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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18548 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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Trump just announced they destroyed all military targets on Kharg Island, so, presumably they'll conquer that?

Kharg Island, I have learned through situation monitoring, is the way Iran processes 90% or so if its oil for export.

I have no idea how sane this is. Maybe it'll be fine?

Sounds like more bad news for oil prices.

At worst we are seeing a slow but emerging strategy of just running Iran into the ground like with Syria and all the rest. Where sub par targets get selected due to a lack of better options. The decision makers have to make decisions, after all.

Sub par targets? Kharg Island is one of the most important targets in any Iranian scenario because it’s where all the oil gets processed. Please stop thinking in hour-long news cycles and imagine what an Iranian operation would look like if it was planned to take five weeks and we were only halfway into it.

Do you have a conception of what the original US plan might have been; and how it might have changed due to events thus far? Just curious.

That's something that's bothering me about this entire enterprise. I'm not the most plugged-in person when it comes to geopolitical events, but I like to think I can read and understand the news, at least.

As it stands, I don't know quite why we're there, or what we want to accomplish, or how we plan to do it, or what our win condition is.

It makes me long for the days of desert storm, she that was all clearly laid out before lead started flying.

A shattered Iran in civil war would have to be terrible for sea traffic right? I mean there's always going to be one faction shooting at tankers.

It remains to be seen whether the IRGC are actually capable of guerilla warfare. Iran isn’t Yemen or Afghanistan or even Iraq. Iran fell below replacement level tfr 25 years ago. Iran is more developed and educated than those nations. It lacks the strong tribal loyalty upon which the Taliban and Houthis rely. IRGC officers are used to creature comforts, not living in caves.

It is still a very high risk, of course, but it’s not guaranteed that a collapse leads to a Houthi style Shia Islamist insurgency.

I can't understand what the point is of seizing Kharg island. The US could just bomb it to leave it unusable for as long as they want? Or just steal the tankers at sea? It's not like it would be hard to blow up some oil storage terminals.

Landing troops there would just make them a juicy target and difficult to resupply. Iran can launch all kinds of things from inland at them.

Maximally cynically: brave dead Marines coming to grips with the enemy will produce a greater rally round the flag effect than high oil prices and the occasional air accident. The scenario where we bomb Iran and kill 14 copies of Muhammad Al Unpronounceable while Iran blows up oil tankers will produce few of the political benefits of a war; the scenario where Iranians are killing American soldiers will have some purchase with the public.

Controlling the island gives you leverage in negotiations. You want your oil refineries back? Then play ball. Or in the best case scenario you can hand it over to a new friendly regime.

And yeah, Iran can launch all kinds of things, if they’re fine up blowing up their own refineries in the process.

I really don't see the benefit here, karg is just their oil export terminal. All of kargs oil has to go through the strait, which iran has closed anyway. They've already determined they can last without oil exports from karg. Karg is useless without the ability to export oil from there and iran already isn't. This logic has real "we're taking kursk as a bargining chip in negotiations" energy. How did that work out?

They are still sending their own oil out of the Strait. Mainly to China.

The benefit is leverage in peace negotiations, and if there is peace the strait won’t be closed anymore. The Karg island facilities are extremely valuable to Iran in peacetime, which makes them worth taking in times of war.

Alternatively, the conflict never really ends and it's gitmo east.

Iran has not "closed" the strait in normal terms. They have apparently not mined it, despite some claims that they would. Thet can still get their own oil through. What they're doing is taking shots, with drones, at other ships which transit it.

It seems like a bargaining chip. Taking it away from Iran and offering to give it back gives them more of a positive motivation to end the war than just bombing it.

Also, getting them to fixate on whacking Marines on Kharg would redirect their munitions away from more high-value targets.

Finally, it would allow them to test some of the tactics the Marines have been pivoting towards which focus on the need for the Marines to be able to operate within hostile missile range.

Escalate to deescalate perhaps?

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