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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#251

Post by bawolff »

fogzen wrote: post #184
bawolff wrote: post #6

> 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 woul…

> 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.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#252

Post by williamdclt »

niemandhier wrote: post #187

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.

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#253

Post by pjc50 »

citrin_ru wrote: post #216
beloch wrote: post #71

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 se…

> 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 t…

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!)

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#254

Post by crazygringo »

D_Alex wrote: post #101
lmm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 prototyp…

>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 .

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#255

Post by amarant »

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!

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#256

Post by spwa4 »

Hikikomori wrote: post #169
spwa4 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 presid…

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.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#257

Post by pstuart »

abraxas wrote: post #235
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…

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.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#258

Post by bawolff »

gostsamo wrote: post #11
bawolff wrote: post #6

> 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 woul…

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 und…

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/Neither_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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#259

Post by the_af »

daemoens wrote: post #163
somenameforme wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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."

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#260

Post by abraxas »

pstuart wrote: post #257
abraxas wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Perhaps they are not as intelligent as you think they are.
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