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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.
I like this game we're playing where there's definitely a plan that's been clearly communicated, if you ignore half of what POTUS says, a third of what the SecState says, and two thirds of what the SecWar says.
Why do you think that press releases are a reflection of the true plan? I'd argue the opposite - that the Trump admin uses deliberate strategic ambiguity in their public statements. To quote 2016 candidate Trump: "I don't want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is."
Because that's been the expectation of every American president in wartime basically forever. That the president and his administration would clearly communicate the causes of the war, the motivations behind the actions of the war, the aims of the war. To do otherwise is morally unacceptable to me.
To accept that Trump has a plan but is lying to us about it repeatedly is to accept the status of subject rather than citizen, to be a slave rather than a man. "L'etat? C'est lui!" You seem to draw some line that Trump is lying to the press, he isn't lying to the press, he's lying to us.
I'm not anti-Trump or against regime change in Iran in principle, but I'm not going to "trust the plan." That's un-American.
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Two more weeks, trust the plan? Short term pain, long term gain? It feels like I'm tuned in to the news cycle alright.
The US bombs or captures Kharg Island, halting 90% of Iran's oil processing and then what? The Iranians throw in the towel? Strike a peace with the US and Israel and we can all go home to for peace and prosperity? Genuinely, maybe that can happen. One can hope. But it sounds silly.
Or will it be another slow grinding down of conditions for human life in Iran, just like in Syria? Or will we repeat Iraq? How many women and children did those sanctions under Albright kill? Half a million? We're not even counting the invasions yet. How many refugees did Syria net the world?
I'll reserve me some pessimism, if based on nothing other than the cavalier attitude people can have toward human life and the future of their own allies.
This has been going around on Twitter so forgive the link to the slop account:
https://x.com/sethjlevy/status/2032516317866029535?s=46
Contrary to a lot of discussion here Trump has been aware of Kharg Island for 40 years (it would be hard not to be, it’s one of the central points in any war game over Iran)
You are welcome to still be skeptical or pessimistic or believe whatever you want… but clearly details about what to do with Iran are not news either to Trump or to the people running the military.
Given that the number floated recently by Trump was “five weeks” I’m willing to wait that long at least before proclaiming that Kharg Island constitutes some kind of spiraling out of control when — it was probably always going to be targeted. Because it has to be, because it’s one of the most important chokepoints on the map.
And like it or not there actually is a capital-P “Plan” that the 24-second news cycle isn’t really capable of judging.
Trump has known about Kharg Island for 40 years so therefor I should not be skeptical or pessimistic about the still undetermined goal of a plan that would be drawn together by the same institutions that brought us Iraq one and two, Afghanistan, Lybia and Syria.
I'm willing to wait five weeks and be proven wrong. As I said before, worst case scenario they are throwing shit at a wall hoping that it sticks. That doesn't change the underlying contention here. Which is that there is no stated goal with regards to this invasion. So how would one be able to judge the strategic salience of any action?
I think you mean the same institutions that brought us Venezuela. Iraq and Afghanistan began over two decades ago, which is a complete replacement cycle for the US military. Literally thousands of people have no other job than to analyze those conflicts and figure out what went wrong and how to do better.
No, it's the same institutions that brought us Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Made obvious by how vague and obscure everything about this conflict is. Which is one of the problems highlighted in the Afghanistan Papers, but was also intuitively obvious regarding Iraq. Why invade Iraq? Because of 9/11. Except they had nothing to do with 9/11. Well, the WMD's! Except there were none and Saddam had already accepted investigators to confirm they had gotten rid of all of those. Well, the oil! Saddam was already providing regional stability and selling it internationally. I could go on.
The US was using the exact same tactic back then as they are now, except the Venezuelans allow themselves to be bought, whilst the Taliban did not. Iranian officials seem to not be accepting any bribes at a broad scale. So what alternatives do US strategists possess?
We are still waiting on the results of this conflict, but as it stands I see no reason to believe there is anything different going on. A thousand people can analyze a hammer, that won't make it any better at screwing. All we've seen so far is the hammer. I'm still waiting to see the screwdriver.
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It's a chokepoint for oil I guess, but I haven't seen anyone claim that it's a chokepoint for e.g. maritime traffic.
Let's say another three weeks go by. What kind of situation will make you say that you were wrong about everything going according to some reasonable plan? What are the strategic objectives that are supposed to be accomplished in the next three weeks, the failure of which will indicate that things are going off the rails?
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I'd imagine if the plan was always to seize islands in the Gulf that you wouldn't wait two weeks after the beginning of your air campaign to start transferring Marines in from out of theater.
Conversely, we have a lot of reason to think the current administration thinks in terms of short news cycles and poasting.
Trump has been aware of Kharg Island for 40 years:
https://x.com/sethjlevy/status/2032516317866029535?s=46
Again and politely: I think this is a form of TDS. Every reasonable expectation of how a war works is thrown out the window because Donald Trump is in charge. How long is it supposed to take to invade Kharg Island? Did they wait to destroy Iranian air capabilities first? Were they waiting on other intelligence? Did the Americans already have war plans for this contingency? The Israelis? The Saudis?
Well, since Donald Trump is the one in charge all these questions disappear. We know from our vaunted backseat driver theoreticians’ armchairs that the invasion of Kharg Island was unexpected, or should have happened sooner, or later, or has unimaginable consequences, or can’t possibly be a good idea. Or whatever. I heard the war plans were drawn up in crayon and Trump had to have explained to him what “oil” is. Hegseth is so evil he made the plans worse, but he was also too drunk to make them effective. If only we had General Milley back he would have saved everything
So our argument in favor of sane war planning is that it incorporates an idea our 80 year old president first fixated on 40 years ago, when he had no military experience or advice. Gotcha.
If you’re not aware of the obvious importance of Kharg Island and the fact it would trivially be in any war plan with Iran you are actually displaying a disqualifying level of ignorance here. I don’t even mean this as a personal attack: you clearly do not know the first thing about which you speak.
Acquiring the site where Iran processes 90% of its oil is just a weird fixation of Trump’s? I don’t know how to parse this except as another form of TDS.
That fact that Trump is and has been aware of Kharg Island demonstrates that he does know what he’s talking about, that US military plans were not made up in the 24-second news cycle, and that the hyper-cynical take pursued by ultra-skeptics is more based in emotion than anything else. You’re wrong, the US military does have a war plan and denying that is a conspiracy on par with denying the landing on the moon.
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Why risk ground forces' lives by taking them earlier?
Because they're not significantly at risk and they're actually ready to go.
Aren't they at greater risk at the beginning when Iran's ejaculation capabilities were not yet degraded and they could reasonably overload whatever temporary AA the marines were able to build at the island?
I think you misunderstand me. If the plan was to have the Marines seize Kharg Island, you probably wouldn't send them in right away. But you'd have them staged nearby; you wouldn't wait two weeks then move them in from the Pacific.
Ahh fair
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wat
The new Supreme Leader is rumored to have been impotent.
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Missile launches. They way they use them - without plan, goal, control or success makes the analogy apt.
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I’ve heard of demographic warfare but not of that particular metric…
There was a plan back in the Kennedy admin to drop leaflets on Cuba warning the men that the presence of nuclear weapons on the island would cause so much radiation that it would make them impotent.
Wasn't there also a CIA plan to drop "jumbo" condoms relabelled as "medium" somewhere as a psi-op? Or did I just hallucinate that on the internet?
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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, when that was all clearly laid out before lead started flying.
I think this piece from Ross Douthat is the most likely explanation. Trump is a bully, and while he's obviously no military expert, he has an uncanny sense for knowing when someone is weak. Iran was weaker than they'd been in a long time, so he seized the chance.
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Why?
Look what Iran is doing - shutting down the global economy, launching missiles at and deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure and the economy (oil, travel, etc etc) of its neighbors. They've always been interested in doing this in all likelihood, but didn't think they could get away with it. They also had their civilian terror networks temporarily defanged.
What happens if they get the bomb? What happens if they rebuild the missile capacity and expand the drone capacity?
What if two years from now they wanted to close Hormuz and were a nuclear state? We'd have to just accept it or much riskier things.
The U.S. and Israel absolutely have classified timelines on missile production, they may have timelines on the nuclear stuff.
Iran can't be allowed to do what it wants to do, because it would do this. We know this, we can see now exactly why that is.
It just happened Trump was sitting in the chair instead of a cowardly president who might end up just waiting and praying.
Why now, specifically?
Trump made his threats and it was clear something was going to happen eventually, it appears to have gone off a bit half cocked but I imagine that's because the Iranians foolishly put enough of the government in one room together.
Why don't people understand this?
The government has been very explicit with stated public war aims and reasons, and has a number of private elements that are easily guessable. The media has landed on a meme to criticize this conflict as "they weren't clear" so people think it isn't clear when it is.
Which time were they extremely clear?
Was it when Rubio said we didn't really want to do this but we had to because the Israelis were doing it either way? Was it when Trump said their nuclear program was completely eliminated a few months ago? Was it when Hegseth said there would be no ground troops involved? Was it when Trump said that the whole thing was pretty much wrapped up last week?
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Iran can’t be blamed for defending themselves from an unjust attack by Israel. I would hope Americans would do the same if they were in Iran’s place; if they wouldn’t, I think they lack courage and a moral compass. If Israel decided to start targeting the homes of every American service member, and our only hope was to shut it down, then that’s what America should do. This is the proper response to an Israeli attempt at your national annihilation, something they have a track record of doing in the past 80 years.
Israel does this
This applies to Israel
Israel has the bomb. Every accusation is an admission when it comes to Israel. The Israelis, with a straight face, will tell you we should “help the Iranian people have their voices heard” while they keep three million Palestinians under a military occupation and prevent them from voting and moving freely in violation of international law.
Can you point out the inciting incident of which Israel was the aggressor - and thereby justifies the characterization of a 'unjust attack', rather than a series of mutually aggressive tensions and accumulated causus belli between Iran and Israel that have flamed into war? Has Israel ever made 'justified' attacks? Can you name a single one, or is this another case of selective demands of rigor?
Or is everything Israel does illegal by definition, and we're playing wordcel games?
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Iran has been waging proxy war against Israel for 44 years via Hezbollah, Hamas and their other paramilitaries. it has a literal doomsday clock counting down the days until Israel's destruction. If the regime didn't want a war with Israel, they've been going about it a funny way.
And it's not as if Israel is a threat to Iran. They're seperated by two countries and hundreds of miles. If Iran wanted peaceful relations with Israel, all they would need to do is stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas and stop threatening to nuke Israel.
There is a lot to criticise Israel about regarding Gaza and the West Bank, but Iran's conflict with Israel is one of Iran's making.
Their official stated policy goal is to leave the fate of Israel up to a democratic referendum which includes displaced Palestinians. Oh the horrors of justice and the rule of law! Is our heart so small and our palate so delicate that we should ignore three million Palestinians in the West Bank living in a dehumanizing and disenfranchised state as Israel’s state-sponsored proxy settlers (some labeled terrorist groups in the US) torture and torment Palestinian women and children nearly every month? I hope not. America should be unironic social justice warriors (not the gay kind).
Israel has been waging a proxy war upon much of the Middle East through her greatest proxy America. I hope I don’t need to list all of the atrocities and damage caused by this proxy in the region. We are literally their proxy. We do their bidding because their supporters pay us to. You can pick up a copy of the Israel Lobby and read about it. If it weren’t for Israeli lobbyists it is unlikely that Iraq and Afghanistan would happen, and we likely would not have taken out Assad (half a million dead), and so on.
Other proxies include the South Lebanon Army which caused the Sabra and Shatila massacre. You can read how “prior to the massacre, the IDF took [their proxies] to training camps in Israel and showed them documentaries about the Holocaust. The Israelis told the Lebanese fighters that the same would happen to them too, as a minority in Lebanon, if the fighters did not take action against the Palestinians”. And “as the massacre unfolded, the IDF received reports of atrocities being committed, but did not take any action to stop it. Instead, Israeli troops were stationed at the exits of the area to prevent the camp's residents from leaving and, at the request of the Lebanese Forces, shot flares to illuminate Sabra and Shatila through the night during the massacre.” Another group that Israel has funded is MEK which carried out assassinations in Iran.
It is completely reasonable for Iran to fund proxy forces against an expansionist power which has a history of oppressing their neighbors. You may have noticed that America has been doing the same thing, as we fund Ukraine because of the territorial ambitions of Russia. The difference is that any Ukrainian left in Russian territory will eventually be given full rights; the Israelis cleanse the land of every Muslim and Christian they can before acquiring it, and any remaining non-Jew is oppressed and cannot participate in Israeli democracy. Horrifying. Do you think Russia has the right to target American scientists sleeping in their homes with their children via ballistic missiles, because we funded a proxy group to defend against their expansionist ambitions?
Did you just...add a word to my quote? I don't know if that's against the rules or not, but it's definitely poor form.
I genuinely don't know what this is based on. I've Googled around and all I can find are articles about Iranian proxy war strategy. That is, a war with guns and bombs and rockets. Nothing about referendums. Indeed, I'm curious how exactly invading Israel and destroying its military could lead to a peaceful referendum?
Iran is not the Middle East, Iran is Iran. And the Iranian regime has been dedicated to the destruction of Israel since it took power in 1979. The idea that Iran is standing up on behalf of the greater Middle East seems like a stretch, given that Iran is currently bombing every Middle Eastern country it can reach, and has spent years funding paramilitaries in them.
https://www.newsweek.com/iran-plan-israeli-palestinian-conflict-vote-1887056
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Poland is Poland, not Europe or Ukraine, and America is America, not Europe or Ukraine, but they’re both funding Ukraine to defend against Russian aggression in Europe. Surely if Iran lacks the right to fund defensive groups against Israeli encroachment, then Israel lacks the right to encroach on land for around 80 years. The majority of UN member states consider the Golan to be Syrian and demand it to be returned, but Israel occupies it with American approval. Isn’t it strange that Iran, the supposed “international pariah”, is not encroaching on any new land, not once in the past fifty years?
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This sounds very nice when put in such anodyne, bureaucratic terms. A rhetorical tactic you are very practiced at, phrasing horrendous or risible propositions in superficially reasonable ways.
"Iran just wants democracy and for the Palestinians to be granted suffrage! Who could be against that?"
Gosh, indeed, who could be... if one ignores the undeniable and immediate consequences of letting Palestinians vote on a "democratic referendum on the fate of Israel."
This is just how people who think Israel shouldn't exist say Israel shouldn't exist without saying "Israel shouldn't exist."
It's always amusing watching the Jew-haters suddenly become bleeding hearts over Palestinians. You don't care about Palestinians. You wouldn't want them in your country. You don't care about their enfranchisement or dehumanization. You are well aware of the lengthy history of Arabic atrocities carried out against each other, against Iranians, and against Africans. No one has treated the Palestinians worse than other Arabs. In fairness, that's because the Palestinians have had an unfortunate tendency to destabilize every country in which they are admitted. This sucks for the vast majority of Palestinian civilians, who as several people have already pointed out at length, are the unfortunate victims caught up in every war in which a nation undertakes aggression that the women and children and old men never signed up for. But the Israelis aren't refusing a farcical Palestine/Israel one state purely out of ethnic/religious exclusion (though that is certainly part of it). They reject your proposal (again, hilarious to see you pushing a proposal only advocated by the most deluded leftists in the West, only because it's something that would stick in a knife in Jews) because they can see what has happened in every country in which Palestinians become a political force, and because the Palestinians make no secret of what they want to do to Israelis. The idea that admitted as full citizens of Israel, Palestinians would proceed to coexist peacefully with the Jews as fellow citizens is not something anyone actually believes. I don't think even those deluded leftists really believe it, they just won't say out loud that what would result is something they think the Jews have coming.
No one is forcing Israel to occupy and encroach on land in the West Bank. If they don’t want to add the residents to their nation, then they can just stop occupying and dispossessing them.
I believe in the past you have claimed to be Irish. I might be misremembering. One way to gauge your moral intuition on this conflict is to imagine a scenario where the British decided to occupy Ireland tomorrow, dispossess them, ban them from traveling throughout the UK, steal their homes, and then fund chavs to settle in Irish towns, chavs who routinely harass them. Occasionally chavs will burn down an Irish home or kill random Irish civilians. The British in the UK press call anyone who opposes this a Anglophobic Brit-hater.
Or another scenario to imagine: “what if Iran took control of Israel?” You can imagine Persians confining 3 million Israelis to an occupied zone where they are periodically brutalized and dehumanized. How would you reply to this? Do you think the international Jewish community would accept this as “just part and parcel of living in a civilized world” or something?
It’s very easy to call things that challenge us “hatred”. It’s harder to put ourselves in the
shoessouls of the oppressed. If it were so easy to practice compassion for our enemies then we wouldn’t need a whole religion to compel humans to do it. As an Irishman I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.More options
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I am pretty sure that the anti-Israel crowd has two arguments in response:
Proxy attacks don't count.
Hezbollah was formed to resist Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon; and therefore (a) Hezbollah has carte blanche to do whatever it wants against Israel, including acts of terrorism; and (b) other countries can freely make use of Hezbollah's carte blanche by funding and directing terrorist attacks, and it doesn't count.
Both of these arguments are so ridiculous on their face that anyone reading this will naturally suspect that I am strawmanning, however these arguments were really made and I can demonstrate it with quotes.
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I appreciate your response but I won't be engaging with you on this. I've personally found the anti-Israel/anti-Jewish posters to be too laser focused on that end of the conflict to the point where it makes the conclusions questionable and discussion unrewarding.
My apologies if I have you pegged incorrectly on the Jewish front.
What a coincidence! I too find people who post on the topic of Israel to be incapable of rational discussion because they fail to agree with me and my obviously correct points - just with the opposite political valence to you.
As I made clear down thread, I'm perfectly willing to engage with criticism of Jews, Israel, and this war. I find plenty of people capable of rational discussion about this topic including people I deeply disagree with.
However some of the posters here are clearly just angry, hateful, and blinded by some sort of intense and specific dislike that will never make sense to me and is clearly objectively irrational despite being historically common.
What's the value in discussion with someone who is going to blame the Jews every time? You already know they are going to blame the Jews. They aren't going to say anything novel. They might even be right occasionally but you won't be able to tell because they say the same thing every time.
I've never had any significant interaction with anti-semites in person or in real life prior to this conflict and I now get while growing up the Jewish people I know just automatically assumed anyone who was anti-Israel was anti-semitic.
If someone was criticising the actions of the Nazi regime, would you discount their critiques on the basis that there is no value in discussion with someone who is going to blame the Germans every time? How many people in the upper echelons of the Israeli government, with the ability and authority to make serious decisions, are not Jewish?
What, exactly, is irrational about Coffee Enjoyer's post? Are you going to deny that Israel has nuclear weapons? Are you going to deny that they have, in the past, engaged in both espionage and direct attacks on the US? The most significant intelligence theft in US history (at least to my knowledge) was committed by an Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard.
The kind of low-intelligence antisemitism that you're describing, the kind that belongs to people who just look for some kind of external force they can blame for the problems in their life so they don't have to do anything about, have always existed and will always exist. If it wasn't the Jews it would be the Feminists or the Man or the Illuminati etc. Those people aren't worth talking to, but I'd argue that it isn't the specific target of that kind of mental pathology that distinguishes them.
But you're doing your own thinking a great disservice by shoving every single person with an antipathy towards Israel into that rather cramped box. Have you paid any attention to the recent conflict or the actions Israel has actually taken in the Middle East? Do you think the family of Rachel Corrie are motivated by an "objectively irrational" dislike when they criticise the state of Israel? As someone on the left I can assure you that most people who criticise Israel in my circles have a gigantic list of incredibly specific grievances and problems they have with the state of Israel, and it is in fact the state of Israel which goes out of its way to conflate all criticism of it with criticism of Jews in general, and plenty of prominent organisations do the same (like the ADL).
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Then don't reply.
I mean it's a tough situation, I'd prefer to not be rude and both options are rude.
I think many people here have something interesting to say for or against this conflict but at this point I've started to find the anti-jew posters aggressively one note on anything that can be blamed on jews. On reddit I'd tag people with RES so I could keep track of things like this, but I don't know how to do that here and I wasn't 100% if he was one of those...and well he made it clear.*
If you are more irked by my lack of response to you, well I watched mainstream media on the recent events, personally heard the talking points in real time, felt convinced I understand the public justification and aims, then watched the dem talking heads land on a narrative of "not clear" and people download that.* I am happy to explore how valid my thought process is on this with a curious party like OP, but your stance suggests a fixed position and willingness to use disingenuous talking point to affirm your stance.
Ex: At this point Trump has been in the public sphere long enough that unwillingness or inability to adjust to his administrations communication style is the fault of the interlocutor. The lack of professionalism is a reason to critsizie them for lack of professionalism, it is not a reason to fail to appropriately engage with their communication.
*Plenty of reasons to dislike Israel and its recent actions, but if what you are saying tries to make Israel seem worse than or equivalent to Iran+terrorists than the complaints just aren't credible and I think discussion is unlikely to be fruitful.
*Seen many times in recent high quality political discussion like with Mark Halperin going "here are the aims! They said that in this speech! Stop pretending it wasn't clear" and talking heads just not engaging.
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The Israeli strategy has long been to confine American discourse to a narrow passage of acceptable comparisons and permitted moral indignations, so I do not find this response surprising.
My guy, I implore you to consider the ramifications of our interaction going like this: "I'm worried you make everything about Israel" "of course Israel made you say that."
You were justifying the war with arguments that could apply against both Israel and Iran. This suggests that your justifications are meritless, because it is nonsensical to fight on behalf of country A against country B for reason C when both countries are doing C. Similarly you argued for war against B when IMO most Americans would support doing C if we were on the receiving end of A’s aggression. It is not possible to discuss the merits of the war without bringing up Israel, the major party to the war, on whose behalf we are currently waging war. I don’t know if you intended your post to be a general justification for American participation in the conflict but this is how it came off. “Why don't people understand this?” — I am a member of the group of people who do not understand it, explaining why it is not understood.
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