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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.
Honestly, it seems to me Iran probably will just send all of its troops on leave for a while if it hasn't already; no point concentrating themselves in flimsy barracks, packed all nice and tight, they obviously wouldn't do this, and they aren't really needed anywhere except maybe a little bit on the coast (no one seriously expects a ground invasion, so why bother planning for it?). I really don't think the IRGC will lose much more than infrastructure, and reading between the lines, any major leadership that wasn't killed probably cannot be killed, otherwise we'd have a lot more high-profile "X is dead" annoucements
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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.
I am no expert but if there are some committed fanatics for Shia Islam the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is exactly where I’d expect to find them.
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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.
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.
Probably a naval/aviation thing. I work around both and those are the only people I hear say it.
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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.
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.
So far all that's been produced is a cardboard cutout.
The Gulf states asked us to do this.
Oh.
The taliban reconstituted itself and asserted control immediately after the US left 20 years later. They would have done the same if the US had left after one. We didn’t win, we just went and fought an entrenched enemy until deciding to leave, and they just endured another empire dicking around before going right back to the pre-war status quo.
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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.
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.
-- 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.
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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.
The post I linked to is talking about JDAMs, which the US has hundreds of thousands of.
Although you have to be careful with public statements and photes, yes, there's reason to believe the US is using JDAMs in its Iran campaign. There's even signs that B-1s have switched to JDAMs from standoff munitions with strategic bombers, which indicates a willingness to commit very valuable assets to comparatively close-range work.
The way modern air warfare works is that you "kick in the door" with bespoke standoff munitions to degrade enemy C&C and surface-to-air weapons. Then you hit them with cheaper weapons, like JDAMs and SDBs (Small Diameter Bombs). This is why US officials have been talking about recently when they have been talking about switching to cheaper, more plentiful munitions.
They levelled Gaza and couldn't win. They failed at fighting Yemen in the red sea for a year despite relentless bombing and couldn't get cargoships through. Epstein fury is a bigger failiure as the straight of Hormuz is closed so we can't have years of crusading for LGBTQXYZ in the middle east and mass immigration into Europe.
I might have let one "Epstein fury" go, but you did not disappoint and doubled down with another unhinged and evidence-free rant about how much you hate Da Joos.
We have a number of people here who hate Jews, and say so regularly. But we've been over this repeatedly. If hating Jews is Your Thing and what you really want to post about and insert into every possible conversation, you have to occasionally post about something else and act like a human being, not an SS-bot. You also need to actually put enough effort into your posts that your grievances have some coherence and sanity, a point, not just "Anything involving Israel is an LGBTQ mass immigration plot because Jooooooooos!"
Most importantly, you have to not be tiresomely, repetitively, and egregiously obnoxious about it. Someone coming in here with some 4chanism like "Epstein fury" is "shitlib"/"magtard"/"5 Guys-tier" low-quality chud discourse that we generally mod on general principal because no one is here for that.
You have been pushing boundaries for a while now. I gave you a break last time, because of your mixed record of shitty posts and (undeserved, IMO) AAQCs. At least one other mod wanted to give you a lengthy ban.
You were told you were getting a break last time and you were told to chill out, and rather than wiping the spittle off your chin, you just could not let go. Such is the nature of unhealthy rage. Since you don't learn, I note that leniency was in fact unwarranted. 30 days ban, and if you come back with more of the same, there won't be any more breaks.
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This is all irrelevant to the technical point I am making about mass bombardment capabilities. If you're following this thread as a whole you will see that I am skeptical about the efficacy of using mass bombardment by itself for regime change. That's a separate question from whether or not the USAF can still manage "WWII scale" bombing.
Why does this matter? If you get the facts wrong on little things like "US offensive munitions stockpiles" you can more easily misunderstand how a tactical situation will play out, which can cause you to misunderstand a strategic situation, which can cause you to misapprehend the geopolitical situation.
These things are hard enough to understand even if you do have a security clearance and are kinda autistic about them (I don't have a security clearance and uhhhh I throw myself at the mercy of the Motte on the second question) and one of the things I appreciate about the Motte is that people on here are willing to correct me or call me out if I am getting something wrong. Please forgive me if I come across as pedantic, but I find this stuff interesting.
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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."
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.
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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.
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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
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