[HN Gopher] Miscellanea: The War in Iran
___________________________________________________________________
Miscellanea: The War in Iran
Author : decimalenough
Score : 351 points
Date : 2026-03-25 04:27 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| manfromchina1 wrote:
| > More relevantly for us, Iran is 3.5 times larger than Iraq and
| roughly twice the population.
|
| Worth noting that at the time of invasion of Iraq they had about
| 25 million people per gemeni. They now have about 46 mil people
| per wikipedia. All else equal, we are comparing 25 mil to 93 mil
| and not half of 93 mil to 93 mil.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Excellent catch.
|
| I also used this as an opportunity to reference the now
| archived[0] CIA Factbook[1] which does put the 2003 Iraq
| population at 25 million.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114530
|
| [1] https://worldfactbookarchive.org/archive/2003/IZ
| bawolff wrote:
| > And I do want to stress that. There is a frequent mistake,
| often from folks who deal in economics, to assume that countries
| will give up on wars when the economics turn bad. But countries
| are often very willing to throw good money after bad even on
| distant wars of choice.
|
| On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution happened?
| An economic crisis due to a prolonged war leading to a
| revolution? While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least
| possible that something similar could happen to Iran.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Actually, there are lots of revolutions in Europe after WWI,
| but keep in mind that in this case the populations were blaming
| their governments for starting or participating in an
| unnecessary war with monumental casualties. In this case, the
| Iran government has two useful scapegoats and any casualties
| could be easily ascribed to the idiots bombing girl schools and
| not to the idiots sending millions to their deaths under
| artillery fire.
| bawolff wrote:
| While possible they could scapegoat this, hasn't the rallying
| cry for Iranian protests prior to this been "Neither Gaza nor
| Lebanon, my life for Iran" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neit
| her_Gaza_nor_Lebanon,_My_L... - i think we are already at the
| place of the population blaming the government for its
| foreign policy consequences, at least in some segments.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I would not wager money on a revolution coming from this war,
| either. But if a revolution does come as a result of the war,
| it seems at least as likely to be in the United States as in
| Iran.
| nwellnhof wrote:
| I think a revolution caused by this war is more likely in
| countries like Egypt. The Arab Spring was triggered by a rise
| in food prices after all.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >On the other hand isn't this how the russian revolution
| happened?
|
| It happened because Russian empire (and German empire) lacked
| state security apparatus adequate to the threat. It was fixed
| by most authoritarian states after that, so e.g. Soviet Union
| survived for 70 years despite many popular uprisings, which
| happened almost the whole time of its existence. It went down
| only when elites in Moscow destroyed it from within.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Are we talking about Iran or US?
| krige wrote:
| While I agree that a revolution in Iran is not impossible, I
| rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly
| and moderate; after the indscriminate military action of the
| past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd
| again.
| fogzen wrote:
| > While i wouldn't bet money on it, it seems at least possible
| that something similar could happen to the USA.
|
| Fixed that for you.
| bawolff wrote:
| Y'all mostly couldn't even be bothered to show up to vote. A
| population that is too lazy to vote (in a system where your
| vote does matter) is definitely too lazy to have a
| revolution.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| The reason for the Iran war is very simple: Israel's instigation,
| a potential strike against China, and Trump's political
| immaturity.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The purpose of the war is to destroy the Axis of Resistance,
| Iran, Hezbollah and its allies, the only force standing in the
| way of US/Israeli hegemony in the region.
| geraneum wrote:
| That's a purely ideological way of looking at the situation
| which IMO is not sufficient. As the article states, this war
| was not unprovoked either, regardless of whether the
| provocations warrant such a response. Iran is seeking its own
| hegemony. Now, this does not negate your point on the
| hegemonic approach of US in the region. I think this war can
| be viewed as a power struggle between a regional and global
| power that's developing into a struggle dominance and
| survival.
|
| edit: typo
| roenxi wrote:
| Is anyone going to mention what these provocations are?
| I've yet to figure it out after 6-12 months. Pretty much
| everything going on seems to involve the Israelis
| aggressively expanding their borders or viciously attacking
| anyone who might oppose their expansion. I've lost count of
| the number of negotiators they've killed.
|
| Trump has averaged something like 1 bombing run on Iranian
| leadership ever 2 years. Iranian provocations must be quite
| effective at making him see red.
| geraneum wrote:
| > Is anyone going to mention what these provocations are?
|
| Sure, it's not hard to find. These started long before
| Trump. You should look beyond the last few months' news
| cycles. Iranian government's issues with Israel are of
| ideological nature (according to the regime) and their
| open support (financially and militarily) of a part of
| Palestinian resistance and Hezbollah. Iran has been
| active at Israel's borders for years. Their heavy
| involvement (including sending troops) in Syria's civil
| war is another one to name. All of these are the ones
| that Iran openly admits to. You can't explain these away
| with Israel's expansionist tendencies because that's not
| been a threat to Iran. No serious analyst believes that
| Israel wants/can to expand into even Iraq, let alone
| Iran!
|
| The hostilities towards US and vice versa are a whole
| different topic.
|
| Now to be clear I'm not siding with Israel on this and
| not saying that caring for Palestinians is not right,
| just answering your question and naming a few examples.
| Now, it's all happened during many decades and not sure
| if it matters anymore who started it because it's become
| a total shit show that is very hard to reconcile.
|
| You might find it surprising that during Iran-Iraq war,
| Israel was the only country in the region who helped Iran
| against Iraq (which had the backing of the Arab countries
| including Palestinians).
| roenxi wrote:
| Would it be fair to characterise these provocations as
| all involving Iran providing resistance to Israel
| aggressively expanding their borders? Because these cases
| seem to have a tendency to Israel controlling more land
| at the end of the day. It looks like a pretty classic
| situation where an aggressive power builds up in a series
| of "defensive" expansions.
|
| > Iranian government's issues with Israel are of
| ideological nature
|
| I think they're just good at threat assessment. There
| seem to be a lot of Iranians dying of Sudden Acute
| Missile Disease this month. Frankly I'm struggling to see
| what aspect of their actions aren't just common sense
| over the last decade, except for their charmingly
| simplicity in that they didn't make a break for a nuclear
| bomb when they first got within a year or two of being
| able to develop one. Israel and their supporters have
| done a very bad job of offering an explanation of why the
| repeated hits were justified or helpful.
| geraneum wrote:
| > Would it be fair to characterise these provocations as
| all involving Iran providing resistance to Israel
| aggressively expanding its borders?
|
| Considering the results of this war so far and the one
| before, as well as Iran's military strategy, it doesn't
| seem plausible to think Iran sees (or ever saw) Israel as
| a threat to its borders' integrity. This may be the basis
| for Iran's strategy in the region in some version of the
| future, but to extend it to what they've done in the past
| would be hindsight bias.
|
| IMO, the regime is not as much worried about Israel as it
| is about the US. Just compare the number of missiles and
| drones they shot at Gulf countries vs Israel.
|
| But consider that Israel, rightfully or not, can make
| similar claims, which actually conform to the Iranian
| regime's long-stated goal of "destruction of Israel".
|
| > Frankly, I'm struggling to see what aspect of their
| actions isn't just common sense over the last decade.
|
| That's because it didn't all start in the last decade. As
| you get closer to "present" in this timeline, it looks
| more like a one-sided affair. This is similar to the view
| which sees the whole Israel-Palestine issue only from
| October 7th onwards.
|
| > Israel and their supporters have done a very bad job of
| offering an explanation of why the repeated hits were
| justified or helpful.
|
| True, I'm also not sure if this is going to turn out as
| they wish it did. Although the jury's still out, but as
| the article points out, it seems unlikely.
|
| edit: type
| hersko wrote:
| You keep saying Israel is aggressively expanding its
| borders like its some WW2 era land-grab which is
| ridiculous.
|
| Israel has given back more contiguous land captured
| during (defensive) wars its won than probably any other
| country in history.
|
| Pretending the current conflict is because Israel
| randomly wants to take over it's neighbors is silly.
| klipt wrote:
| Israel withdrew fully from Lebanon in 2000, and this was
| certified by the UN, yet Hezbollah kept attacking them
| anyway.
|
| If Hezbollah offered Israel a choice between: peace with
| Hezbollah OR occupy land in Lebanon, I think Israel would
| rationally choose peace.
|
| But Hezbollah has never offered this. Their stated goal
| is complete destruction of Israel.
|
| So if the options are: Hezbollah shoots at you from right
| across the border OR you occupy a buffer zone and
| Hezbollah still shoots at you but from further away:
|
| Isn't it perfectly rational to choose the buffer zone?
| watwut wrote:
| Israel just communited genocide in one place and
| displaced millions in two others.
|
| It "ordered" wast places full of people to lead,
| destroyed bridges, created shoot at will area on other
| side and is getting ready to move settlers there.
|
| Isreal is not defending itself. It is cleansing and
| expanding, feeling entitled to kill at will everyone not
| them.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Did Israel peacefully withdraw from the Golan Heights?
| No? Unilateral annexation condemened by nearly everyone
| in the international community.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > Iranian government's issues with Israel are of
| ideological nature (according to the regime)
|
| Opposition to the oppression of Palestinians is not
| ideological.
| mrexcess wrote:
| >As the article states, this war was not unprovoked either
|
| Using the same extraordinarily broad definition of
| "provocation" required here, can you name a single war in
| history that was unprovoked? And if not, haven't we just
| neutralized all meaning from the phrase "provoked war" with
| our overly broad definition of "provocation"?
| lyu07282 wrote:
| What you see here is the limits of liberal discourse on
| war, it's always 'here are the reasons why the war is
| justified' now let me explain why i'm against the war.
| Then discourse devolves into 'what is war even'? Believe
| in something, anything, dear god.
| ardit33 wrote:
| It is to benefit Israel (so it can anex more territory in
| Lebanon), and it has no benefit to the US. The US had already
| a deal with Iran, which didn't threat its own interests
| directly. It is like leave a snake alone, but once you step
| into it, it will bite you.
|
| This war is only to benefit Israel, and right now indirectly
| Russia (due to the rising prices). Basically, the US is the
| main loser/sucker in this war, and we are all poorer for
| doing it.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Israel is an arm of the US empire. It's a very useful ally
| of the US in the region. And when I talk about the US here
| I mean ruling elites.
|
| The US is doing just fine from this war. The US is an oil
| and gas producer, the largest in the world. So they benefit
| from rising prices.
|
| I'd say the biggest losers are countries like Europe, and
| neutral oil importing countries around the world.
| decimalenough wrote:
| The oil and gas producers benefit from higher prices, in
| the same way that glaziers benefit from broken windows.
| Everybody else loses though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_windo
| w
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| > a potential strike against China
|
| I think this is understated in every analysis I've seen. I
| would bet good money this was part of the main selling point
| for the US. Just type in "China Oil" into any search engine or
| even filter the search to 2023 and earlier. China's oil
| consumption was surging significantly and they get a huge chunk
| of their oil through the Strait. It wasn't until 2024 I believe
| that they started reducing their dependence on oil; which I
| think suggests that they saw the writing on the wall and were
| worried about this exact scenario. China is America's number
| one adversary. If we're making large global moves, there's a
| high chance it's a strategic move against China.
| ritonlajoie wrote:
| I do agree. China has only 3 overseas military bases, and
| only 1 official one, guess where is it ? Djibouti, overseeing
| the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb in the Red Sea
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea.
| ..
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| He writes that the region is not very important to the USA. It's
| not, but it is a strategically important area, not only in terms
| of its location, at the nexus of Asia, Africa and Europe, but
| also because of the oil there.
|
| Now the US is not dependent on Middle Eastern Oil, but Japan,
| China and other countries are. So controlling the region will
| mean a lever of power over those regions.
| fruit2020 wrote:
| So it's not about nuclear weapons?
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| its always oil and 'freedom'
| bluealienpie wrote:
| It was never about nuclear weapons, Netanyahu has been saying
| Iran was one week away for over 30 years. Europe goes along
| as an excuse to support politically unpopular war to maintain
| US support for Ukraine.
| fruit2020 wrote:
| What would you expect Europe to do? It's not like they
| openly support this war. The Iranian diaspora supports it,
| there is the secularism element, but the US doesn't care
| about the Iranian people anyway
| decimalenough wrote:
| The diaspora is happy about the regime being targeted.
| They will be much, much more ambivalent if the US starts
| targeting power infrastructure and innocent people in
| hospitals etc start dying en masse.
| lenkite wrote:
| Power infrastructure & hospitals are already being
| targeted and bombed. Just doesn't make the news.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Power infrastructure & hospitals are already being
| targeted and bombed_
|
| It's absolutely not. If they were being targeted,
| material fractions of them would be getting destroyed.
| Instead we're seeing one offs, which look more like
| fuckups or Israeli nonsense.
| orwin wrote:
| The diaspora somewhat supported it for a week. Then a
| desalination plant was hit, and I guarantee the support
| grew way, way weaker. Now we're 3 weeks in, and the only
| Iranian I keep contact with is extremely sad that the
| outcome is this bad. I won't tell him 'i told you so',
| because unlike people on HN who argue for the operation,
| he doesn't deserve it, but to the 'regime change'
| supporters: I told you so.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| No, he hasn't been saying that, despite what you may have
| read in a random reddit comment. In the 90s he was saying
| 3-5 years. In 2010 it was 1-2 years.
|
| The first time any kind of claim measured in weeks was
| immediately before Rising Lion last year, and guess what,
| the IAEA agreed with him.
| riffraff wrote:
| In 2015 he said weeks. I think we can agree a few weeks
| passed before that and bombing Iran ten years later.
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/jlqXOwYfpdQ?is=woFU_DlsW3Eb5NY
| d
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I think we can agree that being weeks away from having
| enough fissile material for a nuke is different from
| being weeks away from having a nuke. Unless you think you
| just get your fissile material and then pop it in the
| next day
| pas wrote:
| the nuclear weapons program has cost about 2T USD for Iran,
| and definitely makes certain arguments for intervention more
| acceptable, but it doesn't negate the other side of the
| equation. the cost of intervention is still enormous. (and
| since the enriched uranium is an obvious target it is
| obviously even more protected)
| beloch wrote:
| At present, gasoline prices in China have risen by 11% since
| the war started. In the U.S., they have risen by 33%.
|
| The U.S. is dependent on oil and the oil market is global. Even
| if the U.S. is a net exporter of oil, Americans still pay
| increased prices for pretty much everything as a result and the
| economy suffers. The only way around this would be a scheme in
| which domestic oil producers are forced to sell to American
| refiners at pre-war prices, similar to the "National Energy
| Program" that was tried in Canada during the '80's. (Spoiler:
| It didn't turn out well.)
|
| Yes, the U.S. is less likely to see its pumps run dry and U.S.
| oil companies are going to be very happy with the increased
| prices. However, unless it goes the NEP route, U.S. companies
| are going to export more oil creating shorter supply at home.
| Americans will pay the same high prices everyone else will be
| paying. As we're seeing now, the U.S. might actually see even
| higher price increases than countries like China.
| klipt wrote:
| Imagine if the US government diverted the billions spent on
| this war into building out green energy infrastructure.
|
| If everyone had electric cars charging from solar then Iran's
| strait gambit would be much less effective.
| dotancohen wrote:
| American citizens have known since 1973 that their
| dependence on oil puts them at the mercy of every Middle
| East dictator. The governments have known this clearly
| since the 1940s - see the Barbarossa operation. The US had
| literal generations to reduce their oil dependency and yet
| chose to remain dependent. It has nothing to do with the
| current war.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The US succeeded in reducing their oil dependency and the
| country is now a net exporter. That doesn't solve the
| environmental concerns, nor hermetically seal the country
| from trends in global oil markets, but the US's energy
| independence agenda has definitely been successful on its
| own terms.
|
| Unfortunately, it hasn't diminished the number of
| American foreign policy experts who think it's very
| important to fight lots of wars in the Middle East.
| Certhas wrote:
| The article states that it's not important for any reason other
| than oil and shipping:
|
| "The entire region has exactly two strategic concerns of note:
| the Suez Canal (and connected Red Sea shipping system) and the
| oil production in the Persian Gulf and the shipping system used
| to export it. So long as these two arteries remained open the
| region does not matter very much to the United States."
| samus wrote:
| Unfortunately these two things have been the major drivers of
| politics of the last 80 years in the region.
| ruffrey wrote:
| China is a primary adversary for the US. Oil is a major
| resource for both countries, supporting economics and defense.
|
| First, observe the top 10 oil reserve countries:
|
| 1. Venezuela: ~303-304 billion barrels (mostly heavy crude) 2.
| Saudi Arabia: ~267 billion barrels 3. Iran: ~208-209 billion
| barrels 4. Canada: ~163-170 billion barrels (mostly oil sands)
| 5. Iraq: ~145-147 billion barrels 6. United Arab Emirates
| (UAE): ~111-113 billion barrels 7. Kuwait: ~101 billion barrels
| 8. Russia: ~80-110 billion barrels (estimates vary) 9. United
| States: ~40-70 billion barrels (reserves fluctuate with
| prices/technology) 10. Libya: ~48 billion barrels
|
| China is the world's largest oil importer. Stats are hard,
| things get mislabeled due to sanctions, but somewhere between
| 15%-20% of China's oil is-or-was from Iran+Venezuela.
|
| In my view, this partially explains the move in Iran,
| considering a 3-10 year strategic timeline.
| avereveard wrote:
| It seems there's a flawed reading coming from a single point in
| time analysis
|
| Region instability had ben regularly threatening freedom of
| navigation in the last five years
|
| And USA may not consider the individual country strategic, but
| cares deeply about freedom of navigation, because the single
| market is basically the pillar for their hegemony.
|
| Sarah Paine lectures give overall better lenses to look at this
| engagement.
| decimalenough wrote:
| As the article discusses in detail, if the US actually cares
| about freedom of navigation, the war was a massive own goal
| because it looks extremely likely to grant the current Iranian
| regime de facto control of the Strait.
| avereveard wrote:
| Iran already had the strait in ransom, directly and
| indirectly with proxy receiving weapons. You don't get to
| ignore that part and call this a own goal, since inaction led
| to the same effective results.
| ardit33 wrote:
| What are you talking about? The strait was open, and
| tankers were not paying tolls as they do now.
|
| They held the threat of closing it, as a deterrent of an
| attack, and once attacked, they did just that.
|
| You either live in a parallel universe, or are just spewing
| here propaganda.
| avereveard wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/politics/houthi-red-
| sea-a...
|
| Lol there were routine attcaks every time things weren't
| going their way. Whos been in a parallel universe?
|
| And never said closed. I said ransom.
| sveme wrote:
| The strait was navigable until three weeks ago. There are
| very few conceivable paths towards reestablishing this.
| This is absolutely not the same effective result.
| avereveard wrote:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/politics/houthi-red-
| sea-a...
|
| Mhm
| Thiez wrote:
| You realize that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are
| different places, right? Your link does not support your
| argument.
| orwin wrote:
| It seems you can't read a map. And btw it's very
| different targets, Hormuz vessel contain oil, gas and
| fertiliser for the Asian market. The red see is mostly
| foodstuff, cattle and Asian good for the European market.
| Way less impactful
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Same effective results as in it was causing constant global
| inflation and instability?
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > Please understand me: the people in these countries are not
| important, but as a matter of national strategy, some places are
| more important than others.
|
| I assume/hope this was meant to say "the people in these
| countries are not [un]important"? (or just "are important")
|
| As an entirely secular person, I believe every innocent human
| life is important.
| lmm wrote:
| He's speaking from a military, America-first perspective (which
| I suspect may be somewhat affected, because he is hoping to
| convince people who sincerely think that way). The people in
| these countries are not strategically important.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Trying to parse the whole sentence, especially the "but"
| afterwards, the most reasonable explanation is that there is a
| "not" missing.
| pas wrote:
| He emphasizes relative importance, he doesn't claim that the
| actual people are not important.
| triceratops wrote:
| I think he meant to write "not unimportant". His proofreading
| isn't perfect and he has typos or missing words in a lot of his
| work. I'm a fan of the work itself.
| hrldcpr wrote:
| The typo is fixed now.
| righthand wrote:
| > They did not and now we are all living trapped in the
| consequences.
|
| They (rich and well connected) did, but they won't have to suffer
| the consequences, everyone else will. The Pedo of the United
| States is now a billionaire that will walk away in 4 years
| shrugging his shoulders laughing all the way to the bank with
| them.
|
| Not one person that could stop it, did stop it. Legislature is
| sitting on their thumbs pretending not to work for Israel and
| selling us out to big tech and defense spending.
|
| All the Baby Boomers are in the south enjoying the sunshine and
| shrugging their shoulders.
| khhu2bnn wrote:
| The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this
| small circle within the US administration has. You can find
| dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty
| of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality,
| everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization,
| critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf
| destabilization, etc.
|
| In the fantasy imagination of some people, they really think you
| can take out some military targets of another country and then
| the oppressed masses will magically revolt, as they completely
| ignore the failed revolution just a month prior. Surround
| yourself with enough of these people while excluding and firing
| those who don't and this is what you get.
| pm90 wrote:
| Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent
| yes men.
| GJim wrote:
| I don't think that is the whole picture.
|
| I suggest a significant cause is Trump's arrogance and only
| listening to the advice he wants to hear.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Its what happens when your nation state has been raised on an
| unhealthy diet of warrior narcissism.
| orwin wrote:
| It's not all. I tried as much as I could not commenting on
| it, but the delusions of _a lot_ of hn users on the subject,
| even a few whose opinion I respect, were unreal. People who
| are not MAGA btw.
|
| And I'm not sure most of those realise how delusional they
| were, even now. They will probably rewire their memory to
| forget what they believed 3 weeks ago, compress the time they
| were wrong.
|
| I initially thought the 'manufacturing consent' part of the
| war was botched, unlike Irak, but now to me it seems that
| people are much more susceptible to propaganda disguised as
| 'almost true' information on social media, and I am afraid I
| might be in the same boat.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Their key insight is that you don't have to manufacture
| consent when so many voters just love the guy in the White
| House and will stand by him no matter what.
|
| Why waste time convincing anybody of anything, when support
| for the war will just converge on the president's approval
| rating anyway?
| tencentshill wrote:
| The facts are that this administration removed most of the
| top generals in the pentagon a year ago[0]. Notice the
| pattern in other areas of the administration when the
| opportunity for new appointments is created: Loyalty over
| competence and experience in almost every case. There are a
| few exceptions, but most were from His first term
| (Jpowell).
|
| [0]https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/21/cq-brown-trump-
| fire...
| roryirvine wrote:
| It was certainly notable that so many HNers seemed
| absolutely _certain_ that the Kurds would come to the USA
| 's aid, ignoring the fact that America had facilitated the
| one-sided ceasefire imposed on Rojava just weeks before.
|
| A few more sceptical voices brought this up, and were told
| repeatedly that it didn't matter because the Kurds in Syria
| and Turkey are very different from those in Iraq & Iran.
|
| And there's certainly something in that - but it ignored
| the clunkingly obvious point that, if America had been
| thinking at all strategically, a bit more support of Rojava
| and would have demonstrated to _all_ Kurds that "looking
| west" would be rewarded.
|
| It has to be hard for Americans to realise that their
| government has pissed so much of the world off so badly. I
| suspect we'll see further such errors in analysis and
| response before the new reality fully sinks in.
| generic92034 wrote:
| Possibly they think they can make up what they lost in
| good will and cooperation with blackmail and pressure. It
| is doubtful it will work as reliably as in the past,
| though (second order effects even left aside).
| jmye wrote:
| > It has to be hard for Americans to realise that their
| government has pissed so much of the world off so badly.
|
| It is not hard, at all, for roughly 1/3 of Americans to
| understand this. Another 1/3 don't think it, or anything
| past their TikTok feed, matters. The last 1/3 thought
| Team America was a documentary.
| GJim wrote:
| > It is not hard, at all, for roughly 1/3 of Americans to
| understand this.
|
| Sorry, but I don't think they do understand.
|
| America has managed to piss off Canada FFS. And lets be
| honest, you've got to work _really_ hard to piss off the
| Canadians.
|
| Frankly, Americans (former) allies have seen the American
| people VOTE for Trump. Twice. Even if Trump goes
| tomorrow, the (former) allies know what a significant
| proportion of the US people want in a leader, and so may
| be in store at the next election.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| I can't speak for anyone else, but the depth of our self-
| disgrace is pretty damned obvious. (What I can or should
| do personally is less obvious.)
|
| Having elected Donald Trump twice - atop all our other
| failings - is a giant screaming proclamation that the
| United States is unfit for, and undeserving of, continued
| existence as a state or government. The responsible thing
| to do is to hold a Constitutional Convention and dissolve
| the damned thing, and then the individual states can
| figure out how they ought to go forward from there. (I
| don't think current U.S. States are anything like perfect
| but they're what we have left once the United States
| government is gone.)
| jmye wrote:
| > Sorry, but I don't think they do understand.
|
| Sorry, but 1/3 of the country is deeply, keenly aware of
| what an absolute fucking disgrace the last year and two
| months have been for us on an international stage.
| There's no delusion, here, that Canadians are excited
| about being threatened with an invasion, in spite of your
| silly black/white post.
| TitaRusell wrote:
| Turkey- a key US ally- will never allow the formation of
| an independent Kurdish nation near their borders.
| roryirvine wrote:
| Sure, and the question really came down to how much
| autonomy they'd end up getting within an integrated
| Syria. The answer turns out to be "not much".
|
| And to make matters worse, Trump didn't even make an
| attempt to let them down gently - saying "the Kurds were
| paid tremendous amounts of money, were given oil and
| other things. So they were doing it for themselves more
| so than they were doing it for us"...
|
| ...and then, 4 weeks later, expected their Iraqi and
| Iranian cousins to ride to the USA's aid!
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Maybe it's time for us to decide who our allies are more
| carefully.
|
| I will never forgive Saudi Arabia for the content of the
| 28 pages. Those who did 9/11 on us remain unpunished
| because geopolitics demands that we keep good relations
| with their "royal family".
|
| I'd be happy to abandon whatever "alliance" we have with
| Turkey/Hungry, and a few other states that have shown
| evidence that they don't like democracy and are hostile
| to it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > so many HNers seemed absolutely certain that the Kurds
| would come to the USA's aid
|
| I must have missed those, but I would expect HN to be
| able to count. There really are not a lot of Kurds.
| simonh wrote:
| Not forgetting Trump personally ordering the withdrawal
| of all US forces in Northern Syria in his first term, on
| a weekend so none of the generals were around to talk him
| out of it.
|
| This resulted in the Turks moving in, massacring all the
| Kurds they could find, and a few thousand ISIS prisoners
| (including 60 'high value targets') escaping as the Kurds
| guarding them fled for their lives.
|
| However Trump said this didn't pose any threat to the US
| because "They're going to be escaping to Europe."
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trumps-syria-
| withdrawal-i...
| vkou wrote:
| I mean, I assumed that any group of people stupid enough
| to be betrayed by the department of state twice would be
| first in line to get betrayed a third and fourth time.
|
| It hardly seemed an unreasonable assumption.
| pphysch wrote:
| It is a ring of incompetent yes men, but behind those yes men
| is a nefarious foreign influence operation. These guys didn't
| arrive at their bad decisions by accident.
| pydry wrote:
| When you listen to the director of counterterrorism explain
| what happened in the run up to him resigning it fits pretty
| well the theory that Trump is compromised (possibly with
| kompromat) by a certain Middle Eastern country.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| do you have a link?
| pydry wrote:
| Look for the Tucker Carlson interview with Joe Kent.
|
| (Tucker Carlson is weirdly intelligent and thoughtful in
| that interview in a way i did not expect, but Joe said
| the most eye opening stuff... I have a lot of respect for
| him)
| lyu07282 wrote:
| There is this interesting split on the right on Israel,
| Tucker Carlson is one of the few large platforms talking
| on zionism. He also interviewed the US embassador to
| Israel Mike Huckabee who said they have a "biblical right
| to land from 'wadi of Egypt to the great river'" (Greater
| Israel), he also reported on how Israeli is seeing Turkey
| as the next threat to eliminate after Iran.
|
| The left, not liberals but actual antiwar/antizionist
| left has been warning about Zionism and the Iran war for
| decades, nothing Tucker is saying is new, it's just
| nobody ever listens to those voices they have no platform
| are completely ignored in liberal media which is
| exclusively Zionist and pro-war. So when Tucker talks
| about it it's the first time most people ever hear this
| stuff, that's what makes Tucker so dangerous he is a
| white supremacists with a large platform who reads the
| room and recognizes the historic unpopularity of Israel,
| who has built a viable independent media platform for
| himself. Tucker is what an intelligent fascist Trump 2.0
| would look like make no mistake.
| Dig1t wrote:
| >he is a white supremacists
|
| He says constantly that he is against blood guilt, the
| killing of innocents no matter their heritage, and even
| went so far as to say that he doesn't even necessarily
| think the large scale replacement of white people in
| their home countries is a bad thing. I don't know how you
| could consider that to be white supremacy.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, if you ignore maybe half of the things he
| says about Black Americans or immigrants, you could maybe
| not see him as a white supremacist. Tucker Carlson is a
| good political communicator, and he is clever. But he's
| still a bad person.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > he doesn't even necessarily think the large scale
| replacement of white people in their home countries is a
| bad thing
|
| Tell us more about this white replacement theory, do you
| agree with Tucker?
| Pay08 wrote:
| > he also reported on how Israeli is seeing Turkey as the
| next threat to eliminate after Iran.
|
| Good thing that that's not at all true. What you are
| referring to was an (intentional) mistranslation of a
| public comment by an Israeli minister, who said that
| Turkey was their greatest threat after Iran.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| I mean, Joe Kent resigning in protest over the war with
| Iran is admirable, but Joe Kent is also a vocal anti-
| Semite who was upset that US policy was being directed by
| Israel. And I don't mean that Joe Kent dislikes the
| Israeli government or its actions specifically, I mean he
| engages in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and associates
| with anti-Semites like Nick Fuentes.
| pydry wrote:
| These days conflating criticism of israel with anti
| semitism is a very clear, very obvious and very reliable
| racist calling card.
|
| Mitch McConnell (adherent of the great replacement
| theory) accusing Joe Kent of anti semitism gave the
| accusation the same gravitas it would have if Strom
| Thurmond or the Grand wizard of the KKK did it.
|
| i.e. it only serves to underscore the accuser's racism.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Did I cite Mitch McConnell? No, I did not. I tried to be
| clear that I am not accusing Joe Kent of anti-Semitism
| because he is criticizing Israel, and Mitch engaging in
| that kind of rhetoric is only serving to make it harder
| for me to make my point. I am accusing Kent of anti-
| Semitism because he has a history of engaging in anti-
| Jewish conspiracy theories and consorting with neo-Nazis.
| My point is simple: we should not respect Joe Kent. His
| resignation is correct; his reasoning is flawed.
| Animats wrote:
| That used to be plausible. But what new revelation about
| Trump could hurt him? Misuse of office for personal gain?
| Trump Tower Moscow? Inciting an insurrection? Harassing
| young women? Adultery? Rape? Hanging out with a
| pedophile? Blowjob from a 13 year old girl? [1] Those are
| all on the record.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_mis
| conduct...
| jdlshore wrote:
| That last one isn't in the article you linked, at least
| not that I can find.
| pjc50 wrote:
| .. and a substantial domestic influence organization. Lots
| of US donors with US passports handing over good old US
| dollars. Lots of pro-regime news stations. More since the
| CBS takeover.
| scott_w wrote:
| Honestly, the way this administration has behaved makes me
| think someone there is obsessed with playing Total War and
| thinks that's how the real world works. It's all about winning
| battles and painting the map red, white and blue (Greenland,
| Venezuela, now Iran) with no thought to what they want to
| achieve beyond that.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Don't forget prior saber rattling about Panama. Cuba is still
| actively on deck.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| They're obsessed with what real white men did the in past
| centuries, ie old style imperialism, not the current US state
| of imperialism.
| bonesss wrote:
| I think that criticism legitimately undersells Total War
| players (and thereby oversells the administrations
| competence).
|
| Total War involves an understanding and exploitation of high
| ground, rivers, and choke points. Like just about any war
| gamer, with a glance at the map of Iran one arrives at The
| Pentagons stated wisdom on the matter for decades. Geography
| says you invade all of it, or cede the straight.
|
| We have this issue many paces in the world and people just
| don't get it. North Korean nukes are a threat, but the
| unstoppable artillery barrage that would kill tens of
| millions in the first minutes of the war is The Issue. You
| can't have snipers on a mountain ridge over your house and
| feel safe.
|
| Dick Cheney and the Bush family spelled it out over and over.
| They like money and oil.
| scott_w wrote:
| I never said they were _good_ Total War players ;-)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| And here I thought that they acted more like Tropico players.
| bradleyankrom wrote:
| Hegseth?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The failed revolution a month prior may have been the US too.
|
| It's after the ramp up in production of weapons used in the
| shooting war started.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, the protests were mostly genuine. That's what happens
| when your country is so up it's own ass with religious
| totalitarianism that you set yourself up to not have water at
| all in the next few decades. Average citizens generally get
| really pissy when you take away the "At least I'm not
| literally dying" excuse.
|
| The US could not participate in that because we had moved
| assets to south america to fuck with Venezuela. The war in
| Iran wasn't started until the USS Ford had been re-positioned
| back to the middle east.
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| Seriously did you buy this?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Seriously did you buy this?_
|
| Uh yes, water shortages and inflation have a habit of
| pissing people off.
| overfeed wrote:
| The CIA, as its tradition demands, never meddles when the
| conditions are ripe to promote American interests. They
| just let nature take its course from afar.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _CIA, as its tradition demands, never meddles when the
| conditions are ripe to promote American interests_
|
| Straw man. Nobody argued American interests were
| unrepresented on the ground.
| netsharc wrote:
| If you're claiming they've been duped, at least provide
| an argument to say why they're wrong. Preferably with
| links to credible research (sigh, what's "credible"
| anyway?)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The failed revolution a month prior may have been the US
| too_
|
| Probably not. History has practically zero examples of
| foreign- _caused_ popular revolts. When you want your person
| in power, you do a military coup.
|
| What history is littered with is adversaries (a) constantly
| fomenting dissent in each other and (b) levelling up
| convenient revolutions. America has been doing the former in
| Iran since basically 1979. But to say the recent protests
| "may have been the US" is ascribing _way_ too much influence
| to Washington.
| nicbou wrote:
| I have been thinking about this scene a lot recently:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hj_4KIKHRFY&t=60s
|
| America is isolating itself in so many ways. You could rewrite
| that scene and reach the same conclusion.
| SirFatty wrote:
| A swing and a miss.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What specifically about that scene? Video won't load for many
| HN readers.
|
| Apparently it's "The Wind Rises: The Looming War", a Japanese
| anime film.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises>
| csomar wrote:
| Read on the martingale strategy. This is Donald Trump signature
| strategy. Basically, when something doesn't work, you double
| down; and it pays off. This strategy keeps working until it
| doesn't and completely bankrupt the player. Because the
| strategy has been always paying off for the them (djt & co),
| they thought they have some kind of a special skill/power that
| others don't; not realizing that they are just bad at math,
| geopolitics and strategy.
| locopati wrote:
| Trump doesn't care about the results in Iran. He's getting
| richer through graft while making himself look big. He's
| pathetic and we're all paying the price in one way or
| another.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| I suspect Trump may not care about money much, but at the
| end of the life he wants to be some historical figure.
| Similar motive was for Putin to invade Ukraine.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I think it's perfectly encapsulated by Hegseth's comment
| about not fighting "with stupid rules of engagement."
|
| The implication is that, the US's military failures in the
| past have been caused by lefty bedwetters wringing their
| hands about casualties and restricting the military. More
| generally, caused by "woke" policies that are about political
| correctness instead of about military success.
|
| I would bet at least $10 that the top people in the
| administration are baffled that they haven't won the war yet.
| They're saying, we did everything right. We got rid of the
| trans people in the military. We fired the worst women and
| black people in leadership roles. We put a real tough guy in
| charge of the military. We told our troops to stop worrying
| about rules of war and let them off their leash. So why is
| Iran still able to fight?
|
| That's one of the problems with bigotry and toxic masculinity
| and that sort of thing. Not only does it lead you to harm
| people, but it also hurts your ability to actually get things
| done. Thinking that gay people are destroying society is bad
| if you're in a position to hurt gay people, but it's also bad
| if your job involves preventing the destruction of society,
| because it means that you're going to look at idiotic
| "solutions" to the problem. And because it's not coming from
| a place of rationality in the first place, you're not going
| to eventually say, wait a minute, this isn't working, maybe
| gay people aren't the problem. You're just going to keep
| pushing at it harder because you _know_ it 's right, and if
| it's not working then it's just because you haven't done it
| enough.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's not just this administration. Everything with the US
| military has been going clearly downhill since the Millennium
| Challenge 2002. [1] It was, appropriately enough, a wargame
| simulating an invasion of Iran. It was a major event involving
| preparation in years and thousands of individual operators.
| When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by
| unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian side,
| not entirely unlike what Iran has done during our invasion.
|
| Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be
| learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game
| was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them
| from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted
| result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin
| and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align
| strategic initiatives moving forward.
|
| In modern times we increasingly seem to have entered into an
| era where people are willing to believe what they _want_ to
| believe, rather than what they know to be true. And while it 's
| easy to mock politicians and the military for this, this is
| also a mainstay of contemporary political discourse among
| regular people, including those who fancy themselves as well
| educated, on a variety of controversial issues.
|
| I don't know what started this trend, but it should die. At
| least in terms of war it's self correcting. The US can't handle
| many more botched invasions or interventions, and I suspect
| we're already beyond the point of no return in terms of
| consequences of these errors.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
| daemoens wrote:
| The Millennium Challenge 2002 is discredited because it had
| motorcycle couriers that moved at light speed handling all
| communications and 10' speed boats launching 19' missiles.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Well shit, we should have paid attention when Iran
| developed light speed motorcycles evidently.
| mrexcess wrote:
| After being restarted, the red (opposing) force general
| resigned due to the restarted game having what amounted to
| a scripted end, with little to no latitude for the red
| force to exercise creativity in strategy or tactics. Among
| the highlights, the red force were required to turn on and
| leave on their AA radars so that blue force HARMs could
| take them out, and the red force was prohibited from
| attempting to shoot down any of the 82nd airborne / marine
| air assault forces during the assault.
|
| Gen. Van Riper's tactics were apparently discredited in
| 2002 because they were unfair, but Iran seems not to have
| received the memo since their moves bear more than a
| passing resemblance to his.
| pepperoni_pizza wrote:
| We have not gotten quite to the "VDV tries air assault,
| gets wiped out" stage of Iran war yet, as far as I know.
|
| But the US seems to be committed on repeating the Russian
| experience.
| tim333 wrote:
| Similar complaints from Trump the other day
|
| "So, it's it's uh little unfair. You know, you win a war,
| but they have no right to be doing what they're doing."
|
| https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/2033768757688934424
| the_af wrote:
| > _The Millennium Challenge 2002 is discredited because it
| had motorcycle couriers that moved at light speed handling
| all communications and 10 ' speed boats launching 19'
| missiles._
|
| This is not what Wikipedia's summary describes. Now, maybe
| Wikipedia has the wrong summary, but according to it the
| challenge wasn't "discredited". By that point the exercise
| was over, but 13 more days were budgeted for, so the
| analysts requested their forces to be resurrected so they
| could play out the rest of the days, with artificial
| restrictions so that the rest of the challenge was
| effectively scripted and left no room for the OPFOR to try
| novel tactics.
|
| One of the generals (of the blue team) is quoted as saying:
| _" You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the
| next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and
| you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which
| is a better way to do it?"_
|
| Also:
|
| > _The postmortem JFCOM report on MC02 would say "As the
| exercise progressed, the OPFOR free-play was eventually
| constrained to the point where the end state was scripted.
| This scripting ensured a blue team operational victory and
| established conditions in the exercise for transition
| operations."_
| FrontierProject wrote:
| From Wikipedia:"Such defeat can be attributed to various
| shortfalls in simulation capabilities and design that
| significantly hindered Blue Force fighting and command
| capabilities. Examples include: a time lag in
| intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
| information being forwarded to the Blue Force by the
| simulation master, various glitches that limited Blue
| ships point-defense capabilities and error in the
| simulation which placed ships unrealistically close to
| Red assets."
|
| It definitely seems like there were issues with RedFors
| achievments. But the response is still ridiculous. I
| would have also resigned in ReFor's shoes.
| morkalork wrote:
| Implementation details aside, explosive speed boats have
| decimated Russia's black sea fleet.
| lucianbr wrote:
| The game being reset makes sense - time and resources have
| been spent to make it happen, and it's best to get as much
| value from those resources as possible.
|
| Of course this means learning the lesson of how the first
| defeat happened. You reset so that you can learn more
| lessons. If they ignored the lesson of the first defeat,
| that's stupid. But the reset itself makes sense.
| __alexs wrote:
| The reset isn't the problem, the entirely nerfing the Red
| team is the problem. The US took steps to fail to learn
| from the exercise before it had even finished.
| ndiddy wrote:
| > When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by
| unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian
| side, not entirely unlike what Iran has done during our
| invasion.
|
| > Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would
| be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the
| game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to
| prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing
| a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an
| overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged
| game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward.
|
| Wargames aren't like laser tag matches where one side wins
| and then it's over, the point of them is to be a training
| exercise. It's supposed to be closer to D&D than anything,
| where the person playing the opposing forces plays a similar
| role to the DM. If you look at interviews from other MC2002
| participants, essentially what happened was that the Navy
| wanted to practice for an amphibious landing. Due to how they
| moved their ships, the computer running the simulation
| thought that the entire naval fleet had been instantly
| teleported right next to a massive armada of small boats that
| Van Riper had set up, without simulating what would have
| happened if the naval fleet had seen the enemy ships in the
| distance. Additionally, in real life Van Riper's fleet could
| not have held the missiles that he had told the computer they
| were carrying and now firing at point blank range at the
| Navy. The simulator that ran the US naval ships' defenses was
| also not functioning due to the engagement happening in an
| unexpected area, so it was turned off. Van Riper was able to
| sink the ships and defeat the navy _within the bounds of the
| simulation_ , but not in a way that could have happened in
| real life.
|
| This is basically like if I found an obscure sequence of
| chess moves that caused the Lichess server to crash and
| declare me the winner, then used it to beat a bunch of
| grandmasters, then went on a media tour saying that this
| proves that there's some massive flaw with how chess strategy
| is being taught.
| BariumBlue wrote:
| > When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by
| unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian
| side, not entirely unlike what Iran has done during our
| invasion.
|
| Are you saying that Iran is capably fighting and killing US
| personnel, aircraft, and invading infantry?
|
| I am a little confused about the universe you live in. The
| IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of command and
| are effectively moving and acting by momentum, essentially no
| different than a dead man walking.
|
| Do you know the names of any alive people in the IRGC chain
| of command? Have you seen videos or evidence of IRGC doing
| anything to harm US forces other than lob some stuff and hope
| it hits? Where are the Islamic Iranian armies and navies you
| imply to exist?
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > The IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of
| command and are effectively moving and acting by momentum
|
| This was by design via the mosaic defense tactic.
|
| They know the US prides itself on decapitation strikes,
| "taking out the leader of x" was a monthly headline during
| our time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and during the events of
| ISIS/syrian civil war. It's how the special forces
| operated, taking out a "leader", collecting all the names
| they could find in their possession, and taking those guys
| out. In the later days of Afghanistan, they stopped even
| trying to find out who the names were. If you were some
| mid-level Taliban member's dentist, you'd be fair game.
|
| So Iran built a defense for that, a military that does not
| need a central command to continue fighting. They have
| their orders and they'll continue to carry them out.
| Completely bypass the benefits of highly accurate
| munitions, cyber intelligence, etc.
|
| That's the same reason the first round of the Millennium
| challenge won outright. The red-team leadership knew to not
| expect last year's war today, and used their brains to
| exploit the weaknesses of a highly mechanized and
| sophisticated military.
| worik wrote:
| > The IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of
| command
|
| There is no reason to believe that
|
| They have been training for decades for exactly this sort
| of war, and have experienced veterans at all levels
| dudinax wrote:
| War games aren't useful for guessing the real course of the
| war. 'Iraq' was able to prevent a US invasion in pre 2003
| wargames.
| dzonga wrote:
| I learnt something new - wow - we are truly led by idiots.
|
| who rigs the results of a war game and believes the results -
| only an idiot drunk on power.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Perceived? US politicians are all mutli millionaires no matter
| what happens they will be golfing in Hawaii.
|
| At least Roman emperors got assassinated by their own
| bodyguards.
| redwood wrote:
| I see a lot of people throw this "no revolution" perspective
| around when everyone involved has been very clear to the
| Iranian people: that this is the time to stay safe and inside.
| People rising up will take time, and will be highly
| unpredictable. No one said otherwise. You imply "analysts
| already had this all identified" yet you are putting forward a
| supposition here that's just wildly unrealistic.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Donald trump addressed the Iranian people in a video message
| and told them to rise up when the war began.
| redwood wrote:
| That was in January
| ses1984 wrote:
| No actually it was feb 28th
|
| https://x.com/i/status/2027651077865157033
| redwood wrote:
| Did you even listen to the link you just posted? He makes
| very clear in his instructions to the Iranian people that
| they should stay sheltered as bombs will be dropping.
| overfeed wrote:
| Do go on - what were his instructions on what they ought
| to do after the bombing stopped?
| redwood wrote:
| I think you're conflating the details with what he
| explicitly was saying on January 13th
| Pay08 wrote:
| Link?
| ses1984 wrote:
| https://x.com/i/status/2027651077865157033
| erezsh wrote:
| Seriously, all these armchair "experts" are missing very
| obvious truths -
|
| 1) Every authority figure is telling the Iranian people to
| stay inside and wait.
|
| 2) Revolutions don't happen overnight, the same way that
| businesses don't succeed overnight, even though from far away
| it might seem that way.
|
| 3) Official Israeli statements estimate it could take up to a
| year after the war is over for a successful overthrow, even
| if everything is going according to plan.
|
| The truth is there's a lot of people who want this war to
| fail, because it will align with their political convictions
| and hopes.
| enaaem wrote:
| I will predict right now that no revolution will happen.
| Revolutions happen because of fragmentation within the
| regime. If there is one thing that puts all grievances
| aside then that would be an existential war. Just like
| during the Iran-Iraq war.
| watwut wrote:
| Israel does not want functional moderate goverment in Iran.
| It would bomb and kill anyone who tries that. Israels plan
| is to periodically bomb and keep Iran failed state.
|
| It is working on making itself larger cleansing whole areas
| around it and settling it.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Israel doesn't want delusional theocrats running Iran.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| It may not be in Israel's national interest having an
| aggressive Islamist government in Iran, but political
| incentives and national interest aren't always aligned.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Israel does not want functional moderate goverment in
| Iran_
|
| Israel would probably be fine with a moderate government
| in Iran. A moderate Tehran doesn't encourage Hamas and
| Hezbollah to randomly lob rockets into Israel.
|
| Even if Israel disagreed, a moderate Iran balances Israel
| in the region. An Iran that has beef with literally every
| single one of its neighbors other than Turkmenistan
| cannot provide that balance.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > 1) Every authority figure is telling the Iranian people
| to stay inside and wait.
|
| Last week: "Our aircraft are striking terrorist operatives
| on the ground, on roads and in public squares. This is
| meant to allow the brave Iranian people to celebrate the
| Festival of Fire. So go out and celebrate...we are watching
| from above," Netanyahu said, speaking from air force
| headquarters.
| redwood wrote:
| Everyone knew the Iranians would close the strait and that it
| would take time to re-open it. That was the price the
| administration was willing to pay. Put differently, the
| regime's traditional deterrence did not work against this
| administration. You seem to think the administration would not
| have done this thing with what we know now. What makes you
| think that?
| sysguest wrote:
| yeah I did expect US to know all those things...
|
| but what I did NOT expect, is how Iran regime would choose
| strategically suicidal options just to "feel good"
|
| missile-rambo even on non-combatant countries? that'll
| trigger self-defense attacks...
|
| $2M per voyage? woah... the stait-users don't have a choice,
| but "make an example out of" iran...
|
| I mean, iran should have just shot israel with all its
| missiles (select and focus), and bring that "missle
| interception rate" down to 40%.
|
| Now what did iran gain from shooting everyone? making more
| enemies, and showing your weaknesses (96% missile
| interception rate, even from UAE? wtf...)
|
| don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying Trump was right on
| starting the war. I actually think what the fk was he
| thinking back then...
|
| I'm just saying even if you're angry and desperate, there are
| wise choices and dumb choices
| samus wrote:
| The Gulf states are not any more willing than the USA at
| invading Iran with ground troops. The only thing that
| changes by making them angry is that slightly more missiles
| fly into Iran. Which is already accounted for and won't
| magically reopen the strait.
| Pay08 wrote:
| Actually, Saudi Arabia might get involved.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| they couldn't defeat much smaller and weaker Yemen.
| Pay08 wrote:
| That doesn't mean they can't be useful, and they do
| already have a chip on their shoulder wrt Iran because of
| Iran's support for the Houthis.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| Yemen situation is just good indication of how useful
| they could be, and answer is not much. They don't have
| good functioning military.
| rurp wrote:
| I disagree. Even though I think the Iranian regime has been
| extremely incompetent overall their war strategy has been
| surprisingly lucid. They aren't actually risking much more
| by attacking neighboring countries that are already
| cooperating with the US. How much is Qatar's military
| involvement going to move the needle when you're already
| facing a full-on war with the US and Israel?
|
| Raising the overall costs to the US and its allies is a
| pretty coherent theory of victory for Iran. Obviously they
| aren't going to win a conventional fight, but they might be
| able to inflict enough havoc on energy and commodity
| markets to the point that it really hurts the US and its
| allies economically; perhaps enough that they bail out of
| the war in order to stabilize the global economy.
|
| Trump _clearly_ wanted a quick easy win here and does not
| want to see massive inflation at home. Sure he personally
| doesn 't give a shit about Americans but the rest of the
| politicians who enable him do and he's at risk of
| absolutely torching his own party for years if the war
| drags on and costs really get out of hand.
|
| All the Iranian regime has to do to win is not lose for
| enough weeks. If the regime holds out Trump will have to
| either give up and try to pretend this disaster was a Great
| Victory, or he'll launch a ground invasion that will almost
| certainly turn into a quagmire. Bombing civilians makes a
| popular uprising much less likely, so the US is doing them
| quite a favor on that front.
| markdown wrote:
| Yup, Iran is threatening regime change by targeting the
| financial stability of American voters.
|
| It's their only play, really.
| watwut wrote:
| Iran did not made more ennemies. It attacked countries that
| did not liked Iran and hosted American assets.
|
| They are easier to hit and harder to defend then Israel.
| That is depleting defense forces more.
| breve wrote:
| > _Iran should have just shot israel with all its missiles
| (select and focus)_
|
| Iran has deliberately escalated the war horizontally to
| create a bigger mess and to make the military adventure
| more expensive for America and the world.
|
| Iran is saying, "If you attack us, these are the costs."
|
| As an invading military, you're either willing to pay those
| costs or you're not.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| Trump is quoted saying that Iran would surrender or be
| pverthrown way before they would close the strait.
|
| This operation was cobbled together between Trump, Hegseth,
| Rubio and Vance without consulting anyone outside that
| circle. The way they have been selling it, espwcially the
| strait stuff, smells of unplanned developements all around.
| abraxas wrote:
| You elect clowns, you get a circus.
|
| The US has turned into a Wall-e society just getting off on
| entertainment and bored with civilized, thoughtful politicians.
| This is the end result of TOO MUCH prosperity for the average
| American.
|
| They haven't experienced true hardship in generations and we
| (the rest of the world) is paying the price of their hubris.
| pstuart wrote:
| Watching helplessly from the inside is painful. What makes it
| worse is I know people who are intelligent and appear to not
| be hateful SOBs that voted for the clowns, and would do so
| again. It breaks my brain, and my heart.
| abraxas wrote:
| Perhaps they are not as intelligent as you think they are.
| pstuart wrote:
| I believe that highly intelligent people can do
| incredibly stupid things -- I've seen it first hand.
|
| The correlating factor for those two acquaintances is
| that they are both _devout Christians_. I find that to be
| beyond ironic but also makes sense, as that devotion
| parallels the appeal to authority and many churches are
| run by leaders who believe in Supply Side Jesus.
|
| I don't mean this to be inflammatory as it's only an
| observation, but organized religion is not compatible
| with modern society,
| throwup238 wrote:
| You're not the first to make such observations. To quote
| Barry Goldwater (Republican party nominee for US
| President in 1964):
|
| _> Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control
| of the [Republican] party, and they 're sure trying to do
| so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly,
| these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand
| compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting
| in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I
| know, I've tried to deal with them._
| bdangubic wrote:
| Was he describing America or Iran? Hard to figure out as
| we seemed to be in War due to similar people in control
| of another (not)important country :)
| estearum wrote:
| IMO those people you're describing are the worst of them
| all. I can forgive someone too (legitimately) stupid to
| know better. But many people are not that.
|
| https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of
| %...
| Dig1t wrote:
| From the article:
|
| >Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at
| any time.
|
| >It should go without saying that creating the conditions
| where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a
| security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior
| partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error,
| precisely because it means you end up in a war when it is in
| the junior partner's interests to do so even if it is not in
| the senior partner's interests to do so.
|
| This situation is not just because we elected a clown, these
| people donated hundreds of millions to Trump's campaign
| (Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Elison, etc). The
| same lobby (the Israel lobby) has contributed hundreds of
| millions more to almost every US senator, to the point that
| both political parties are pretty much aligned when it comes
| to serving Israel. There are plenty of politicians in the
| Democrat party who are quietly supporting this war because at
| the end of the day they've been bought by the same lobby.
|
| Kamala (the alternative candidate in the 2024 election) has
| her own ties to Israel, and publicly said "all options are on
| the table" to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
| Which means had she won the election she likely would have
| also invaded Iran.
|
| It goes beyond just who we elected, it's huge sums of money
| flowing through our political system and effectively buying
| our politicians.
| abraxas wrote:
| Nonsense. Of course Democrats are also on Israel's side.
| The US will always take Israel's side in any Middle East
| dispute. But it's only this infantile man and his clown
| cart that is stupid enough to go along with any and every
| hare brained idea that Israel puts forth.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We had Israel friendly politicians for at least 50 years,
| all of which who eagerly wanted to fuck up Iran ("Bomb bomb
| bomb, bomb bomb Iran" anyone?) and we didn't because they
| were at least sober enough to understand that it was
| moronic and would obviously be some sort of strategic
| defeat or decades long boondoggle.
|
| No president has ever been this fucking stupid.
| watwut wrote:
| Israel is entirely dependent on USA. If USA says they cant
| attack, they wont.
| markdown wrote:
| But most US politicians are dependent on Israel-aligned
| donors, so the US isn't going to say they can't attack.
| They'll do what they need to in order to keep the money
| flowing in so they can get re-elected.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the US isn 't going to say they can't attack_
|
| America has told Israel not to attack multiple times.
| Hell, _Trump_ has held Netanyahu back before.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Are you sure you haven't got that the wrong way around?
| As an outsider it looks to me as if Israel shouts 'jump'
| and the USA says 'how high?'. Which is bizarre when you
| look at how much support the US gives Israel.
| manyaoman wrote:
| For me that was the best insight in the whole article. Here
| are a few extra sentences for context:
|
| > So Iran would now have to assume that an Israeli air
| attack was also likely an American air attack. It was
| hardly an insane assumption - evidently according to the
| Secretary of State, American intelligence made the exact
| same assessment. But the result was that by bombing the
| Iranian nuclear facilities in June of 2025, the Trump
| administration created a situation where merely by
| launching a renewed air campaign on Iran, Israel could
| force the United States into a war with Iran at any time.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >publicly said "all options are on the table" to prevent
| Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Which means had she won
| the election she likely would have also invaded Iran.
|
| Your second sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the
| first. Obama had similar words to say about Iran during his
| administration and never invaded.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's huge sums of money flowing through our political
| system and effectively buying our politicians_
|
| I disagree strongly with this assertion. But for sake of
| argument, let's assume it's true: American politics is
| permanently captured to Israel's interests.
|
| That _still_ doesn 't explain this war. "I think most folks
| understand that this war was a misfire for the United
| States, but I suspect it may end up being a terrible
| misfire for Israel as well. Israeli security and economic
| prosperity both depend to a significant degree on the US-
| Israeli security partnership and this war seems to be one
| more step in a process that very evidently imperils that
| partnership. Suspicion of Israel - which, let us be honest,
| often descends into rank, bigoted antisemitism, but it is
| also possible to critique Israel, a country with policies,
| without being antisemitic - is now openly discussed in both
| parties. More concerning is polling suggesting that not
| only is Israel underwater with the American public, but
| more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis
| for the first time in American history."
|
| If, on the other hand, we acknowledge "Netanyahu...is
| playing an extremely short game because it benefits him
| politically and personally to do so," we can allow for
| similar levels of narcicism and stupidity in the U.S.
| netsharc wrote:
| > Which means had she won the election she likely would
| have also invaded Iran.
|
| Wow, what an insult, to call her as stupid/cheaply buyable
| as Trump.
|
| I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have had an alcoholic wife-
| beating former Fox teleprompter-reader who would not have
| been able to tell her why it'd be a catastrophe to start
| bombing Iran... As weak Biden was/appeared to be, at least
| he had a competent team (ok, it wasn't competent enough to
| pushback against Adolf Netanyahu).
|
| Probably Harris would've tried to restore the Obama-Iran
| deal like Biden did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%
| 80%93United_States_rel...), a job that Biden failed because
| a particular fuckwit fucked it up before him...
| underlipton wrote:
| There are too many people, enriched by the status quo, who
| won't move until their personal discomfort erodes, even while
| they're watching it get closer and closer (in denial). People
| who are going to be jobless in 6 months carrying water for the
| admin because they're afraid of losing their jobs now. This
| isn't a hypothetical, because it has been happening
| continuously for the past year-and-a-half. Yours truly is not
| exempt, but it's certainly frustrating watching people hem and
| haw from the other side of the line.
|
| I get that people like me have no pull because we're already
| designated losers, but it would be nice if y'all would just
| take our word for it.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "further radicalization,"
|
| If by that you mean Iranians in Iran chanting "better our
| a-hole than yours", I'm not so sure that's radicalization.
| duped wrote:
| No it means people driving cars into synagogues and shooting
| up bars.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Well, there's more than just perceived invincibility.
|
| The alternative is recognizing that you can effectively cow
| large populations of people into submission, no matter how much
| it sucks, and that the people who do this (in this case, the
| Islamic theocrats of Iran) can and will forever be a part of
| the geopolitical landscape with thrall over tens of millions of
| lives, and seek to influence even more. That there will always
| - ALWAYS - be a segment of humanity that has no real chance to
| think differently, to improve their lot, and to peacefully see
| the changes they want made to their society.
|
| The hope in the immediate post-Soviet era of the early 1990s is
| that liberalized representative government would spread around
| the world, and that rules-based order would allow for peaceful
| resolution of problems through democratic processes and
| markets. And for a while, this seemed to be the route. Then it
| became apparent by the late 90s that there were still parties
| who didn't like the general direction that this was taking,
| particularly Russia, China, and at least some of the Middle
| East.
|
| Now that China and the Middle East have become engines of
| global economic growth, there seems to be a tacit agreement, at
| least among the people who matter, than authoritarianism is
| fine so long as the right people get paid and that line
| continue to go up. In fact, it's more than fine; it's perceived
| by these people as more efficient at creating economic growth
| than that messy back-and-forth of representative government.
| And God forbid you have to set up that representative
| government _after_ getting rid of an authoritarian one like in
| Afghanistan or Iraq.
|
| Is it a harbinger of dystopia? Absolutely. But that's the
| reality that we inhabit.
| anticodon wrote:
| West is living in its own bubble of misinformation. Including
| the government.
|
| On many occasions I've read self-soothing wishful thinking
| messages about my country. In 2022 it was that Russian army is
| fleeing, all Russian tanks were burned down, and Russian
| soldiers are deserting from a front lines with a speed of
| 100,000 persons a day. Here on HN. Written by the people who
| had no clue how to distinguish Russian tank from Ukrainian
| tank.
|
| Or in 2022-2023 EU leaders said that Russian soldiers are
| fighting with shovels and stealing microwaves and washing
| machines to extract microchips from them.
|
| Or just recently someone wrote to me that we are living in the
| stone age, whatever that means.
|
| On the other hand, I'm happy that West prefers to live in a
| bubble with no access to real information. And if you try to
| convey real information, they'll call you "Kremlin bot" or
| "North Korean bot" or "Chinese bot". It means that less
| countries will fall prey to neocolonial practices and wars
| because you cannot wage wars and govern colonies based entirely
| on misinformation from propaganda your own media creates out of
| thin air.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear that this war was initiated by
| Israel, who asked/hoped that the US would go along with it.
|
| While I can easily imagine the Trump crew is a bit impulsive
| and unprepared, I am VERY sure Israel went in to this with
| their usual competency, including very clear plans and targets.
|
| If this eventually results in a half decent Iranian government,
| that would be the best thing that happened to the world this
| century! A period of war and high oil prices is a cheap price
| to pay, IF that actually happens.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _an find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb
| 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now
| become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further
| radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other
| US partners, gulf destabilization, etc._
|
| To be fair, one can find plenty of analysis positing everything
| for the Middle East. The pointed criticisim is, in Devereux's
| words: "Iran would thus need a 'lever' closer to home which
| could inflict costs on the United States. For - and I must
| stress this - for forty years everyone has known this was the
| strait. This is not a new discovery, we did this before in the
| 1980s."
| theonething wrote:
| > plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become
| reality
|
| You can also easily find analysis warning of the opposite: the
| risks of not invading Iran. See Nazi Germany and WW2 for an
| example what happens when you fail to contain a belligerently
| rogue country.
| hackandthink wrote:
| That all makes a lot of sense. Mr. Devereux is being more
| realistic this time than he was at the start of the war in
| Ukraine.
|
| My takeaway from the war in Ukraine is: it's going to get worse
| and last longer than anyone ever imagined.
| pas wrote:
| I remember his protracted war posts, and ... indeed there's
| still a war going there, and fortunately it did not even get
| into the anticipated guerilla phase.
|
| Can you elaborate a bit on what was unrealistic? (Maybe you
| have different posts or claims by him in mind?)
| hackandthink wrote:
| I checked the blog, You have a point. Brett Devereux was more
| cautious.
|
| "If you are trying to follow the War in Ukraine, I strongly
| suggest watching the War on the Rocks podcasts for the times
| they bring in Michael Kofman."
|
| I've been caught up in "guilt by association" here. Michael
| Kofman always struck me as a cheap propagandist. (but I
| should shut up now)
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Paying WoR subscriber here. Kofman likes to talk a lot and
| can't interview others because of it. He is also clearly
| pro-Ukraine.
|
| But I never saw him as a cheap propagandist. Not even an
| expensive one.
|
| Despite his obvious allegiance, he regularly criticised UAs
| actions and never went for any of the hurrah-hurr-durr
| delusions you had anywhere else. During the siege of
| Bachmut he repeatedly and clearly said that UA has nothing
| to gain from holding out. I remember him openly critical of
| the sacking of the defence minister, candidly describing
| the problems in UAs recruitment, never hyped up drones,
| avoided predictions and after that first fiasco with Trump
| and Vance last year he did not hold back criticism towards
| Zelensky and not once can I remember him painting the
| Russians as morons. On the contrary, in one episode he
| dismisses any sort of essentialism and related chauvinism,
| this was when refuting the idea that broad parallels can be
| seen between Napoleonic and today's Russia.
| totierne2 wrote:
| Next country to invade is monopoly/risk for 10 year olds inside
| 70 year old presidents.
| wecwecwe wrote:
| Bret mocks the JCPOA, but the west found a way to work with the
| Kingdom of Consanguinity and Public Executions. What gives?
| kybernetikos wrote:
| He wasn't particularly scathing about it - in the article it's
| presented as a decent solution to a difficult problem, just
| that in his opinion too much was paid for it - but that being
| so it should have stayed in place.
| orwin wrote:
| (are you talking about Qatar or Saudi Arabia?)
| D_Alex wrote:
| >Iran would have to respond and thus would have to try to find a
| way to inflict 'pain' on the United States to force the United
| States to back off. But whereas Israel is in reach of some
| Iranian weapons, the United States is not.
|
| This is too complacent for my liking. Every rusty trawler is a
| viable launch platform for Shahed type drones (operational range
| ~2500 km per Wikipedia). Nearly every US oil refinery and LNG
| terminal are on the coast. And then there are floating oil
| platforms (e.g.:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdido_(oil_platform))
|
| The article then says:
|
| >One can never know how well prepared an enemy is for something.
|
| And:
|
| >And if I can reason this out, Iran - which has been planning for
| this exact thing for forty years certainly can.
|
| I'll leave it here for y'all to ponder.
| lmm wrote:
| > Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed
| type drones
|
| And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler out
| of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on its own
| (well, with a couple of tankers accompanying it, but never mind
| that) and hope no-one pays attention?
|
| > operational range ~2500 km per Wikipedia
|
| I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at the
| hyped prototypes rather than the models in actual use. The
| Shaheds have ranges in the hundreds of miles, not thousands.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| 2500 km is a realistic range of you follow the war in
| Ukraine. Kyiv is frequently attacked with Shahed drones and
| it is far from frontlines.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Kyiv is pretty close to the Russian border to its north,
| even Moscow itself is less than 1000km away.
|
| I think the furthest hits Ukraine has been able to achieve
| with drones were on a refinery about 1300km from Ukraine
| controlled land.
| lmm wrote:
| > Kyiv is frequently attacked with Shahed drones and it is
| far from frontlines. reply
|
| It's a couple of hundred miles from the frontlines in
| Kharkiv, and the Russian border to the North is even
| closer.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Shaheds are launched not from the frontline (to avoid a
| launch site being attacked) but I would agree that a
| typical attack distance is around 500 km (which is much
| less than the range stated in wikipedia). Still this
| unlikely the max range of this drone and there is a
| tradeoff - one can increase range by reducing the war
| head mass.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The genius of the Shahid drone is that the fuel is the
| warhead. Look at Shahid attacks - mostly FA damage, very
| little HE damage. They are for killing people and
| destruction of soft infrastructure by fire, not
| destruction of hardened infrastructure by explosion.
|
| The fuel tank is heavily segmented, so they are difficult
| to shoot down. When shot, they lose fuel but continue to
| the target. They get to the target with less fuel, but
| still get there. The HE them detonates the remaining fuel
| load.
|
| A Shahid could do a 2500km mission, and arrive with a
| very small fuel load. That will be effective against
| targets that already have enough fuel to burn there, such
| as apartment buildings, petroleum energy infrastructure,
| office buildings, etc. Less so against places with little
| flammable material concentration such as hospitals,
| military installations (other than fuel and munitions
| depots), roads and runways, etc.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| > And where exactly are you planning to operate that trawler
| out of? Or are you going to send it across the Atlantic on
| its own
|
| China operates fishing fleets all around the globe but Iran
| is not known for this so Iranian fishing vessel in western
| Atlantics will rise suspicions. An ordinary cargo vessel
| heading to the Central America on other hand may sail
| unnoticed.
| samus wrote:
| How to identify a vessel as Iranian though? They can just
| register it in a Caribbean country and give it a less
| suspicious name.
| D_Alex wrote:
| >I think you either added an extra zero or were looking at
| the hyped prototypes
|
| I thought I was clear where I was looking - here, you may
| check for yourself:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Its range has been estimated to be anywhere from between
| 970-1,500 km (600-930 mi) to as much as 2,000-2,500 km
| (1,200-1,600 mi)._
|
| You presented the absolute maximum estimate as if it were
| the conventionally accepted value. That's incredibly
| misleading.
| Arnt wrote:
| I assume that smuggling drones into the US is easier than it
| was for Ukraine to smuggle them into Russia.
| spwa4 wrote:
| These people are used to executing civilians when they are
| the police. That's how IRGC, hamas and hezbollah work. You
| won't see much action from people like that when they can't
| just shoot anyone that they don't like.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| Its harder. 20% of Russians(my estimate) have connections
| to Ukraine (relatives, friends, or were born there) and
| could be Ukrainian agents, there are lots of land routes
| how you can smuggle stuff. Things are not as well connected
| between Iran and US.
| robocat wrote:
| Agents in the US would just be normal citizens asking for
| money/crypto. You'd need to find fools to deceive, but a
| lot of people fall for scams to get small gains. Many
| hard drug users in particular are often rather self
| centered in my limited experience.
|
| Or if you wanted to attack refineries, you could possibly
| select some climate change activists to do it for you?
|
| Or find angry children to do it. Make things go bang for
| fun.
|
| Our industrial infrastructure appears to be vulnerable to
| me (as a superficial opinion).
|
| The real fix is to help poor people in other countries to
| like the US. And work hard at avoiding doing things that
| radicalise dangerous haters.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| I believe all those pools of opportunities are much
| smaller to what Ukraine has in Russia.
| Pay08 wrote:
| It's surprisingly difficult to find ships if they don't want
| to be found. Iran has been able to maintain it's shadow fleet
| for decades for a reason. It'd be more difficult to get a
| boat that close to the USA for sure, but not impossible. What
| is more likely are attacks by the various Iranian terrorist
| organisatons that have been showing up especially in the UK
| [1, 2].
|
| [1] https://news.sky.com/story/four-arrested-on-suspicion-of-
| syp...
|
| [2]
| https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-890851
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's probably an accident, since I would normally expect them
| to claim responsibility and victory, but a refinery exploded in
| Texas the other day: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/valero-oil-
| refinery-explosion-t...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Every rusty trawler is a viable launch platform for Shahed
| type drones_
|
| The point is Iran isn't going to be landing tactical, much less
| strategic, fire on America unless we royally fuck up. It will
| be closer to terror/psyop attacks.
| beloch wrote:
| A few thoughts.
|
| 1. The straight of Hormuz is crazy because of the sheer amount of
| options Iran has to threaten shipping. It's so narrow that they
| can even hit ships with _artillery fire_. No need for missiles or
| drones at all! Lobbing kinetic shells may sound primitive, but
| anti-missile defences are designed to deal with large projectiles
| with minutes or hours of warning, not shell-sized projectiles
| that hit within seconds. If a U.S. war-ship enters the straight,
| they could be struck by fire from artillery that 's been
| concealed for decades before they know they're under fire. It's
| also worth noting that Shahad drones have a larger range than the
| size of Iran, and they're hidden all over the country. Any ship
| transiting Hormuz or any ground force trying to land in Iran
| could face drone attack from _anywhere_ in Iran, or all of it
| simultaneously. A few drones are easy to intercept, but give Iran
| a juicy enough target and they could make the decision to simply
| overwhelm it. Drones are a heavily parallel capability.
|
| 2. There are only a couple of lanes deep enough for large ships
| in the straight. So far, no ships have been sunk outright, and
| that's probably a deliberate choice on Iran's part. If they sink
| a ship at the right spot, the straight could become barricaded.
| Clearing that barricade under threat of fire would be a far worse
| pickle than what we're seeing now.
|
| 3. The critical question to ask is, "How does the U.S. end this?"
| Just continuing to bomb Iran is phenomenally expensive and likely
| won't accomplish much. This is a regime that has been preparing
| for an American invasion since they overthrew the CIA-installed
| Shah 47 years ago. They probably never seriously expected to win
| an air-war against the U.S. and have obviously planned for an
| asymmetric conflict. The U.S. is not going to win this one
| without _phenomenal_ amounts of blood, treasure, and will, but
| all of these are in short supply. A ground invasion of Iran would
| likely be worse than Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam rolled into
| one. The U.S. _can 't_ win this war because they simply can't pay
| the price. Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the
| ability to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding
| to invade Cuba. Iran could keep the straight closed even after
| the U.S. withdraws their forces, and likely will to make sure
| everybody knows they can control the world economy at will.
| They're going to expect a peace settlement, and it won't be
| cheap.
|
| 4. This conflict lights a fire under the behinds of all nascent
| nuclear states. Iran would not have been invaded if they'd
| managed to build nuclear weapons. Even Iran is more likely to
| develop nuclear weapons now. Contrary to what some think, Iran
| isn't going to give up their enriched uranium and end their
| program just because the U.S. promises not to attack them again.
| Something like the JCPOA only works if some level of trust is
| possible, but Trump personally burned that. The best the U.S. is
| likely to get in negotiations is a superficial _promise_ not to
| develop nuclear weapons, backed up by absolutely nothing. If the
| U.S. decides to end the program by force, the result will also be
| uncertain. Say the U.S. locates and extracts Iran 's HEU from
| those underground facilities. How will they ever be certain they
| got it all without occupying the whole country?
| ardit33 wrote:
| Agreed on your points. This conflict, just validated the North
| Korea style of strategy to all regimes out there. It does the
| opposite of what it is intended.
|
| I hope things do get de-escalated soon, as this is not good for
| any party (apart Israel and Russia, which are the main gainers
| of all this mess).
| pas wrote:
| But it didn't really. Iran is poorer than it was before, even
| more of a problem than it was before. NK has two very special
| advantages (Seoul is within artillery range, and it is
| literally in the backyard of one or two relevant superpowers
| over the decades) whereas Tehran's "force projection" is
| mostly through proxies and affecting global commodity trade.
|
| Without NK's hard deterrence (and without being next door to
| its allies) Tehran is an easy target up until the last
| second. And even then what's going to happen if they detonate
| a nuclear bomb? Everyone will sit back and let them build as
| many more as they feel?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Iran is poorer than it was before, even more of a problem
| than it was before.
|
| Iran seemingly is coming out of this mess stronger than it
| was before.
|
| The regime remains unchanged, and is likely less willing to
| make concessions now. Hell, even sanctions on it being able
| to sell oil have been lifted, which is a boon to their
| economy.
|
| They are in effective control of the strait, and justified
| in exercising it now. Yeah, other gulf countries may try to
| circumvent it with pipelines and whatnot, depending on how
| poorly they come out of this war - and it is not like you
| create a pipeline in a few days. Those are big engineering
| projects.
|
| If I were a betting man, which I am not, I think they will
| just resume their nuclear weapons program unchallenged
| after this, and will likely achieve it. It is clear that no
| one can stop them doing so.
|
| And frankly, they should. Every country that can have
| nuclear weapons should develop them, that much is very
| clear, as the last decade taught everyone.
| pas wrote:
| Obviously the current US Mobministration is almost
| impervious to shame, but of course they still have their
| own egoistic expectations to grapple with.
|
| They are not afraid to spend money (and blood) on a
| problem, even if it turns out to be bigger than expected.
| How much? We'll see.
|
| The neighbors are motivated to not live next to one more
| nuclear state. We'll see how much.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > They are not afraid to spend money (and blood) on a
| problem, even if it turns out to be bigger than expected.
| How much? We'll see.
|
| I agree, but it is unclear if "more money" is the answer
| here. Iran is a much tougher nut to crack than
| Afghanistan. Afghanistan is barely a country. Iran is an
| actual, functioning country, with a territory that is
| geographically very defensible. And on top of that, they
| have actually been preparing for this for decades.
|
| The ironic bit is that I thought the Iranian regime was
| on an irreversible decline, as the unrest amongst the
| population was growing in recent years.
|
| The analysis I have read point out that this attack
| actually further legitimizes the regime and takes steam
| away from internal unrest, especially if Iran comes out
| on top.
|
| Every authoritarian government needs an enemy. The US-
| Israel axis provided a very real, tangible one.
| pas wrote:
| > The analysis I have read point out that this attack
| actually further legitimizes the regime and takes steam
| away from internal unrest, especially if Iran comes out
| on top.
|
| Yes. Unfortunately both things can be true (irreversible
| decline) and solidified regime due to any external
| intervention.
| hersko wrote:
| > Iran seemingly is coming out of this mess stronger than
| it was before.
|
| This is a wild take. Their top leaders and generals have
| been killed, they have no control over their own
| airspace, have their military and civilian infrastructure
| completely at the mercy of their enemies, and have no
| navy/airforce any more.
|
| Oh, and their currency collapsed.
|
| But other than that they are doing great.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Yeah, and for some reason this place that has "military
| and civilian infrastructure" completely at the mercy of
| their enemies is right now exercising full control of one
| extremely important sea trade route, and is wreaking
| havoc on all gulf states allied to the US, and is
| successfully hitting targets on Israel.
|
| Facts have this annoying tendency of getting in the way
| of propaganda.
| hersko wrote:
| Explain how they are better off than when the war
| started.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Since you seemingly have trouble reading text, I'll try
| to condense it in some bullet points.
|
| Unfortunately HN has no crayon functionality:
|
| 1. Regime still in power, legitimized by the defense
| against foreign agressors.
|
| 2. Internal unrest loses steam.
|
| 3. Effective control of the strait of Hormuz, being able
| to, for example, dictate who is allowed to pass through
| and/or demand tolls for safe passage.
|
| 4. Weakening of the US presence in the Gulf countries. In
| particular the destruction of radar systems. Those things
| are expensive.
|
| 5. Lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil, at a time where
| the resource is very expensive.
|
| 6. Likely will be able to pursue its nuclear ambitions
| undeterred.
| hersko wrote:
| 1) What defense? They have been punching back but have
| been unable to stop enemy strikes. Do you understand what
| the word "defense" means?
|
| 2) That happened before the war, and the protesters have
| been told to hold off for now. Its completely irrelevant
| to this war.
|
| 3) They control it for now. We'll see how long they can
| continue threatening global trade. My money is not for
| long. [1]
|
| 4) Attacking radar systems is not weakening the US
| presence in gulf countries. What they have succeeded in
| doing is attacking almost every gulf country souring
| relations.
|
| 5) This makes no difference since they were selling to
| russia and china regardless
|
| 6) This makes no sense, as they had operational Nuclear
| facilities up until the moment Israel/US blew them up.
| There is no reason to think we wouldn't do it again.
|
| [1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/bahrain-uae-
| join-20-oth...
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Needless to say, I think you are full of shit.
|
| But we will see in the coming days and weeks how things
| progress.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Counter point to 4. The Israeli's wouldn't be trying to kill
| the Iranian leaders if they hadn't spent the last 40 years
| waging a proxy war against Israel.
| pas wrote:
| Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which
| they could have spent on water desalination for example.
|
| Yes having the deterrent is strategically beneficial, but
| working toward it paints a huge target on your back, while you
| need to pay for development, endure sanctions, etc.
|
| Any state considering such weapons development already knows
| this. So this war is not new information.
|
| And it's far from over yet.
|
| Iran could very well end up cut off from the strait as rival
| gulf states build pipelines, rail, and drone defenses. (Sure
| this kind of long term thinking is not characteristic of the
| actors involved, but politics change easier around Iran than
| inside it.)
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which
| they could have spent on water desalination for example.
|
| (Side note: That... seems like a very high figure to me?) For
| comparison the US spent close to $1 trillion in 2024 on the
| military. It _could have_ saved lives and spent that money on
| healthcare. But that 's not how govts work. Iran didn't get a
| drawstring bag with 2T in it and chose to throw it all on
| nukes.
|
| Additionally, you're trying to bring a (totally valid tbf)
| logical argument ("Desalination is critical and an excellent
| place to spend money that's not going into saving lives") to
| a government that behaves like a cornered wild animal. It
| _will_ act to save itself first, even if attacking the
| aggressor hurts itself too in the process.
| pas wrote:
| > It will act to save itself first, even if attacking the
| aggressor hurts itself too in the process.
|
| Of course, but as we see simply focusing on ground forces,
| drones, and anti-air defenses would be strictly _better_.
| (Because they wouldn 't be this sanctioned, and they could
| even have a civilian nuclear energy program too.)
|
| > 2T USD
|
| It's a number coming from an Iranian trade official.
|
| I heard it in this video:
| https://youtu.be/OJAcvqmWuv4?t=1084 and unfortunately
| there's no source cited, but I think it's this one: "As
| former Iranian diplomat Qasem Mohebali admitted on May 20,
| 2025, "uranium enrichment has cost the country close to two
| trillion dollars" and imposed massive sanctions yet
| continues largely as a matter of national pride rather than
| economic logic."
|
| https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/nuclear/iaea-report-and-
| geo...
|
| see also https://freeiransn.com/the-two-trillion-dollar-
| drain-irans-m...
| nearbuy wrote:
| It can't be 2T USD. That's about 60 times the cost of the
| Manhattan project in today's dollars. It could maybe be
| 2T Iranian rials.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| > It's so narrow that they can even hit ships with artillery
| fire.
|
| I'm not a military export but it doesn't look like a very good
| option. To get accurate targeting information Iran will have to
| use radars. Radars can be detected and destroyed given that the
| US has air dominance. Also as soon as artillery will start to
| fire their position will be calculated by counter-battery
| radars (and they will be destroyed again thanks to air
| dominance).
|
| So drones (both UAV and unmanned USV) are likely more viable
| options for Iran.
| pjc50 wrote:
| During daytime, a 24 mile artillery hit on a ship the size
| and speed of an oil tanker is entirely within the capability
| of WW2-era naval gunnery by optics alone. Provided they have
| time for a few ranging salvoes.
|
| (HMS Warspite, a WW1 era ship, managed a 24km hit on another
| moving ship!)
| nprz wrote:
| OP forgot to mention just mining the strait, which is also an
| option.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > This conflict lights a fire under the behinds of all nascent
| nuclear states. Iran would not have been invaded if they'd
| managed to build nuclear weapons.
|
| Replace "Iran" with "Ukraine", the difference being that the
| latter gave them away.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > If they sink a ship at the right spot, the straight could
| become barricaded.
|
| Just a minor point, but, the shipping routes are thin, but they
| are not _that_ thin. It would take several ships to do that.
|
| > Unfortunately, the straight of Hormuz gives Iran the ability
| to prevent Trump from simply TACO'ing out and proceeding to
| invade Cuba.
|
| Iran already proposed a soft-victory condition that Trump could
| use to TACO-out. He can just claim it's Europe problem, so
| Europe deal with the toll.
|
| It's Israel that won't allow TACO.
| johnohara wrote:
| The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M
| per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel.
|
| The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers
| payment in yuan, not dollars.
|
| If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful
| in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the
| dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for
| trading energy.
| ardit33 wrote:
| No one in the US asked for this. Such a dumb move from the
| current administration.
| duskdozer wrote:
| The traders with a five-minute preview of trump's tweets beg
| to differ
| beej71 wrote:
| I've often wondered why the stock market oscillates while
| Trump is in office. If I just knew a little in advance...
| eigenspace wrote:
| Who could have possibly guessed that when voting for
| fascists, they'd start doing the same thing as all the other
| fascists.
| dsign wrote:
| You can't say that. Trump is very inconsistent and a
| consummated liar, so plenty of people didn't believe on his
| promises to deliver fascism. And plenty of people did
| believe on his promise to end wars. /s
|
| Whether your little black heart wishes concentration camps
| or you're just hoping your paycheck goes a bit further,
| voting for a con man is a terrible idea.
| eigenspace wrote:
| You write "/s" but that's unironically the logic a lot of
| these idiot enablers use.
|
| "Oh he's just trolling", "it's a negotiation tactic,
| didn't you read his book?", "chill out, it's just a
| joke", "but what about OBAMA!?"
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| I mean it can't be worse than Biden right? RIGHT?
| fogzen wrote:
| Yeah who could have guessed electing a narcissistic moron
| surrounded by incompetent clowns would result in dumb moves?
| samrus wrote:
| It would legitimately be hilarious though if the result of this
| conflict was iran being the one to enact regime change. In
| terms of the global order
| physicles wrote:
| Heh. Trump asks the oracle at Delphi what will happen if he
| launches the war.
|
| "The war will surely achieve regime change," replies the
| oracle.
|
| "Great, let's go," says Trump, who never read Herodotus.
| sysguest wrote:
| idk this move, along with firing missiles even to non-combatant
| countries, is going to fuk-up iran...
|
| I mean, even before the $2M toll, if you're
| kuwait/UAE/saudi/etc, what choice do you have? form a coalition
| against iran
|
| now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll the
| ships...
|
| so what choice do all those strait-using countries have? pay
| $2M or more, even after US leaves?
|
| nope... they'll form a coalition against iran
|
| it's highly unfortunate that trump started the war, but iran's
| way of things are just making more enemies -- it'll pay with
| regime change within few months
| klipt wrote:
| > now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll
| the ships...
|
| But the strait has two sides and Iran only controls one side.
| The UAE/Oman on the other side could equally threaten to
| attack Iranian ships unless _Iran_ pays _them_ a toll.
| sysguest wrote:
| well I guess that makes Iran really fked up...
|
| the strait-using countries are surely going to "make a
| lesson out of" iran exactly for that reason
| zinodaur wrote:
| I think what we should have learned from this is that
| it's extremely hard to "make a lesson out of" Iran if you
| depend on moving oil past their borders... the gulf
| states are much more exposed to this than the US is, and
| much less powerful.
|
| They are also not neutral - they have been paying in to
| the US protection racket, and are discovering that their
| payments haven't bought much.
| sysguest wrote:
| > it's extremely hard to "make a lesson out of" Iran if
| you depend on moving oil past their borders
|
| it's not just gulf states -- look at who are the
| customers of those gulf states are. the whole asia,
| europe, and america -- the whole world is their customer.
|
| Even if it's "extremely hard", those countries have no
| choice but "make a lesson out of" iran -- just like what
| we did with pirates
|
| why would those "customers of gulf" just leave iran?
| after US leaves, will iran regime suddenly become nice
| and stop forcing that $2M-per-voyage bill?
|
| no, and even if iran regime promises "I'll never bill
| those ships", how could you trust on that promise? the
| only way to ensure free-ship-passing would be
| obliterating Iran as an example, even if US backs away.
|
| > They are also not neutral - they have been paying in to
| the US protection racket
|
| hmm so were they "helping" US bomb iran? "being neutral"
| means it didn't participate on attacking iran, not
| whether it paid or not.
| samus wrote:
| Most nations who are affected don't have a blue-water
| navy or similar means to pose a serious threat to Iran.
| They have to either back the USA or deal with the toll
| and the uncertainty that comes with it.
| zinodaur wrote:
| If Canada and Mexico started letting Iran launch bombing
| sorties against US cities from within their borders,
| would the US consider them neutral?
|
| 2 Million a ship seems like a pretty cheap price to pay
| for the damage the us and Israel have inflicted on Iran -
| they cannot be made to pay it though, so I suppose the
| rest of us will have to (through marginally higher oil
| prices in the long term - much less than the
| spectacularly high oil prices the US war will cause in
| the short term)
| jltsiren wrote:
| The value of the oil / natural gas production in the Gulf
| states is not infinite. Nobody except the US has the
| force projection capacity to fight a major war against
| Iran. If they are not interested in fighting that war,
| the rest of the world will find that the cheapest and
| least disruptive option is to cut consumption. To assume
| that nobody is shipping oil and natural gas from the
| Gulf, until a new status quo emerges in the region.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| According to this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St
| rait_of_hormuz_full.jpg shipping lines are in Oman's
| territorial waters. Iran controls the whole area by
| creating a risk that a ship can be attacked. And if Oman
| would try to impose payments it would break the UN
| convention on the Law of the Sea.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| > they'll form a coalition against iran
|
| and do what?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _and do what?_
|
| Bomb shit. The Saudi and UAE militaries aren't anything to
| sneeze at. (The area cross the Strait from the UAE is
| majority Arab [1].)
|
| I think it's generally good strategy to not provoke new
| belligerents against oneself.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran
| andriy_koval wrote:
| Saudi and UAE has less air power than US+Israel, whatever
| could be bombed already bombed.
|
| But Saudi and UAE are ruled by rich regimes who benefit
| from oil revenue, and very vulnarable to Iran strikes,
| they more likely will pay those $2m.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Saudi and UAE has less air power than US+Israel_
|
| Less plus some is still more.
|
| > _whatever could be bombed already bombed_
|
| This is plainly untrue. We're still bombing things.
| Missiles are still being fired. Power plants and
| refineries continue to run.
|
| > _Saudi and UAE are ruled by rich regimes who benefit
| from oil revenue, and very vulnarable to Iran strikes,
| they more likely will pay those $2m_
|
| That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty to
| Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else Tehran
| requires.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| > That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty
| to Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else
| Tehran requires.
|
| the point is besides full scale invasion which Saudi and
| UAE won't do, there is no reliable way to remove threat
| of Iran striking oil infra, they just don't have way to
| deal with the problem.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won 't do_
|
| Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the
| coasts. They can't do it alone. But they _can_ provide
| troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where
| the U.S. cannot.
|
| > _there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran
| striking oil infra_
|
| Barring invasion: mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian
| tankers. Seed their ports with mines. Israel locking up
| the Caspian and the UAE and Saudi Arabia locking up
| Hormuz to Iran changes the calculus of the war in Tehran
| and makes suing for peace-not with America and Israel,
| but with the Gulf-tenable.
| andriy_koval wrote:
| > Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on
| the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide
| troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where
| the U.S. cannot.
|
| they couldn't win this against much closer, smaller and
| weaker Yemen. They just don't have functional military.
|
| > mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their
| ports with mines.
|
| I don't believe they will do this because they love oil
| money too much, unlike Iranian regime, which is
| idiologically/religiously driven, and endured for many
| years of various attacks and sanctions.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _couldn 't win this against much closer, smaller and
| weaker Yemen. They just don't have functional military_
|
| KSA went it alone in Yemen. And from that-as well as
| various proxy wars in Africa-both it and the UAE have
| learned.
|
| > _don 't believe they will do this because they love oil
| money too much_
|
| Loving oil money means wanting to export your oil. That
| said, I think the monarchies are more politically
| vulnerable. So it's harder for them to commit to this
| path. (It would also involve pissing off Trump.) But that
| doesn't mean it's strategically off the table,
| particularly for Saudi Arabia, which is less dependent on
| the Strait than the UAE.
| tptacek wrote:
| Seems pretty unlikely that the Yuan is going to be the dominant
| world currency, given its capital controls.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| But Iran let the International Maritime Org that anyone who is
| not US/Israel or not attacking or supporting attacks on them
| can pass through the strait of Hormuz. Is the $ 2M still a
| thing?
| citrin_ru wrote:
| > The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay
| $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel.
|
| The straight is not physically closed by Iran. It's closed by
| insurance companies which asking a very high war risk insurance
| premiums. Even if you pay $2M it unlikely will reduce the cost
| of insurance. That's why very few ships are choosing this
| option (and some of them are shadow fleet tankers which
| probably have no insurance).
| ahmadyan wrote:
| well, you can view it Iranian are willing to insure the
| vessel for $2M fee - that it will not get hit by them during
| the crossing ;). Once they are in the Oman sea, they can use
| traditional insurance.
| credit_guy wrote:
| You can view it like that, but most people don't. At least
| the people involved manning those tankers don't.
|
| And why should them? It appears that the Iranian armed
| forces started acted quite autonomously, by design. They
| know that communications are not secure, so local
| commanders have a very high latitude in what actions they
| deem correct to take. If such a commander deems that asking
| and collecting $2 MM per vessel is a good idea, they'll do
| it. But if another commander thinks that sinking a passing
| vessel is what their standing orders are, they'll do it
| too, not being aware that the toll was paid. So, if you are
| the captain of such a vessel, what do you do? Do you
| complain to Iran for not holding their end of the bargain?
| solatic wrote:
| Author seems to not care about the prospect of the Iranian regime
| developing nuclear weapons, putting those weapons into the hands
| of its terrorist proxies, and sitting back while those proxies
| turn Western Europe and Palestine into radioactive wastelands
| (yes, Palestine, because it is not possible to restrict the
| fallout to just Tel Aviv, and the regime has shown itself to be
| far more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian, the prospect of
| Palestine being a radioactive wasteland for a century is an
| acceptable price for destroying Israel). The US and the rest of
| the West should, apparently, just accept this as inevitable
| historical destiny, because $5/gallon gasoline or putting boots
| on the ground are apparently so utterly reprehensible.
|
| Author's analysis, as critical as he is of American presidents
| breaking their promises, is completely absent of analysis of what
| would happen if American presidents broke their promises to never
| allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Never mind that JCPOA had
| a sunset clause that would allow Iran to resume nuclear
| enrichment to weapons-grade after the sunset clause.
|
| The author's analysis pretty blatantly exposes reality: the West
| is losing because it does not have the political stomach to win.
| Instead of deciding that maybe society should try to develop that
| political stomach, instead of paying attention to a Trump who got
| elected in large part on mantras about how America was losing and
| it needed to start winning, no, Author says this was all a
| horrible idea and implicitly we should just sit back while our
| enemies progress along the road of putting nuclear weapons in the
| hands of terrorists.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Donald Trump obviously doesn't care either, because every
| action he has taken during his two terms has increased the risk
| of Iran developing nuclear weapons.
|
| JCPOA was highly flawed, but it was a lot better than nothing,
| which is what Trump traded it for.
|
| If Trump was serious about stopping Iran's nuclear program, he
| would have made taking Isfahan a top priority of the initial
| strikes.
| spwa4 wrote:
| That doesn't change in the least the argument the OP made.
| The UN's IAEA has declared that Iran deceived them, didn't
| follow the agreements, and even accused them of violating the
| agreements with the intent to build a bomb.
|
| As to Trump's motivations, they don't change this calculus.
| Iran intended to nuke their neighbors, and Israel, not just
| before Trump came to power but literally before the first
| Bush became president. And the full situation is even worse:
| right after the mullah's came to power in a leftist
| revolution in 1979, they begged for US and Israel's help to
| stop Saddam Hussein from nuking them. They got that help ...
| and then figured that nukes are a great idea.
|
| Here's what the mullahs are most afraid of btw. The biggest
| threat to their power, the biggest problem for their central-
| London villas:
|
| https://x.com/NarimanGharib/status/2036761330359615897
|
| This local opposition to them has systematically worsened
| over time, btw. So I wouldn't put it past the mullahs to nuke
| Iran itself, eventually. It also means that Iran's islamic
| regime is threatening everyone, for the simple reason that if
| they make a single concession loosening their grip on Iran,
| they'll be lynched, one by one, in the streets, by people
| they went to school with. That is how much Iran's regime is
| "winning".
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You, me, solatic and acoup probably all agree that a
| nuclear weapon in Iranian hands is a huge danger.
|
| But it's only Donald Trump that has used that as an excuse
| to make that danger greater.
|
| And acoup has a great counter-point to your tweet in the
| article.
|
| The Soviet Union dealt with massive internal protest quite
| successfully for pretty much every single one of its 70
| years of existence. The Soviet Union only fell when
| insiders took it down.
|
| Iran appears to be in absolutely no danger of that
| happening.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| JCPOA was followed with minor discrepancies like having
| less than 1 ton too much heavy water. US intelligence
| agencies agreed that Iran was not working on a bomb as US
| left JCPOA, as they testified to in congress.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Well, here is the final UN report, from the horses mouth
| so to speak:
|
| https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25
| .pd...
|
| (they preliminarily reported the same stance even in
| 2024, before any attacks)
|
| TLDR: Iran, despite having signed a treaty allowing
| access, is hiding highly enriched uranium, enough to
| build 9, maybe 10 nuclear devices. It is also not
| complying with its other obligations under the NPT
| treaty.
|
| And then Iran responded to this ... by boasting of making
| nuclear weapons grade uranium to make bombs, to American
| diplomats:
|
| https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/iran-eastern-
| stat...
|
| Now I get that American diplomacy is a shitshow since ...
| a certain event. However, I fail to come up with a worse
| attitude that Iran could have had at the time. They are
| openly boasting of having "the divine right" to enriched
| uranium that can only be used for bombs in negotiations
| ...
|
| I also get that Americans (and everyone else, for that
| matter) feel that it's entirely unfair that they have to
| care about nuclear weapons in Iran. But if nobody does
| ... Iran's leaders have made it clear that as soon as
| they have the weapons, nuclear war starts. What I find
| baffling is that nobody cares ...
|
| Of course, now it turns out that UAE and Saudi Arabia
| have since been SCREAMING at the US to do something. But
| the people it will affect the most are of course in
| Europe and Asia (everyone except Russia, Norway and
| Ukraine), who are effectively going to see yet another
| 3-4% tariff, except this one applies even on goods they
| produce themselves, for themselves. The EU is burning
| massive amounts of political goodwill trying to get a few
| percent savings, and now they'll have to do tell their
| people they're saving at least double that, in a few
| months time, with no real warning.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| They started again in 2021, years after Trump left the
| JCPOA and imposed heavy sanctions. You see how one thing
| might lead to another? Its almost like someone wants this
| to happen.
| spwa4 wrote:
| I don't really care what you say, this is the IRGC, who
| massacred 50 people at Brussels airport for example. If
| they feel they are unfairly treated in any way, they can
| always report to the Belgian authorities, who I'm sure
| will provide a small windowless room with free meals.
|
| And until they do that, and until they're let out again,
| no amount of arguments will ever make me agree that it's
| just not fair. In fact, if everyone even remotely
| involved with them gets shot THAT I will call fairness.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Yeah they should. Netanyahu and Israels leaders should
| report to the ICJ.
|
| You don't really care because you don't have a valid
| argument. Fact is Iran was complying with JCPOA, as all
| US intelligence agencies agreed on. It was working. But
| it had one flaw, Obama signed it and the orange baby
| couldn't deal with that, and likely Israel/Netanyahu
| influencing Trump back then as well as they were opposing
| the deal from the start.
|
| Now I don't think Iran should have nuclear weapons, but
| lets be fair here, they followed the deal, but still got
| sanctions put on them as if they were building a bomb,
| why not do it then? If we're to judge them by what
| politicians, generals or religious zealots has said in
| the past, then look no further than the US and what they
| thought about using nukes post ww2, I would argue they
| were much much worse no matter what Iran has said.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Like I said you cannot make a reasonable argument that
| Iran respected international treaties and is now being
| treated unfairly. That's utterly and completely
| ridiculous, regardless of the specific treaty.
|
| Iran's government organizes massacres, inside and outside
| of Iran. Could you illuminate further to me which
| treaties that little practice follows and how unfair it
| is it causes bad things to happen to them?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >>Like I said you cannot make a reasonable argument that
| Iran respected international treaties
|
| > Iran was complying with JCPOA, as all US intelligence
| agencies agreed on.
|
| ??? I'm not even the one making the argument.
| solatic wrote:
| People repeat themselves saying "JCPOA was highly flawed, but
| it was better than nothing", as if JCPOA would have prevented
| Iran from getting nuclear weapons. It would not - it only
| _delayed_ Iran getting nuclear weapons, and so by that line
| of thinking, it only delayed the onset of war.
|
| Delaying the onset of war is not worthless, but it is not the
| same as arguing that war could have been avoided, which is
| what people who roll out that claim are really trying to
| argue. It's only true in a universe where Iran would have
| collapsed from within before the expiration of the sunset
| clause, and that clearly was not going to happen.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > as if JCPOA would have prevented Iran from getting
| nuclear weapons
|
| "highly flawed" implies that it's not very good at its
| primary goal
|
| > it only delayed Iran getting nuclear weapons
|
| That sounds better than no delay
| bitcurious wrote:
| > That sounds better than no delay
|
| That depends on what Iran does in the meantime, does it
| not? If Iran effectively turned their missile program
| into a true deterrent then negotiated delay is worse,
| because it would remove the ability to stunt the
| development through military means. Which is very much
| the argument being made for the "why now" of this war.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to
| terrorists or use those weapons at all?
|
| This does not happen even in the most insane examples like
| North Korea.
|
| The more likely outcome would be that they would be able to
| avoid getting their schools/hospitals etc. bombed.
|
| In your mind US should just nuke iran so there is regime
| change? Can you calculate how this would play out after that
| happens?
| solatic wrote:
| > What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to
| terrorists or use those weapons at all?
|
| a. They have armed and financed their terrorist proxies
| (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and others), who used those arms
| and capital to commit acts of terrorism against their regime
| enemies (the US and Israel).
|
| b. Witkoff literally offered them free nuclear fuel forever
| for civilian purposes and they turned him down, bragging that
| they had enough highly enriched nuclear fuel already for
| nuclear weapons
|
| c. I can put 2 and 2 together
|
| In what universe does having nuclear weapons protect you from
| getting schools and hospitals bombed? Israel very likely has
| nuclear weapons, but Israeli schools and hospitals are
| getting bombed by Iranian missiles. So what?
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Israel can't just be bombing Iran and then nuking them when
| Iran retalliates by bombing them back. Because this will be
| too much bad PR even for Israel as the vast majority of
| people will find evaporating people indiscriminately is
| unacceptable.
|
| With all this considered I think it is clear why Iran is
| able to bomb Israel back and Israel can't just nuke them.
|
| I think the points you made about why Iran would give
| nuclear weapons to terrorists make no sense. Because Iran
| would, presumably, get obliterated when those terrorists
| use those weapons on any country.
|
| As far as I know, full-on invasion of a country that has
| nuclear weapons has never occured in history so far. So
| Iran having nuclear weapons in a defensive capacity is
| obviously good for them. In fact all countries having
| nuclear weapons in middle east might have made it more
| peaceful but would have been obviously terrible for
| Israel/USA
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Witkoff literally offered them free nuclear fuel forever
| for civilian purposes and they turned him down, bragging
| that they had enough highly enriched nuclear fuel already
| for nuclear weapons
|
| Can we believe anything that the senior people in the
| current US administration say, at this point in time?
| kdheiwns wrote:
| In all my years, I've never seen Iran care one bit about
| influencing or bothering any country outside of its sphere of
| influence. But I've seen Iran be antagonized nonstop and
| respond accordingly.
|
| As an American who lives abroad and travels around the world,
| I've never had the slightest worry about "oh man what if Iran
| does something?" But I've had to adjust flight and travel plans
| several times, I've had cost of living surge, I've witness
| chaos causing terrorist splinter groups that attack countries
| around the world because Israel and America have started some
| stupid conflict and said "we had no choice bro we had to attack
| them because in 80 years they would've made a bomb that
| might've killed a civilian bro you have to trust me bro." And
| frankly, I'm done even taking those arguments in good faith. I
| simply refuse. The mess these two countries cause has caused
| far more death than even if Iran had a nuke, ten nukes, or one
| thousand nukes.
| solatic wrote:
| > I've never seen Iran care one bit about influencing or
| bothering any country outside of its sphere of influence
|
| Its sphere of influence includes Israel, Gaza (Hamas), Yemen
| (Houthis), Iraq (various Shia splinter groups), and Lebanon
| (where Hezbollah refuses to accept the sovereignty of the
| Lebanese government). You are being willfully ignorant.
| kdheiwns wrote:
| Nope, not ignorant. I know that. And I don't care one bit
| if Iran dominates that area. I'm at a point where I'd
| prefer it because it's absolutely better than the mess the
| first country on that list causes, with hacking, election
| interference, terrorism, war, and ethnic cleansing to name
| a few. I think a growing number of people globally are sick
| of it.
|
| And funny you mention Lebanon. Iran isn't the country
| bombing Lebanon every few years or seizing land there
| either. But right now another country is invading and
| seizing land and not accepting the sovereignty of the
| Lebanese government. [1] Always funny how accusations in
| 2026 really just are a way of confessing.
|
| [1] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-
| news/article-89105...
| bitcurious wrote:
| > I've never seen Iran care one bit about influencing or
| bothering any country outside of its sphere of influence.
|
| There's this weird attitude I see where people claim
| "realpolitik" to give other nations colonial rights to their
| neighbors while denying the same to America. If you buy into
| "spheres of influence" as a concept it's time to accept that
| the US, as the world's preeminent military and economic
| power, has a sphere of influence that spans the globe.
| stefan_ wrote:
| You seem to suffer from selective memory, your president
| declared Irans nuclear program "totally, totally destroyed" and
| your post "fake news". That was half a year ago. What
| necessitated another obviously useless strategic air campaign?
|
| Its ironic it's not even discussed anymore in the US. A year in
| and you can't find a political post on HN, it's all blackholed
| - we've gone past "I didn't vote for him" straight to posts
| like this from alternative reality where he doesn't exist,
| doesn't say or do things.
| spwa4 wrote:
| The unspoken assumption here is totally wrong. Why would the US
| have any interest in conquering and occupying Iran as a whole? If
| the US just takes Karg Island, and 300km coastline along the
| strait of Hormuz, and the 4 islands, Qeshm, Hengam, Larak and
| Hormoz, Iran is utterly and completely and totally fucked and
| powerless. Only 1 of those Islands is bigger than 10 football
| fields by the way, 3 would struggle to fit a decent basketball
| field, and 2 of these places are totally uninhabited, only 1 has
| actual tiny villages, 1 has industrial equipment and zero have
| anything resembling a city.
|
| US doesn't even have to hold that ground. It just has to make
| sure no-one else holds it either. US could just level those
| places and shoot at anything that moves for 10 years.
|
| And yes, even under those circumstances, Iran has 2 export routes
| for their oil, so even that is not a problem.
|
| Meanwhile this is an indication of the support these Iranian
| islamists actually have:
| https://x.com/NarimanGharib/status/2036761330359615897 ...
|
| I hate Trump, but I am enough of an adult to say: first, I hope
| Trump wins this. As bad as Trump is, he's better than the current
| occupiers of Iran. Second, if winning this means Epstein's
| associates go free ... first FUCK THEM, but honestly, if that's
| the price ... fine. Iranian mullahs have raped 10000 children for
| every person Epstein ever touched (you see, in islam, a side
| business for imams is to rent out children for sex. Islamic
| marriage allows that, explicitly allows that I might add. Yeah,
| insert whatever details about branches of islam, and obviously I
| realize most muslims don't rent out child prostitutes. That's
| true in Iran too, btw, despite islam's law allowing it. But with
| that, you have to understand, some Iranian imams literally rape
| more children than they would physically be able to rape in an
| entire lifetime, in addition to the millions that are dead
| because of these people. Hell, raping children is very much
| consciously part of what these islamists in Iran are fighting
| for)
| Starman_Jones wrote:
| Regarding the first half of your comment, I believe that the
| article addresses both your recommendations.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Really? The only thing that comes close is the sentence about
| Iran's regime collapsing "on cue", and let's be honest, the
| only attention that factor gets is a sound-byte dismissal
| with barely a reference to what happened in January.
| Starman_Jones wrote:
| > But a 'targeted' ground operation against Iran's ability
| to interdict the strait is also hard to concieve. Since
| Iran could launch underwater drones or one-way aerial
| attack drones from anywhere along the northern shore the
| United States would have to occupy many thousands of square
| miles to prevent this and of course then the ground troops
| doing that occupying would simply become the target for
| drones, mortars, artillery, IEDs and so on instead.
| eigenspace wrote:
| "Just" taking Karg Island, 300 km of coastline, and 4 other
| tiny islands leaves the US occupying forces as sitting ducks
| under constant bombardment and drone attacks from the Iranian
| mainland.
|
| US service members would be constantly getting killed, causing
| inevitable escalation and deeper and deeper incursions. It's a
| quagmire.
|
| This stuff is the exact same reason Israel constantly feels the
| need to peel more territory off their neighbours after each
| war. "We're getting bombed near the borders, so we need to push
| our borders out to keep the border regions safe", which of
| course just creates a new, even bigger border region.
| niemandhier wrote:
| A war continuous until one side has caused the other more
| suffering than it can take.
|
| When dealing with the Middle East we keep underestimating the
| amount of hardship the people I these countries can endure or be
| forced to endure.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| _" Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur"_ -Ennius,
| Annales, XXXI
|
| Translation: "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished
| does not consider himself so"
| Bender wrote:
| Adding they can hang out in bunkers that are 500 meters under
| the mountains for decades. US leadership come and go every few
| years and they know it. They need only wait them out. There are
| no bunker busters or nukes in existence that I am aware of that
| can do anything to the missile cities. I would love to be
| proven wrong by their actions ideally without sacrificing 15k
| ground troops _which I believe is the current count on the
| ground not counting the 50k naval forces._
| williamdclt wrote:
| > A war continuous until one side has caused the other more
| suffering than it can take.
|
| The article is in large parts about how that's not true. It
| makes the point that the very existence of the Iranian regime
| hinges on its opposition to the US, to capitulate would mean
| for the leaders to lose all support, be overthrown and likely
| die: so there's no level of suffering that it "can't take
| anymore". And similar in the US, the leadership cannot survive
| politically to a capitulation. Hence endless escalation on both
| sides.
| redwood wrote:
| Amazing to me how impatient people are. It was six to seven
| months between the 12 day war in June and the mass uprising seen
| in December/January which was ruthlessly crushed. It will likely
| be a while between the end of this war and the next mass
| uprising. But every uprising that happens against a massively
| weakened regime means there's more chance of real change.
| Totalitarian regimes fall in ways that are hard to predict, but
| gradually and then suddenly.
| winton wrote:
| Crazy how impatient people are while millions of people suffer,
| thousands die, and prices go up around the planet.
| redwood wrote:
| The biggest beneficiary of this whole thing will be the shift to
| renewable energy. I am surprised to see the greens up in arms
| about it all.
| foobarian wrote:
| I was just thinking how much this situation benefits China and
| their solar power industry.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The ends don't necessarily justify the means. And it might just
| as well be a shift to nuclear energy instead, which greens are
| traditionally against.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| The ability of a state to run on energy pulled out of thin air
| is an obvious strategic benefit.
|
| Surely the resources required to build and maintain solar
| panels, turbines, dams, and nuclear reactors are logistically
| more stable than oil has proven to be.
| rustyhancock wrote:
| For all his faults and there are many. The no more wars aspect of
| Trump's campaign actually made me mildly optimistic.
|
| I'm not an American so I'm not sure if the voting base actually
| believed him.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| No one who understood what Trump is believed him. You shouldn't
| have either.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| This kind of amateur analysis is not worth being front page of
| HN. Its not that it doesn't make a few good points, but overall,
| it just isn't high grade strategic analysis because it lacks a
| lot of information by the post's own admission.
| dmichulke wrote:
| Can you point out a better source or the major points that
| become invalid due to other circumstances?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Nah it's good. It shows exactly how far you can get with just a
| modest understanding of _what strategy actually is_ at the
| level of nation states plus publicly available facts from the
| news.
|
| Especially in the heavily jingoistic american context, where
| all of the focus is implicitly on the military means and
| technology and execution, but people have lost sight of, maybe
| can not even state plainly, what the point of a military _is_ ,
| what considerations are part of deciding to use it to
| accomplish a goal.
|
| If you're going to accomplish a strategic goal with a military
| action, that goal had better be _achievable through military
| action_ and this one plainly isn 't. A historian can see it, a
| blogger can see it, a programmer can see it. Why wasn't it seen
| by people whose job is ostensibly to see it?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| It doesn't even consider potential primary objectives,
| especially when viewed alongside the recent actions in
| Venezuela:
|
| 1. If US was to replace Iran as the one to control exports of
| oil through the strait, then thos would gain huge leverage on
| China via control of energy exports from Iran, Middle East
| more generally, as they have already done in Venezuela.
|
| 2. Making it clear that partnership with Russia and China
| will not provide security, which was shown to be worthless.
| This counters "The East is rising and the West is declining",
| a go-to Xi Jinping line.
|
| 4. Securing South America for near-shoring production,
| decoupling of supply chains from China. Iran, China, and
| Russia have lots of
|
| 5. Disrupting Iranian ability to support Russia against
| Ukraine via manufacturing of drones in Iran and in Venezuela.
|
| Whether these points are actually part of the strategy, I do
| not know, but they have been raised by others in the space,
| and seemed absent in the article.
| the_af wrote:
| > _This kind of amateur analysis is not worth being front page
| of HN._
|
| The author is a military historian and professor with a PhD, so
| not an amateur.
|
| If you think this isn't high grade, or that it is mistaken,
| please explain how and why.
| znnajdla wrote:
| No one seems to discuss the worst case scenario for this war. In
| the best/average case the world takes an economic hit. But I can
| think of one really big black swan event which no one seems to
| even consider (except Nassim Taleb). This war could trigger
| regime collapses all over the Arab world and put populist leaders
| in charge who rise to power on the basis of Gaza genocide fury.
| That would be catastrophic to Israel: they could face Iran from
| the air and Arab ground forces from multiple directions. In fact
| there are already signs that Egypt is moving towards that, troops
| are moving in to the Sinai. There is a real chance that Israel
| could cease to exist.
| pphysch wrote:
| This is exactly why the Saudi leadership have been quick to
| debunk Western propaganda about the Saudi's itching to join the
| war, despite Iran's strikes on GCC territory. The domestic
| blowback in the GCC states would be fatal to the political
| system.
|
| The GCC elites there are living well, with escape plans, but
| the people know they are viewed as subhuman "arabs" by the
| Israelis, and are in line for the Gaza Method (which is
| currently being deployed in the West Bank and Lebanon).
| manyaoman wrote:
| > This war could trigger regime collapses all over the Arab
| world and put populist leaders in charge who rise to power on
| the basis of Gaza genocide fury.
|
| It would be a black swan if this _didn 't_ happen.
| dingaling wrote:
| "That would be catastrophic to Israel: they could face Iran
| from the air and Arab ground forces from multiple directions. "
|
| Israel has little to fear from Iran in the air, the IRIAF has
| been destroyed and ballistic missile launches have tapered off.
|
| In terms of Arab ground armies, only Egypt and Saudi pose much
| of a threat; the others are small, unintegrated and
| inexperienced and rely heavily on Western contractor support.
|
| And if Israel, which has the most combat experienced air force
| in the World, somehow did struggle to defend against those
| forces, they always have the Samson Option of nuclear-tipped
| missiles from silos and submarines.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > ...they always have the Samson Option of nuclear-tipped
| missiles from silos and submarines.
|
| At which point Israel is over. I have no doubt about that.
| yyyk wrote:
| We saw regime collapses in the Arab Spring - it's not a simple
| or short process, most regimes survived (either directly or via
| reversion). Even when a regime was overthrown, the replacement
| was usually not more hostile to Israel. e.g. Syria isn't more
| hostile than it was. Thing is there isn't all that much 'fury'
| since Arabs already assume the worst of Israel, while reasons
| for relative peace remain as is or are actually strengthened by
| the revolution process (e.g. economy, desire for quiet
| following violent revolution, new regime wanting to establish
| itself, etc.)
| tmnvix wrote:
| A not-unlikely outcome in this war is the fall of many gulf
| monarchies. A great outcome for some. A terrible outcome for
| others (such as Israel and the US).
| amarant wrote:
| There are a few passages in there that in isolation are not very
| notable, but taken together are kind of interesting:
|
| >But countries do not go to war simply to have a war - well,
| stupid fascist countries do, which is part of why they tend to be
| quite bad at war - they go to war to achieve specific goals and
| end-states.
|
| >Again, it is not a 'gain' in war simply to bloody your enemy:
| you are supposed to achieve something in doing so.
|
| There are a few other passages to similar effect, but for
| brevity, these two will do to illustrate the point: the author
| seems to be subtly implying that America is a "stupid fascist
| nation". Actually, the way he keeps clarifying the obvious, I
| think he expects a good amount of his readers to be "stupid
| fascists".
|
| I cannot say I wholly disagree with his assessment!
| the_af wrote:
| > _the author seems to be subtly implying that America is a
| "stupid fascist nation"_
|
| He does nothing of the sort.
|
| I can clarify for you: the mention of fascist countries being
| bad at war is a link to another article by the author, which
| explains that fascist countries such as Mussolini's Italy and
| Nazi Germany were _very bad at a war_ even while they
| mythologized and romanticized it, and derived their "sense of
| nation" out of symbolic struggle and might. The article you
| linked to describes many fascist or fascist-like nations, like
| Putin's Russia, but does not mention liberal democracies such
| as the USA.
|
| I recommend you read it.
|
| So why did the author mention that article in this context?
| Because he wanted to explain that countries -- unless they are
| fascist countries -- have strategic goals for going to war, and
| so does the US in this case, and therefore it's warranted to
| look into those goals and whether they have a chance of being
| met.
|
| Again, I recommend you read the article in question (the one
| about fascists being bad at war) before jumping to unwarranted
| conclusions.
| amarant wrote:
| We read the article rather differently it seems. My reading
| is that he's pointing out the lack of goal for America here.
| Or at the very least the lack of a realistic goal. As he
| points out, it was clear 40 years ago that the stated
| objective stood very little chance of being achieved, which
| in turn makes one wonder if that was even a real objective at
| all.
|
| And having a stated objective is quite different from having
| a real objective. Hitler had various stated objectives for
| all his wars (Lebensraum, fostering the Ubermensch, and
| rescuing Germans from the supposed oppressions of the Jews,
| which of course never existed and was purely a fiction to
| justify unspeakable horrors). If you take Hitler's words at
| face value, they were all motivated and not at all stupid
| wars. But you'd be very stupid to take Hitler's words at face
| value, especially with the benefit of hindsight!
|
| I think the same arguments are applicable to trump. He has
| stated several goals, none of which are reasonably
| achievable. Take trumps words at face value and the war makes
| sense, but he has shown himself to be a pathological liar, so
| you'd be an idiot to believe him, especially when his
| statements lack any connection to the real world. Given how
| he tends to argue, it wouldn't surprise me at all if trump
| thinks that "bloodying your enemy" is a win in a war. That's
| how he works. That's how he handles trade. Doesn't matter if
| tariffs damage America, so long as they also damage other
| nations, it's a win. Of course he thinks that way about war
| too!
|
| The end state trump is looking for is damage to Iran. He'll
| have it. But the rest of the world (including USA) will
| suffer tenfold. He doesn't care. Because he's a stupid
| fascist leader.
|
| Thus, we end up with the conclusion that America had no
| _real_ reason to start this war, and starting it anyway is an
| action historically only done by stupid fascist countries,
| therefore America is a stupid fascist country. It 's a fourth
| order implication, which admittedly is not at all clear, and
| might not have been intentional.
|
| I'm severely biased of course, I generally hold last week's
| turd in higher regard than I do trump (turds make great
| fertilizer!). So grain of salt and all that...
| guzfip wrote:
| > But you'd be very stupid to take Hitler's words at face
| value, especially with the benefit of hindsight!
|
| Well there are a lot of very stupid people in this world.
| amarant wrote:
| On that, we agree!
| Iuz wrote:
| > That said, this post is going to be unavoidably 'political,'
| because as a citizen of the United States, commenting on the war
| means making a statement about the President who unilaterally and
| illegally launched it without much public debate and without
| consulting Congress. And this war is dumb as hell.
|
| Proceeds to not mention the Epstein files at all. No comment here
| mentions it either.
|
| All that mess and all those deep connections that were
| unraveling... I'm not a US citizen, but has that already been
| forgotten? Do people not consider that they might be relevant in
| some way to this situation? Or is raising that possibility now
| generally viewed as a conspiracy theory?
| amarant wrote:
| A core trait of my personality can be summed up as "always look
| on the bright side of life". To that end:
|
| This war seems more than likely to drive up oil prices not only
| in the near term, but in the medium and long terms too! In
| addition, petroleum usage seems likely to become dependant on
| sucking Iran's proverbial dick, a notion that very few people in
| The West will find palatable.
|
| Optimistically then, perhaps this will finally light a fire under
| _everyone 's_ asses to switch to renewable energy sources! Wether
| it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property of
| renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide. Once
| deployed, international trade can stop completely, and you'll
| still have electricity to heat your homes, cook your food, and
| drive your car.
|
| No more being dependant on dubious regimes like Iran for your
| day-to-day.
|
| Admittedly this is true for coal, too, but I think we've already
| established that it cannot economically compete, so that should
| play out in favour of renewables in the long run.
| 1minusp wrote:
| I'd love to believe this, but very recent history has shown (in
| the US at least) that we are moving backwards and trying to
| resist renewable energy.
| brightball wrote:
| Economics will always win in the end. At the rate that costs
| are dropping for solar, it should just be a matter of time.
|
| Biggest concerns are usually placement and durability to bad
| weather.
| bdangubic wrote:
| > Economics will always win in the end.
|
| This may have been true in the past but the economics of
| today is "whether this is good for 1% of the population"
| and not in general, yes? If I can buy cheap solar panels
| from China (or say for the sake of argument someone
| "friendlier" like Germany) but that gets slapped with
| tariffs or other means the "administration" (bought by the
| 1% crowd) has at their disposal to prevent this from
| happening. If we lived in a free market this would be true
| for sure but we don't (by we I mean USA :) )
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| The remaining oil companies will profit tremendously from
| the high oil prices. I am sure they will have no problem
| allocating some of those extra profits to sabotage attempts
| to consider any alternative energy sources.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _very recent history has shown (in the US at least) that we
| are moving backwards and trying to resist renewable energy_
|
| A longer view of history shows a clear pattern: "After a
| gasoline price shock, households respond in the short run
| mostly by reducing travel, although estimates from the
| literature suggest the response in the short run is quite low
| (e.g., Hughes, Knittel, and Sperling 2006). Over long
| horizons, households adjust their vehicle technology and
| reduce further their consumption of gasoline.
|
| ...
|
| The market share of full-size pickups, utility vehicles, and
| vans fell more than 15 percentage points between its peak in
| 2004 and early 2009. Small cars and the new cross-utility
| vehicle segment picked up most of this market share" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086%2F6575
| 41#...
| lxgr wrote:
| > Wether it's wind, solar or hydro, a underappreciated property
| of renewable energy is the energy sovereignty they provide.
|
| If your sovereign territory happens to support them
| geographically. This is true for many, but not all countries.
|
| Also, without large storage capacity, you might end up being
| self-sufficient during sunny, windy days, but find yourself
| very dependent on your neighbor countries for imports on
| overcast days or at night without wind.
|
| The combination of all of this is especially unfortunate for
| hydro, where you're pretty much fully dependent on the
| geography you've been handed.
|
| So I'd say the self-sufficiency story of renewables doesn't
| fully hold. They benefit from regional cooperation and trade
| just as much as fossil fuels, if not more. (In my view, that's
| not really a counterargument, but it does raise the importance
| of having a well-integrated, cross-border grid even more.)
| dalyons wrote:
| Why do you have to go to absolutes? If 90% of countries can
| be 80+% self sufficient, that's still an amazing thing
| lxgr wrote:
| If you're 80% self-sufficient, you're not self-sufficient.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| But the dependency turns from a stop the world calamity
| to an annoyance.
|
| If you're 95% self sufficient it will stay at headlines
| in the local press.
| lxgr wrote:
| Losing 20% of your electricity supply is a calamity, not
| an annoyance. So unless you want the calamity, you're
| still dependent on imports.
|
| Personally, I don't see an issue with that, as long as
| the neighboring countries you're importing from are
| reliable and will be able to supply at the times you need
| (i.e., they don't have the same possibly spiky import
| dependency as yourself). The other option is massive
| storage capacity.
|
| I just don't think it makes sense to just equate
| renewables with automatic sovereignty.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Dunno about you, but losing 20% of _my_ electricity
| supply is an annoyance. I just don 't run the clothes
| dryer and hang my clothes on a rack instead.
|
| (And yes, I have solar + battery, and have lost 100% of
| my outside electricity supply on a half dozen occasions
| since having it installed, and my actual response has
| been to not run the clothes dryer.)
| ms_menardi wrote:
| If a kid lives on their own but their mom buys them
| groceries once per month and their dad swings by on
| thursdays with pizza and beer, that kid's still pretty
| darn self sufficient.
|
| Similarly, if a country can use 80% less oil or imported
| fuel than they would have without renewable energy, I
| think they're pretty self-sufficient. They don't have to
| be isolated from trade, it's okay to import some things
| and export others. Energy sources can be one of those
| things. But if they _rely_ on energy imports, then when
| something disrupts their supply then they are in trouble.
| However if they get 80% of their energy from renewable
| sources, then they have significantly less of a problem.
| leonidasrup wrote:
| These 20% will still make you dependent on foreign country.
|
| For example Germany was dependent on Russian gas (before
| year 2022), which they later swapped for dependency on US
| LNG. In addition, Germany is dependent on China for PV
| panels.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Germany was dependent on Russian gas (before year
| 2022), which they later swapped for dependency on US LNG.
| In addition, Germany is dependent on China for PV panels_
|
| There is merit to putting one's energy policy on
| autopilot by doing the opposite of whatever Berlin is up
| to.
| amarant wrote:
| More countries are able to produce renewable energy than are
| able to produce fossil energy. As such, renewable energy
| providers _more energy sovereignty than fossil fuels_ which
| is what matters. If it 's 100% or not is mostly irrelevant
| for the decision making. If we're being rational.
|
| Going for the worst possible option, only because the better
| options are not 100% perfect, is to be considered irrational
| behaviour.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > without large storage capacity
|
| That's like saying _without gas stations good luck getting
| gasoline to the people_. It goes without saying that
| batteries are an essential part of most renewable solutions.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| The US just gave away a billion dollars to NOT build renewable
| energy.
| skybrian wrote:
| It will be a boost for renewables, but hardly the end for
| natural gas. Keep in mind that while ~20% of natural gas was
| supplied via the Persian Gulf, that means 80% was not.
|
| I expect that batteries will eventually solve the day-night
| cycle for solar, but for seasonal storage, natural gas is much
| easier to store, so this still looks to me like a mix of energy
| technologies, with renewables getting a larger share.
| weaksauce wrote:
| this misses the fact that petroleum is incredibly useful
| outside of the burn it to make electricity and burn it to make
| car move use cases.
| estearum wrote:
| Not really. Needing 1MM barrels gives you a lot more
| independence than needing 100MM.
| bikelang wrote:
| All the more reason to not squander a finite, precious
| resource to generate electricity.
| amarant wrote:
| Not really. If we only need it for petrochemical products,
| like medical plastics etc, losing 20% of available crude
| globally is a non-issue.
|
| We can probably stand to use a lot less plastics too. Outside
| of medicine it's mostly replaceable, and reducing our usage
| to less than 80% of current usage would be trivial if we
| didn't burn it for energy.
|
| In that scenario Iran can keep their strait. We won't need
| them.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| There are still processes that we haven't replaced petroleum
| for, like Haber-Bosch. China has already banned the export of
| fertilizer for this reason.
| ericmay wrote:
| Self-sufficiency is a myth. Even if you wanted to try and be
| energy independent, for the short and medium term (and maybe
| longer, who knows?) you will be dependent on China and all the
| baggage that they bring because of their dominance of rare
| earth mineral processing. Need a new solar panel? Don't make a
| certain country mad (whether that's your local Ayatollah or CCP
| official).
|
| And that's just energy. What about pharmaceuticals? Financial
| markets? Who protects your shipping lanes? Who builds your
| semiconductors? Where do _those_ factories get their energy
| from?
|
| I support the diversity of energy sources because they all have
| strengths and weaknesses. We've got to figure out climate
| change. But we also can't have, even if you want to somehow
| "move off of oil" a single country run by lunatics who can
| decide whenever they don't get their way that they get to seize
| 20% of the global oil supply. We can't have China dominating
| rare earth processing either. For some others it may be a
| reliance on American military technology.
| estearum wrote:
| I don't think they said it will give you self-sufficiency,
| rather that it removes one (important) dimension of
| dependency.
| ericmay wrote:
| It doesn't though, it's the illusion of removing of a
| dependency which is rather dangerous. You're not only
| swapping one dependency for another in this specific case,
| but you're ignoring the rest of the global economy and its
| own dependencies and how they affect you.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| You're swapping a dependency which hits very quickly if
| disturbed, for one that would take a much longer time to
| manifest.
|
| When Russia invades Ukraine or Iran cuts the straight of
| Ormuz energy prize go up instantly, chocking the entire
| world economy in the course of a few weeks. Even if China
| stops exporting rare earths, it would take years before
| it affects the energy market.
|
| It's absolutely incomparable.
|
| Cuba is a good example by the way: a country can survive
| for decades while being cut from most technology import
| due to sanctions, but if you cut its access to oil, it
| becomes dirty real quick. And because Cuba has been stuck
| in the middle of the 20th century, it's actually much
| less dependent on energy than most developed or even
| developing countries.
| ericmay wrote:
| > You're swapping a dependency which hits very quickly if
| disturbed, for one that would take a much longer time to
| manifest.
|
| That's not the entire point. You still rely on global
| supply chains. Those semiconductors in your MacBook Pro
| are made in Taiwan - many steps (perhaps most) in that
| supply chain to go from raw material to MacBook Pro, or
| EV, or fresh produce rely on oil. When Iran holds 20% of
| the world's oil supply hostage then prices go up for you
| too. Even if you are 100% renewables you are _still_
| dependent on oil for your economy.
|
| Even the renewable power grid relies on fossil fuels for
| maintenance and service, many parts and components are
| built using materials made from oil (hello plastic), &c.
| estearum wrote:
| Nobody said that a modern economy can be completely
| independent, but that doesn't mean all levels and types
| of dependency are equal.
| estearum wrote:
| Eh, an operational dependency that immediately raises
| costs across your entire economy, across all geographies,
| all industries, within a couple days of disruption is
| very different from these more strategic dependencies.
|
| The key would be to simply not ignore all the other
| dimensions of dependency.
| mememememememo wrote:
| A country that goes all in renewable is in a stronger
| positon. UK power grid doesn't give a fuck about this
| war.
|
| Sure China. But unless they send in an army to retreive
| previously sold panels, or block the sun they can only
| harm future increases to supply.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Or wait 20 years for the panels to degrade...
| californical wrote:
| Two things
|
| 1. It's closer to 50 years, and even a partially degraded
| panel will work, just with less output
|
| 2. Even if we say 20 years, that means that you only need
| to buy panels once every 20 years! Not continuously. A
| complete and total interruption of solar panel production
| lasting 4 years will only mildly interrupt current
| output. How long can we last with a total disruption to
| oil supply chains?
| kibwen wrote:
| The long operating life of a solar panel compared to a
| barrel of oil is a selling point when it comes to self-
| sufficiency. With 20 years of warning, any country that
| pretends to be a globally-relevant power can get itself
| to the point of producing acceptable solar panels if its
| survival depends on it.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Swiss measurement of 30 year old panels showed 20%
| degradation.
| ericmay wrote:
| > A country that goes all in renewable is in a stronger
| position.
|
| Depends on the country.
|
| > UK power grid doesn't give a fuck about this war.
|
| Power grid =/= economy. You're missing the point. Rising
| prices affect the United Kingdom economy even if it was
| fully run on renewables. The ships bringing products to
| the country don't run on renewables, the cars mostly
| don't, your fighter jets don't, your fertilizer doesn't.
| &c.
|
| It's important to not be dogmatic and be practical about
| this stuff. Every country on the planet needs and
| utilizes oil and gas and that will remain true for the
| foreseeable future because of globalized supply chains.
|
| > Sure China. But unless they send in an army to retreive
| previously sold panels, or block the sun they can only
| harm future increases to supply.
|
| Which, in the case of a war with the US would be true
| because the UK will be involved and sided with the US
| and/or certainly assumed to be by China. (This is
| indisputable). So sure you build up those panels, but
| then you see a war and now you lose access to those
| materials and if it isn't solved in the near term you
| have to switch all of your energy back to fossil fuels.
| No new EVs during the war, for example.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Oil is disposable, solar panels are not. If you have solar,
| and then piss off the CCP to the point where they attempt to
| stop you from acquiring more of it, you don't lose the solar
| you already have. Those solar panels will continue generating
| energy for years, if not decades, afterwards.
|
| It's also important to note that the US _also_ produces
| oil[0]. There are some quirks of the market and refineries
| that make it difficult to consume our own oil, but we could
| potentially build more domestic processing. The real problem
| is that pesky global market that puts costs on the state 's
| ambitions for power. To put it bluntly, American oil is
| expensive. We can survive an oil crisis iff we are willing to
| pay astronomical prices at the pump; but if we are doing this
| assuming we can just enjoy cheap gas while the world burns,
| we are going to get a rude awakening.
|
| Think about it this way: buying your energy in the form of
| oil is like exclusively using streaming services for your
| entertainment needs. It's cheap, easy, convenient - until the
| plug gets pulled and it suddenly stops being those things.
| Buying solar is like buying physical media - you have to pay
| up front and it's more of a hassle to get started, but it
| can't be turned off on a whim.
|
| [0] It also used to produce rare earths, too. The mines
| closed down because they were too expensive to operate - not
| because rare earths are actually rare.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Self-sufficiency is a myth_
|
| Self sufficiency exists on a spectrum. On the idiot end is
| autarky, which only works to keep a small group in power at
| the cost of national weakness. On the other end is a lack of
| stockpiles and domestic production that essentially negates
| sovereighty.
|
| A country running a solar grid with EVs can withstand more
| economic shocks for longer than one importing oil. And while
| mining metals is geographically limited, making solar panels
| and batteries and cars is not.
| nostrademons wrote:
| There is a huge difference between buying a solar panel once
| and having it generate energy for the next 30 years vs.
| buying a barrel of oil now and consuming it by next week.
|
| It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it
| until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy
| of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped
| software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a
| SaaS subscription that provides a different product next
| month.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it
| for the next 18 years_
|
| I'm wondering how that works. I have written software that
| was still being used, 25 years later, but it was pretty
| much a "Ship of Theseus," by then.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Old hardware or emulation of old operating systems on new
| hardware.
|
| Quite common on old industrial machinery and other
| capital equipment like lab equipment. San Francisco BART
| for example has to scrounge eBay for old motherboards
| that still allow DMA to parallel ports via southbridge
| because it's too expensive to validate a new design for
| controllers.
| buran77 wrote:
| The petrochemical industry is huge we've yet to find
| alternatives for it. Half the stuff around you was made with
| something derived from oil, and you can't replace that with
| wind or sunlight in the foreseeable future.
| all2 wrote:
| We should also note that wind turbines require huge amounts
| of petroleum derivatives to operate.
| nullpoint420 wrote:
| Yeah but at least the byproducts produce a solid that can
| last for years vs treating it as a consumable.
|
| I'm fulling expecting someone will reply to me and say that
| making plastic wastes 75% of the oil or something during
| production, and that it's just as wasteful amortized across
| the lifespan of a wind turbine. I'm tired, man.
| leonidasrup wrote:
| You can compare material intensity of different
| electricity generation technologies.
|
| https://davidturver.substack.com/p/material-intensity-
| electr...
|
| According to International Energy Agency mineral demand
| for clean energy technologies would rise by at least four
| times by 2040 to meet climate goals, with particularly
| high growth for EV-related minerals.
|
| https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-
| minerals-in...
| andriy_koval wrote:
| there are pathways to produce synthetic oil from coal or
| using carbon capture if you have cheap energy. I hope they
| will catch up if fossil oil prices skyrocket.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| This is the secret flipside of solar power's duck curve: it
| makes a lot of stupidly energy intensive paths towards non-
| fossil oil production a lot less stupid if you just have
| the energy to burn. Think about how in the 2000s we had a
| weird obsession with ethanol and other biofuels, only to
| learn that they were merely 40-50% efficient. If your
| energy mix is predominantly fossil fuels, you're better off
| just not burning the oil. But if you have solar, suddenly
| it becomes a good option for energy _storage_ , especially
| in industries that need the weight properties of chemical
| fuels (i.e. aircraft, where you HAVE to be able to burn and
| exhaust your fuel or the plane will be too heavy to land).
| leonidasrup wrote:
| Very little oil is used to make plastic.
|
| In Europe between 4-6% of oil and gas is used for producing
| plastics and globally around 6% of global oil is used. By
| contrast, 87% is used for transport, electricity and heating.
|
| https://www.bpf.co.uk/press/Oil_Consumption.aspx
| oblio wrote:
| A lot of what the petrochemical industry does took over from
| other stuff or isn't vital, there just hasn't been enough
| push back against it.
|
| Stuff like medicine, sure, crucial and very hard to find
| replacements for.
|
| But single use plastics can probably be replaced 95% (the
| environment would appreciate it if we banned them), dyes are
| mostly not vital, synthetic fibers can be replaced 95% with
| minor critical impact, just using natural fibers, etc.
|
| The petrochemical industry is just the cheapest option in
| many cases in a world driven by conspicuous consumption of
| non vital items.
| laurex wrote:
| It's very helpful to understand energy density to evaluate what
| a shift to renewables actually entails or what is even
| possible. Vaclav Smil is a good source or for a less dense
| version Nate Hagens has podcasts about it.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| For the US to start going that route we need a certain group of
| politicians to stop telling everybody that windmills are
| killing whales and birds en masse, claiming solar "isn't there
| yet" (somehow it never is), and that there is such thing as
| "clean coal." Literally the only thing I don't hear them
| fighting (loudly) against is hydro power.
| goda90 wrote:
| In January, the youtuber Technology Connections did a whole
| rant about how ridiculous it is that we're not rushing as
| quickly as possible to get off of non-renewable energy.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
| scoofy wrote:
| It really is crazy that environmentalists were like, "hey
| look, free energy," and suddenly everyone started screaming
| "No, boo! We like the way things are!" I have a friend who
| has never used an induction range before that is dead set
| that he never wants one. I just don't get it.
| scottLobster wrote:
| To be fair induction ranges aren't without issues, not due
| to the concept itself but failures in implementation.
|
| Touch screen controls are rife and not only become
| impossible to use when, say, grease is splattered on them
| or your hands are wet/wearing gloves (common when cooking
| on a stove top), they can even be falsely activated by such
| things. Cold spots can also be a concern depending on your
| cookware.
|
| Unfortunately a lot of promising technology has matured in
| a time of consumer product enshitification, and there is no
| established track record for people to be nostalgic for.
| scoofy wrote:
| Again, I'm talking about someone who has never used one
| who has their mind made up.
|
| I don't think there is anything wrong with preferring
| gas. It has many superior use cases. My point is that
| "no, I like things this way and won't ever consider
| trying the other thing, much less changing, even though
| the other thing ends up being effectively free in the
| long run" is silly, and almost certainly based in some
| kind of identity.
|
| Where as I think most curious people would think "Oh,
| neat, a new cooking surface. I'd like to try that thing."
| stickfigure wrote:
| LG makes an induction range with knobs. I have one. It's
| wonderful.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _war seems more than likely to drive up oil prices not only
| in the near term, but in the medium and long terms too_
|
| "This recovery period doesn't just get pushed out by 24 hours
| each day it gets longer as more production is forced to shut
| down or is damaged in the fighting. As I write this, futures
| markets for the WTI seem to be expecting oil prices to remain
| elevated (above $70 or so) well into 2028."
| scottLobster wrote:
| Pessimistically, this will lead to the return of old-school
| Imperialism to secure the necessary oil supplies and increased
| exploitation of known deposits.
|
| Just because there's an obvious good choice for the average
| citizen doesn't mean we'll take it, as recent history has more
| than proven.
| wesleyd wrote:
| Nice.
|
| Another upside seems to be that every Arab country in the
| Middle East seems to be on the same side as Israel. Nothing
| unites like a common enemy!
| epsters wrote:
| I am not sure getting a million people killed in another
| decades-long middle-eastern war (one whose scale and tragedies
| will likely overshadow all the previous wars we have seen so
| far in region) in a country of 90 million people is really
| worth the push to renewables.
| aetimmes wrote:
| Only a small fraction of a typical barrel of oil is allocated
| to energy generation. The majority goes to
| transportation/industrial use-cases. The transportation usage
| can be allayed with sonar energy, but the industrial use-cases
| cannot.
| MrDrDr wrote:
| That this was so predictable, is the hardest thing to process. A
| friend shared this video by Jiang Xueqin
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y_hbz6loEo&t=2s I find this guys
| hard to take seriously, his logic is erratic and often just
| absent. But his prediction has been frighteningly spot on
| regarding Iran. Towards the end he predicts American boots on the
| ground - and them turning into American hostages. I found that
| last part truly unbelievable until I heard Trump will have moved
| 3000 marines to the region by Friday.
| MrDrDr wrote:
| N.B. The video is from May 2004 (during the Biden
| administration)
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| This guy is a weirdo that believes Jesuit illuminati run the
| world (listen to the end of his Breaking Points interview), his
| qualification is a BA in English, he teaches at the high school
| level, and holds discussions with manosphere figures like
| Sneako. Not sure I'd elevate what he says just because he has a
| good online presence and really don't understand why he would
| be at the time of this post in the top comment in this
| discussion.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I think you are missing the parent comment's point.
|
| The point is not "this guy is a genius" but rather "this war
| was so predictable, even this weird guy could pinpoint with
| frightening accuracy how this war would happen two years
| before it started".
| rfwhyte wrote:
| The only counterpoint to the article's central thesis I really
| have is that frankly I don't think there even was a "Strategy"
| for this war beyond the fact it will distract the American
| populace from the Epstein files and somehow enrich Trump and his
| political cronies.
|
| That's it. That's the whole damn "Causus belli" for this so
| called "Special military operation." It isn't intended to
| accomplish any specific geo-strategic goals, it doesn't have a
| plan or purpose, it's just a convenient distraction and way for
| some already very rich folks to get even richer.
|
| This is honestly my major issue with the whole "Geo-strategic
| analysis industrial blogger / YouTuber complex" in that I think
| they far too often ascribe deeper meaning and geo-strategic
| planning or purpose to state actions when they can far more
| easily be interpreted through the lens of the political capture
| of nations and institutions by the wealthy elites, their greed /
| self interest and their monological desire to preserve the status
| quo and thus their own political / economic power.
|
| Nations very seldom do pretty much anything these days because it
| would be of benefit to their nation or people, they almost
| exclusively only do things that benefit the wealthy elites who
| control them.
|
| This war, like all wars throughout human history, is a class war,
| in that the lives and livings of us regular folks are being
| sacrificed at the alters of power and profit, all so certain rich
| folks can get even richer and keep their boot on our necks.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The blog post said that the Iran war costs the US at least 1
| billion USD per day. The US is incredibly rich and can afford the
| cost. What I don't see being discussed: What if the US (and
| Israel) does not put troops on the ground in Iran, but continues
| relentless, daily aerial bombing... forever (1/2/3 years)? I am
| not saying that you can control a country from air superiority
| only (this has been widely discussed by military strategists --
| it cannot), but you can endlessly bomb their military assets.
| What would happen? Honestly, I don't know. I don't think it has
| been done in the last 50 years of war. (Please provide counter
| examples if you know any.)
| fartfeatures wrote:
| "There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a
| war. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried
| yet, and we shall see." - Sir Arthur Harris
|
| The response is as applicable now as it was then. Time will
| tell.
| bgnn wrote:
| That's one way to make sure people living under aerial bombing
| firmly support a regime defending their sovereignty, hence
| legitimizing the islamic republic. Example: Taliban, with boots
| on the ground, didn't get any weaker at the end.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Many of their military assets are underground out of reach of
| bombers. And you need somewhere to stage out of. Probably not
| the Gulf bases that are being wiped by missiles and drones at
| the moment. The aircraft carriers have been having issues and
| are being pushed back out of missile range. So it becomes more
| difficult and expensive to keep the bombing up.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| I mean the answer to underground facilities is you just keep
| bombing the entrance which is exactly what they've done. Iran
| still has insane supply levels of ballistic missiles so the
| US/Israel are eradicating their tele-launcher fleet.
| brentm wrote:
| I don't think we could see a bombing campaign like the one
| we've seen so far anywhere near that length of time. Partly for
| munitions reasons and partly for target reasons. There is only
| so much stuff to blow up and only so many bombs to blow things
| up with. We can't produce them at any where near the rate that
| would be required to just to do this for years.
| standardUser wrote:
| The second the first bomb hit, the Republican Guard went from a
| standing military force to a guerrilla army, similar in a lot
| of ways to what the US faced in Iraq, just vastly better-
| trained and better-equipped. The US couldn't subdue Iraq with
| hordes of troops _on the ground_ for years, so why would anyone
| imagine an air-only campaign would have better results against
| a stronger and larger opponent?
| riffraff wrote:
| Russia has been bombing Ukraine for years, and they're not
| closer to winning the war now than they were when it starts.
| yyyk wrote:
| Yea, the US joined in in 2025, what should it imply about a
| future war? The assumption that Iran doesn't know who's bombing
| it sounds rather dubious. If anything, it should be very much in
| their interest to assume away US involvement unless 100% proven,
| given fighting an additional enemy tend to be very bad and US is
| so powerful. Unless...
|
| Maybe the strategic balance creates a situation where it's
| advantageous for Iran to pull US in _regardless_ of non-
| involvement. They don 't do well against Israel alone (see rather
| low damage of 4 separate large scale attempts at attacking Israel
| directly), but US is so much easier to pressure via the Gulf.
| Indeed, this scenario doesn't quite need Israel.
|
| So US risked getting pulled in not due to attacking in June 2025,
| but because the cheque given to the Gulf was starting to expire,
| the power balance was objectively swinging in favor of Iran at
| the location where Devereaux sees as the most important part of
| the Middle East. Now, say there are powerful states who feel they
| are in a decent position now but also that the strategic balance
| would slip away. What do they tend to do? Devereaux can consult
| his WW1 history.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| It's Israel.
|
| This war doesn't make any sense for US to be involved in. It
| makes every sense for Israel to have the US involved in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "...it is not possible for two sides to both win a war. But it is
| absolutely possible for both sides to lose; mutual ruin is an
| option. Every actor involved in this war - the United States,
| Iran, arguably Israel, the Gulf states, the rest of the energy-
| using world - is on net poorer, more vulnerable, more resource-
| precarious as a result."
| csmpltn wrote:
| It's so cringey to witness how every techbro here is all of a
| sudden an armchair expert on geopolitics, intelligence, game
| theory, and the 50+ year long conflict with Iran. And they
| clearly know everything the biggest and most competent
| intelligence agencies in the world don't... utterly bizarre
| times.
|
| People that couldn't place Iran or Israel or Lebanon on a map,
| let alone know the first thing about the rivalries in the region
| or have any skin in the game (beyond "the pump") just feel like
| they can comment on any of this - taking cheap shots and crappy
| cynical takes at it. Where's the moderation?
| udioron wrote:
| > Iran was big and hostile, but relatively unimportant.
|
| How unimportant was Bin Laden?
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| I think culturally he was important to a lot of folks in the
| 40-60 year old range, but the cultural take of the younger
| (20-30 year old) demographic really feels like all of Iraq was
| a huge waste of lives, time, and money.
|
| Was he important? Genuinely curious because all I know is
| cultural vibes.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| It's not a war in Iran.
|
| It's an unprovoked war by the USA and its handler, Israel,
| against Iran.
|
| People are being killed, by choice, by the USA and Israel, and
| the USA and Israel are irreversibly destroying their own personas
| on the world stage.
|
| Even US hostage Merz is starting to stutter about it.
|
| Everywhere that isn't the USA or a USA vassal, they call the USA
| and Israel "The Epstein Coalition".
|
| That's how it is viewed. Think about it. That's how appalling it
| is.
|
| Downvote me, I have no fucks to give; the field is barren.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| >Even US hostage Merz is starting to stutter about it.
|
| Is he stuttering into an iron dome?
|
| "Volkswagen may turn car factory into Iron Dome hub with Israel
| partnership"
|
| https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/volkswagen-isra...
| epsters wrote:
| Joe Kent [1] offered a possible way out of this - however slim
| the odds might be. Trump's one quality that may save us all from
| this quagmire is his ability to do a complete 180 on his previous
| committed path - "TACO" as his detractors like to call it. Like
| he did with ICE in Minneapolis, or in Yemen last year when he
| quit his bombing campaign after one month. If he could be
| convinced to just declare victory over Iran and move onto the
| next crisis of his creation - maybe send ICE to Cuba or invade
| Puerto Rico. He has the personal power to pull it off and his
| base will probably back him. Getting the Iranians to de-escalate
| and back to negotiations will be a challenge (after the second
| time he bombed them in middle of negotiations). The real problem
| will be restraining the Israelis who will likely do everything in
| their power to scuttle any deal and will do things to further
| drag the US and other countries in the region and the world into
| their war.
|
| Another problem will be getting to through to Trump who seems to
| be cocooned in a reality distortion field cast by Fox News, the
| Israel Lobby and Israel-firsters in his administration. If enough
| people in his base and dissenters in his administration and the
| government can speak up and get through to him he might be
| convinced to change course.
|
| The Democratic Party for their part seem to be quite unanimated
| in all this. It looks like they're playing a cynical double-game,
| hoping Trump gets further caught up in a web of his own making. I
| wonder if it will weigh on them at all if another school gets
| blown up or another thousand people die while they slow-walk the
| vote on the next war powers resolution.
|
| [1] - Interesting interview between Kent and Saagar Enjeti
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XMyC2Cr7X0
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