MANIFOLD
American troops in Iran before the end of 2025?
58
Ṁ1kṀ14k
resolved Jan 1
Resolved
NO

This market resolves YES if U.S. military troops enter Iran before December 31, 2025. U.S. troops acting under United Nations command or private contractors do not count.

  • Update 2025-12-28 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Aircraft crew members flying through Iranian airspace count as troops entering Iran for the purposes of this market's resolution. The creator is inclined to accept this interpretation unless persuaded otherwise by traders.

  • Update 2025-12-28 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator has confirmed they will resolve this market YES based on the technicality that aircraft crew members flying through Iranian airspace count as troops entering Iran. The creator states "technically correct is the best type of correct" and is proceeding with this interpretation.

  • Update 2025-12-29 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator clarifies that the resolution criteria does not require "boots on the ground" - the original description's phrase "U.S. military troops enter Iran" should be interpreted without this additional constraint.

  • Update 2025-12-29 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator is now leaning towards resolving NO and reconsidering the previous interpretation. They are seeking confirmation from mainstream news sources that specifically state "US troops have entered Iran" and now believe that "troops entered Iran = boots on the ground" is the standard interpretation used by credible news outlets.

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@Bandors In the hypothetical world where the B-2s used a standoff cruise missile launched from outside of Iranian airspace, would you have resolved this question to NO? And do you think it's a good question definition when it 1) says not a single word about weapons and 2) hinges on a specific type of munition used to conduct a strike?

Also see all the rhetoric and debates over the years how there will be / there won't be US troops in a country X (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, what have you), happening while the US were bombing the country in question. Nobody interprets airstrikes as "troops entering the country".

@SurvivalBias Ok I completely get the subjectivity of the whole airspace vs ground distinction, but your hypothetical about cruise missiles seems confused. In that case, no human would have entered Iran, ergo it's a NO. Why would the description need to clarify that?

@Sketchy what I'm trying to illustrate with the hypothetical is this. Lets say country A conducted an airstrike on a country B. The fact of this happening can obviously matter a lot for international politics, as does scale of the strike, target, number of casualties and so on. What does not matter is the specific kind of delivery system used to transport the kaboom from the aircraft to the target. Whether it was a regular bomb, gliding bomb, cruise missile, air launched ballistic missile or whatever else typically only matters for the people actually involved in the strike and military hardware nerds (assuming that the results are identical).

This question is phrased and tagged as if it is about international politics, without a hint of it being about military hardware. So it doesn't make sense that its resolution depends on an "implementation detail" which is completely irrelevant to international politics.

@Sketchy can you find a news article from a mainstream news sources that says specifically "US troops have entered iran,"

I have been mulling this over and I am leaning closer to resolving NO, because "troops entered Iran = boots on the ground" seems to be a universal rule among credible news outlets

@Bandors lol this is shifting the debate towards whether war.gov can be considered mainstream, a whole new can of worms :D

@Bandors No, tbh I can't find that exact phrasing in news outlets. Many news outlets refer to the strikes as being in Iran, but don't use that sentence in the same sentence as troops.

There are several government sources that use the phrase "enter Iran" as opposed to entering Iranian airspace - DoW, National Guard, Pentagon.

Should resolve NO. The troops never entered Iran itself, only Iranian airspace

What if 2 Vietnam veterans visit family in Iran? Does that count?

@NivlacM to be clear a YES resolution is stupid bullshit

@NivlacM "boots on the ground" aka the soldier's boots were on the ground of the plane flying over Iran

@NivlacM I never mentioned boots on the ground

bought Ṁ500 YES

Doesn’t this resolve YES with the Fordo bombing? Doesn’t say boots on the ground, just troops in Iran.

@Sketchy did american troops enter Iran?

bought Ṁ250 YES

@Bandors “The main strike package comprised of seven B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members”

Yes, at least 14 crew in the B-2 plus more in the protection package entered Iran on June 22 and bombed Fordow and Natanz, both targets clearly within Iran.

The pentagon said more than 125 aircraft participated, although some were part of the decoy package or refuel and wouldn’t have entered Iran.

https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4222543/secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen/

@Sketchy This is a really funny technicality and I'm willing to give it to you unless another trader can persuade me otherwise @traders

sold Ṁ276 NO

@Sketchy I don't care if I get one star resolution ratings, technically correct is the best type of correct

@Bandors If overflights count as "entering" then US troops "enter" 50+ countries every week. Traders were clearly betting on deployment/boots on ground

@Simon74fe there is a substantive difference between a bombing run in the capacity of the US military and a commercial flight.

@Sketchy but is the difference really in whether you are entering the country? I would argue the difference is in other dimensions

@Simon74fe you don't have to reach for flights to get a long list of countries with US troops in them. According to Wikipedia most countries have US troops in them. So having US troops there is always unintuitively broad.

@Sketchy I think this is decidedly against the spirit of the question. Airstrikes shouldn't count as "soldiers in Iran"

bought Ṁ6 NO

@Sketchy when you fly to another country for holidays, do you also claim you've "entered" all countries you've flown over? Entering the airspace is not commonly interpreted as entering a country imho.

@DanielFox9fff It was a bombing run with at least 14 troops on the B2 bomber.

I didn't say they had to be on the ground. I understand spirit of the market etc etc but I think he's got a legit point

Military bombing runs and commercial flights are substantially different.

@Bandors you should probably resolve the market soon either way or close it so there’s less trading on definition debate

@smnsmnsmnsmns I closed trading. Still open for persuasion if someone has a better argument

@Bandors it is odd that the market didn't resolve YES months ago

@AlexanderTheGreater no one pointed out the technicality earlier

@Sketchy Just as a matter of usage, no, air crew does not count
Doolittle's crews did not constitute 'American troops in Japan' in 1942
The U2 and Blackbird pilots were not 'troops in the Soviet Union' (until Powers crashed or was shot down; that case, at least, would make for an interesting debate)
And this is not some special rule we're applying to soldiers. I have been in planes over Greenland, Iceland, and Ireland at various points, but would not say on that basis that I was ever 'in' those countries, nor did I have to enter them in any legal or practical sense

@Bandors but if the market creator thought that airmen count, why didn't they resolve it back when the bombings occurred?

@AlexanderTheGreater Bandors is the market creator, so it seems like it's because no one pointed out the technicality to him.

@Sketchy despite owning YES, I gotta say that sounds like Bandor also wouldn't have thought that airmen in the air should count...

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