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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.
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?
Now that makes no sense at all. Ukraine doesn't need American drone interceptors for Shaheds. Even if they did, forcing the other side to spend one interceptor for one drone in Iran is no better for Russia than the same happening in Ukraine.
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