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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   1103 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 19, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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So apparently the gloves are coming off. Trump has Truthed out, in clear language, that Iran has 48 hours to allow all traffic through Hormuz with no threats of action, or the US will start hitting power plants. Apparently what Trump meant when he said the USA could easily open the strait without any help.

If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!

Notably to this point Iranian government sources have only put civilian casualties at 200-400, essentially one big accident and change for a bombing operation this large. From here the intention is to strike civilian targets until Iran cries uncle.

Iran in turn is threatening to strike back at gulf power generation targets. With weapons they may or may not have at this point.

And postponed until after market close on Friday. Who the hell even knows at this point. DJT has contradicted himself multiple times in recent days.

They can just rebuild it with the oil money they're getting :v

It's always hard to evaluate these kinds of statements because Trump is both a blusterer and a brute. It does kind of put the lie to any humanitarian pretense.

Well they've been hitting back at Israeli nuclear sites just today, the town next to their nuclear facility I believe. So it's safe to say their missile arsenal remains operational.

RIP fuel imports... Not holding my breath for this latest threat to be effective.

How it started:

”Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

For many years, you have asked for America's help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let's see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”

How it’s going:

”We’re going to turn your entire country into Gaza lol”

Hehe.

I suspect blowing up power plants is a war crime.

How is this going to win the hearts and minds of the Iranian people? The US is going to seem like a bigger enemy than the clerics now.

I get the impression that people thought I was being hyperbolic when I explained what "winning" looks like from the perspective of the US, Isreali, and Saudi right, rather than plainly stating a position.

Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stops 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 allowing the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

How is Trump supposed to accomplish that when he has no real staying power? He's sensitive to what the markets do and what the population thinks. He didn't spend any time actually prepping the American population for a real, prolonged war. All that propaganda about democracy and the free world and good vs evil has useful effects, and that stuff is not present atm. He's not in a strong position and is likely looking for some way out IMO.

You don't need "staying power" to cut off someone's electricity.

Again, I feel like people here aren't grappling with what I'm saying. You seem to think that this is nation building exercise rather than a punitive expedition.

You wrote:

reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and allowing the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.

How are you going to do that in quick fashion?

The actual answer is that you're not. Iran is not Afghanistan. Destroying critical infrastructure in Iran isn't going to turn it into a bunch of warring tribes any more doing the same in Britain would. It's just going to lead to a lot of avoidable deaths of Iranian civilians.

I think you have assigned too much weight to the notion of a cosmopolitan UK. If you turn off the electricity, turn off the food, and turn off the water, how long do you think it would take for Anglicans and Muslims, Labour and Tory, Scotts and Britons, Britons and Welsh, Et Al to stop playing nice with each other and start stabbing? I do not think that it would take very long.

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By wiping out the state leadership and then blowing up all the powerplants.

The USA has shown a marked unconcern for legal niceties throughout, that is not going to change any opinions or make the top 5 list at the end of the war.

Power plants are 50/50 anyway, it should be proportional and Iran will provide proportionality afterwards if it hasn't by now.

The USA has shown a marked unconcern for legal niceties throughout,

How would you characterize the concern for legal niceties exhibited by everyone else in modern history then? Iran, for instance is attacking other nations seemingly at random and targeting infrastructure and hotels and other civilian targets.

The U.S. has shown the most concern for legal niceties out of any major combatant since those legal niceties existed.

That's not to say that the U.S. is particularly great on this front, just to say that nobody else really seems to even bother.

attacking other nations seemingly at random

This is the Motte - please leave takes sourced from John Stewart and other talk show hosts where they belong. What they are actually doing is attacking nations which are hosting US forces and military bases, and the hotels they have been attacking were used to host American troops. They've been positively saintlike when compared to the US' blowing up of primary schools and oil depots in Tehran.

targeting infrastructure

Iran attacked a gas field after one of their gas fields was attacked and they explicitly said that was a proportional response. Even Trump chickened out from destroying their powerplants after the Iranians explained what they would blow up if he did.

This is not factually accurate.

I am unaware of any U.S. military bases or U.S. troops in several of the attacked countries, of which there are over ten.

To list, at least: Israel, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Cyprus. By implication also the U.S., U.K., and France, and depending on how you want to count it Diego Garcia. Several of these were explicitly not getting involved.

I am also unaware of any evidence of U.S. military assets being present in a majority of the attacked civilian infrastructure. Some of the targets can be painted as part of an escalation ladder. Random civilian buildings can not.

unaware of any US military bases or U.S. troops

Israel

Come the fuck on. Are you even trying to participate in a good faith discussion? Are you going to seriously sit here and claim that Israel was not party to the attacks on Iran? Do you believe there's no military co-operation between Israel and the US?

Diego Garcia.

Are you for real? Did you forget a sentence or something here? If you aren't aware of any US military bases on Diego Garcia I think you need to go and do some more research before continuing to post on this topic.

I'm sorry - based off of your response I think you may have misread my comment, or at least you are not responding to what I actually said.

Given the specifics of the way you jumped in here it could be as part of some didactic exercise, please clarify if so.

Thank you!

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I think Iran's response is massively scattershot, but Azerbaijan is the only country in that list without US bases and/or troops.

IIRC Cyprus wasn't the U.S. (well I think they might have some classified assets there maybe?), I'm not sure where France got attacked but that probably was non-U.S. Iran seems to have accidentally attacked Palestine and Lebanon.

Iran lacks the targeting ability to actually hit what they are aiming at, which further complicates matters (see accidental attacks in Palestine, Lebanon).

Ultimately I think the comment can be reasonably described as uncritical repetition of Iranian propaganda however.

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How would you characterize the concern for legal niceties exhibited by everyone else in modern history then? Iran, for instance is attacking other nations seemingly at random and targeting infrastructure and hotels and other civilian targets.

I don't see where this is relevant to the comment I made or the comment I'm replying to.

I think it's notable, as I've stated upwards in this comment chain, that Iran has only reported a total of 200-400 civilian casualties, showing that the USA has shown a great deal of concern for civilian casualties during this war, and an extraordinary ability to prevent them. For all the talk about the girls' school, it's basically been that and some spare change.

But the DoW leadership has hammered repeatedly on the message that the focus of the military is on "lethality, not legality." They have no concern for legal technicalities.

What legal technicalities are we talking about? If we talking about war with other nation, I am not sure "legal" has any meaning here. We have a legal system in the US. You know, Congress, laws, courts, lawyers, police, 9th Circus, SCOTUS, all that beautiful arrangement. But none of it - beyond trivial cases of military cook stealing supplies and selling them on the side - has any bearing on military actions against a foreign country.

Are you referring to a fictitious notion often called "international law"? If so, I think naming it "law" is one of the biggest swindles ever perpetrated on humanity - it's just a network of voluntary vows taken by various sovereigns, each of them could be at any moment revoked or ignored by any of them. It has very little in common with that we call legal system within the US, and probably as much with any legal system in any existing country. So I don't see any problem in the military not being super-concerned with those. It doesn't mean military should not have any rules or limits - the military is ruled by the civilian leadership, and the civilian leadership can impose on it limitations stemming from our culture and sensitivities. Like, trying to minimize collateral damage, not harming noncombatants if possible, not using munitions that cause excessive harm to noncombatants, not acting in a way that may be repugnant to our culture, etc. But I don't think those can be properly called "legal technicalities", and I think it's not the military's position to define those - it's the outside constraints placed on the military (necessarily and justly), but within these constraints, they should do their thing.

I'm pointing out that "marked unconcern for legal niceties" isn't really accurate, something like "as usual legal niceties become a bit fuzzier during war time" or "the U.S. usually does a better job than most at maintaining legal niceties, however..." would be more accurate.

Your word choice implies that the U.S.'s approach is worthy of criticism and perhaps is worse than others.

If you feel that way, I think it should be explicit.

This is superficially a small matter of language but given the amount of criticism for certain actions taken by Israel and the U.S. and lack of criticism and even forgiveness for actions taken by the other side that are ten times worse....I think the loaded language needs to be pointed out.

I'm pointing out that "marked unconcern for legal niceties" isn't really accurate,

How is it inaccurate to say that the US is unconcerned with legal niceties when the Secretary of War has made a career out of criticizing prior war efforts for their adherence to legal niceties? When the SoW has repeatedly made public statements that they are focused on "maximum lethality, not tepid legality?" When the stated intention has been from the beginning to open up rules of engagement based on legal niceties?

Look bro, you seem to want to be the woke police about people not being rah rah enough for the war, in future consider all my comments about the American war effort to contain the Politically Correct Disclaimer:

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN IS AN EVIL REGIME THAT DOES EVIL THINGS, AND WE SHOULD NOT FORGET HOW EVIL THEY ARE

Then maybe you won't feel the need to play whataboutism in a discussion of the United States' openly avowed policies. Iran is evil, sure, that doesn't prevent one from examining policy questions in light of the statements made by the United States' Government.

We should be precise in our statements, Iran is winning the propaganda war, you can find a large number of Americans and Europeans saying and believing things like "Iran is about as or more honest in reporting during this conflict" "Iran is about as or more following the rules of war/attacking civilians" "Israel is not checked will attack Europe and the rest of the world" (front page on reddit yesterday!).

This was has created situation where you have a truly unprecedented publishing of military and diplomatic information with near zero credible publishing of military and diplomatic interpretation.

Add in the usual TDS and you have a boiling pot of misinformation that we should be careful to avoid contributing to.

Some people do need to be reminded that Iran's government is evil.

I don't have any problem with criticism of the conflict.

I suspect blowing up power plants is a war crime.

Power plants are duel use, so my understanding is that attacking them is legitimate if it is connected to a proportionate military effect. Certainly it's been done in the past, by multiple parties.

For the record, I continue to stand by my stated preference that the Trump administration not carry out a wholesale energy disruption campaign.

Possibly, one could argue that literally any action no matter how severe is proportionate to the long term consequence of shutting down the Hormuz strait.

The consequences are likely incredibly bad for the entire world, and apocalyptic for poorer regions.

My understanding is that Iran has not closed the strait to all countries, though.

It seems to me that they practically have and if they haven't then the blockade is meaningless because oil is fungible.

if they haven't then the blockade is meaningless because oil is fungible.

Right, but they can perhaps impose some inconvenience/cost on most hostile states and avoid imposing that on less hostile states.

It's also an easy way to demonstrate capability - a shot across the bow.

There seems to have been no such attempt thus far and i genuinely struggle to understand how it would work.

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People keep throwing the word "proportionate" around like it's something to be desired.

Was Nuking Japan twice and waging total war against them a "proportionate" response to loosing a few boats and a few thousand people at Pearl Harbor? No of course it wasn't, "proportionality" was never the intent to begin with.

The vast majority of people have a completely wrong conception of what "proportionality" means in international law. The most common belief, which is completely wrong, is that one counts up the amount of damage that Party A did to Party B and say that the amount of damage that Party B then does to Party A must be in some way proportionate.

The part of international law that contains the thing generally referred to as "proportionality" is International Humanitarian Law. You can already get a sense that it has something to do with pain to civilians, who are not, in a sense, "part of the conflict". Indeed, the main treaty provision that is pointed to for this principle is Article 51(5)(b) of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention. It prohibits attacks which:

may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

That is, it acknowledges that there will be military objectives, and that pursuing those military objectives may cause damage to civilians. In some sense, military commanders are supposed to weigh those things. This is not a trivial task, and there aren't clear, objective ways to compare those things, either. But the entire consideration is different in character than how it is considered by most people.

My understanding is that proportionality has a specific meaning in international law as pertains to armed conflict, although I can't claim to always use that correctly.

It's probably worth noting in your example that Japan actually did quite a lot more than just bomb Pearl Harbor!

Anyway, I don't object to moving vertically up the escalation ladder. I do object to using military force against civilians in a way that is not directly connected to military objectives. For instance, if we are at war with Iran, and we intentionally airstrike a public school and hit civilians, the degree to which that airstrike will be justified under the laws of armed conflict will depend on the nexus to a military objective. If we did it for no reason, then it would be disproportionate. If we did it to kill a single low-ranking Iranian soldier, it would likely still be disproportionate. If we did it to strike a surface-to-air system that was colocated with the school, it would be much more defensible (and also the Iranians might be themselves guilty of a war crime).

My objection to a concentrated campaign against the Iranian power grid is not a principled objection to hitting power facilities, but rather that I think that such a campaign would not degrade the Iranian military forces more efficiently than allocating those weapons elsewhere would. To the extent that hitting Iranian power facilities would degrade the operations of their military forces in ways that could not be more easily achieved by other military means, I have no particular objections. But most high-end weapons systems are going to have generators as either a primary (if mobile) or secondary (if fixed) power source. Thus, as a general rule, I think that a concentrated air campaign against weapons systems and military facilities themselves is a more efficient allocation of resources than hitting centralized power sources.

There is a certain logic to striking purely civilian facilities in Iran because Iran has not respected the civilian-military distinction themselves, and according to old custom, the laws of the civilized do not apply to barbarians (defect against defectors). But I do not think the United States needs to do this to accomplish its goals in the region, and it would undermine our pretensions to moral conduct in war and give future opponents precedential cover to make such attacks against us.

If we did it for no reason, then it would be disproportionate.

What does it have to do with "proportion"? Hitting a public school with no military purpose behind it is wrong. This is because of how our society and our morals work, not because Iranians didn't hit exactly the same school before. Even if they did, it still would be wrong. If Iranians killed 100 random US civilians, would "proportionate" answer be killing random 100 Iranians civilians? I don't think a lot of people in the US would endorse such notion of "proportionality", neither should they.

If you're saying we should not inflict unnecessary civilian casualties, and if there is a collateral damage, there must be a very good justification of why that was unavoidable - I totally agree. But "proportionate" doesn't sound like a very good term to use in such case.

As for hitting power facilities, that depends on the goals of the campaign. If the goal is to degrade Iran's capacity of making trouble, then destroying its energy system is a reasonable step towards this goal. It's hard to manufacture advanced weaponry - or in fact any weaponry beyond light arms - without a functioning power grid. If, however, the goal is to cause the regime change, then it may be less effective, since people would be disorganized and depressed by the lack of basic necessities, and may not be able to resist the regime troops who probably have generators and other provisions to survive independently. Maybe also specific power plants are important for specific weapons factories or communication facilities and knocking them out will disable some important pieces. That's a tactical question.

If you're saying we should not inflict unnecessary civilian casualties, and if there is a collateral damage, there must be a very good justification of why that was unavoidable - I totally agree. But "proportionate" doesn't sound like a very good term to use in such case.

Yes, that's what I am saying. Feel free to use a different word - I use it because, as I explained earlier, it's a term of art.

That's a tactical question.

Yes, I agree with this. But (if my priors are correct) the decision to hit power plants instead of weapons factories or communications facilities would be a curious one. I would guess that it would likely be easier to hit Iran's weapons factories and military communications nodes than to take out their power network.

I'm not sure that is inherently the case, of course. If Iran decentralized its arms production facilities and situated them in civilian neighborhoods and dwellings, for instance, bombing power plants would likely be both more efficient and more humane. So I agree with you that the facts of the case really matter, there's not some blanket rule saying you can't hit power plants.

(Hopefully this post, containing only links concerning one current event, is according to The Rules(TM) )

Iranian ballistic missile fragment hitting the old city of Jerusalem, falling roughly 400 yards from the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa.

Not the first time it happened.

Oordinary oops? Final Iranian desperate move to incite Spirit of Jihad(TM)? Israeli false flag, in preparation to finally remove these obstreperous buildings to make space for Third Temple?

Reminder that really spicy times hadn't began yet.

Or, another possibility is when Al-Aqsa gets destroyed for real, nothing really happens. The Ummah, tired of lifetime of fruitless rage, just shrugs their collective shoulders. "We have enough mosques at home".

Mother of all anti-climatic endings ensues.

Just stay calm and keep monitoring the situation.

edit: links linked

I have long wondered whether Israel's Iron Dome, which openly tracks expected impact points and only intercepts high-value rockets, is setup to include Al-Aqsa. I can see arguments for either (maybe even changing over time), but no reason to actually disclose this policy choice.

Given how densely populated the area is, and the inherent imprecision, I think it would be significantly harder to exclude Al-Aqsa than to include it. In other words, even if Israel wanted for Iran to hit Al-Aqsa, allowing it to do it without risking the lives of a lot of civilians would be impossible. And a fragment after interception could still hit it, but it's not predictable or controllable.

Look for example at this picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Mosque#/media/File:Jerusalem-2013(2)-Aerial-Temple_Mount-(south_exposure).jpg (the actual mosque, btw, is not the golden dome, it's the square structure with the smaller dome lower in the picture) - there are a lot of buildings close to it, most of which likely don't have protected spaces that can withstand a rocket strike. So while I know of no official policy about it, I am pretty sure the answer is "yes".

Another news, another habbening, concerning this time both Eastern European and Middle Eastern situations.

A radical anti-Israeli group set fire to a drone manufacturing plant in Pardubice, Czechia.

Looks like continuation and escalation of previous actions, looks as Edinburgh January 2026 action except this time with more competency.

(competency as: use gasoline instead of spray paint and hammers, and do not wait to be arrested, GTFO to fight another day)

Group calling itself "The Earthquake Faction" was never heard about before, and the plant was manufacturing drones for Ukraine, not Israel.

It is rather clear what is going on - even FSB/GRU are learning, and instead of trying to derail European war effort with exploding dildos, found out how to redirect pro-Palestine useful idiots on more fruitful targets.

The perpetrators are very unlikely to be locals - in Czechia, as in whole post-Soviet Central/Eastern Europe, opinions on Middle Eastern situation range from "GO ISRAEL GO! SMASH BURN DESTROY!" to "Pox on the whole sand box". Sympathy for Palestine is extremely rare even among local woke folx, pro-Palestine protests are pathetic affairs with few dozens attending at best.

Situation still developing, keep monitoring.

edit: links links links

Situation status: MONITORED

Situation update:

The object was protected, but no one could predict that someone would use Star Trek tier technology to get in.

Fire in Pardubice: They forcibly entered the building using a hammer and an axe

You can say it like that, but of course we don't underestimate the issue of security. And in the media everything revolves around the fence.

Securing these objects is not just about fencing. Of course, fencing is an obstacle, but it is not a roadblock. This means that if I want to overcome the fence, I will always overcome it.

For me, it is important that the buildings located there are secured by electrical security systems, camera systems, and various detectors.

They got over the fence, but at the moment when there was entry, unauthorized entry into those buildings - I would like to emphasize here that the entry was forcibly made using a large hammer and an axe

Not ordinary hammer, but large assault hammer (probably painted black). Obviously, all resistance was futile.

The damage seems to be substantial.

The Pardubice hall that caught fire must be demolished

Hundreds of millions. Zbrojovka estimated the damage after the arson attack

Hundreds of millions in local money. 100M CZK ~ 4,7M USD right now. Do the maffs.

Cost of operation: train tickets, few hammers, axes and cans of gasoline, about half dozen activists.

Good ROI? Certainly better than throwing soup at paintings, chaining yourself to road or releasing rats in fast food restaurant.

Now, the question is: how many activists are there, and can the recruiting pipeline deliver new ones faster than the existing are hunted down? If the answer to the later question is yes, get ready for spicy times.

Situation status: MONITORED

Things status: HABBENING

The court sent the accused in the terrorist attack in Pardubice to custody. They did not confess to the crime.

Yes, we live in cyberpunk age of universal surveillance. When TPTB want to find you, you are not getting away.

You can still do things, but only once. No second chances. Ever.

One of the detainees is Youssef Moursi, born in Egypt and a U.S. citizen. He is a student in Czechia, writes articles for the far-left group Druhá Směna, and is also active with Shella Radio, nur.prague, and tadamun_kollektive, which operate out of the Ankali club in Prague.

They face 20 years to life in prison for a terrorist offense.

druhasmena

Youssef Moursi (he/she/they) is an activist, student, and passionate photographer exploring themes like queerness, love, nightlife, and identity. Deep appreciation of intersectional feminism and ‘postcolonial’ studies have been instrumental in shaping his/her/their identity, freeing her from preconceived labels and societal constraints. Continuously learning, they embrace ongoing growth.

For him words "Free Palestine" stand for an indigenous, anti-imperialist, queer, feminist, brown, black, environmental, and anti-colonial uprising; a call for a world liberated from ongoing neo-colonialism. Her beliefs center around collective solidarity and fighting against systemic oppression, while giving love and healing with communities. Right now Youssef is studying at FHS UK.

A New Year's resolution for the ummah. To imagine a decolonial future.

More works of queer postcolonial feminist theory here.

Sadly, Youssef Moursi neglected to study more practical skills, but despite their failing, their result was rather respectable.

Another will come after them who will learn from their mistakes, get ready for interesting times.

edit: links uplinked

Securing these objects is not just about fencing. Of course, fencing is an obstacle, but it is not a roadblock. This means that if I want to overcome the fence, I will always overcome it.

I mean, that's not wrong. Generally, security these days isn't "leave it unmonitored with a wall nobody can get past", it's "have sufficient fence/barbed wire/whatnot to delay people long enough for security to respond."

As a general note, it kind of makes me sad to see how strange the thinking patterns had become, I think maybe because to incessant electoral campaigning. Everybody should have an ultimate plan to solve everything, forever, perfectly, or it's even not worth talking about. And if the solution takes more than a week, we don't have enough attention span to comprehend what is going on.

The saddest part is everybody knows literally 100% of people who propose these nice rounded-up solutions are liars - we know it is not going to work this way, they know it is not going to work this way, and it never ever worked this way. It will always be more complicated, more chaotic, things will change and go to off directions, unexpected things will arise and all plans will have to be changed or abandoned altogether. But somehow still everybody demands A Man With A Plan - even fully knowing (though frequently not realizing) that any such plan must be bullshit, no one can have a perfect plan for decades forward for 90 millions of people, especially those same people submerged in an ocean of 9 billion other people. If we can do something that will make the picture a little more predictable and less dangerous for a little forward, if we cut off some of the ugliest branches on the possibility tree (such as "Iran gets nukes and uses them to initiate the coming of the Twelfth Imam") that's already a huge achievement. But imagining you can control the whole tree and shape it to your will - isn't it a bit too much to expect? And yet, though we know it's impossible, we routinely demand our leaders to pretend they can do it easily and routinely.

I guess that's what attracts people to socialism - they promise there would be a Plan. Maybe some people will starve, and some will have to be killed, but look - we have a Plan! Nobody has a better Plan than we do! No matter this plan is never achieved - having it is enough, somehow.

As a general note, it kind of makes me sad to see how strange the thinking patterns had become, I think maybe because to incessant electoral campaigning. Everybody should have an ultimate plan to solve everything, forever, perfectly, or it's even not worth talking about.

I'm skeptical of how many people actually think like this. I think it's often just a convenient criticism to level against the other side when someone wants to avoid the social consequences of being forthright about the actual objection. Since it's still mostly frowned upon to openly say "I'm angry about the war in Iran because I hate Trump/America/Israel/Jews", it's much easier to make the objection that actually, it's just because an unrealistic standard of forward planning wasn't met.

I'm sure this doesn't apply universally; there are probably people out there who genuinely are favourable to this sort of ME intervention in principle but simply don't agree with how the current one is playing out. But certainly on the Motte and among the MSM I've noticed that that the people saying "there's no plan!" are mostly the same people who anti-Israel generally.

This is a reverse Nirvana fallacy, justifying predictable missteps with a shrug and saying 'nobody is perfect'.

People demand a credible justification, a coherent goal, and a plausible argument that the goal is achievable. Comparing OIF to OEF is illustrative, in that Bush leveraged high public confidence and made a huge effort to sell the endeavor both domestically and internationally: Saddam is developing WMDs, we can stop this by getting rid of him, and we have the military force to do that (a lot of people still called BS and it turned out they were right, but public support at the time was high). By contrast, Trump has had his officials contradict themselves and each other several times a week as to why we're doing this, the goal is pretty vague, and their plans, such as they are, seem very reactive to extremely predictable problems. And this was carried out with zero effort to build support during a time when public trust is incredibly low.

I guess that's what attracts people to socialism

The appeal of socialism is primarily that it promises free stuff economic security and remediation against exploitative elites. Nobody cares about the plan.

People demand a credible justification

The word "credible" is load-bearing here - you just declare any justification "not credible" and demand another, can go forever this way.

a coherent goal,

Same here. Is a goal "diminish Iran's capacity of stirring shit up for years to go as much as possible" "coherent" or it must be "bring peace and happiness to all the world forever"?

plausible argument that the goal is achievable

Is the argument "this is actually being achieved in front of our own eyes" "plausible" or not? Of course you always can say no, not plausible, gimme another.

their plans, such as they are, seem very reactive to extremely predictable problems.

Wait wait, you're saying the fact that they are reacting to things that happen and actually change their actions in accordance with actual events that happen - is a bad thing? How do you usually handle it - do you ignore things that happen and never change any initial plan no matter what?

And this was carried out with zero effort to build support

Support from whom? Would France or Germany go for war with Iran if we asked really nice? Or maybe the Islamic Republic of Britain would? Maybe Spain? Italy? There's a lot of support from one ally - Israel - who do a lot of the work, but that leads only to various conspiracy accusations.

The appeal of socialism is primarily that it promises economic security

If the plan works, that is. Which it never does.

This is a fully-general counterargument that can be used to defend any bad plan.

The fact is, the things that are currently going wrong in the Middle East were not unknown unknowns. They were not even known unknowns. These were well-known pitfalls that have been discussed for years. My high-school history teacher told us in a very stern voice that the Strait of Hormuz was a massively important trade route and that the reason Iran is so dangerous is that they control it.

It was not unforseeable that Iran would close the strait. It was not unforseeable that Israel would try to force America to commit by cutting-off deescalation pathways. It was not unforseeable that a ground invasion of a Middle Eastern country would turn into a quagmire.

It was not unforseeable that Iran would close the strait.

It was. So what? There's no "plan" in existence that may preclude this possibility - of course, except ignoring the treat from Iran until they make nukes, and then face the consequences. Calling it "bad plan" is assuming there's some "good plan" that somehow magically makes it impossible for Iran to close the Hormuz. What would be that "good plan"? I submit it does not exist and can not exist.

If you insist on a military solution, the effects of a strait closure could have been substantially mitigated.

Refilling the strategic petroleum reserve is the obvious one in hindsight.

We could have pressured the gulf countries to invest in pipeline infrastructure to bypass the strait.

We could have waited for Venezuelan oil production to ramp up (or better yet, used the added oil security to stop worrying about the Middle East for good).

We could have brought-in Ukrainian experts to teach our forces about drone warfare before we got into another conflict.

Strategic reserve is being refilled, after being raided by Biden, who dropped it to levels not seen since early 1980s. It's just going slowly, because buying so much at once would spike the prices, which aren't exactly low (even before the war) and defeat the purpose of the exercise. Oh yes, before that, Trump tried to fill it up at $24 per barrel, and had been blocked by Dems in Congress because it was clearly just "a bailout for big oil".

We could have waited for Venezuelan oil production to ramp up

That could take a while, and in the meanwhile Iran would build more missiles and recover his nuclear program. I don't have enough information to say March 2026 is the best moment and why, but saying "let's just wait and see maybe it gets better" doesn't seem to me like an obvious winner either.

We could have brought-in Ukrainian experts to teach our forces about drone warfare

There's not too much in "Ukrainian experts" that is not known in the US and that goes beyond PR. US military (and Israeli military) knows how to shut down Iranian drones. The problem is it's not 100% effective (no defense is) and it needs to be done cheaply, on existing US capacities, because wasting a million dollar interceptor on a 50k drone is unsustainable. There are solutions for that, but most of them are not scaled and deployed yet at the necessary scale, AFAIK. You can have perfect defense system, in a single prototype somewhere in Arizona - it's not going to do you much in Iran right now. Ukrainians won't help much there - they can't magic in a wide deployment of newly designed drone system (not in Middle East, and not in Ukraine). They have some useful battlefield empiric knowledge, and this knowledge is being studied (though sometimes slower than optimal, NIH syndrome is real) but they have no magic bullets. People talk like they have some magic spells that if only we could ask them we could make all Shaheds drop out of the skies - there's nothing like that. "Tons of cheap shitty drones" is a new problem, and deploying new solutions takes time, especially in a system as large and complex as US military. And again, waiting for several more years until US military fully scales to this new thing has the same problem I described above. Plus, of course, dealing with 10x more drones then.

And, of course, none of that would prevent Iran in any way from closing Hormuz. And, of course, Iran would not sit and wait until we make their strategic threat irrelevant - they could sabotage the pipelines built to bypass their zone of control, they could develop new drones that are not effectively dealt with by existing systems, they could cooperate with Russians to integrate whatever recipes Russians found to break whatever defenses Ukrainians figured out - just waiting for more time and assuming everything would be better is not really founded on anything. And there's a time boundary - as soon as Iran has enough uranium to make several nukes and does their first nuclear test, the whole construct goes out of the window and we have another Russia - except managed not by a kleptocrat with a fixation on going back to 18th century, but by an apocalyptic cult with a fixation on going back to the 7th century.

"Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face" is a good argument against overly elaborate plans or plans that don't take account of the enemy's vote. When it becomes a fully generalizable argument against asking for any plan whatsoever, then it's just a deepity.

"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything" is usually attributed to Eisenhower, and is a statement I generally find most reasonable.

No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end.

Helmuth von Moltke

A quote I haven't seen quoted too often with regards to the present armed hostilities involving Iran.

https://nypost.com/2026/03/19/world-news/iran-executes-19-year-old-champion-wrestler-saleh-mohammadi-two-others/

Iran executes 19-year-old champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi, two others in horrific public hangings

I personally think that once US has air domination - it would be good PR if they go after the judiciary. A good assignation campaign and couple of blown courthouses will actually win hearts and minds.

Probably not. I mean, if Iran is anything like any other country I am familiar with, most courts are relatively boring and very replaceable government buildings, and most judges are the "banality of evil" kind of functionaries, also entirely replaceable. They do not control the system, they do not influence how the system behaves (there's no independent judiciary with strong tradition of guarding its independence, AFAIK), they are just a cog in the machine. Sure, if you take out enough cogs, the machine may slow down or even break, but I don't think going individually after each one of 10000 judges is an efficient use of resources. If the regime falls, Iranians will take care of them by themselves, but killing some of them is not what would make it fall.

Context: Saleh Mohammadi was executed for demanding democracy by way of killing police officers.

It is understandable that US media downplay this aspect, they do not want to remind #AbolishThePolice folx that they are just LARPers. This would make them very sad.

You are repeating the claims of Iranian prosecution as if it were an established and indisputable facts. Are you sure it's smart to do that?

If Iranian authorities want to kill someone, they do not need to fabricate evidence (including CCTV footage) against him. They can just do it.

If Saleh Mohammadi is really heroic freedom fighter who sacrificed his life for democracy, are you sure you want to insult him by calling him innocent victim who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?

If Iranian authorities want to kill someone, they do not need to fabricate evidence

Yet the experience with most totalitarian regimes suggests they do. Stalin could execute anyone anytime, from a lowly peasant to a decorated general, and yet he bothered to make show trials with elaborate fictitious stories of espionage and sabotage. A lot of effort has been spent on making people admit all kinds of crazy shit and invent more crazy shit to accuse others of. Evidently, this is how totalitarian society works - you need to have something, even if nobody really believes in it, but you can't simply walk into Mordor murder people, you need to have a story behind it, even if a completely ridiculous one. So yes, actually they need to fabricate the evidence, if they are like every other totalitarian authorities that ever existed on this planet. This is how it always worked.

If Saleh Mohammadi is really heroic freedom fighter who sacrificed his life for democracy,

I don't think he "sacrificed" anything. I think he was a dude who wanted to be free, just as I do. And for that, he was murdered. Under which circumstances - it's hard for me to know, but surely I am not going to believe ayatollahs' word on it. Maybe indeed he went to far. Maybe he didn't and they are lying. I don't really know. But one thing I know is that Iranian police is not a reliable source on these matters.

are you sure you want to insult him by calling him innocent victim who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?

Are you trolling right now or do you genuinely unable to see the difference between "he did not murder policemen" and "he had nothing to do with the anti-government protests and just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time"?

Context: Saleh Mohammadi was executed for demanding democracy by way of killing police officers.

Context: Iranian justice system has the same relationship to truth, facts and reality as cryptobros, tech startup founders, instagram influencers and astrologists.

So what actually is the American long-term plan for Iran? Just keep bombing them forever, for the lulz?

There isn't one. The plan was to pull Venezuela redux, but a) the IRI regime is made of sterner stuff than Maduro's clowns b) they appear to have killed a lot of the people they imagined stepping in to fill the void.

Okay, it's not quite right to say that there isn't a plan, but the backup plan seems to be that we (the US) are going to apply pressure to Iran until they cave. The Trump administration is stuck, because they don't want to look weak by packing up and there's a lot of pressure to resolve the crisis they started, but they don't really have a good way to compel the Iranian government. While the IRI ability to fight back is pretty limited, it's not nothing and (as demonstrated back in January) they are far more willing/able to force their populace to endure hardship than the Trump administration is.

(Also, Israel appears to have distinct goals - if I had to guess, they see the window closing on their ability to borrow strength from the US and are trying to cash that in to do as much damage to Iran as possible)

but they don't really have a good way to compel the Iranian government

Don't they? I feel like blowing up all of their leadership and military is pretty compelling. There's many reports of desertion in their army ranks already.

Also, the pressure to resolve things quickly seems to come mostly from foreign countries like Japan and India that rely heavily on Persian Gulf oil. The US is a lot more independant, and oil prices haven't really risen that badly, so there's no particular need for Trump to resolve this immediately. The only real threat is that he'll get distracted by something else and lose interest.

Don't they? I feel like blowing up all of their leadership and military is pretty compelling.

The record of air power in delivering conclusive outcomes is... very bad.

Well, the short argument is that it worked quite well in Venezuela 3 months ago. It also worked pretty well in Libya and Syria, if you'll overlook the civilians who died in the ensuing civil war. But it accomplished its strategic goals.

But my longer argument is that this is something unprecedented, qualitatively different from any air war the world has seen before. The US and Israel have had decades to plan this war, plus months to build up forces in the region. They have satellite and drone intelligence to locate all targets, complete air dominance, vast numbers of precision bombs, and now bunkur buster bombs to attack underground sites. They're striking something like 1000 targets per day, which is roughly equal to all the bombs dropped over the entire Bosnian air campaign. There really isn't much a ground force could do that isn't already being done from the air, unless you just want that political value of a man in uniform raising a flag. These days we could even deepfake that too.

Well, the short argument is that it worked quite well in Venezuela 3 months ago.

That argument would be very wrong, as would the analogies to Libya and Syria. The Venezuelan operation worked precisely because it put men on the ground to force the issue (and also probably because Maduro's subordinates sold him out). Syria and Libya had ongoing civil wars where western air power was merely supporting a favored faction. Gaddafi doesn't get overthrown if there isn't a massive rebellion on the ground; likewise for Assad. The Trump administration (at best) seems to be wishcasting a renewed uprising after standing by and doing nothing while the IRI massacred protestors, but available evidence is that it's not going to happen.

The US and Israel have had decades to plan this war, plus months to build up forces in the region

Which is why the US is currently rushing a couple of battalions of marines from the Pacific to (probably) seize a couple of outlying islands. The idea that this operation has been meticulously planned over the course of decades is cope.

There really isn't much a ground force could do that isn't already being done from the air

Unless you have ground forces to stop them, air power cannot stop the enemy from reconstituting once the bombing stops. There's a reason modern doctrine for the application of air power isn't "we're going to bomb until everyone's dead." The military value of air power isn't in raw killing effect, it is in the way air power allows you to precisely strike at key targets in a way that disrupts and degrades the enemy's ability to fight back. That can be an incredible force multiplier, but you still need ground forces to actually engage the enemy.

Ah, the "purist" view. So it's not a "real" strategic air win unless it comes 100% from the air, we're not allowed to make use of commando raids or friendly local factions. In fact, it was over before it began, since the mass protests in Iran disqualified the Air Force from being able to win "fairly." I suspect most military commanders don't see it that way though.

Unless you have ground forces to stop them, air power cannot stop the enemy from reconstituting once the bombing stops.

Unlike decadent Iran, which fights with large expensive ballistic missiles that are in short supply, the US fights with cheap mass produced drones like the LUCAS. There's really no need for the bombing to ever stop, unless Iran has one of those force fields from Dune that can only be penetrated by a slow-moving knife attack.

Ah, the "purist" view. So it's not a "real" strategic air win unless it comes 100% from the air

Yes. If you have to utilize ground troops to achieve your objective, it was not accomplished solely through air power. You cannot equivocate between a special operation with air support and and a pure air campaign.

More comments

Keep bombing them until the list of primary targets is completed, then see if there's somebody there to take over or just leave it to smolder and come back when they ask for seconds.

There is no long term plan clearly expressed at this point. Right now there are three outcomes that have been mooted by Trump and Co at different times:

  1. Regime change/the people finally rise up: Iran's government falls. USA makes a deal with the new Iranian government (s) to get everything moving again. Goes to Trump's calls for unconditional surrender.

  2. The United States gets bored and leaves, as Trump threatened yesterday. The gulf countries probably make a deal with Iran to pay tolls to get Hormuz open.

  3. USA is able to brute force destroy Iran's ability to harm vessels in the strait, and traffic resumes. The air war may continue more or less indefinitely, with Iran slowly ground down but the islamists maintaining power over the rubble. Iran becomes increasingly irrelevant. Goes to Trump's plans for naval escorts and island threats.

I'm not sure which seems likely at this point.

What is long term plan for Gaza, Syria and Lebanon? The bombing goes on and can go on ... not forever, nothing lasts forever... but for a long time until there is anything to bomb.

Gaza, Syria and Lebanon can’t cut off half the world oil supply.

I guess until they break. I guess that if this could be sustained couple more weeks people will take to the street. I guess they could start dissolving the state capacity. Barracks, courthouses, prison administrative buildings, police stations and so on.

The protests were wasted but if a couple of cracks show - it will roll downhill and fast. Lets give US at least the time NATO had in Serbia. It took 3 months to bring down Milosevic.

That would at least be a plan. Alright. Let's see how it plays out.

  1. Bomb Iran

  2. ???

  3. Profit

Yes Rico, Profit.

How America Took Lloyd’s 300-Year Oil Empire in 48 Hours

I'm neither pro-iran nor anti-america. I just plain don't get it. I don't understand where this is supposed to lead.

Minimal goal: destroy Iran's capacity and will to make trouble for significant time (years, if lucky decades) Maximal goal: IRGC regime falls

To Underpants Bomber Gnomes obviously.

For real, the Iran "plan" seems to be about as well planned as the Underpants Gnomes' plan in that episode.

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