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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#271

Post by nprz »

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…

OP forgot to mention just mining the strait, which is also an option.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#272

Post by solatic »

kdheiwns wrote: post #243
solatic wrote: post #128

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-Palestinia…

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 liv…

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#273

Post by bitcurious »

kdheiwns wrote: post #243
solatic wrote: post #128

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-Palestinia…

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 liv…

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#274

Post by __alexs »

lucianbr wrote: post #165
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 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.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#275

Post by simonh »

roryirvine wrote: post #164
orwin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'manufa…

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…

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...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#276

Post by bitcurious »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #154
solatic wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#277

Post by MomsAVoxell »

macintux wrote: post #244
aa-jv wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'd be curious about a citation for the "lose half of their babies" statement. This review of the data & papers has some grim numbers, but nothing remotely that dramatic. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7903104/

From over a decade ago .. its still happening:

https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/2/e004166

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277304922...

But of course, it depends who you ask. American institutions cannot be trusted, obviously.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#278

Post by amarant »

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#279

Post by [deleted] »

sysguest wrote: post #232
redwood wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

[deleted]

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#280

Post by 1minusp »

amarant wrote: post #278

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…

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.
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