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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#111

Post by avereveard »

ardit33 wrote: post #77
avereveard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#112

Post by avereveard »

sveme wrote: post #84
avereveard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#113

Post by surgical_fire »

pas wrote: post #107
ardit33 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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 i…

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#114

Post by aa-jv »

pm90 wrote: post #33
khhu2bnn wrote: post #26

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 im…

Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent yes men.

Its what happens when your nation state has been raised on an unhealthy diet of warrior narcissism.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#115

Post by aa-jv »

manfromchina1 wrote: post #4

> 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.

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#116

Post by geraneum »

roenxi wrote: post #105
geraneum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

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 pro…

> 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).

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#117

Post by orwin »

pm90 wrote: post #33
khhu2bnn wrote: post #26

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 im…

Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent yes men.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#119

Post by krapp »

surgical_fire wrote: post #118
underdeserver wrote: post #22

[flagged]

> The US and Israel have been pummeling them continuously, and they're not done Is this the winning condition? Killing Iranians, all else be damned?

The win condition is that the Republican Party maintains control of government after the midterms and suffers no consequences for raping children on Epstein's island.
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