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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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Maybe they can, I have no idea, but it’s not a given, as Iran has tons of mountains and Russian / Chinese communication tech.
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.
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?
They didn't have to because Hezbollah and Hamas did it for them. But they can't now, because we destroyed them.
Hezbollah just launched the largest volley of the war a few hours ago so clearly you've got a funny definition of "destroyed"
If Iran is "destroyed" yet they continue lobbing missiles and drones at every country with an American presence and the Strait remains closed weeks if not months later then clearly being "destroyed" doesn't count for much
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