This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
America has destroyed Iran's military and leadership and experienced a scant dozen casualties. In what sense has this war gone poorly?
Oh IDK, stumbling into a quagmire scenario with a country that can strangle the global economy with barely any effort applied, while needing to either concede on unfavorable terms or invade and dedicate enormous resources to secure shipping across a rugged and populated coast where any one random attack that slips through on the previous traffic of hundreds of ships per day is a major failure. Effectively devoting enormous financial and military resources to return something back to what was already the status quo before starting the war.
All for the strategic purpose of… making sure that all countries never trust in the validity of a deal or agreement with the US again.
More options
Context Copy link
Has it achieved any goals? At what cost?
I'd also score "we never really thought about what our goals are" as not achieving goals. Right now, the main goal seems to be an open Hormuz and stable markets... Which we had before the war started.
The war has definitely depleted Iranian munitions stockpiles (even if we assume that US efforts to strike those stockpiles were 0% effective, which they were not, and all of that depletion is from launching them at all and sundry.)
The US said that (besides self-defense) preventing Iran from projecting power and completing a nuclear weapon were its primary objectives on March 2.
Destroying their navy and missile inventory is a means of preventing Iran from projecting power.
Without inside knowledge of how effective US strikes are, what Iran's stockpiles look like, etc. I cannot tell exactly how effective this has been, but it definitely seems like Iran's ability to project power has been negatively impacted.
This is very true. But what do we do in 5 years when they.... make more?
There's a reason we are bombing their industrial defense production. And, from what I can tell, there's good reasons at this point to think that Israel will just keep bombing those production facilities, particularly if Iran does not agree to an arms control agreement.
But let's assume that "mowing the lawn" doesn't happen. Wanna see me do some really sloppy analysis?
Iran first started producing ballistic missiles in the mid-late 1980s, so completely destroying their production entirely sets them back by 35 years of infrastructure and production. However, that's a naive estimate, because part of what's difficult about ballistic missiles is accumulating the knowledge to build them. I think we can assume that the US and probably more especially Israeli are attacking that accumulated knowledge, but it's more difficult to do that than it is to blow up a bunch of static buildings.
One estimate I found guessed that Iran could build 300 ballistic missiles and an eye-watering 10,000 Shaheds per month in peacetime.
This works out, in a very, very simplistic evaluative way, of Iran having the capability to build the facilities to produce about, let's say, 10 ballistic missiles per month every year, building up from 0 in 1990 to 300/month today.
It's a bit harder to evaluate the Shahed, but let's just say that they started the program in 2016, since there is at least some evidence of it being used in 2019 (they may have acquired blueprints for a similar design around 2004 but I like 2016 since it gives us a nice round ten years). That suggests it takes a mere 1 year to build out the capability to produce 1000 Shaheds per month.
So if we assume for the sake of easy math that Iran has to rebuild their ballistic missile program entirely from scratch and progressively ramps up manufacturing, we find that their ballistic missile production ramps up like so:
720 sounds like a lot, but the US will have built 3000 Patriots in that time at 2026 production levels plus the excess Patriots manufactured as the US ramps up from 600 produced to 2000 produced per year between 2026 and 2033. It's unclear to me what the Israeli production rates are, but 200 annually of Stunner and Arrow-3 doesn't seem insane. So in 5 years it seems plausible that the Israeli or even a fraction of US interceptor capability will be able to handle the bulk of the Iranian ballistic missile threat.
Shahed numbers will be considerably higher, however, since our estimate is that they are 100 times as easy to produce. So in five years, we can expect 72,000 Shaheds, right around the 80,000 my source gives as an estimate of Iran's stockpiles at the start of this conflict. But, BAE is producing 25,000 APKWS guidance kits per year, and last year a new Iron Dome facility opened in Arkansas that is supposed to be able to produce 2,000 Iron Dome rockets per year. That works out to around 125,000 APKWS and 10,000 Iron Dome rockets to intercept the 72,000 Shaheds.
NOW, I don't think there's really any reason to think that the US will divert every single one of their APKWS to Israel, but there are a lot of cheap anti-drone systems coming online now, like the Martlet (which is expected, I think, to be sold to countries in the Gulf, although perhaps not Israel) and Iron Beam, and this doesn't take into account other defenses (like conventional air-to-air missiles or even the 30mm on Apaches). So it doesn't seem impossible that even against Shaheds, in 5 years there will be a lot of cheap defenses proliferated in the region.
Obviously, this is a VERY CRUDE TOY MODEL that is likely significantly off from what we will see in real life. It doesn't take into account cost, either, and from what I understand Iran in particular is under some financial strain at the moment, although they also are building relatively cheap offensive weapons. But the fun thing is that you can plug in whatever numbers you want (e.g. 500 baseline ballistic missiles and 2000 baseline Shaheds in stockpiles, or a residual production capability, or larger production numbers for the US+Israel to represent increasing Patriot and APKWS production, etc.) and see how the math works out.
While I don't think this is "realistic," I do think it suggests that Iran in 5 years will probably be less capable than they were at the start of this fight as regards ballistic missile stockpiles. Meanwhile we can anticipate advancements both technologically and in production from anti-missile systems over in the next 5 years. So there's actually at least some reason to think that the balance of power in the region will shift if Iran's production capabilities are significantly reduced.
I probably should have said 10 years given how hard Iran's ass is getting kicked.
They could speed things up given that Russia is now the premier Shaheed manufacturer. And Russia is no slouch on missile production either. I doubt China would sell them much offensive stuff.
Your analysis is largely sound, western production should have a nice edge on Iran in the near term, ideally. But yeah, only a fraction of it goes to ME. Everyone and their sister wants patriots/Interceptors right now.
I actually think your comment on the attack/defense power ratio is the most important point. No idea how that will go, but I think Iran's power in 10 years (assuming the current situation ends with a status quo except Iran's military-industrial complex is much flatter) is actually entirely out of their hands.
Either, 1) it remains much easier and cheaper to chuck drones at stuff than it is to blow them up, and Iran will inevitably regain an edge due to this dynamic
Or 2) it becomes quite cheap and easy to blow up cheap drones/missiles and then the only way to deliver warheads to foreheads is stealth cruise missiles or hypersonic ballistic missiles and then Iran is just fucked because they simply don't have the economy to do this and "mowing the lawn" becomes laughably easy as the "stealth cruise missile" supply chain is 100 to 1000x easier to break than a cottage industry making shaheeds in distributed basements.
I tend to agree with what you've said here. I will offer two notes: firstly, from what I can tell, Russia has historically been extremely leery of giving Iran anything that could actually hurt Israel). I am not sure, however, if this would rule out bulk Shaheds. Also, there is no reason Israel can't just build their own Shaheds. The US does it. So it's possible (if unlikely) that in 2036 the Gulf region is just "everyone has 500,000 Shaheds" which would be sort of funny in a dark way, I suppose.
Shaheed wars is kind of funny. It reminds me of a Phillip K Dick short story where the cold war goes hot and both sides have massive underground missile factories and after the initial nuclear exchange, both sides go underground and proceed to systemically level each other's continent grid square by grid square with the missiles they make that day.
Maybe it's not that funny, idk
I do wonder if shaheeds/their derivatives (i.e. cruise missiles lol) will become meta though. Especially once you can get little target detection AI on there for terminal targeting and start networking them together and such.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Lol. Dude. Anyone that's actively launching missiles in a war is effectively "depleting their stockpiles." That's not much of an accomplishment when you consider Iran still hasn't even begun launching it's most advanced ammunition, has the largest repository of missiles in the Middle East, and what it 'has' launched has inflicted a great deal of damage already, so it's not as if they used up their stockpile putting on a fruitless light show for everybody else.
Indeed, and as I said, the US depleting its own stockpiles is a big risk case in this war.
I'd be interested in how you can be certain of that, and which specific models you believe they are holding back.
Yes, I agree with this. But because Israel and the United States pulled the trigger, they have the first mover advantage, which means that most likely this arsenal was less effective than it otherwise would have been.
The Qassem Basir, for one.
Interesting, and thanks for the link, it was a good read.
First time I was in school, I ignored the free subscriptions. Now that I've returned to grad school? You better believe I'm taking advantage of everything I can.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Okay. But "we got the Iranians to attack our allies with missiles" is not much of an achievement, or at least, it doesn't indicate on its own that the war is going particularly well.
You neglected eleven days ago to specify what kind of situation would make you say that the five week special operation is going poorly. Care to update that or do you feel that the war is basically already a success since our allies got bombed?
I think you have me confused with Shakes. I'm gonna have to get a real pfp or something!
You know, when you put it like that, you would sort of think the hostile-to-Israel types around here would favor the war more, wouldn't you...
Anyway: I think the operation so far has made progress in its goals: Iranian regional influence has been blunted. However, so far, I have not seen any evidence that the US has yet maximally degraded the Iranian strike complex. Today's CENTCOM briefing assessed that over 2/3rds of Iran's military production capabilities have been destroyed, for instance, so it seems clear that even US public-facing assessments are that Iran's capabilities are degraded but not destroyed. It seems possible to me that the US could reach something much closer to a systematic destruction of their capabilities the course of additional weeks or perhaps even days, although I think the Iranians are adopting a reasonably savvy defensive posture. As I said, without nonpublic information it is difficult to evaluate.
Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes sounds like a Victorian pharmaceuticals company to me. Or maybe a legal one.
I miss names like this. Now they'd be called "Gloob" or something equally nonsense.
More options
Context Copy link
Our names are Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes,
We're experts in reasons and takes,
In opinions and argumention,
prognostication,
In effortposts, politeness, and make no mistakes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, you got me, especially since Shakes wrote the grandparent comment.
More options
Context Copy link
Wait, Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes are three different people?
All I can say for certain is that we are three different Motte accounts!
Three Motters in a Trenchcoat?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
By the literal definition of "they probably have fewer munitions than before the war" then obviously they're degraded, but that isn't a meaningful measure in any sense.
A better measure might be a few days ago, when Israel hit their gas field and they responded by issuing evacuation orders for multiple equivalent targets in neighboring countries and overcoming AD to hit all of them within hours. Personally, I'd call that a clear demonstration of "power projection" and until they are no longer able to reliably launch large, AD penetrating countervalue volleys any claim of victory on the basis of having degraded said capabilities is clearly hollow.
I tend to agree. But it's difficult to verify the current levels of Iranian munitions: smaller salvo sizes might indicate munitions destruction or merely conservation; larger salvo sizes might indicate healthy munitions levels or a use-it-or-lose it mentality.
So the war might end with the US claiming to have exhausted Iranian munitions stockpiles, when in reality the Iranians have thousands of missiles left. On the flipside, the war might end with the Iranians claiming to have barely felt it, when in fact the their final salvo in the war was their last gasp.
It's possible that the war will end in a way that makes it easy to determine the winner, but it also seems plausible to me that the war will end with both sides claiming victory and the real measure of that victory will be measured in subsequent behavior over years or decades.
Very much this, and it's the decision-making process of the the subsequent decades in particular that will... not vindicate, but provide context for whose expectations may have been better grounded.
There are two general parts of state-level decision making in geopolitics: you need the resources to do it, and the sort of political leadership to choose those resources. I am far from convinced that the Iranian system will be better positioned for either in the future, even if the desires to toll the straights of Hormuz becomes the post-war status quo.
For state resources, many things are not just a matter of money, but time and capital. The US and Israel claim to have gone after a lot of military industry, and that is neither cheap or quick to replace, nor are the outputs. The nature of losing years to decades of naval or missile investments is that they may take years to decades of reinvestment to rebuild. Until you build another Navy, I doubt even the most hardline Ayatollah will, say, send a blue water task force to escort Iranian oil tankers to China in a US-china war and dare the US to start another war to stop it, with all the implications that has (or could have had in the middle east).
But political leadership matters to. The Iranian political-economic system was already strained enough that there was a 'moderate' faction of pragmatists who were willing to disagree with IRGC-aligned hardliners not in goals, but in the need for reforms to get there. This war seems to have let the IRGC step in and leave the reformists out, and over the longer term states that don't reform can still be aggressive and dangerous, but become less capable over time. There is also a point to be made about the difference between animosity and the belief of personal distance from risk. Ayatollah Khamenei and most of the Iranian high-level leadership had over 30 years of lived experience of well-justified belief that they could wage asymmetric and not-so-asymmetric warfare against the US and Israel and that they wouldn't be retaliated against. Khamenei 2.0 and his core advisors may hate the US and Israel even more than his father, but somehow I doubt they will hold that sort of belief.
None of this is an argument for or defense of the American attack on Iran, but it seems clear to me that this is a war to try and shape the trajectory of the region, and there's more to the future of the region and relative Iranian or US power than the straits of hormuz or if the Iranian theocracy stands.
I realize you're just jawboning and not advocating for this position, but this would have to make the "Trump 8d Backgammon" hall of fame for copium right? "The war that we launched to bring down the hardline theocratic Iranian regime succeeded, because it empowered the hardline theocratic elements, which will lead to their downfall some years down the road!"
Only if it was presented as a reason to do the war, as opposed to a consequence of how the war turned out. Since Trump made no claim that this was The Goal or The Plan, he gets no credit (and has made no claim) for it.
In theory, the Iranians could have chosen another supreme leader aligned with or signalling support for the reformist camp. That they did not, and would not, was predicted by various people, including critics of the potential war before it started. This was generally preseted as a warning, typically in the form of 'a hardliner is bad (for the US/Israel) because they'll be more aggressive,' but that is in no way incompatible with 'a hardliner is bad (for Iran), because they'll refuse reform.' Whether the 'benefits' of Iran assuming greater opportunity costs outweighs the costs of another (quote-unquote 'more') hardline theocrat just goes back to frames of reference on what time scale, and under what sort of paradigm (i.e. negative-sum versus zero-sum versus positive-sum).
Which, as you note, I'm not making a position on. This is just noting the externalities that come with various dynamics.
(And thank you for recognizing / noting openly that you were not taking my... 'jawboning'?- as advocacy. The expectation of any such observation, or critique, being advocacy / defense is one reason I've avoided commenting much on the Iran conflict while I was enjoying a video game hiatus.)
I agree it's intensely frustrating, particularly as each side seems to have arrogated to itself the right to just say whatever bullshit and it doesn't matter, while assuming that any statement by the other side is deeply symbolic of their evil.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On a long enough timeframe, all one's opponents wind up as dust on the ash heap of history.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wars are not a tally of losses on either side. The US inflicted incredibly lopsided casualties in Afghanistan and Vietnam and still failed, because confusing tactical brilliance for strategic success is a perennial failure of American military thinking.
Also, the US hasn't destroyed the Iranian military.
We sank the vast majority of Iran’s navy, which is itself a strategic goal. It is in fact one of the strategic goals outlined by Trump in his speech when the war began
More options
Context Copy link
A perennial failure of all military thinking, mind you. Sad as it is, we are not uniquely unable to see the forest for the trees.
It's certainly not unique to the United States, e.g. there's a good argument that Prussia and its successors had the same basic problem, though there it was more that Prussia overestimated the ability of tactical prowess to paper over fundamental material disadvantages. Thus getting into deep shit and having to be bailed out. The same could be levied against Japan during WW2. The distinction I would draw is that these people generally had straightforward strategic goals, but their egos were writing checks their armies couldn't cash.
By contrast, I think where the US stands out is the combination of conventional dominance and confused, facile, or overly ambitious strategic thinking. America, like Prussia, keeps convincing itself it's going to get a quick decisive war. But Prussia's problem was biting off more than it could chew, while America's problem is that we have no idea what we're doing. And I don't mean that in the sense of 'incompetent'. I mean it in the sense that we think we're doing one thing when we're actually doing another.
I'd call this a human problem. Breaking shit is fun and easy, thats why kids do it. That's why I still like throwing rocks off tall heights even though I now have grey hairs.
Building durable good systems is incredibly hard and challenging and much much less fun. That's why software engineers get paid so much.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Iran has effective control of the strait of Hormuz and the regime stands, with a new generation of leadership. The nuclear program is exactly where it was before. If the war ends at this point it's a clear US loss.
We bombed it.
And after bombing it in June 2025 it was destroyed for many years and no further action was needed until the mid/late 2030s. Right? Right????
More options
Context Copy link
We bombed it earlier, it made no difference. We can keep bombing the entrances to their facilities, but they can keep digging them out. So either we have to keep bombing forever (which means the war didn't end), or they're going to be able to restart the nuclear program where they left off. We actually have to take the nuclear material and take or destroy the centrifuges before we've actually set them back.
So in your opinion is the concept of a "bunker buster" just a lie?
In the stated opinion of the United States government, they're more of a suggestion, or advertising fluff.
The USA bombed Iran's nuclear capability six months ago, and the government has said repeatedly that it did not achieve its goals of setting back the Iranian nuclear program.
More options
Context Copy link
The Iranians had bunkers deep enough to defeat the USs largest bunker busters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link