Huge success! Just ask Custard!

Shocker that this meme is fake/misleading. But hey, as long as it
feels good to post it, who cares?
AI analysis:
The top panel attributes a version of a real point to Vance. Early official estimates put the direct costs of the 2026 Iran conflict (Operation Epic Fury and related operations) around $30 billion; later tallies rose to the mid-to-high $40 billions. Vance has been more skeptical of open-ended Middle East wars than many in the administration, has questioned optimistic Pentagon briefings, and has publicly acknowledged difficulties and the need to end the fighting on better terms. “Underestimated Iran” is a fair paraphrase of the resilience the U.S. encountered—especially Iranian willingness to absorb punishment, mine and harass shipping, and keep fighting longer than some expected. 
The bottom panel is fabricated. The “Obama” quote is not real, the image is edited, and the framing collapses under scrutiny.
On the nuclear claim:
Iran was not sitting on a finished nuclear weapon, but it was not “a nuke that didn’t exist.” Before the 2025–2026 strikes, the IAEA verified roughly 440 kg of uranium enriched up to 60%—a short technical step from weapons-grade (≈90%). That stockpile, plus the enrichment infrastructure and know-how, represented a latent breakout capability measured in months, not years. Multiple U.S., Israeli, and independent assessments treated the program as a serious proliferation risk. Strikes degraded the known enrichment sites and production capacity; the remaining unaccounted material and any undeclared work are still live issues. Dismissing the entire concern as imaginary is not serious analysis. 
On the Strait of Hormuz:
The waterway was not “wasn’t closed.” Iran’s response to the U.S./Israeli campaign included declarations of closure or severe restriction to “hostile” shipping, mining, attacks on tankers, and demands for permits/tolls. Commercial traffic collapsed to a small fraction of pre-war levels (roughly 8% of normal AIS-visible volume in recent tracking) and has stayed heavily disrupted for months. The disruption is a direct consequence of the conflict, not a pre-existing non-issue the U.S. invented a war to fix. Claiming the opposite is ahistorical. 
A more accurate response to the underlying critique would be: the war has been more expensive, longer, and harder than the most optimistic early claims suggested; Iranian endurance and asymmetric tools (mines, drones, missiles, proxy pressure) were under-weighted by some; and costs in munitions, readiness, and regional stability matter. Those are legitimate points. Pretending the nuclear threshold problem and the Hormuz disruption were fabrications is not. The meme trades in a false binary instead of grappling with the actual trade-offs.
The scariest and most misleading thing tempo and others commonly repeat here is that this war was pointless. They (in some thanks to Obama himself) have been getting closer to nuclear weapons and refused to back down on it. Can you imagine what the folks who, as Murph likes to say, “don’t give a fuck,” had nukes? Talking out both sides of your mouths about dangerous shit just because you hate Trump is retarded. But it makes some sense if you’d like to see those nukes pointed at Israel. Hmmm