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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8376 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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Does disaster in Iran make war with China less likely?

As the fog of war begins to clear after the last ten days, a few things have become evident.

  1. There is no revolution in Iran. The IRGC’s grip on power has strengthened, or at least not weakened. In Khamenei’s son it has its preferred candidate in power, at least nominally (it may be the institution rather than the man who is in power, but it doesn’t really matter). The IRGC has more than 150,000 men, heavily armed, extremely well trained, in control of more than 40% of the economy. True Shia believers, deeply committed to the Islamic revolution, they know they have no future in a secular Iran and will do anything to prevent it. The secular middle class can flee, as they have for decades, and have low casualty tolerance. Even worse, the risk-takers in that demographic were already killed or jailed in the previous wave of repression. According to various sources, more than 80-90% of Iranian mine laying speedboats and other platforms are still operational. These are very hard to target from the air, they’re small, easily hidden, widely dispersed along the coast. Minutes ago, Fars announced that Iran will not allow a single ship affiliated with America or its allies through the Strait. According to CNN, US intelligence believes mine laying has already commenced.

  2. The US has only two escalations left open. The first, which is low-casualty (comparatively), is to bomb Kharg and/or Iranian oilfields, pipelines and refineries, and/or Iranian tankers using the Hormuz or Iran’s Eastern ports where they’re scaling up shipping. In that event, Iran’s low cost drones will attack Gulf oil production. The Strait will remain heavily mined and inaccessible for months for cargo traffic. Oil surges to $150, perhaps beyond; the Gulf nations will be forced to sue for peace with Iran, expelling US bases. The regime holds, even still; the people are not armed, resistance is limited. The second option is that the US goes all-in, attempting a ground invasion, arming the Kurds (destroying further relations with Turkey); thousands of American soldiers die but Tehran can likely be occupied, the IRGC retreats to hardened mountains it knows well, quagmire with far higher casualty rates than Afghanistan, and far less US support. Both routes end with the GOP finally turning on Trump and a wipeout in the midterms.

The consequences are clear, and for all his faults, the president has very good immediate political instincts if poor military ones: the US will declare mission accomplished, the president may well personally blame the Iranian people for failing to rise up (“you know, I really thought they’d do it, it’s a shame, you know, but they had their chance”), Witkoff will force Israel’s hand to stop further action like he did with the Gaza deal. Through back channels with Turkey or Russia, the Iranians will agree to slowly stop their action, so that they can rebuild. Iran will quickly complete its bomb. A period of rebuilding and greater domestic repression will follow. The Gulf states will be angry with Iran, but will ultimately draw closer with it out of necessity.

Most importantly, and this is true in pretty much every scenario, the US will have experienced a major geopolitical and military humiliation that makes conflict with China much less likely. Missile defenses shredded by cheap drones that can be mass produced by the million by China will rightly create visions of entire hundred billion dollar carrier fleets destroyed by a hundred million dollars of Chinese drones in a massed attack. Unlike in the Gulf, in a Taiwan conflict in which the US actually fought, bases in Guam, Korea, Japan and elsewhere could definitionally not be evacuated abroad (those forces would be needed to fight).

And while some Americans, Jewish and Evangelical, place eschatological and otherwise deep religious important on the geopolitics of the conflict with Iran (or rather, on its hated adversary), even these people are less motivated for a war with China over Taiwan, especially as chip production diversifies geographically. Who actually wants war with Taiwan? Some AI labs who don’t want Chinese competition? Seems unlikely, open source models will get out regardless. The influential Taiwanese diaspora like Lisa and Jensen? Seems unlikely that they want their country destroyed; most smart Taiwanese I know have made peace with their country’s destiny a long time ago. Neocons? Even many of them seem to be going on record to say this war is a bad idea, and many don’t care much about China for the reasons above.

I will not add to this argument other than to say I have bookmarked this thread and will be looking back on it in around a month to see which side was obviously stupid in retrospect and update my opinion of the people on that side accordingly.

Trump has managed to replace Ayatollah Khamenei with Ayatollah Khamenei, except that this one is thirty years younger and just had his parents, wife, sister and son killed in an American/Israeli attack. The mind boggles...

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

- Sun Tzu.

Masterclass in giving a man so little to lose he might say ‘fuck it’ and nuke you even with guaranteed MAD, genius. They’ve got to be kicking themselves if he really is alive.

They already committed to killing him too, so, who cares what he thinks?

just had his parents, wife, sister and son killed in an American/Israeli attack.

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with

-- Nicolo Machiavelli

Keep reading

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause...

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred;

Agreed. Although the problem is that the "avoid hatred" ship sailed a long time ago.

Which eliminates the entire idea of inspiring fear to avoid hatred.

Missile defenses shredded by cheap drones that can be mass produced by the million by China will rightly create visions of entire hundred billion dollar carrier fleets destroyed by a hundred million dollars of Chinese drones in a massed attack.

I am begging you to think through the implications of "missile defense doesn't work" for China when their most obvious path to seizing Taiwan by force is "successfully defending a few hundred transports against tens of thousands of missiles and guided bombs."

Their most obvious path (diplomatic / ‘peaceful’ / semi-peaceful unification aside) is a blitz campaign (with or without attacks on US bases in the region) followed by a quick deal with whoever survives in the leadership. The options for them at that point are “make a deal with Xi” or “call in the yankees and turn my country into a wasteland and die along with hundreds of thousands of civilians and my family and friends”, and they will pick the former.

I am begging you to think through the implications of "Operation Epic Fury has failed" (as you posit) for China if their most obvious path to seizing Taiwan is "Operation Epic Fury With Chinese Characteristics."

What makes you think that it failing in Iran isn’t due to specific characteristics of Iran rather than some universal strategic truth?

Let me give you an example: if Trump bombs Belgium heavily tomorrow demanding some political arrangement, they would surrender by midnight; the political leadership don’t want to fight and won’t, they would rather be ruled by America than die. Maduro’s party preferred making a deal with America to dying. The Iranians don’t.

Taiwan is neither Venezuela nor Belgium nor Iran, but its political leadership is closer - when it comes to ideological position on this - to the former than the latter. If the Islamic Revolution is overthrown then the IRGC are penniless and prosecuted at best and hunted and slaughtered at worst, probably the latter. If the Taiwanese elite accept Chinese rule relatively quickly…they get to go back to being rich in Taipei, or at worst exile themselves to America if they love democracy.

If Iran was ruled by people with the character and belief system of EU bureaucrats they would have surrendered on the day, shaking their heads.

Maduro’s party preferred making a deal with America to dying.

Has Delcy actually done anything that benefits America and goes against their interests? So far it seems like sanctions shuffling or limited sanctions relief with oil being redirected to US refineries. I'm not plugged into what the flow of drugs looks like at a statistical level, but it sure doesn't feel like there are fewer drugs around.

If Iran was ruled by people with the character and belief system of EU bureaucrats they would have surrendered on the day, shaking their heads.

Has this ever come true? The same was said about Ukraine wasn't it, that surely they would surrender their fake bullshit country? I don't know what country has ever actually surrendered under bombardment without even a threat of ground invasion.

What makes you think that it failing in Iran isn’t due to specific characteristics of Iran rather than some universal strategic truth?

I am open to the idea that Taiwan might be different, but traditionally coercive bombing campaigns by themselves have had limited success achieving regime change. Operation Allied Force is the typical example of a successful bombing campaign, but NATO was preparing for a potential ground campaign, and Yugoslavia threw in the towel on the same day as a JCOS meeting specifically about pivoting to a ground invasion, leading some to conclude that it was the preparations for a ground offensive that tipped the scales. But even this did not lead directly to regime change, although it set the stage: Milošević was overthrown by his own people at a later date.

You can even see similar arguments about Japan, even after nuclear weapons were used against them, there were those inside the Japanese government of the opinion that the Japanese should continue resisting, and some argue it was the Soviet success on the ground that ended up tipping the scales.

That's not to say that air operations never succeed - for instance, Operation Preying Mantis or Operation El Dorado Canyon. But these were retaliatory, punitive strikes, not regime change operations.

Furthermore (unlike Belgium) Taiwan is preparing for this sort of coercive action to be taken against them. I have real questions about the resiliency of the Taiwanese people in the face of adversity and the effectiveness of their efforts to prepare, but it's not as if they have not taken steps to harden themselves materially and psychologically against an attack by the mainland.

It is also worth noting that the parallels between Iran and Taiwan extend beyond just "might get bombed." Iran's mountainous terrain and underground fortifications are often cited as an advantage; Taiwan has both. And while Taiwan is isolated due to its status as an island nation, Iran is relatively isolated geographically as well (in the sense that they are not going to be receiving regular resupply from China or Russia, unlike, say, Ukraine) and more vulnerable to ground attack, since it shares a border with potential adversaries. Iran is much larger than Taiwan, and much more populated, which is a massive advantage, although their domestic military technology stack might lag Taiwan's.

It is also worth noting that "Epic Fury With Chinese Characteristics" might be less effective and face steeper resistance than Epic Fury. Because of the comparatively long flight time, Chinese ballistic missiles in particular will likely be inferior to American air-delivered guided munitions as a way to hit mobile targets (such as missile launchers) and Ukraine has been able to contest Russian air dominance with systems like the Patriot, which is also in Taiwan's inventory, although it is possible China might be more capable than Russia in performing SEAD/DEAD, and Taiwan less capable than Ukraine in preserving their assets. And unlike Iran, Taiwan has a superpower patron (the United States) that has deployed a tripwire force on the ground, enabling it to "wave the bloody flag" in the event of an attack. In the event of such an attack, if it has not already occurred, Taiwan will likely be able to follow the Ukraine model of integrating closely with US intelligence apparatus, while Iran's ability to integrate with China and Russia's inferior intelligence capabilities is likely less efficient.

If the Islamic Revolution is overthrown then the IRGC are penniless and prosecuted at best and hunted and slaughtered at worst, probably the latter. If the Taiwanese elite accept Chinese rule relatively quickly…they get to go back to being rich in Taipei, or at worst exile themselves to America if they love democracy.

I don't actually think that the fate of Taiwanese leadership is all that rosy if China takes control of Taiwan. Presumably they noticed what happened to Hong Kong and will respond accordingly.

Also it will be interesting to see if how cutting off shipping through Hormuz impacts China: in a hot war, it seems pretty easy for Taiwan and its allies (some combination of the US, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines) to cut off shipping to every Chinese port in much the same capacity, which is presumably far more painful.

China has extensive overland routes, are the world leaders in renewable energy, have a year of oil reserves, have the state capacity to make unpopular decisions about limiting energy usage, can be resupplied through Russia, Central Asia etc, and has large food reserves. Terrible for an export-led economy but not something impossible to survive for a year or two.

The IRGC’s grip on power has strengthened, or at least not weakened.

I don't know enough to agree or dispute this, but I would have to agree that regime chance is unlikely. Based on Marco Rubio's statements, it seems like US military leadership is aware of this is well. My sense is that the current war is what the Israelis used to call "mowing the lawn."

According to various sources, more than 80-90% of Iranian mine laying speedboats and other platforms are still operational. These are very hard to target from the air, they’re small, easily hidden, widely dispersed along the coast. Minutes ago, Fars announced that Iran will not allow a single ship affiliated with America or its allies through the Strait. According to CNN, US intelligence believes mine laying has already commenced.

n that event, Iran’s low cost drones will attack Gulf oil production. The Strait will remain heavily mined and inaccessible for months for cargo traffic. Oil surges to $150, perhaps beyond; the Gulf nations will be forced to sue for peace with Iran, expelling US bases

I'm pretty skeptical that Iran has both the will and the ability to stop the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf for an extended period of time.

In terms of will, what's striking to me is that Iran apologized for lashing out against other Persian Gulf countries. My impression is that Iran was hoping for the result you predicted (that other countries would pressure the US to lay off Iran) but the actual result was the opposite (other countries pressured the US to step up the attack). Which makes sense. Nobody wants to be seen as giving in to blackmail and in the Middle East, people place a lot of value on their perceived honor. I think that if the Iran lashed out again at other Gulf countries, it would probably backfire in the same way and in fact it's pretty likely that Iran wouldn't even try again. (Edit: By coincidence, right after posting this I heard a report that Iran has attacked a large oil storage facility in Oman. Obviously this changes my thinking about the situation. In fact, I am tempted to delete the whole post and re-think things, but in the interest of epistemic humility I will leave it up.)

In terms of ability, I agree with the others that the US seems to be pretty good at taking out speedboats. I'm not a military expert, but surely the US has been planning for years (and building tools) to deal with the exact situation where Iran tries to stop traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. So I think it's pretty likely that the US has enough countermeasures in place that whatever Iran tries on this score, it won't succeed long term.

Iran will quickly complete its bomb. A period of rebuilding and greater domestic repression will follow.

I agree with the second half of this, but I think it's pretty unlikely that the first goal will be accomplished. The reason being that Israel is very capable and preventing Iran from getting a bomb is one of Israel's top priorities, if not THE top priority. And if push comes to shove, I doubt Israel will hold back.

As far as Taiwan goes, it seems to me it's difficult to assess that question without knowing how difficult it would be for the US to defend Taiwan against a PRC invasion. You can talk about millions of drones, but who knows how effective they would be against whatever tricks the US Navy has up its sleeve?

In terms of ability, I agree with the others that the US seems to be pretty good at taking out speedboats.

There's a big difference between taking out a random speedboat, and taking out every single speedboat.

In terms of ability, I agree with the others that the US seems to be pretty good at taking out speedboats. I'm not a military expert, but surely the US has been planning for years (and building tools) to deal with the exact situation where Iran tries to stop traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. So I think it's pretty likely that the US has enough countermeasures in place that whatever Iran tries on this score, it won't succeed long term.

Yes, but also no. Minesweeping has been a recognized weakness for a while, and the ships that were supposed to help turned out to be... bad enough many were retired early.

Yes, but also no. Minesweeping has been a recognized weakness for a while, and the ships that were supposed to help turned out to be... bad enough many were retired early.

I don't really have the expertise to agree or disagree with this. Except to say that based on my general knowledge about the US military, I would be pretty surprised if we had to bargain with Iran in order to keep the Strait open.

Oh, I'd also be surprised. Just that minesweeping is an area where the USN knows it is a bit weak, that it's an area where an asymmetric foe can exploit, and that it hasn't solved as hoped.

My understanding is that there are three sides to this. The first is that minesweeping is just inherently difficult, for anyone. Even clearing a single mine is difficult, and this becomes vastly more difficult when there's large numbers of them. The second is that the USN in particular has problems with this, as all their attempts to build a dedicated mineclearing ship get cancelled. Maybe it's just not glamorous enough to draw funding? But the third is that the USN doesn't particularly need to be good at this. "Shoot the archer, not the arrow" is the key philosophy. Its a whole lot easier to sink a mine laying boat than to hunt all its individual mines. Thats what we've done to Iran so far. And we have the luxury of operating abroad. If anything, adversaries like China should be afraid the USN would mine its ports, which would completely crash its economy with minimal effort.

Regarding your second point about escalation options: The United States has nuclear weapons. Like Russia in the Ukraine War, the Trump administration has been overtly laying the ground work for cassus beli in case the button is pressed.

The administration’s whole theory of the war is that Iran is very, very close to both an atomic bomb and missiles capable of hitting the US. Justifying nuclear strikes here would be trivial: “The IRGC has access to a few prototype ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe and parts of the United States. We just got intelligence showing that a deep underground Iranian nuclear facility was able to crash enrich enough Uranium for three or four kiloton-yield warheads. We believe they have successfully assembled the warheads. The risks here are too great, we must start striking deep underground missile batteries and nuclear facilities with tactical nuclear warheads.”

The IRGC’s grip on power has strengthened, or at least not weakened. In Khamenei’s son it has its preferred candidate in power, at least nominally (it may be the institution rather than the man who is in power, but it doesn’t really matter).

Is this true? I thought most of their leadership has been completely wiped out, and that the state of Khamenei's son is dubious at best.

According to various sources, more than 80-90% of Iranian mine laying speedboats and other platforms are still operational.

That does sound annoying, but a coast / strait seems easier to police than a bunch of caves on land. How long can Iran disrupt a very important shipping lane while the US navy is hanging around? France just sent an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean and the UK is sending an air defense warship. This play also seems like all that Iran has left. They aren't launching as many missiles anymore. I will concede that on the ground, I don't know how regime change will happen without ground forces. Unless there's some internal militia that can force IRGC out, someone is gunna have to go in.

If anything, this is good practice for the US military should China try anything in the near future. Weakening Iran not only strengthens America's and Israel's position in the Middle East, it also disrupts China's and Russia's. This joint-operation between the US and Israel seems like a huge power-play set to benefit both. In the last year, the US and Israel have showed that with intelligence and airstrikes, they can basically swoop in and smoke air-defenses and dissident leaders within a week of operation (albeit, not against a major power yet). The only question I have is, who is set to benefit from this more, the US or Israel?

I will concede that on the ground, I don't know how regime change will happen without ground forces. Unless there's some internal militia that can force IRGC out, someone is gunna have to go in.

The most viable options that don't involve American boots on the ground are either Artesh (the Iranian army, distinct from the Republican Guard) staging a coup and/or the Kurds invading.

and/or the Kurds invading.

Kurds don't really invade. It's not their thing. Kurds are basically hillbillies, they hold onto Kurdish majority areas easily enough, but there's no amount of weapons you can give them to get them to march on Tehran.

No country plans to have their entire leadership killed, become an international pariah by firing missiles at every neighbor, and then finish it off by obliterating the country's only export of value. It's cope. Pure cope. If the Americans are being humiliated, then they can put on the clown suit and honk their horns as all of their enemies die. Third Worldists have internalized 'if you kill your enemies, they win' mentality, and I hope they cling onto it as long as they can.

I'm not sure anyone is arguing the war is good for Iran. More that it's not good for anyone else either. So if the US wants to settle for being the undisputed king of the decimated third world they can do that. But if that's all they can do one has to admit that the shine of the US empire has dampened a little bit.

Many Iranians in America had said to me before the war, for years in the past, that if Trump just dropped a few bombs on Iran and killed Khamenei it would be the best thing for Iran. Let's not totally ignore that things could improve over time even if right now it seems unlikely. The American and French and Russian and Chinese revolutions all seemed certain to fail at different times.

Iranian Americans are extremely disproportionately religious minorities. My guess is that even a lukewarm Shi’ite Iranian would not have this reaction.

I sympathize with exiled Iranians but they don’t know more about regime change than anyone else, many are just clinging onto whatever hope they might be able to go home in their lifetime, if this is it it’s it.

Yeah. I guess I'm just not geopolitically tuned in enough to intuitively understand what 'improvement' looks like or for who. So far the track record of US 'improvement' in the middle east has been lackluster to say the least, so I'd argue some pessimism is warranted.

I pray for my loved ones, unfortunately on both sides of the guns here.

In WWII, the same situation lead my ancestors to become Jehovah's Witnesses.

No country plans to have their entire leadership killed

Except, you know, Iran. “The regime has in fact already taken preventative measures to ensure its survival in the event of an attack, including by tapping Ali Larijani, a former IRGC commander and the current head of the Supreme National Security Council, to take the lead on contingency planning. Khamenei has also reportedly named successors for himself and his key military and government appointees to enable smooth transfers of power and ensure the regime’s longevity.”

an international pariah

They already were a pariah and cut off from trade. America even managed to persuade India to stop sending them food. That curse happened to become a blessing for them, as they are insulated from the internal consequences of disrupted global trade. What is perhaps not noted here is that the only thing a Sunni hates more than a Shia is an Israeli. The Gulf Arabs are unlikely to go to war with Iran to increase the territorial expansion and power of Israel. Just two weeks ago Huckabee spilled on the beans on the Zionist conspiracy to increase Israeli territory. So for who will Iran be a pariah exactly?

But those contingencies are contingencies for a reason. Obviously it is not an ideal state of affairs for your entire civilian and military upper ranks to be decapitated! Now the former Ayatollah was an old man getting up in the years, dying of cancer and willing to martyr himself. But his wife? His son's wife? All of his subordinates, too? It's not like Israel or the Americans are stopping with just them. They're going down the entire chain of command, killing anyone who even has a whisper of command authority.

How can you plan for that? You can't. Planning for a war where there is no central leadership and your state is degenerated into regional warlords is a shit plan.

And there is degrees of international pariah: there's being on American's shit list, and there's 'bombing the Strait of Hormuz and being treated as a rogue state by everyone'. The Gulf State Arabs were neutral before this. Now, they're in a coalition that INCLUDES Israel in shooting down missiles and drones. That's a sea change! Iran had no friends before this war. Now, it doesn't even have business partners. (Not that they could pay for anything now.)

Iran casually discarded all that remained of its international clout and recognition to strike a doubtful blow against American hegemony. It will take their neighbors a long time to forget about those attacks, and China and Russia are in no rush to bail them out. All to spike oil prices for about a day before the market settled back down. It wasn't worth it.

Now the former Ayatollah was an old man getting up in the years, dying of cancer and willing to martyr himself. But his wife? His son's wife? All of his subordinates, too?

It’s a good point. The only way this could serve the interests of Iran is if the foundation of their cultural and religious identity revolved around the collective mourning of a massacre which mirrors what happened to Khamenei in important ways. What you don’t want to give Iranians is “a template for the public expression of collective solidarity and moral feeling”. But, like, what’s the probability of that? Thankfully the CIA is advising Trump and not two random real estate developers and a guy with a Kafir tattoo written under his Deus Vult tattoo.

They're going down the entire chain of command, killing anyone who even has a whisper of command authority

Maybe they can, I have no idea, but it’s not a given, as Iran has tons of mountains and Russian / Chinese communication tech.

Thankfully the CIA is advising Trump and not two random real estate developers and a guy with a Kafir tattoo written under his Deus Vult tattoo.

One of those real estate developers negotiated the most comprehensive peace in the Middle East in generations. "Jared Kushner is advising Donald Trump" is not actually a slam-dunk proof that America doesn't have a sense of what it's doing in the Middle East.

Some peace deal if this is what happens a few years later.

Notably, this is a war between the countries that signed the deal to enforce its terms on a country that didn’t.

Yes, I know what jihad and religious martyrdom is. I also think it's stupid. Making the other dumb bastard die for his country has been the American warfighting strategy for over a century now, and if the Iranians want to indulge in dumb sand people strategies they're more than welcome to.

Also... what the hell gives you that impression? If they have Russian/Chinese communication tech, they're not using them. They're meeting in person, for God's sake. They're so thoroughly infiltrated by Mossad they've given up on communication technology altogether.

In previous conflicts they were not able to reign missiles down on Tel Aviv. Also we had other crazy sand people dying for us. Neither Americans nor Israelis are able to sustain consistently high sand people mortality figures. The key questions of this war IMO are (1) can we actually find all the ballistic missiles and (2) how easy is it to make a TEL. I haven’t found any expert even hazarding a guess on these except to say that making a TEL is pretty trivial stuff.

They're meeting in person, for God's sake

I don’t think anyone has a clear idea what is happening. But we have not announced any new leaders being killed after the “trick your opponent into coming to the negotiation table and then slaughter their family” strategy, right?

In previous conflicts they were not able to reign missiles down on Tel Aviv.

They didn't have to because Hezbollah and Hamas did it for them. But they can't now, because we destroyed them.

how easy is it to make a TEL.

This presumably depends on the technology for your missiles: if they're dumb ballistic things, you probably need to be very confident of where you are launching from and where they're going to point them the right way. If they're liquid-fueled you may need extra targets tanker trucks to fill them once they're vertical. Smarter missiles help a lot with that (see why the Navy now uses VLS instead of missile turrets), but doesn't necessarily solve your problems like precisely initializing guidance systems.

Saddam and his government got pretty thoroughly destroyed too, that didn’t stop the war from becoming a giant black eye for the US.

I'm not going to defend the occupation or the American foreign policy of the time, but Iraqi Freedom was objectively a sweep: Saddam's conventional forces were destroyed in little less than a week. The black eye came from the attempt at nation-building, not the military operation. Turns out the US military is good at blowing things up. Who would have thought?

The Americans can actually learn lessons. They're not going to commit to a pointless ground occupation where mujahadeen can shoot at them. Iran isn't a insurgency which passes off responsibility of statehood onto an occupying power - it's a nation of ninety million people. If Iran is a smoking, sectarian shithole like Syria with collapsed central authority, that good enough. They can hate the Americans, but if they do so impotently, that's a win.

Nobody creates a quagmire consciously, every war is conceptualized at the outset as a quick in and out affair.

Just like the Iranian regime can never just ease up about being the vanguard of Shia islam dedicated to thwarting Israel, it’s in the very DNA of the US’s position that we must dedicate our military to ensuring safe passage on global shipping lane choke points.

Thus we are now fundamentally committed to ensuring the total destruction of Iran’s capacity to choke off shopping in Hormuz, in a similar way that Israel is completely committed to wiping out the ability of Hamas to launch rockets from Gaza. But on a vastly larger scale.

The Iran before the full scale attack may have been an entity that could be negotiated with, and perhaps I’m wrong, but I think this headless group of martyrdom and honor culture infused bomb survivors is now going to hole up in the mountain fortress and commit to fighting until they cannot any longer.

As long as they continue to fight, the US cannot decide to back down. The ball is simply not fully in our court anymore.

If America destroys all Iran's missile bases and ports it doesn't matter if they hole up in the mountains. They can do that forever, it doesn't matter. It would be nice if the Mullahs were removed from power and Iran was a fair and friendly country again. But we don't need that to happen to win.

Shaheds are tiny and there’s a huge border where they can be resupplied, not least through Iraq which is majority Shia and sympathetic. Maybe you can get Putin to promise pretty please that he’s not going to supply them, but come on. So again you’re in an insurgent situation that maybe looks a little less like Afghanistan and more like a cross between what happened in Iraq, the Troubles, and the second intifada, except far larger, more entrenched and on larger territory, and with enemies happy to die.

The chance of Putin supplying some hardened remnant of the IRGC in the mountains of Iran with Shaheds is zero. Why would he? What would they have to offer him, compared with using the drones against Ukraine? They couldn't even pay for them.

Because American interceptors at bases in Iran are ones that can’t be donated to Ukraine, and are worth far more than a few cheap drones?

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Please explain why it benefits Putin to supply Iran with infinite Shaheds to keep oil from flowing through the Strait. Is destroying China's access to oil all part of his master plan? A minute ago the theory was that Iran targeting the Strait was disastrous for the global economy -- maybe that's good for Russia?

Russia sells oil, reducing the global supply of oil benefits their bottom line.

And there's a big difference between the number of missiles required to make it physically impossible to transit the strait, and the number required to make it too risky to want to transit it.

A guy on his porch with a shotgun can't stop my bicycling club from riding down the road, he can't shoot all 20 of us before we get through! We'd probably change the route, regardless.

Please explain why it benefits Putin to supply Iran with infinite Shaheds to keep oil from flowing through the Strait.

They wouldn't even do that. Shaheds from the mountains would be shot down before they reached the strait.

But going into the mountains and fighting in the hills is fundamentally incompatible with being a functional state. They would essentially abdicate sovereign control of their own country to whoever cared to take it. They wouldn't be glorious freedom fighters, fighting the good fight against the Big Satan: they'd be cowards running away from a war they started and leaving the people they were ruling out to dry. If the IRGC wants to leave the cities and live like the Taliban, how will they control said cities? How will they keep up missile production?

All of those soldiers need to be paid and fed. Jihad doesn't pay the bills. Who is covering the tab of salaries and material?

By mountain fortress, I mean Iran itself, not actually going out to the hills. The cities might actually be the best cover. Either way it’s probably quite hard to figure out where key people are after the initial round or two of bombardment.

Also I’m not sure being a very functional state matters all that much to them while at war. A dictatorship should just need to knuckle down and keep up supply of weapons to its soldiers.

What matters is likely just simply continuing to broadcast that we’re still here while mustering enough attacks on the shipping lane to keep the snake more or less coiled around the neck of the global economy.

Good question about funding, I don’t know enough to answer it. That might become relevant but a war of attrition to see whose finances break down first isn’t ideal for Trump et al. If I were Russia I’d for sure funnel some cash in in that scenario.

Worse than a black eye - the Iraq War was a huge blow to domestic public confidence in US foreign policy, probably second only to Vietnam. One of the reasons why the US public has become so skittish and unwilling to tolerate high-effort foreign policy is the legacy of Iraq.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, not only did the US win the Iraq War, it successfully managed the nation-building part as well. Iraq was not Afghanistan.

The Iraq War directly led to the creation of ISIS.

After decades and trillions of dollars with a country that doesn’t pose any real risks to the global economy while the turmoil goes on.

I'm well aware that the US eventually brought the conflict in Iraq to an on-paper successful conclusion. The problem is that by the time that finally happened, the bed was already shat, and the outcome was not really a flourishing democracy but a messy quasi-democracy that was halfway aligned with Iran. Not really something the American public was likely to see as a 'win'.

(It also had negative knock-on effects for the US military, e.g. contributing to the dire state the USN)

From where I sit, the situation is exactly the opposite. The first week of the war was spent going high priority targets (missile launchers, SAM batteries, military leadership, etc) with expensive long-range missiles. They also had to focus a lot of attention on shooting down Iranian counterstrikes. But at this point, their air defense is gone, and their missile attacks are down 92%. The US and Israel are now free to focus on low cost, relatively low-intensity bombing, using cheap drones and JDAM bombs. This is where they'll start to focus on targets like the lower-level IRGC commanders and barracks. The IRGC might be "well trained" at massacring protesters, but it's pretty useless at defending itself from this kind of bombardment, and once all they're military is destroyed they'll be in no shape to handle mass protests or Kurdish insurgents. Their nuclear program and everyone who ever worked on it will be killed, probably by Israel if the US for some reason doesn't do it.

Iran's last hope was shutting down oil through the straight of Hormuz. They've done that so far my making it too risky to be worth the trip, but not actually mining it or making it impossible. Oil prices have risen, but not to crazy levels- oil futures still seem to be assessing that the flow will resume before too long. Saudi Arabia can build new pipelines to avoid the straight of Hormuz, while other countries like the US, Canada, and Venezuela can ramp up production. The only country that really needs to export oil through the Persian gulf is Iran.

What it shows, mostly, is that Trump is not an isolationist- he's perfectly willing to go to war overseas if he thinks its necessary. That should be good news for the people of Taiwan, although perhaps bad news if that means the increased risk of WW3. I think it will pressure Congress to approve a large increase in military funding to increase stocks of the high-end missiles that were depleted in this conflict.

Is the IRGC easier or harder to defeat than Hamas in Gaza?

Well, I guess we'll find out. But the IRGC seems to be more of a regular army, and one with pretty bad morale and organization. Hamas seems like a group of fanatics who spent years digging tunnels- hard to actually "defeat" that without killing all of them, but the IRGC might just surrender at some point.

Oil prices have risen, but not to crazy levels- oil futures still seem to be assessing that the flow will resume before too long

TACO is priced in.

For some reason, Trump's energy secretary lied about a tanker getting a naval escort yesterday. We hope that it was mere market-manipulation and corruption instead of underlying incompetence.

The problem with the navy escorting a tanker is that it'll be a far better target than a tanker going through alone with AIS turned off. (The Mayuree Naree, the empty bulk carrier that was hit, went in fat dumb and happy with the transponder on)

Probably the navy ought to just send in RPVs displaying tanker transponders until all the Iranian launch sites are wrecked.

fat dumb and happy

Your use of this statement is activating my service member recognition instinct, Manchurian Candidate style.

No, never; I'm afraid that phrase is around in the civilian world as well.

If killing leaders was a sign of success the US defeated the taliban 10x over. Loads of vietcong leaders died. The US replaced the Ayatollah with his son.

The air defences in the gulf states and Israel are so degraded that the number of successful strikes by Iran haven't diminished even though they are using less ammunition. Iran is holding 15 million barrels of oil a day hostage while the US can't even come close to doing anything that resembles winning. The US largely abandoned the gulf states and let them fend for themselves.

The Epstein fury has to fire expensive long range munitions that are of limited supply which clearly weakens them against China.

The US operation against China might be 2x the current size of Epstein fury which would be inadequate against China. The US has lost several long range SAM-systems and used an unsustainable amount of interceptors while failing to defend its bases in the region. With Chinese level of level of bombardment these bases would be completely smoked.

Compared to 2003 this invasion is lack luster and clearly shows the US would not be able to take out China.

If killing leaders was a sign of success the US defeated the taliban 10x over.

We did. Then we stationed American soldiers in Afghanistan, gave them rules of engagement that prevented them from killing anybody, and spent billions of dollars on liberal NGO projects that did things like feminist opera in Kabul. We're not doing that anymore.

The US replaced the Ayatollah with his son.

So far all that's been produced is a cardboard cutout.

The US largely abandoned the gulf states and let them fend for themselves.

The Gulf states asked us to do this.

The Epstein fury

Oh.

Hundreds of thousands died in Afghanistan and they completely failed. Bombing countries is far less effective and the bombing is minimal compared to Vietnam or Laos. Bombing barely worked at the scale that it was used during WWII. That scale simply isn't possible today.

The new Ayatollah is 56. He is less likely to suffer from dementia than various other world leaders.

The Gulf states asked us to do this.

Move away air defences, abadon bases and let them fend for themselves?

That doesn't meaningfully address what I said, which is that killing your enemies works great when you don't have lib NGOs whispering in your ear. This is not actually the Afghanistan and Vietnam playbook. Americans are not going to die for bacha bazi rings and opium dens, we're simply going to kill the people who want to kill us.

The new Ayatollah is

-- made of cardboard.

Another war that is supposed to spread woke values to the middle east and flood Europe with migrants. Luckily the refugee waves haven't been significant yet as the US is failing its war. These wars are destroying western civilization and it is a good thing that they turn into fiascos.

That scale simply isn't possible today.

This is not really true. US tactical strike aircraft can carry larger bomb loads than strategic bombers in World War Two, and they do so with much more efficient and effective weapons, of which the US has hundreds of thousands.

There is a big difference, LRASM is less than 1/3 bomb and the rest is missile. Since the US doesn't have bases near by and because of air defences the US is relying on expensive, difficult to manufacture and limited stockpiles of guided munitions. These are also the weapons the US is basing its plans for a war against Russia or China on. The school with 150 killed girls was hit by two tomahawk missiles. The US only manufactures a bit over 100 per year.

Compared to 2003 this invasion is lack luster and clearly shows the US would not be able to take out China.

I mean has anybody beyond the strongest Ameriboos ever claimed that the USA could 'take out' China? The whole thing with Taiwan is more 'it would be a massive mess with minimal tangible benefits for the Chinese beyond ego' than 'The US could guarantee a sovereign/non-starving Taiwan in perpetuity against actual bombardment'

Ironically, "take out China" is actually easier in many ways than "defend Taiwan."

  • war of choosing vs war of necessity- the US could choose the timing.
  • defending against missile strikes is harder than launching them.
  • china is very dependant on some critical bottlenecks like the strait of Malacca, the three Gorges Dam, and its port facilities. Of course, attacking any of these would kill millions of civilians... but it would also cripple the CCP.
  • overwhelming nuclear advantage, if it comes to that.

In some ways, defending Taiwan while not destroying mainland China might be the hardest problem. What is the US supposed to do, just build interceptor missiles forever while being forbidden from counterattacks? Screw that.

The US could probably win against China (militarily; I'm not going in to civilian morale/will to fight and win), but it'd be costly.

Come on. Epstein Fury? There's a bar of civility on the Motte (of which I, admittedly, fail at times to meet) but you're not even trying.

I could go to the effort of telling you why the drop-off in ballistic missiles is actually a bad thing, or what JDAMs are, or how the IRGC isn't the Taliban and actually does have the responsibility of managing ninety million people, but why should I? You didn't put any effort into your post. If you used AI to generate your post, it would be far more coherent and have an actual point, rather than skimmed points from third worldist tiktoks and tweets. Maybe you should request an exemption for yourself because you clearly need it.

Thanks for responding to that so i didn't have to lol

Most importantly, and this is true in pretty much every scenario, the US will have experienced a major geopolitical and military humiliation

We killed the core of Iranian leadership in an afternoon and their only viable response is to attack unrelated countries and merchant fleets. What do you mean humiliation! Maybe on twitter where geopolitics is about what makes people feel good but in the real world there is not a single major leader who is not terrified of America's military. Humiliation? America downgraded Iran from a regional power to a backwater without a meaningful military in an afternoon, all they have left are guys with guns pointed at their own citizens.

We have won so overwhelmingly that we are reduced to calling this a failure because Iran was able to get a hit in at all. Yeah, that's what war is!

In Khamenei’s son it has its preferred candidate in power, at least nominally (it may be the institution rather than the man who is in power, but it doesn’t really matter).

Please note that if the Iranian regime cannot even prove their leader is alive, either because we killed him or because we will kill him, then the Iranian government has collapsed. Collapsed! Claiming otherwise is like declaring war in the Pacific with Japan a failure because rogue holdouts continued fighting for years. We also had to drop two nukes so maybe the first one was a failure?

Who is really in charge of Iran? Nobody knows! That's not a government! Who collects taxes, who negotiates with foreign powers, who runs the judiciary? Maybe the Iranians can dig giant tunnels and live in underground cities like the mole people, although the US could actually bomb them there too.

We killed the core of Iranian leadership in an afternoon and their only viable response is to attack unrelated countries and merchant fleets. What do you mean humiliation!

What happens when you do all that and it turns out you still don't get what you want (and possibly cause a humanitarian crisis to boot)? Energy price stability is the only reason the US cares about the sandy dump in the first place, and now that shit is literally on fire. I can't help but feel like the pro-Trump position sees this as some ape-brained dominance display and are confused and angry because people keep asking about things like 'consequences' and 'strategic objectives.'

The risk of humiliation is that the US tries to impose its will by force and backs down once it realizes that's going to take real effort that it doesn't have the will for. Blowing a bunch of stuff up and leaving is not victory. Neither is a situation in which the US destroys quality of life for ordinary Iranians but the same IRI regime holds power.

Blowing a bunch of stuff up and leaving is not victory. Neither is a situation in which the US destroys quality of life for ordinary Iranians but the same IRI regime holds power.

Why is that not a victory? Who says it's not? You? A situation in which the United States can destroy Iran's government and military at will, and Iran can't respond, is a total victory.

This is so obviously true you can only reframe that as "some ape-brained dominance display". Ok, so Trump and Hegseth are baboons who can't formulate or even imagine goals so you don't have to try to understand it, got it. What about Israel? What about Saudi Arabia? Those are two countries that wanted to start this war, are they irrational too? Did Benjamin Netanyahu and MBS have no sense of "things like 'consequences' and 'strategic objectives'"? Maybe everyone in the Middle East is incompetent? Incapable of first-order thinking? Maybe they should read The Motte?

I got downvoted the last time I said this in a different discussion so I want to elaborate: I consider this form of thinking to be a form of TDS. It reduces a complex geopolitical situation into a farce that only makes sense if Trump is the only actor in the world. It's Shakespearean! Trump speaks, anything that doesn't happen on stage while Trump gives his soliloquy to the camera doesn't happen at all. I don't need to consider anything else. Based on media rumors in the fog of war, I've determined that the war is a failure. I don't actually have to understand what American goals are because Trump is irrational, so he must not have had any. I don't even have to consider anybody else's motivations, because they don't meaningfully exist.

In reality we're on week two of an extremely complex operation in which Iran's leadership was decapitated -- they have a cardboard cutout for a Supreme Leader. The best Iran can do in response is mine the Straits of Hormuz and bomb random Gulf targets. Maybe that's a higher cost than America is willing to bear, maybe nobody thought that far ahead, but it doesn't seem likely!

Why is that not a victory?

Because you didn't actually get what you wanted. Of course, it's hard to say here because the Trump administration can not articulate what it wants.

Ok, so Trump and Hegseth are baboons who can't formulate or even imagine goals so you don't have to try to understand it

I have tried to understand it. You act as if the only reason you could conclude Trump doesn't know what he's doing is because you're not paying attention.

The problem is that they seemingly can't articulate what we're trying to do and contradict themselves like twice a day. Let me ask you this: why should I extend any of these people the benefit of the doubt? Have they displayed some record of competence that suggests I should and wait and see what strategic genius unfolds? Spoilers: no, they haven't. These are the people who decided we needed to threaten a close ally to gain access to territory we already have access to. We are fortunate that they can at least lean on the immense operational competence of the US military, but that cannot cover for a strategic deficit.

No, all the evidence available to me suggests that they expected the Iranian government to be cowed by the initial attacks and don't have a follow up plan beyond "keep bombing until they give up" (a strategy with a terrible track record). Maybe this was done at the instigation of Israel/KSA, but "Trump got suckered into doing something stupid in Iran at the behest of self-interested 'allies'" is a point in favor of the "Trump doesn't know what he's doing" argument. He is at least in good company there, since that describes a lot of US involvement in Iran since the end of WW2. For Israel, we have both clear national strategic interests and the personal interests of the leadership, but Israeli leadership wants to do a lot of things and the US doesn't have to indulge them.

And there's the thing: you don't even have to be a weapons-grade dumbass to wind up in this situation. Military actions not producing the desired results and forcing planners to clumsily improvise has happened to smarter people than Trump.

Maybe everyone in the Middle East is incompetent?

I wouldn't dismiss the possibility, though I think it's more likely that the lack of quality institutions highlights the prevalence of incompetence more.

iirc Big Yud had an essay on this, called something like "Am I Smarter Than The Bank Of Japan?"

The BoJ isn't staffed by populist outsiders who actively tout their lack of qualifications. If it was, the answer very well might be 'yes'.

I think your concerns are valid. Where I think things might be different is that the supply of will power is more than likely coming from Israel. Their motivations are existential, which makes them more impervious to Western political pressure and humanitarian considerations. If Israel continues to see another version of the same Iranian leadership, their lobby will probably continue to push hard for military action and the US will feel the nudge to play a sustained role in lopping off the snake's head until Israel is satisfied.

This could incidentally work in the Iranian people's favor if the Kurds and any other rebel force are supported for a long enough period of time to become formidable enough to sway the Iranian military. Recent history suggests this probably won't happen though. We're more likely to leave rebels empty-handed once Iran is reduced to only being a threat to its own people rather than the region.

The Supreme Leader is a dead man walking, but he also has access to 1000 lbs of 60%-enriched uranium.

There’s no way to deescalate. I don’t think Iran was inclined to preemptively nuke Israel before this war, but they probably are now. A nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would increase the absolute risk WWIII by about 10% (anyone have different intuitions here?), which is obviously worth a giant ground invasion if that is the only way to disarm the threat.

I am ABSOLUTELY LIVID that it has come to this. We got completely played by the Israel lobby. We only needed nuclear nonproliferation. They wanted Iran disarmed completely.

Can you explain why the Israel Lobby manipulated us into a situation where they get nuked? That doesn't sound very smart of them

I suspect Israel’s logic is more out of desperation. The know Iran’s going to get nukes and they know a core mission of the Islamic Revolution is the elimination of the ‘Zionist Entity’ by any means necessary - why wouldn’t that include nukes? Iran after all destroyed its relationships with countless others in the region, got sanctioned by half the world and spent billions of dollars just to fund pretty much every major hostile force on Israel’s border (none of whom are ethnically Persian, many of whom aren’t even Shia). They did it solely to attack Israel, for purely ideological reasons. An Iranian nuclear first strike was always a possibility.

In that scenario, maybe the Israelis calculated that even a war with Iran with a 20% chance of destroying the government or sparking a collapse or uprising was worth it.

Well if Iran was going to destroy Israel anyways and it was only a matter of time then we don't need the phantom of "the Israel Lobby" to explain why America would rather just go to war

The United States is going to expend massive amounts of financial and political capital ensuring that Israel doesn’t get nuked. We could have done this much easier via diplomacy. The benefit to Israel of doing it this way instead is that Iran also has all of its conventional weapons and economic power wiped out as well.

We could have done this much easier via diplomacy

As I understand it, Iran declared that stopping nuclear enrichment/capabilities to do so wasn't on the table. Which means no, there really wasn't a diplomatic option possible that I can see.

It’s kind of up to Iran. While there’s a lot of online rumor-mongering that the ‘Samson doctrine’ means that Israel will nuke third countries if Iran nukes it, the more commonly accepted version of it is just that it’s a second-strike trigger. So Iran nukes Israel, Israel nukes Iran, then what? For WW3, either Israel nukes another Arab country (increasingly unlikely as time goes on, at least for now, and even then the path of escalation is unclear), or Iran nukes Saudi Arabia (drawing Pakistan into the conflict, drawing India into the conflict, which is a more plausible route to a world war), which again, is far from a given and doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Will Iran strike first? I’m not sure. They might announce they have nukes and see what happens. At that point, the Israeli reasoning changes.

Given the current state of Israeli diplomacy with literally every other relevant state in the region, why would attacking a third nation make any sense there? They've mostly put out generally supportive statements and countered attacks. Kuwait also shot down some US fighters in a friendly fire incident, but was presumably thinking them Iranian.

Iran has done some of that recently: what did the Azeris do to them? At best they are either flailing around --- it'd be hilarious if Israel, Ukraine, or US intelligence caused them to inadvertently strike Chechnya --- or trying to appeal to the negative sum game of a more regional war.

It isn't 1991 and the other Gulf states demonstrably won't reflexively refuse to be on the same side of a conflict as Israel, and that gambit didn't even work then.

Iran has done some of that recently: what did the Azeris do to them?

In pure utilitarian terms Iran can inflict more pain on the United States (and by extension Israel) by attacking parts of the world economy than it can by attacking Americans. In two weeks Americans as a whole have suffered more from gas prices jumping $.75 than they have from six or a dozen dead servicemen. Bombing other countries harms the world economy.

I also think the IRGC, just like every other bomb commander in the world, is under the impression that the enemy population in the Gulf is uniquely weak and cowardly and will surrender as the result of bombing. This despite knowing that brave Iranians will get angry and rally to the flag under enemy bombing.

The unique setup of the IRGC is unlike that of other Gulf countries. It’s an armed ideological and economic core operation designed specifically to rule over a hostile middle and upper class by design, it’s unlike other “militarized countries” where the army controls large amounts of the economy but is also very corrupt and ideologically disunited (Pakistan, Egypt) and it’s also unlike security states ruled by comparatively small intelligence communities like East Germany or arguably even modern Russia. The IRGC doesn’t need ordinary Iranians to rally to the cause, it just needs to avoid open revolution and to keep the public scared enough that nobody stands against them.

Iran has done some of that recently: what did the Azeris do to them? At best they are either flailing around --- it'd be hilarious if Israel, Ukraine, or US intelligence caused them to inadvertently strike Chechnya --- or trying to appeal to the negative sum game of a more regional war.

Iran evidently warned their neighbors that in the event of a US attack they'd be hit (as part of a strategy to convince them to pressure the US into leaving them alone, though this may have backfired all by itself), and they also had a doctrine of devolving control to local commanders if the leadership was hit. So I suspect what happened is the leadership was hit, the local commanders followed their last orders (which may have been a bluff that was never intended to be followed, but there was no one to countermand them) and attacked everyone. Or maybe the Iranian leaders actually would have thought attacking everyone was a good strategy; we'll never know because they are dead. I guess the moral is if you have a deadman switch, don't make it stupid.

The Supreme Leader is a dead man walking, but he also has access to 1000 lbs of 60%-enriched uranium.

Supposedly they're busy digging that uranium out. If I were a troll with the US military at my beck and call, I might just wait for them to do all the hard work of digging it out, then bomb all the nearby roads and send in special forces to take it.

I am fairly sure this is exactly what is going on.

I mean, I can think of at least two trolls with the US military at their beck and call (Trump and Hegseth), so, yeah.

This analysis is nuts. Xi just purged his top two generals, and the CCP looks like it’s actually going to stand up to him about that. China is in no position to go to war, especially after finding out from Venezuela and Iran that Chinese radars can’t beat American stealth. Before the war we were assured that Iranian missiles would quickly overwhelm our interceptors, and we’ve instead found that we can wipe out Iranian missile launcher sites while keeping our carriers safe and sound. Iran is getting crushed, and they resorted to putting the impotent son of the old Ayatollah in charge, the one who is so incompetent that his dad specifically ordered in his will that he not be put in charge. Oil is cheaper now than it was in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it looks to stay that way.

The only part of this analysis I agree with is that the Iran war makes war with China much less likely, because China would be crazy to try to take Taiwan now that they’ve seen how outmatched they would be, and that Trump is willing to break things and let the chips fall where they may.

and the CCP looks like it’s actually going to stand up to him about that

I would like to know more. I've heard about the firings, but not about any signs of the rest of the party developing a backbone.

We can wipe out Iranian missile launcher sites while keeping our carriers safe and sound

The way they did that was by just not using the carriers, and running the entire first week of the war by an elaborate relay of aerial tankers to run squadrons in from far away for sorties. Smart, but not an effective tactic in the pacific and not a good sign either.

China is in no position to go to war, especially after finding out from Venezuela and Iran that Chinese radars can’t beat American stealth.

Dunno man - they seem to work pretty realiably. The moment one of them explodes, you know there is F-35 nearby.

Iran will quickly complete its bomb.

Is it your opinion that the previous rounds of bombing targeting Iran's nuclear program were ineffective, or that from a standing start Iran will still be able to get to the finish line quite quickly?

you replied to the wrong parent comment it seems

Oops. Thanks!

My opinion is that the previous efforts (targeted assassinations and then the bombing campaign) were as effective as possible given the circumstances (limits of conventional weaponry, contributions of individual scientists), but that a society of 80 million capable of procuring and enriching to 60%+ with an intelligent and well-developed academy and domestic population of scientists is going to get there sooner rather than later. There is no big technical hurdle they cannot quickly overcome. Israel will keep trying, but interventions can set a program back by weeks or months at the most, not more.

There is no big technical hurdle they cannot quickly overcome.

At the moment, it seems likely they lack effective delivery mechanisms if nothing else: ballistic missiles aren't as reliable as they used to be, and I'd bet many of their avenues of sneaking something into Israel aren't what they were a few years back. Launching an unprovoked nuclear attack and failing is something that I don't have much precedent to go on, but I doubt enamors one with any existing nuclear powers.

Launching an unprovoked nuclear attack and failing is something that I don't have much precedent to go on, but I doubt enamors one with any existing nuclear powers.

"What's the proportionate response here? Drop a box labeled 'this could have been a nuclear weapon' on them?"

Previous bombings may have stopped Iran's progress, but they didn't move it backwards -- not as long as Iran still has the enriched nuclear material.

So, assuming for a second that the Trump administration is telling the truth, the Iranians are two weeks from the bomb in perpetuity?

I don't know about "two weeks", but the only way to move them backwards significantly is to take or destroy the uranium they've already enriched.

Disagree that that’s the only way. In theory, we could also destroy their ability to sprint from their current level of enrichment to weapons-grade, i.e., destroy the centrifuges. But I agree that removing their access to existing stores of enriched uranium is probably the easier way.

According to various sources, more than 80-90% of Iranian mine laying speedboats and other platforms are still operational. These are very hard to target from the air, they’re small, easily hidden, widely dispersed along the coast.

The information environment in this war is worse than in Ukraine. "Various sources" may well be full of shit. In any case, the US has the ability to target speedboats from the air.... what, you think blowing up Venezuelan drug boats was just about stopping drugs?

The US has a lot more than two escalations open. The one I have been expecting is a limited invasion to occupy Qeshm and the smaller Iran-controlled islands in the Straits. This would disrupt the ability of Iran to attack ships, and directly threaten their own shipping.

As for mining, if Iran mines the straits while their oil production is still active, they've cut themselves off from oil sales. Mines have no IFF, and the Iranians have only one filling terminal outside the straits, which the US could easily destroy from the air.

Mines have no IFF

There are mines with IFF (Turkey and Finland make some), but I dont think Iran has any.

As for mining, if Iran mines the straits while their oil production is still active, they've cut themselves off from oil sales. Mines have no IFF, and the Iranians have only one filling terminal outside the straits, which the US could easily destroy from the air.

What’s the logic here? They can (and are) still shipping oil from the port not in the Strait (Jask I think). The US can bomb it, sure, but then the shaheds start bombing Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti etc oilfields without inhibition, which is far worse for America and its allies than it is for Iran (which is already fighting an existential war if you’re a senior regime figure) - and which the GCC specifically doesn’t want to happen. Even worse, they might go all in and start bombing gulf desalination plants, at which point you guarantee a humanitarian crisis.

Iran can mine the straits, keep shipping oil from the Gulf of Oman, and dare the US to do something. If America attacks, they go for the jugular and attack Gulf oilfields directly and devastatingly. If they don’t, they get away with it. No good options absent a deal, which they don’t seem to want to do.

shaheds

Shaded are total and utter shit. Russia needed almost 3 years to make something usable out of them. The latest Gerans seem to be doing well in Ukraine, but they are so heavily modified - there is almost nothing in them.

If America attacks, they go for the jugular and attack Gulf oilfields directly and devastatingly.

There is nothing shown so far to imply that they have the capacity. So far - every launcher they use is single use only.

Jask is low capacity as well as vulnerable. Even if the US doesn't take it out, it doesn't provide Iran much of a lifeline. Iran could fire Shaheds at oilfields, but Shaheds aren't exactly unstoppable, and anyway if the Straits are mined, destroying some oil infrastructure doesn't add much additional pain. They could go all out on Gulf desalination plants, but realistically that hurts the war effort not one bit. Note most of Saudi Arabia's desalination plants are on the west coast.

Iran can mine the straits, keep shipping oil from the Gulf of Oman, and dare the US to do something.

Ah, yes, daring Trump to do something will totally make him back down.

It’s just not true that people haven’t called Trump’s bluff. Plenty of people have, including over tariffs, when China did.

if the Straits are mined, destroying some oil infrastructure doesn't add much additional pain

Surely it prevents export from Saudi Arabia’s western ports?

Surely it prevents export from Saudi Arabia’s western ports?

Only if you hit enough of it.

Even worse, they might go all in and start bombing gulf desalination plants, at which point you guarantee a humanitarian crisis.

There were headlines about strikes on desalination plants a few days ago. We might already be here.

Iranian mine laying speedboats and other platforms are still operational. These are very hard to target from the air, they’re small, easily hidden, widely dispersed along the coast.

I've seen this claim a lot recently, often from the same people complaining a few weeks ago about (frequent) recent US strikes on similar accused drug-running speedboats in the Western Hemisphere. I'm not going to say it couldn't be a problem with sufficient numbers, but with air superiority it seems something a couple dozen drones with modern sensors could deter pretty effectively over a lengthy coastline.

Even worse, the risk-takers in that demographic were already killed or jailed in the previous wave of repression.

I really don't understand why, if Trump was considering attacking, he didn't do so when the protests were closer to their peak and he threatened intervention if people got shot.

I've seen attempts to praise Trump for holding to his red lines, unlike a certain other President, but what good is it if you dither long enough that it doesn't matter? It was always a long shot that you could stop this stuff from the air (we apparently have to go through cyclical phases of optimism about regime change/victory via air power) but same goes for collapsing this regime.

if Trump was considering attacking, he didn't do so when the protests were closer to their peak and he threatened intervention if people got shot

The US military makes things look very easy, but that's due to a lot of battlespace preparation, asset mobilization, and logistics. The downside is that it's very easy to make this look so easy as to think they could accomplish it on a shorter time scale.

I have heard rumors that the planned uprising was going to be concurrent with the strikes, but that it was discovered and had to go early.

I really don't understand why, if Trump was considering attacking, he didn't do so when the protests were closer to their peak and he threatened intervention if people got shot.

Because carriers don't move fast enough. I don't think it matters. Against a sufficiently ruthless regime, unarmed protestors are just bullet sponges, and that holds true even if the regime is being bombed. I think some Iranians in the west have gotten this idea that "you protest, things change" is actually cause-and-effect from watching western leftists appear to pull it off; they don't realize that's kayfabe, either a way for the government to do what it wants to do anyway, or at least a faction of the government.

Are Rubio and Vance done for? On the ground I don't see much discontent from rank-and-file MAGA, in fact at this point less discontent than over the Benghazi situation, that could change depending on exactly how big of a disaster this becomes for the global economy.

I think this hurts Vance incredibly, because carrying water for Israel's wars is not going to endear him to any of the nativist factions that he naturally appeals to. Rubio not so much, he was always more of a neocon, so anyone who supported Rubio in 2016 is probably happy to see this war kick off.

That's certainly the concensus on manifold and other betting sites- big shift towards Rubio and against Vance recently. But Vance is still the clear favorite at 45% vs 27% right now.

Right now, not much has happened and foreign policy simply isn’t a very emotive issue for most Americans.

So far every knife out for Trump has failed. When the first real hit lands (when he gets unpopular enough and someone - probably not one of the central players - is willing to gamble on going all in) everyone will reposition themselves. I don’t think this means it’s over for Rubio or Vance necessarily. The Democratic base was antiwar since 2005 and they chose Obama, Hillary, Biden. Immigration, law and order and the economy are the top three policy issues for Republicans.

My feeling is that:

  1. Casualties (which may well remain moderately low) don’t typically blow back in the face of wartime presidents. If anything, deaths make people mad and angry and bloodthirsty. Vietnam wasn’t even an exception until it had been a very long time indeed. If Iran sinks a big ship and kills 200 US navy sailors a lot of ambivalent Republican commentators will say “well now we do have to punish them”.

  2. Trump’s tariff performance suggests he isn’t willing to allow oil to be much above $100 for long at all. A comparatively ‘principled’ or ideological neocon might try to make a case to the public, Trump won’t. That might not save his polling (which has been in decline for a while) but it might be enough for Vance and Rubio.

When the first real hit lands (when he gets unpopular enough and someone - probably not one of the central players - is willing to gamble on going all in) everyone will reposition themselves.

I have been hearing this for ten years now. I want some deep introspection about why it's definitely real this time before I take it too seriously.

I didn’t say it would happen this time. I said ‘when’ it happens. Trump can still easily save himself here.

Trump’s tariff performance suggests he isn’t willing to allow oil to be much above $100 for long at all.

He may find that it's not up to him.

True, but he can try desperately to bring it down, and even his advisors will tell him that unilaterally ending hostilities with Iran is the fastest route to that.

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