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One possible negative consequence of the Iran war that I haven't seen talked about much is that it might encourage both the American establishment and the American public to think too lightly of war with China. More the latter than the former, really - I am sure that the former at least understand the danger of nuclear war and have no interest in getting personally hit by nuclear weapons. But even they might become a bit too reckless as a result of these easy military victories. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the public has very little understanding of military affairs and probably don't really understand the difference in power between China and every other US rival. The way I would put it, the Iran war is like an NBA team playing a college team, maybe even a high school team. Yes, Iran is keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed and are pulling off the occasional successful strike against Israel and the Gulf countries. But that is happening because they are lucky in terms of geography to be sitting next to one of the world's most economically important waterways and are also right next to the Gulf countries. In terms of pure military-on-military action, the US military is dominating while suffering barely a scratch.
War against China would be like an NBA team playing another NBA team, maybe a weaker NBA team but an NBA team nonetheless. There is a danger of insufficient caution causing a series of minor escalations to blossom into full-scale war against China.
This is such a brain dead analysis. What’s the US military “dominating” exactly? What did they achieve after a whole month apart from killing a bunch of useless geriatrics? Every single US base in the region is either abandoned or is operating under routine fire and losing planes on the ground daily. The aircraft carriers are hiding behind the landmass of Oman and Saudi Arabia. Regime change is obviously not coming. Kurds are not rebelling. I have not seen any evidence at all that American bombers can operate over Iran without resorting to standoff ammunition (or well, getting shut down). Fantastically expensive and limited weapon systems for all of this nonsense is mainly being transferred from Asia-Pacific.
Unless Trump can pull off some incredible feat of deal making/chickening out and salesmanship, this is turning into one of the most spectacular military quagmires in modern history. The only consolidation will be that there won’t even be an option of US fighting China anymore so the world might become a safer place for it.
Edit: welp the whole discussion became quickly moot as team domination and lethality once again just gave up, seemingly bored of dominating. I thought I could stop having this idiotic discussions when the exact same thing happened in Bab el Mandeb pretty recently but not so lucky yet. Looking forward to the next round of domination
I think both what you and @Goodguy wrote is true.
On the one hand, the US can clearly bomb Iran with impunity, their air defense seems to do little to keep the bombers away. (The aircraft carriers are indeed hiding, but that might also be an abundance of caution. Are they effective from where they are currently anchored? If so, it is probably clever to keep them out of harm's way, if not, that would indeed showcase the (presumed) effectiveness of Iranian anti-ship missiles.) They probably killed more senior leadership in a few days of war than what the Allies managed between 1933-45. They managed to pull off an impressive rescue operation. The casualties have been just as lopsided as in the Gaza war.
The problem is that you can win every battle and still lose the war, tactical victories are meaningless without achievable strategic objectives. So they turned the Ayatollah into a martyr and are instead dealing with Ayatollah Jr, whose father and wife they just killed in an airstrike. How is that an improvement? They have the firepower to level Tehran, but that would only get them a cozy cell in the Hague, not prevent IRGCs from continuing to launch missiles from 100km of coastline against any oil tanker for the forseable future. They are spending a shit-ton of taxpayer money to dominate a battlefield while also being totally unable to prevent Iran from wrecking the world economy to a degree which is presidency-ending.
I mean, even Operation Barbarossa took six months to go from optimism to 'why are the Soviets not sticking to our plan?', and a further six months to go to 'oh shit'. Trump's plan went well for the day when he killed the Ayatollah, and then he was completely unprepared for Iran not being Venezuela and surrendering at the earliest opportunity, but instead closing the strait (as everyone had predicted they would).
According to Wikipedia, combat range for an F-18 is around 500 miles, and over 700 for a F-35. Note that that's without refueling, which the US has access to via local bases.
Would being closer be better? Well, yeah, you can reach more places, take heavier payloads, spend more time over target. Would it be better enough that there's any point risking even having to maneuver against a missile? Haha no.
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