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As a Republican who was broadly onboard with toppling Iran well before the most recent flare up, I would like to offer an alternate narrative to the one about Trump is a Joe-Biden-esqe meat puppet being controlled by a zionist cabal, that seems to be the popular consensus here.
First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?
Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
Importantly we are not going to do the Clinton or Obama thing where we give them a whole bunch of cash and trade concessions in exchange for a pinky-promise not to act up again and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later. While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.
How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?
While there is something of an isolationist streak present in the online right the prevailing attitude amongst the wider GOP is that if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role.
First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.
As the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.
From my perspective democrats' attitude towards the Iranian regime seems to echo their attitudes towards illegal immigration, violent crime. If you ask them if they want violent schizophrenics on the train they'll answer "no", but at the same time they will vehemently oppose anyone who looks like they might try to stop violent schizophrenics from stabbing people on trains. They seem to view the occasional train stabbing or ballistic missile attack as simply the price of doing business.
This is where the issue appears - the US is not strong enough to do this without using H-bombs. And even if it were possible, it would be extremely costly and dangerous.
It is very hard to bomb an industrious country into being a failed state. Intense bombing was tried on North Vietnam and Cambodia. The US dropped about 50-70 kg of bombs per person on these relatively small countries. Iran is a large country. The number of bombs needed is extremely high! Even burning down whole cities is not sufficient. That was tried on Japan and Germany and again, did not work. A-bombs, famine, a Soviet ground invasion of Manchuria and the destruction of Japan's offensive capabilities in sea/air power were needed to force a near unconditional surrender. A ground invasion was imminent and they were preparing for it. In Germany the Red Army had to storm Berlin before surrender.
Let's throw the 'decapitation strikes killing leaders' theory of war right out, that has never worked in history and clearly isn't working here. Bombing people just makes them hate you more, they become less willing to surrender.
The US does not have the necessary ground forces for a ground invasion of Iran. It's extremely mountainous, difficult terrain on the other side of the world. The US navy doesn't even dare enter the straits of Hormuz because of all the drones and ballistic missiles. How is America supposed to deploy a million men or more to Iraq, to what bases, with what supplies? Those bases are being bombed and shelled. It'd take 12-18 months to get all the forces in the field. Would a million men even be enough? It's politically impossible, would incur a staggering number of casualties over a multi-year war with disastrous effects for broader US strategy. Iran doesn't fear a ground invasion, they know the US wouldn't try.
And then there are all the things Iran can do to strike back. Iran could attack with dirty bombs if they so chose, against the US or Israel. They could wreck oil production across the Middle East in revenge. They could launch drone strikes against the US homeland like how Ukraine does against Russia. There are all kinds of things 90 million smart people can do to make problems if they want.
It's not possible to force compliance by taking one small island. To force compliance you need to have enough strength to conquer the country. If the war goal is SMO style 'demilitarization', 'denuclearization' and 'de-antisemitization' (per Trump's rambling about picking the leader of Iran) then the US needs to credibly threaten a successful invasion and conquest of the country. Russia's ground invasion needs to reach that stage to secure victory. The Ukrainians would capitulate if their army was smashed. But they haven't capitulated since their army hasn't been smashed, they hold out hope for improved circumstances and just draft more troops.
Americans need to stop thinking as though the US is global policeman and more like a successful gangster. Lots of money and guns. But other gangs also have guns. Other gangs can impose costs too. The gains of a street war may not be worth the costs in blood, wealth and bitter feuding.
You were suggesting that this would work against Taiwan earlier this month.
The United States would probably not struggle to turn off the majority of the power in Iran. I hope we don't, for humanitarian reasons, but we absolutely could. (The Russians have had considerable success doing this in Ukraine despite having less airpower and inferior targeting capabilities, while Ukraine also has better defenses and an open line of supplies from its border with the world's richest economies; Iran will not have this advantage) The target set isn't that big (about 600 power plants, if we trust Google AI.) The US production line supports upwards of 100 JDAMs kits per day, so without even expanding production, the USAF could in theory hit every power plant in Iran weekly without dipping into reserves.
This might not cause Iran to collapse into anarchy or overthrow the regime but it would pretty much turn them into a "failed state" in the sense that state capacity would plummet.
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Of course the US is strong enough to do this without H-bombs. Bombing all of Iran's industry and infrastructure can be accomplished conventionally. Oil, electrical, manufacturing and water. The last being quite critical -- it'll be hard for Iran to rebuild while its population is dying of thirst. It wouldn't be all that costly or dangerous (except to Iran); the expensive part was taking out air defenses, B-1 missions with gravity bombs are much cheaper. And this isn't WWII; the US can hit the targets a lot better. It would kill a LOT of Iranians, however.
This US did that before. The US took Afghanistan, as you may recall. And held it for 20 years. Couldn't quash the insurgency (partially because it was based in Pakistan) but that's a different matter.
The US navy will enter the straits of Hormuz.
Not much, not anymore. The US evacuated the bases, but now that Iran's capability to bombard them is way down, the US COULD use them for staging.
Maybe. If they can still get their nuclear material. And if they don't mind starting a nuclear war with two nuclear powers when all they've got is nuclear waste.
Agreed, the USA could do this. Would it be worth it though? Would this be accretive for Pax Americana? Does this make America more secure as the world Hegemon? Or is it instance #69 of China getting to sit back and look like the rational reasonable alternative to the western "rules based world order"?
Sure, we can practically genocide (I know this word is not to be used lightly, however I'm not sure what else to call "wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to your clean water and energy nationwide?") Iran, but does that really make things better?
"The USA destroys Iranian industrial civilization, millions die" strikes me as one of the main events students memorize in 2126 for the "5 main things that caused the fall of American global empire"
Obviously this would be a terrible choice; I don't know if it would be better or worse than not preventing Iran from getting nukes. Depends on whether it makes them North Korea or they actually start a nuclear war or attempt nuclear blackmail (e.g. "Israel's Jews all leave or we nuke things") over it. I don't think these are the only two choices, but if they were, the choice of committing genocide upon Iran would be available.
Reasonable take! I like it
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Are you implying that NATO did genocide in Serbia?
"If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO's five conditions and we will stop this campaign. But as long as he doesn't do so we will continue to attack those targets which provide the electricity for his armed forces. If that has civilian consequences, it's for him to deal with but that water, that electricity is turned back on for the people of Serbia"
I mean I'm not a fan of that either for similar reasons, so if NATO had choked out Yugoslavia so hard that hundreds of thousands-millions of Serbs/etc started dying of dehydration and chlorea then yeah, that would be.
Im not a big "collective punishment" or "just overthrow your government despite the fact you don't have electricity or water (they do, they have guns so they have what's left of it)" and if you accomplish this impossible task you can drink clean water again"
If we want the Iranians to overthrow their government (I do , I want this for them) we should actually help the fucking protestors. But we clearly missed that window bc the Iranian govt killed 10-30,000 of the people most likely to stand up and rally around.
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How is it a different matter? What we learned from Afghanistan is that even 20 years of boots on the ground didn't make for anything sustainable, the system we created collapsed within a year.
The takeaway here would suggest that we need permanent occupation in Iran and that the forever wars need to be basically indefinite in order to feign meaningful success. That's incredibly relevant when talking about other operations in the middle east.
Like what's the plan here, just keep playing whack a mole with the arab nations forever? Are we gonna loop this now, just spend tons of money fiddling around, pull back and then immediately go back in? "This time the mole won't pop up again, my predecessors just weren't smart enough to hit them with the plastic mallet"
It's a different matter because the question was whether we could successfully invade, not whether we could successfully build a US-friendly regime.
If invasions don't result in US friendly regimes, why would we be invading then?
To destroy an unfriendly regime's capacity to act on their unfriendliness.
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