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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26386 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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Fighting a defensive war against the Great Satan put the Iranian government in a very sympathetic position with their neighbors

Maybe on twitter. But Iran's actual neighbors (diplomats, monarchs, officials) wanted Iran curtailed a long time ago. Iran is the rogue state out. Whatever official sympathy might still have existed evaporated when Iran started bombing uninvolved countries.

Somewhat more complex than this. Turkey condemned Israel and America as instigators more so than Iran. The former Saudi intel chief / ambassador placed blame on Israel and America (it is significant that he is permitted to voice these things publicly). Egypt’s Eid sermon made a suspicious nod to Shia-Sunni unity while the Egyptian military builds up in the Sinai. Of course what is said in public may not be the true feelings of the important figures in private. I for one completely distrust anything I hear about Saudi Arabia ostensibly begging America to attack Iran, given fog of war / Zionist leanings in press (helpful to shift blame on KSA)

Would you change your position if Trump said so himself:

https://x.com/clashreport/status/2036518889069183057?s=46

What countries did Iran bomb that were not US allies and did not have US military stationed on their soil?

Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq all have a US military presence, in some cases a large one.

If we accept that countries that host US soldiers are fair targets then this proves my point: all of Iran's neighbors were already hosting US soldiers and they have no sympathy for Iran.

If we accept that countries that host US soldiers are fair targets

I would say that allowing your allies to stage air attacks from your country is as good as a declaration of war.

If Mexico's federal government allowed Iranian drones to strike US cities, the US would likewise not buy their claims of neutrality.

Not that it matters, because neither side cares very much about international law.

I had heard that initially, several countries weren't allowing the use of their bases/airspace for the attacks, but that has since changed after the Iranian retaliation.

If true, it would be one of the bigger own-goals of a national defense strategy in recent memory.

While attacking a state you've already deterred from joining into a war coalition is certainly a bold strategy, it does have a few potential drawbacks. Such as providing a basis for more direct and open military ties that previously had to remain secret.

But there's also the throughput implications. Anyone familiar with the graphs of the strikes per day should remember that Iran basically front-loaded most of its launch capacity in the opening days, and was followed by a week of exceptionally suppression. Those first days were going to be the most significant opportunity Iran had to overwhelm the established defenses at known targets. Well, there's a rather significant difference in the military disruption if you throw 600 missiles in 3 days at 3 states or if you spread it around 6, or 9, and so on.

Of course, the war isn't over yet, and however it ends I'm sure there will be no shortage of people insisting it was fought the more reasonably way possible by their favorites. But absent a reduction of the arab states into Iranian tributaries at the end of this, I suspect that- if those basing denials were true (and communicated)- the costs to Iran over time may not be seen as worth the gains they thought they'd get.

The Gulf states are much closer to Iran than Israel is. And Iran has very limited means to target any US forces that are not located inside the borders of one of the region's countries. Many of the weapons Iran has are much more likely to successfully do damage in the Gulf states than to successfully do damage to Israel or to US forces that are outside of Gulf stats. This is simply because of range. Some of Iran's weapons do not have the range to reach beyond the Gulf states. As for the ones that do, to some extent the longer they fly the more likely they are to be intercepted.

So Iran did not have the option to use its full military capability against Israel and the US. It was either fire against the Gulf states or not use some of those weapons at all except as a deterrent.

This doesn't mean that firing against the Gulf states was necessarily a good idea. I'm just pointing out that the calculation is a bit more complicated.

So Iran did not have the option to use its full military capability against Israel and the US. It was either fire against the Gulf states or not use some of those weapons at all except as a deterrent.

If firing against the gulf countries ends up looking very stupid in hindsight, and retaining deterrence is something useful even in hindsight, you might as well say 'It was either doing something very stupid or not using the weapons except for something useful.'

Nor is your framing a particularly well structured either-or. There is the third option of 'not use those weapons against host nation infrastructure.' Or even the fourth option of 'not use those weapons against countries who did not give offensive basing and overflight to the Americans.' There was even a fifth option, of only using it against American bases, which are typically camps in the middle of the deserts. If that had happened, the response in, and from within, the gulf countries might have been far different. There's even the sixth option of allocating all the close end-weapons against one gulf state in particular, say the Saudis. There are a lot more than six possible alternatives.

I could go on, but I hope it isn't needed. Iran was not in a use-it-or-lose-it scenario, where if they didn't use the weapons now they'd never get a chance to later. Nor was there any obligation, requirement, or military necessity to use them as they had. It was a choice, and while it may have had a reason behind it, it wouldn't be at all surprising for it to be a bad reason that will look worse with hindsight.

It’s important to keep in mind that a sizable plurality of the actual population of these countries is seething with rage that their own governments are Western puppets siding with Israel. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. Bahrain is a “constitutional” monarchy that needed Saudi troops to put down a popular uprising. Iraq is under the control of pro-Iran militias, partially because they are locally popular and partially because they defeated the previous ruler, literal ISIS. Egypt is once again a military dictatorship because for the two years we let them try democracy they elected an Islamist government (see also: Algeria).

They have been largely hosting US troops for decades as a tripwire against Iran and maybe a lesser extent Iraq decades ago.

The governments of those countries have no sympathy for Iran. I'm not disputing that, I'm just disputing the idea that Iran started bombing "uninvolved" countries.

Azerbaijan is the cleanest example. They hit Lebanon just recently, too.

Oman has also been hit, and is more neutral than the others listed, but has hosted US forces on occasion.

Azerbaijan is a decent example. And even Azerbaijan is a close Israeli partner.

Lebanon is more murky. However, Iran targeting anti-Iran forces in Lebanon would just be the same kind of thing the US and Israel do when they target anti-US forces in countries that have sectarian conflicts.

Odd standard, US military bases open your entire country to bombing.

The IRGC is operating on the theory that the gulf is cowardly and the USA has ADHD. They may yet be proven right, but their target selection reflects a preference for efficient soft targets not precise political punishment.

The US and Israel are using the same standards. See the US bombing Iraq and the Israelis bombing Lebanon. The Israelis are hitting way more than just Hezbollah and the US are bombing allied but currently mostly uninvolved militia.

Odd standard, US military bases open your entire country to bombing.

Laos and Cambodia were bombed by the US for similar reasons no?

Odd standard, US military bases open your entire country to bombing.

It's the standard standard since time immemorial. Allowing military use of your territory is incompatible with neutrality.

The IRGC is operating on the theory that the gulf is cowardly and the USA has ADHD.

If you've seen a lot of Arab societies in military conflicts, military experts have pointed that out. Saudi Arabia remains one of the classic cases of the dysfunctional social issues they face when coordinating and launching military activities. It's not a thesis that hasn't been heavily assailed over time, there was a time around World War 2 when military experts abroad made similar criticisms of American military doctrine.

Americans love war but they have never understood it. Americans got their ass stomped pretty hard by the Nazis at Kasserine Pass and it ran throughout the duration of the entire war. All they really had were numbers and industrial production to overwhelm the axis, but zero in the strategy department. It was the Soviets that won WW2, not the Americans. We were the ones who tasked them with tying down and defeating the greatest army in the world at that time, which the Wehrmacht certainly was. But a lot of it still generalizes.

I'm less interested in the military effectiveness of the gulf countries than in the reaction of their civilian population to Iranian bombings in their cities. It seems to me that every campaign that I've seen begin with the assumption "the populace is docile, cowardly, Aristotelian natural slaves who will surrender when attacked" it hasn't worked out that way. Most recently, Ukraine was assumed by essentially every intelligent observer (including essentially all major governments and intelligence agencies) to be a fake country with a population uninterested in dying for a corrupt elite. That has proven untrue, to the sorrow of millions.

I don't know that the Gulf Arabs can convert popular anger into effective military action against Iran, but I'm unsure that the theory they will cower and sue for peace is a good one for Iran to set as their win condition. In the same way that I would caution against building a win condition into USA war planning that the Iranians will sue for peace as a result of aerial bombing.

It seems to me that every campaign that I've seen begin with the assumption "the populace is docile, cowardly, Aristotelian natural slaves who will surrender when attacked" it hasn't worked out that way.

Were you around for the wars in Iraq?

Yes. The USA failed to pacify the population sustainably until, roughly, 2017 when ISIS lost most of its territory there.

I would not say that was how Dubya and Rumsfeld drew it up.

ISIS and Saddam were separate enemies, and had separate propensities to surrender. It is still true that Saddam's forces surrendered a lot. (And the populace didn't really support either of them much.)

The populace of Iraq didn't mostly refuse to resist the Americans because they were docile and cowardly natural slaves, though; they refused to resist because Saddam sucked so much they preferred the Devil they didn't know. I do not believe the same is true for Iran, and it certainly isn't true for the Gulf states.

US military bases open your entire country to bombing.

What's odd about that standard? Would the US government not bomb all sorts of targets in a country that has a government that allows Iranian military forces to operate on its soil, even targets that are not actually Iranian military? It absolutely would, after all the US has spent two decades considering it standard to bomb any target in almost any country in the Middle East at any time. And that's not even when the US government was engaged in an existential war, as Iran's government is now.

The preference for efficient soft targets, to the extent that one exists, is probably largely caused by the inaccuracy of Iran's weapons. If they had US/Israel-tier military technology, they would have preferred to use it to kill Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, and other enemy elites rather than to waste it on blowing up random apartment buildings.

The preference for efficient soft targets, to the extent that one exists, is probably largely caused by the inaccuracy of Iran's weapons. If they had US/Israel-tier military technology, they would have preferred to use it to kill Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, and other enemy elites rather than to waste it on blowing up random apartment buildings.

I'm skeptical. What's your evidence for this claim?

That they're not completely insane. They have very different values than I do, and they are in many ways irrational, but their track record of staying in power for decades shows that they are clearly rational enough to understand that there are much better ways to use limited and expensive missiles (even US missiles are not infinite in number) than to blow up random apartment buildings. They'd love to kill Netanyahu, so I'm sure they would try to target him unless they were worried that this would trigger nuclear retaliation (a reasonable concern). After Netanyahu there are all sorts of other targets in Israel that make more sense to attack than random apartment buildings.

It's not that I think they wouldn't deliberately kill Israeli and Saudi civilians. Sure they would. But they could easily think of more impressive and consequential targets.

It's not that I think they wouldn't deliberately kill Israeli and Saudi civilians. Sure they would. But they could easily think of more impressive and consequential targets.

Well maybe I misunderstood you. What's a "soft target" to you?

Anything that is relatively easy to hit, whether because it does not require accurate weapons or because it is not well defended.

For Iran, Netanyahu is a very hard target. Civilian apartment buildings in a minor town in the UAE is a relatively soft target.

Anything that is relatively easy to hit, whether because it does not require accurate weapons or because it is not well defended.

Would you say that an international airport, for example Ben Gurion airport is a soft target?

Same question about civilian passenger aircraft.

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Basic logic? Assuming geopolitical actors are largely rational?

Basic logic?

What's the logic?

Assuming geopolitical actors are largely rational?

How would it be irrational for Iran to target civilians if it had the option of (1) targeting both civilian and military targets; or (2) targeting military options only.

The logic is that if you're in a war, you'd like to win it.

Wars are won roughly 100% of the time by inflicting military and strategic damage to the enemy's ability to wage war.

Terror bombing is now rapidly approaching 100 years of "not fucking working" and to engage in it is retarded.

How would it be irrational for Iran to target civilians if it had the option of (1) targeting both civilian and military targets; or (2) targeting military options only.

Because you have a limited number of munitions and you don't increase your chances of winning a war by doing 1.

Terror bombing is now rapidly approaching 100 years of "not fucking working" and to engage in it is retarded.

Well, assuming that's true for the sake of argument, the fact is that there has been quite a lot of terror bombing in recent history. Which means that "[a]ssuming geopolitical actors are largely rational" is a bad assumption.

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