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 -
The US has a bunch of different options in Iran, but none of them are particularly good. Ordered from least aggressive to most aggressive:
The US washes its hands of the conflict, and withdraws from the Middle East entirely, including its bases in the region. Arguably this is the best long-term solution since the US presence is nowhere near commensurate with its strategic interests in the area, but doing this now looks like Iran would be singlehandedly running the US out of town, handing it a massive propaganda win and the US a massive propaganda loss. This is not seriously being considered.
The US washes its hands of the conflict, but remains in the region hoping for a status quo ante bellum but prepared to accept some sort of Iranian victory in terms of tolling the straits, regional proxies, etc. In the meantime, US bases in the region are still targets although the US can evacuate soldiers temporarily. Still a major prestige hit for the US and a big propaganda win for Iran, and eventually the US would have to deal with an emboldened + strengthened Iran, so it's just can-kicking while the problem festers.
The current operation: The US continues its high-intensity but noncommital air attacks hoping Iran blinks. If it doesn't, the US tries to wedge open the strait regardless. The best insight into how this would go is this video by Perun (who is easily one of the best defense analysts publicly posting). To summarize, the US has done an excellent job at pulverizing Iran's conventional forces like its frigates, submarines, and airframes, but it can only do an OK job at suppressing asymmetric tools like the "mosquito fleet" that could dump a few mines into the water, its shoot-and-scoot anti-ship missile launchers, and drones. The US could reduce the rate of these quite a bit, but getting them down to zero is implausible. To reopen the strait then, the US would have to heavily subsidize ship insurance, but this alone would be insufficient -- you'd likely see a few brave captains willing to YOLO it but most shipping companies probably wouldn't be willing to go full Lord Farquaad with their crew. Naval escorts would be required. The problem is that the US just doesn't have enough hulls in the region to do the dual mission. If it pulls ships away from the suppression campaign to put them on escort duty, then the rate of Iranian asymmetric fire would likely increase again. European and Asian allies would actually come in clutch here since they don't have a lot of ships with the magazine depth of an Arleigh Burke nor the power projection of a supercarrier, but they do have a lot of frigates that would be great at escort duty. The problem is that allies have been noncommital so far, and, uh, Trump isn't exactly the best diplomat. Maybe he'll be able to blackmail them into some sort of arrangement, but he'll have a steep hill to climb. There's not exactly a lot of goodwill from other democracies to come pull America's chestnuts out of the fire.
Economic warfare: The US tries to strangle Iran's economy by shutting down oil exports. The US has naval supremacy, so doing this to its maritime exports would not be hard. Iran wasn't exactly in a great economic position before the conflict, and shutting down a major chunk of its oil exports would be another severe blow. The best-case scenario is this being the straw that breaks the camel's back and triggers a general uprising that overthrows the regime. But the Iranian state is very adept at suppressing dissent, and there was already a major crackdown before the war started. If there's not a general uprising, then there might be some slim hope for this to make the regime buckle in some other way -- maybe some senior leaders rely on oil exports for their corrupt slush fund, and if this gets taken out then perhaps they try to seize control of the state and negotiate an end. But at this point we're mostly wishcasting. Also, shutting down Iran's oil exports would worsen the global supply situation which would boomerang on the US, and it would probably take more than a few weeks before the effects really started biting Iran.
The US invades Kharg island by air or by sea. The US could almost certainly take the island relatively easily, but stationing marines there for an extended period would expose them to strikes from the Iranian coast. It's a decent ways from the mainland, but not far enough that it would be considered "safe" by any means. People have speculated that this would be used to shut down Iranian seabound oil exports, but that's already very doable with the US navy in the region, so the main point of this would be to use it as a bargaining chip of some sort. "See how serious we are, we're willing to invade sovereign Iranian territory!" That sort of thing.
The US invades Qeshm island, which is situated in the narrowest part of the strait. This removes one of the easiest launch points and lets the US set up a defensive perimeter as well as being another bargaining chip to hand back to Iran to get them to make peace. But it alone doesn't remove Iran's ability to target ships, it just removes one avenue. It's also fairly large, well-populated, and situated closer to the Iranian mainland than Kharg with Bandar Abbas right there. All this puts US troops at much greater risk while still not forcing a decisive outcome.
The US invades a bunch of Iranian islands like Kharg, Qeshm, Kish, Lavan, Siri, Abumusa, etc. This gives more bargaining chips I guess, but I don't know what the other islands would give beyond that. I've heard some people float the idea of giving Musa and Tunbs back to the UAE after Iran seized it from them a few decades ago, but otherwise Iran still has the mainland and can still credibly threaten ships.
The US invades the Iranian mainland to establish a buffer zone between the regime and the Gulf. The larger it is the more effective it would be at stopping shorter range missiles and patrolling for random fishing boats with mines, but this is a massive escalation and would take many tens of thousands of troops at the minimum to be effective, and at this point Iran could switch from targeting ships to targeting US soldiers until it hopes the US loses political will.
The US invades, and seeks to balkanize the country through its various ethnic minorities to render it impotent. This would reduce US exposure over the longer term, but it's unlikely to get much backing if those regions think the US will just abandon them in short order without giving them their own means of establishing deterrence. It would also inflame regional tensions -- I doubt the Turks would like a Kurdish pseudo-state on their border, and ditto for Pakistan in terms of a Baloch state.
The US does a full regime-change invasion and seeks to occupy the entire country to force an end once and for all. The smallest operation could be something with special forces to take out Iranian nuke stockpiles assuming US intelligence knew where they were, but even that would mostly just be can-kicking since they could just restart their nuclear program after the US left. The long-term solution would be to occupy everything, dismantle the nuclear program and missiles, put a Delcy Rodriguez in charge that's more amenable to US interests, then leave ASAP and cross their fingers that it doesn't all revert afterwards. Going this route would require months of preparation, hundreds of thousands of troops, and a large amount of political will that I doubt the US has.
Given that the US is a net exporter of oil and AUS/China/EU are net importers, it would behoove them to do escort duty out of the straits.
China specifically is not suffering as much from this situation; the Iranians have been allowing Chinese tankers through the strait, and the US has not been stopping them. There is no chance of the PLAN entering this war.
It would be good to see the EU step up to the plate but their preferred strategy is clearly to just wait for the whole thing to blow over, and I’m doubtful that they really have the capacity to sustain an escort mission over the long term even if they wanted to.
Australia’s navy, to my knowledge, does not have the expeditionary capability to get involved in a remotely meaningful way. Japan has some ships on paper to contribute (although they could not do it alone) but, even putting their domestic politics aside, it is unlikely they’d be willing to take ships away from their normal duties with China and Russia right in their backyard.
More options
Context Copy link
This is my main question. At this point it seems clear that Europe is basically fine with Iran being an irrational, belligerent regional power that funds terror wherever it can, but will we/they really accept paying energy taxes to Iran indefinitely just for the sake of spiting Trump/Republicans?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m curious what Russia and China will do behind the scenes, and what they’re currently doing without our knowledge. They must realize that the war provides the chance to get anything they want from America if it continues to impact Israel. By backing Iran they may be able to secure Ukraine, Taiwan, maybe even Alaska and Hawaii (who knows?). They have the ultimate Trump Card — pun intended — if they are able to replenish and support the Iranian missile threat against Israel, as this would compel Israel to pressure the Americans they control into making enormous concessions to end the war. This is, unfortunately and obviously, the problem with having such a close relationship with a rogue regime, while allowing their loyalists to accrue so much wealth and power in your homeland.
It's already been reported that Russia is giving intelligence to Iran to help kill American soldiers. I'm a bit worried that Trump will try to do some quid pro quo with Putin cutting off intelligence from Ukraine in exchange for Russia stopping with Iran.
I think the US's relationship with Israel is entirely too close, and we've somehow made their strategic problems into ours. It's absurd that we're basically fighting their war for them. America would be well served by breaking off the special relationship and treating them as any other democracy -- friendly sure, but not whatever the heck is going on now.
That said, the notion that the US would give up Alaska or Hawaii is not a serious one.
More options
Context Copy link
Sir, I am normally very in favor of your takes but my autism compells me to say that there is a less than 0% chance that Hawaii or Alaska are on the table here.
This war isn't existential to the USA, and even in some hypothetical WW3 the USA would rather nuclear apocalypse the world than give up any of their soil (not blaming the USA here, Russia/China have the same stance, it's how you make MAD credible).
I am curious too. I think "not much" right now. I have a pretty high level of confidence in the USA security/spying apparatus in their ability to find stuff out. Less for China, but large weapon shipments are very hard to find (especially once exploded drone/missile components start raining down on GCC).
I think Russia was shipping some treats to Iran via the Caspian, but Israel hit the boat (I assume it was Iranian flagged).
The problem is, and credit to Trump here, there is a very credible threat of American reprisals for arming Iran.
Russia is having a great time with Iran being the center of attention. Every patriot missile that blows up over Tel-Aviv can't be used in Kiyv. And the massive deficiency means they'll be fighting a lot of other countries for them.
China has less to lose (although they don't want another trade war). But they also have been loving the "do nothing, win" strategy against Trump, which is quite effective. They look stable and trustworthy (they aren't) in contrast to the USA geopolitics shitshow. Put another way "Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.'"
As an aside, I'm still deeply confused what they thought they were doing with "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but they seem to have smartened up.
My impression was always that the wolf warrior stuff was entirely for domestic consumption, propelled perhaps a little further than intended by a small number of true believers.
That makes a lot of sense, because it was a pretty resounding failure of diplomacy at a time where China was starting to look a little less scary and a lot more stable when compared to Trump 1
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I was under the impression that occupying the Gulf islands would make it easier than it already is, given the US' complete naval and air superiority, to destroy every boat, missile and drone coming from Iran - and that the current plan, given the redeployment of ground troops to the Gulf, was to do that.
The UAE has promised to help too; I assume they have minesweepers.
Thus the strait can be forced open. Continued US and Israeli bombing of launch sites, military factories and IRGC positions would make it so they could no longer strike back, and would either have to wave the white flag offering major concessions - or hopefully the Artesh would get fed up and turn their guns on what's left of the IRGC, seize power and call for peace. That's what I'm hoping for.
Occupying a bunch of islands will help a little bit, but again the issue is that it's basically impossible to get Iranian asymmetrical strikes down to 0, which will mean the dual mission (suppression + escort) is required to reopen the strait to any significant degree, and the US doesn't have the hulls in the region to do both.
More options
Context Copy link
The question is not "can the USA occupy the islands" or "will occupying the islands make it easier to control the Gulf"
The answer to both is "1,000% yes"
The real question is actually "will the American people support the required expenditure of blood and treasure to accomplish this" and subsequently "will they still support it after the inevitable missile gets through and hits a bulk transport, US naval asset, or US servicemembers"
The missile always gets through, so this will happen eventually.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My guess is option 2, framed around a negotiated ‘ceasefire’. Netanyahu said this week that Iran is no longer an existential threat to Israel. That is obviously a lie, the highly enriched uranium they already have hasn’t even been confiscated, the regime is still in place and angrier, etc.
So why make that statement? The only reason you make it is to set up a US withdrawal that isn’t yours choice as something you acquiesce to. The Israel Hezbollah war will continue, and for that reason Iran will likely continue to fire missiles at Israel and vice versa, but the intensity will probably slow down.
Iran will control the strait and it will have nuclear weapons within five years. It may extract tolls from some vessels, although I have my doubts that revenue will flow to the Iranian treasury. The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs will likely build more pipelines, maybe even north through Jordan and Syria to the Mediterranean. The US will be humiliated, especially once the damage to the evacuated bases becomes clear. The GCC nations, especially the weakest, closest US allies and most vulnerable to Iran like Bahrain and Kuwait will probably sign punitive peace deals with the Iranians. So might Saudi. Behind the scenes they will put a lot into air defense.
Oil prices will slowly come down. Trump will claim he killed the Ayatollah and taught the Iranians a lesson they won’t forget, and the navigation issue is for the locals who use the oil to figure out. Nobody in America cares much about the SoH. His base will believe him. Trump has extraordinary political instincts and few personal principles. A steady flow of US deaths in a long war is poison for the same reason that allowing the Pro-Life lobby to try to force a nationwide abortion ban or heavy limits on congress would be political poison when leaving it to the states washes his hands of the issue entirely.
Or put it this way - Trump chickened out of tariffs that would have been far less damaging to him than 10,000 American military deaths in a full or even partial invasion. Why would he TACO the former but not the latter?
Everything you wrote here is very plausible, and it's probably the modal outcome.
Of course, Trump's TACO tendencies are somewhat unpredictable, and it's also plausible that his advisors are telling him something like "sir, we're on the cusp of victory. If we pull out now it will be a defeat, but if we just give it 2 more weeks..."
I doubt Trump has the foresight to understand that logic is how leaders get sucked into quagmires without meaning to.
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with basically all of this, but I doubt they'll have nuclear weapons in 5 years. Mostly bc they can't be allowed to and these air operations are expensive but also "cheap" relative to the headache of them having nukes.
Although maybe they'll dig "Fowdow 2: now with blackjack, hookers, and 3km deeper" and pull it off. I have doubts.
I'd definitely be drooling if I was a engineering consulting firm who specializes in pipelines though. They are about to PRINT money criss crossing the middle east with pipelines.
More options
Context Copy link
Seems like a good opportunity to test the theory that Israel has a unique grip on him (directly, or indirectly by way of having a grip on his handlers/the top of the USG apparatus).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think anything that ends with “USA leaves without meeting the objectives of ending Iranian support for terrorism and ending the nuclear ambitions of Iran” are failure with extra steps. And really leaving Iran in control of Hormuz is also pretty much a dead end. If you go to war, you can’t stop without a victory of some sort unless you want to destroy credibility as a war-fighting civilization. Nations can easily detect weakness and will exploit it for their advantage. If Iran can defeat the USA with commodity prices, every other country with natural resources or the ability to destroy them with missiles is going to do so rather than be invaded or submissive to the USA. China can do so with rare earths, any country in the Middle East can do so with oil, Egypt and Panama can close their shipping lanes and disrupt trade. That’s not a good place to be in because any time these countries want something or want to stymie the West, the hostage situation “don’t you dare stop us or the global economy gets it” comes out.
I think we need to keep in mind the specific strategic goals Rubio laid out at the beginning and has been sticking two whenever he gives a speech:
We've done the middle two very comprehensively. We're doing the first pretty thoroughly. The last one is hard to define a victory condition of, how do you destroy a "chance?" But the US can say, 3/4 isn't that bad, and take that as a win given the primary goals the leadership has been sticking to this whole time.
Indeed, we've totally obliterated the Iranian military at least once a week since the war began.
More options
Context Copy link
This isn't possible. Specifically the word "ever". An industrial civilization with 1940s tech can make a nuke. "Ever" is a very long time.
I'd accept "5 years", I'd accept "10 years", passed that and there's quite a lot of hopium getting involved.
But "ever" isn't possible unless you 1) essentially genocide them by quite literally bombing them back to the stone age, which isn't feasible or 2) 100% occupy the country like Germany or Japan and reshape them in a more desirable image, which is also wildly unfeasible (although more feasible than 1)
Unless by 'they' one means 'the mullahs' regime'.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But does the spice flow? The previous Iran leadership at least played lip service to working relations with it's Arab neighbors. The new leadership, or fragments thereof, seem much more willing to break norms. The US may be done with the war, but that doesn't mean that the war is done with the US (or at least it's allies/interests). If the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf remains blocked, heavily impacted, tolled etc. no one is going to view that as a US win, not even Americans if gas prices remain high and downstream inflation picks up as result (both direct from gas prices, and indirect through increased energy costs and imports from directly impacted countries).
The previous Iranian leadership apparently told the KSA and the other Gulf states that if they were attacked by anyone, they'd attack the Gulf states. This was supposed to get those states to discourage attacks by the US, but it apparently had the opposite effect, since the various princes and emirs are not France.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The oil point has arguably been widely known since the 70s and the rare earth point was kind of made during the China tariff news phase last year.
Colonial wars can never be fought against zealots. You can fight them against fat local elites who value their lives and wealth and local fiefdoms over the cause, because eventually they will sue for peace or flee. But you cannot fight them successfully against those truly, strongly motivated by an ideology. The US has never been willing to pay the required price to overthrow the Islamic Revolution since 1979, and that is as true today as it was then and as it has been throughout the period between the two.
Against true believers, only total war works. In very, very limited cases (like the Boer War) an extraordinarily capable colonial power can win these, although they require extraordinarily disproportionate resources and are often not worth it even when attempted.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Siege - current aerial dismantlement of Iranian industry and infrastructure, plus consistent effort to close supply lines. This means bombing and mining Caspian sea ports, and pressure on Central Asian countries to do not allow supply from Russia and China.
In this scenario, supplies of missiles and drones will soon run out, and all crypto yuans stashed by Iranians are just 1 and 0 in cyberspace.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link