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Notes -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Looking at Ural crude prices I'd say that Shaheds sent to Iran pay for themselves in increased oil revenue, though we're nowhere near the point where the Iranians have any need to import Shaheds
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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.
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They wouldn't even do that. Shaheds from the mountains would be shot down before they reached the strait.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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