Now I get it. It's still total BS.

[senseandsensibility]

Hegseth was on one of the Sunday shows and was bragging that now Iran will have to agree to never get or use a nuclear weapon. When Margaret Brennan pointed out that that was already agreed to with the Obama agreement, which was discarded by trump, this was Hegseth's response (paraphrased): Yeah, but that agreement didn't have the threat of force.

So, basically, we spent billions and sacrificed American lives to get back to where we were. And of course, we're not even there yet because as usual this deal is on again off again for the upteenth time. But it's all worth it because we blew a lot a lot of stuff up first?

And then, there's the strait of Hormuz which was open and free before the war. The gaslighting is getting more blatant and I'm glad that very few are buying it.

[ProfessorGAC]

1. His Statement Is Self-Indicting

They got a worse deal because they spent extra resources to show the unnecessary threat was serious.
If Obama didn't need to threaten use of force, and got a better, cheaper deal, it means said threats were unnecessary.
Vance just established that they are much inferior negotiators compared to BHO & his people.

[IbogaProject]

17. We also received damage to our bases

So this amounts to us loosing face at the best. I think the true costs of this mess are 500 Billion upto a trillion, by the time all the knock on results kick in.

[haele]

2. He and his mobster buddies believe they need to be unnecessarily cruel

To prove they "mean it".
The equivalent of pissing on food to show dominance.

[Grins]

34. True. Here's Michael Ledeen

"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." - Conservative shit, Michael Ledeen, 1992.

[RockRaven]

3. We are not getting back to where we were. Not even close.

The new position will be inferior in every way.

[genxlib]

4. I would argue the opposite

There was always the implied threat of force despite the peaceful nature of that agreement. Everyone, everywhere knew that they could be hurt militarily if they didn't go along.

Hegseth is arguing that such threat has been made real to them so it is no longer an implied threat.

BUT... I would argue that they took the beating and remained defiant. Including a real power play in the Strait of Hormuz.

I don't think they learned the lesson that Whiskey Pete thinks they learned. I think they learned that we are isolated from our allies and reluctant to escalate to a ground war. They also learned that they had a lot more geopolitical leverage in Hormuz than they realized.

So here we are full circle trying to get the same deal while also giving control of the Strait to them as a protection racket.

[Colgate 64]

5. The only fool that starts a war he doesn't need and can't

win and winds up with much less than he had before starting it.
Rethuglican brilliance in action.

[Justice matters.]

8. The alienation of former allies to help Putin lose his war-crimes.

Losing to a more clever nation able to not only defend itself using small drones instead of nuclear bombs, but also able to inflict huge damages to the war-criminal aggressor in a climate fragile world on the brink of the next great extinction.

[czarjak]

6. Trumped-Up enthusiasts are dangerously stupid.

[odins folly]

7. How incredibly stupid and incompetent

This fuck head is in so far over his head in this position. He thinks he’s a bad ass and he’s just a punk.

So we tore up a perfectly good agreement because the other guy (who lives rent free in shitbag’s head) negotiated it. And in the end we killed American soldiers, will pay more money to Iran (although it is their money to begin with) and leave them in charge of the strait. Not to mention depleted arm stockpiles and now ANY rouge nation KNOWS with this clusterfuck administration in charge the USA is NOT the most powerful nation in the world anymore.

Assholes!!!!

[Martin Eden]

11. "USA is NOT the most powerful nation in the world anymore"

Trump and Hegseth have abandoned the "soft power" of strong alliances, diplomacy, foreign aid, and leading by example. Instead, they've demonstrated the weakness of military might in the hands of an ignorant bully.

This maladministration has further weakened the USA by rejecting expertise and purging our government ranks of true public servants who are actually competent in advancing America's interests.

[odins folly]

14. Yes!

And not to mention every single one of our allies is looking for another source of that, what used to be, our greatest strength.

As Bob sang: the warriors whose strength is not to fight. Our power was always the ability and resources to ensure those less fortunate and the oppressed had someone they could count on to stand for them. We were never perfect in that light, far from it. But we continued to try.
These fucks decided they wanted to throw around the might of the US military and they screwed the pooch so bad I don’t know when we may regain that mantle.

20 in the military and 20 in civil service all shot to hell by poser boys with little wangs….

[lonely bird]

28. Not to mention

Pushing the de-dollarization of the world and destroying the credit standing of the country.

The economic consequences of their stupidity will be felt for decades.

[Bluetus]

22. I suppopse most of our adversaries already knew our military was 60 years out of date

Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2026, 11:52 PM - Edit history (1)

But Trump and Hegseth decided to put that on parade for all to see. The latest estimates say we are burning up about a trillion dollars with this "excursion". They now can see that, while we can pick off fishing boats at sea, and we can blow up schools and hospitals at a distance, we really are in no position to conduct a big ground operation, especially when we don't have allies lined up.

Does anybody else find it almost unbelievable that, after spending so much on the B1 and B2 programs, we are mostly afraid to use them. So much so that we are embarking on a program to retrofit modern engines on the remaining fleet of 78 B-52s. The idea is to keep them flying until 2050. At that time, every one of those aircraft will be at least 88 years old, and some will be flying at 100 years.

Meanwhile Ukraine and Iran are dealing huge blows to Russia and the US respectively using $20,000 drones against our weapons that cost from $1,000,000 to $35,000,000 each.

Not only has Trump made the US considerably less powerful, he has also screwed much of the US defense industry that made much of their profit selling to NATO allies. The NATO countries are running away from the US makers in droves now.

And back to the B-52 thing, the Pentagon has convinced themselves that the B-52 is the best bombing option because of the range and enormous payload (and the time aloft without refueling will be extended about 30% with the modern engines.) But the newest B-52s were built 40-50 years before the stealth airframes were invented. The B-52 only works when you can keep them at high altitude, a hundred miles away from the action. OK, that can work, but it means that the ordnance has to be expensive guided missiles. These are all about $2,000,000 per shot, and we just burned up about 5 years' production, with no real impact on Iran.

[Martin Eden]

23. Entrenched interests of the military industrial complex

Lots of profit to be made from old, but highly profitable, weapons systems.

[Bluetus]

24. Normally the M-I-C loves periodic wars to burn off stuff that has to be replaced

But there is an art to these war-for-profit games. Yes, you want to burn off the supply of missiles and other consumables so that Congress will appropriaite more money. And you want to identify INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS that will be "absolutely necessary to maintain readiness". The incremental thing is really important because you want Congress to approve hundreds of billions for these "absolutely necessary" improvements, but you donlt really want to engineer very much.

What Trump and the drunken Secretary did here was exactly the opposite. They burned off 5-10 years' supply, but they did it by matching our multi-million dollar ordnance gainst $20,000 drones. If Congress has any brain cells and integrity, they will be challenging EVERYTHING the Pentagon asks for. And that is the last thing the M-I-C wanted to see. Every word that Eisenhower spoke in his Farewell Address is true and 66 years later, we see how this has led to our hollowed-out middle class.

[Martin Eden]

9. To achieve the goal without the threat of force is a big plus on my book.

I don't know what book Hegseth reads, but it ain't the Jesus part of the bible.

[House of Roberts]

10. The JCPOA was NOT just Obama and Iran.

The beltway pundits never mention it was the P-5 nations, United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China plus Germany and the European Union, that negotiated the deal.
Trump has so antagonized all those other nations, except possibly Russia and China, that none of them would be on board any new deal.

[William Seger]

12. There is NO WAY #rump will get as good a deal as the one he ripped up

There's no reason Iran would give him that, since this regime is apparently willing to let the country absorb whatever damage #rump inflicts on them. This "memorandum of understanding" is not even "the" deal; it's just a ceasefire game they're playing to get the Strait open and start collecting fees.

[Galraedia]

13. This whole administration is one giant clusterfuck

...filled with the dumbest people imaginable. The most qualified person in this administration is a high level FEMA official who claims that he can teleport because he traveled 50 miles and woke up in a ditch outside a Waffle House.

[ColoringFool]

15. Hegseth Is OBSESSED WITH "War," "Warriors," "Force,"......."

Hyper-Masculinity, aggression, violence, threats, "maximum lethality," NO WOMEN IN THE MILITARY, and various and sundry other traits---NO FATTIES ALLOWED!---that would make a Freudian's career.

😉

[Totally Tunsie]

18. This is still the best commentary I've seen regarding Iran:

https://democraticunderground.com/100221297474

The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, has apparently closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States, for the seventh time, won the war that wasn't a war, so now the United States has to open the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the not-war began.
The not-war began because Iran had uranium that was totally, completely, beautifully obliterated, so they couldn't build the nuclear bomb they weren't building, which is why the United States had to start the not-war it definitely didn't start.
Now the United States, which has nuclear weapons, is threatening to use nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for countries with nuclear weapons to allow other countries to have.
If the United States saw the United States doing what the United States does in other countries, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

Thanks to DUer Sogo for the original post.

[Aussie105]

19. Iran says: OK, America, learnt your lesson?

Trump says: We won! Do I get the Nobel peace prize now?

Hegseth: Looks at a world map, and thinks . . .Where can I get a war going next? Got to prove I'm a Manly Man and blow stuff up!

Bibi: Silence. Plotting things.

[vapor2]

20. War Crimes

[dave99]

21. The U.S. will never get back to 2015 where we respected each other

[ChicagoTeamster]

25. What Hegseth meant was, the first agreement was made by the Obama administration and the international community

So it didn't have psychotic bullies talking about it ad nauseum on TV

[usonian]

26. Kept Epstein out of the news for a good while.

To Trump, "Worth every damn one of our tax dollars."

[OldBaldy1701E]

27. "I'm glad that very few are buying it."

Me, too.

I wish we would do more than 'not buy it', but here we are.

[Emile]

29. 13 U.S. service members were killed for what?

[karynnj]

30. Also, it is NOT a deal yet, at best it is an MOU to make a nuclear deal

This reminds me of the late 1960s, when a girl from my dorm returned from Christmas holidays with a pre engagement ring, explaining that it was a commitment to become engaged in the future.

Now, remember it took a big capable team, including John Kerry and Dr Moniz, years before they had a framework, then an interim agreement (to test if Iran would comply) then a final deal.

Now, after destroying any trust by unilaterally rejecting the Obama agreement in the first term, then a full scale attack killing many top leaders while they were negotiating a nuclear deal, somehow we are to believe that they will have a complete deal in 60 days with a negotiating team of two real estate men.

[Torchlight]

31. $260 billion spent over 4 months to achieve... the status quo

The nation will be bankrupt by the time he's finished fleecing his voters. Truly, he's the best choice for Pres. that Putin could have picked.

[Blue Owl]

32. Hegseth is a drunken freak-show poser

[SpankMe]

33. Not to mention we burned through half of our Tomahawk missile inventory

It'll take years to re-supply what was used. In the meanwhile, China can invade Taiwan and Russia can double down on Ukraine and begin saber-rattling in other former Soviet states.