Miscellanea: The War in Iran • Hacker News Board

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#451

Post by j_maffe » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #209

roenxi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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…

Did Israel peacefully withdraw from the Golan Heights? No? Unilateral annexation condemened by nearly everyone in the international community.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#452

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #338

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…

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 pha…

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#453

Post by andriy_koval » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #102

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 assume that smuggling drones into the US is easier than it was for Ukraine to smuggle them into Russia.

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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#454

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #431

watwut wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is entirely dependent on USA. If USA says they cant attack, they wont.

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.

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#455

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

aaa_aaa wrote: post #416

mrguyorama wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

[flagged]

> Seriously did you buy this?

Uh yes, water shortages and inflation have a habit of pissing people off.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#456

Post by leonidasrup » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

nullpoint420 wrote: post #355

all2 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also note that wind turbines require huge amounts of petroleum derivatives to operate.

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.

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...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#457

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #75

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…

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.

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>

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#458

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

andriy_koval wrote: post #447

sysguest wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coali…

> they'll form a coalition against iran and do what?

> 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

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#459

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

D_Alex wrote: post #60

>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…

> 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.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#460

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

lenkite wrote: post #70

decimalenough wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Power infrastructure & hospitals are already being targeted and bombed. Just doesn't make the news.

> 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.