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The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
Worth note that North Korea didn't have nukes for a long time, and they stayed safe even though they did a lot to piss of the US and all their neighbors. And they still only have a few shitty low-yield nukes.
It seems like you you just have to be seen as a hard target. NK did it with mountains a ton of artillery. Ukraine was seen as a much weaker target by everyone.
Prior to the last week, I would have assumed Iran was a hard target and thus somewhat untouchable (smaller strikes/assassinations being the limit of messing with them). It's surprising how hard they've been slapped.
But also in some ways, they are still. No one is going to be launching a ground invasion, and the regime is not looking hot right now, but still has power.
It blows me away that despite a close connection to Russia, and increasingly China, they had such terrible IADS. If you can't get invaded, the only way your adversary, who has one of the world's best Airforce's, can cause you serious issues is by air striking you into pieces.
They must have thought their missiles and proxys were a deterrent, which they were at one point. But man it kills me. In PvP video games, if things are going well/fine, you should always be asking yourself "how do I lose" and it doesn't seem like the gang in Iran did that at all.
That being said. It's not hard to imagine a world in which Israel's air campaign culminates eventually as they run low on munitions and a deal of some flavor is worked out. Then Iran spends the next 5 years rebuilding and furiously fortifying. Maybe they get some tips on anti-espionage purges from the Chinese. And then in 2030 were right back to two weeks ago status quo but this time Iran has hardened everything.
This is a devastating tactical victory for the Israelis, the strategic outcomes remain to be seen...
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.
"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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