HN