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I do not know why we wouldn't continue funding Israel to keep doing decapitation strikes on Iran leadership and maintain air superiority. This is incredible edge at incredible ROI.
Requires no ground invasion and civilian deaths are minimized. I would contribute to this GoFundMe.
Eventually, either Iran ruling committee #133 decides to surrender or the central government looks like a pathetic clown show and the nation disintegrates.
I wonder what kind of pitch deck the Kurds are circulating right now.
Because that has never worked, not even once, in the history of humanity?
Wars simply cannot be won by assassinations. This has been tried again and again. It doesn't work. It didn't work on Al-Qaeda. US blows up their leaders all the time (Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022, who nobody has heard of) and they're still around, doing their thing, building camps in Afghanistan... It didn't work on ISIS. US blew up Al Baghdadi to no effect. What defeated ISIS was losing their territory and army, even then they're still lurking underground.
Israel tried this on Hamas. They blow up Hamas leaders all the time. It has no effect, Hamas is still fighting.
To win a war, there are no sneaky tricks, you have to actually achieve your military goals on the battlefield, in service of a broad political goal. Assassination is a tactic to achieve some kind of short-term, minor advantage - like sniper fire. It's not a strategy and cannot substitute for victory. Until recent counter-insurgency wars nobody was even silly enough to try this and for good reason.
If Iran blew up Donald Trump and Hegseth plus some generals what effect would this have on America? Would the country collapse? Would there even be any significant impairment to capabilities? No, it wouldn't do anything beyond sparking lots of discourse and cause some stock market shenanigans.
It did work on Al Queda; they're no longer a threat to the United States. It won't work on Hamas because Israel would have to kill basically every Palestinian before they got to a point where the remaining ones won't re-form something like Hamas, but I don't think Iran's enmity of the US, while deep, is quite that deep. Iran's enmity with Israel might be, though.
Assassinating Bin Laden and other leaders is not why Al-Qaeda isn't a major threat to the US right now, that has more to do with improved security and intelligence operations preventing major attacks and ISIS stealing their thunder in the Islamist world. Right now they're focused on building up and developing with their return to Afghanistan.
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alqueda controls syria
not because of bombing and killing their leaders, it's because the US pays and supplies them and uses them against their enemies like they did before they started attacking the US
Well, an organization controlled by a guy who was once part of al-Qaeda in Iraq controls Syria. The terrorist-to-statesmen pipeline isn't such a bad thing; with some notable exceptions (like another AQI successor, ISIS), it usually calms them down. Ask the Sons of Liberty.
is your claim the organization which controls syria's only connection to al qaeda is it's controlled by the emir of al queda branch and that this means they're not al qeada?
do you have the same story about al qaeda in yemen?
bombing and killing al qaeda leaders didn't beat al qaeda and it's not the reason they're not longer a threat to the US
I mean it is not al-Qaeda itself, though it is affiliated. And I don't think al-Sharaa answers to al Qaeda.
So you say.
yeah? who did al nusra pledge allegiance to?
same guys and same leaders but they rebranded with the admitted purpose of attracting more US support which makes them not al queda
it's a story of how the US made al qaeda not a threat to the US, but it doesn't involve them bombing and killing al qaeda, it involves them offering money and support to be used as tools against America's enemies and they rebrand
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Counter-example: Hezbollah is refusing to help Iran after Israel’s campaign against them.
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Except "winning" the war with Iran in this case means simply preventing them from projecting force into the rest of the Middle East. If Iran can't stop Israel from blowing up their military assets or nuclear developments or their leaders they aren't much of a threat anymore.
They're projecting force into Tel Aviv right now. You can see videos of missiles coming down and discourse about who gets let into the bomb shelters.
This is just like the campaign with the Houthis. The US drops bombs, blows things up. Who can say if they're hitting real targets or dummy targets or whatever. Yet the Houthis retain the ability to strike shipping, it's a stalemate. The US doesn't achieve the goal of 'stopping attacks on shipping' and the Houthis don't achieve the goal of 'stopping the Israeli campaign in Gaza'.
I suppose we'll see how long until they exhaust their missile supply on Israel. Two more weeks of this, or will they be in for it for years?
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The Houthis haven't attacked commercial shipping since December and haven't attacked US ships since the bombing campaign.
The Houthis say they'll renew their anti US shipping campaign with the current strikes on Iran. And they have continued their anti-Israel missile/drone attacks throughout.
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"The nation disintegrates" isn't necessarily a desirable outcome.
My understanding is that from a realpolitik standpoint, the issue is that it becomes a fertile ground for terrorists and extremist groups. In the case of Iran, given hiw much support they already provide to Hezbollah/Hamas/Houthis... how much more could a disintegrated nation export?
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Worked fine in Syria.
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