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I mostly remember the opposite from the time when the war just started: that Iran is doomed, that either regime collapses or the country is thrown back into the stone age and balkanized, that it shouldn't have messed with The Hegemon, that the US armed forces are unstoppable and nearly invincible.
US armed forces were unstoppable have been basically invincible: we destroyed the bulk of Iran's military industrial complex, we can intercept most of their missiles and rockets at any time, we destroyed their drone facilities, we sank most of their navy, and we killed their leaders; America has suffered 13 casualties; one plane was hit by Iranian fire and famously landed safely; another plane was destroyed and the pilot ejected, which lead to a now-famous mission where American forces intercepted him in hostile territory and built a runway to get him out without anyone being detected or killed. That is as invincible as invincible gets.
Godzilla destroys Tokyo and scratches his paw.
The only reason we didn't throw Iran back into the stone age is that we chose not to: Trump did not initiate Bridge and Power Plant Day. The only reason Iran didn't sink American ships and destroy American planes is that they can't.
Is that why you kept your ships at a decent distance?
And the reason you chose not to, is because it would have done nothing to help you achieve your strategic objectives, and would have caused unpredictable consequences that you'd have to deal with. AKA: you couldn't.
What are you implying, that the American ships were chicken?
Are you saying that America lacked the technical capacity to bomb Iran, or that America lacked the political will to deal with the fallout.
First thing is that it is not entirely clear that America actually can intercept most of Iran's missiles and rockets. I'm sure the intercept rate for something like a Shahed drone is close to 100%, but it is certainly much less for their more advanced ballistic missiles.
Second thing is that it doesn't matter if America can intercept most of Iran's missiles and rockets. You need to intercept all of them, a single miss can be billions in damage. 99% isn't going to open the straight. 99% is not going to protect your $10 billion aircraft carrier. 99% gets your THAAD destroyed. See below link.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o
He is saying that it is not clear how doing this accomplishes America's objectives. If our objectives were something like:
Blowing all the bridges and power plants in probably stops 1, but it's not clear how it does long term. It probably mostly stops 2, but I don't think it stops it totally, and Iran having 1% the production they do now is still very dangerous and doesn't get you where you need to be. And it doesn't stop 3 at all. So unless you think we can bomb them into agreement with America it doesn't really matter if we can blow the bridges.
Bombing Iran back to the stone ages would stop their nuclear and missile programs because they’d be dead. We would kill them. It’s also a lot of work cleaning up the body and the mess would annoy our allies so we’d rather just all shake hands.
"I chose to lose because I just don't know what would happen if I really let loose" - every guy who ever got beat up at a bar
Why do you believe that the US can’t blow up bridges and power plants? Do you think we lack the munitions?
I believe the US can blow up bridges and power plants, I just don't believe that blowing up said bridges and power plants would lead to victory.
Rather, since Iran's missile cities have proven nearly impervious to US airpower I suspect that the Iranians would respond by hitting Gulf power plants and desal. Iran has less firepower but Iran is also a huge country while the typical GCC member could be depopulated with just a few hard hits against the right infrastructure. The top buyers of American protection getting Spec Ops: The Line'd is probably an even worse outcome than simply failing and giving up
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