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Notes -
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/more-marines-heading-to-middle-east-as-u-s-continues-relentless-strikes-on-iran
To my knowledge, US ground forces have not been meaningfully involved in the Iran conflict. It appears that this might be changing.
What strategic objectives would 2,500 marines be able to achieve in the context of this conflict? Are the islands in the strait important enough to capture but far enough from the Iranian mainland to actually hold? I'll admit that I am no expert in this. At the moment all I can do is hope none of my relatives get deployed and hope for the best.
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.
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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