What people do to distract the focus from Epstein list. 2nd Epstein war.
Hey, don't knock what works!
Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
81–90 of 1001 posts
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no party even capable of doing it. The Gulf coastline is almost 1000 miles long, there would have to be a gigantic occupation of an area the size of a small country, at the same time as there would be 'all out war' with Iran, which would be backed by China and to a lesser extent Russia, and whereupon an invasion would provide them with millions of determined fighters. We're talking 'Gulf War' scale of operat…
> The Gulf coastline is almost 1000 miles long, there would have to be a gigantic occupation of an area the size of a small country If you want to secure even 5 miles inland over 1000 miles, that's 50,000 square miles, or an area bigger than more than half the countries on earth, including North and South Korea, Iran is the 18th largest country in the world
Wow, amazing perspective on proportionality there.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#83The U.S. can't win this war. John Kiriakou did a nice analysis on this on his recent podcasts. "Iran just has to prolong the war and survive it to win". Trump on the other hand needs a decisive win fast, or the economic and political fallout will be too big. As long as Iran can launch cheap drones and keep a small but steady pressure there is just no path out of this for the U.S. except to go home.
I have seen the same from other sources https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/ > This is the second sudden bombing campaign the country has suffered in as many years – they do not want there to be a third next year and a fourth the year after that. But promises not to bomb them don’t mean a whole lot: establishing deterrence here means inflicting quite a lot of pain. In practice, if Iran wants fut…
While it can very well be true, I wonder if we don't exagerate the will of the iranian regime and its ablity in the current time to think this far ahead. I see them more in survival mode, I'm not sure they fight for future deterence, maybe the goals align currently but seems to me to be happenstance. They seem resilient but I wonder how much they would be close of falling. Of course, I wouldn't have done this war, and I certainly would stop it now.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US public discourse is so dehumanized today that anyone who is not "with them" is literally not a human anymore. Even within the country itself "the leftards" are considered an obstacle which can be removed if only enough force is applied. Sending armed agents at protesters is seen as being the same thing as sending pest control to clear out beaver dams on the creek. Nobody cares what the beavers think, they are…
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> The conservatives, when they protest (Tea Parties) leave public spaces in fine shape.
As long as you ignore the feces smeared on the walls and the injured police.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.
: Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. Could that work? It didn’t end well in Vietnam, which is about a fifth of the land area, and, in 1970, half the current population of Iran. Also, they’ll pack a bigger punch, but I think the USA has way fewer bombers now.
> Could that work? It didn’t end well in Vietnam
We can't carpet bomb to regime change. But we can probably depopulate critical areas around the coasts while ships transit. It's stupidly expensive, both in materiel and collateral cost. But it's feasible. Whether we have the bomb-production is a separate question to which I don't have the answer.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#86At the heart of this is the fact that America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale. High tech interceptors and missiles and aircraft carriers are great, but with China's help these are outnumbered by three (soon to be four) orders of magnitude. It's unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes, with not much in between.
> America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII. > unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.
>We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.
The soviet union collapsed as a result of military overspending and massive supply chain corruption in an attempt to keep up with an opponent with lower levels of corruption and a far more powerful industrial base.
Which is to say, inviting the gold toilet brigade from Ukraine to come and build our weapons while showering them with cash would signal that that Christmas came early for Putin.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#87I'm always perturbed to see people talk of mass killings so casually
There aren't a lot of alternatives - the amount of mass killing going on right now is unusually high. People can't spend all day frothing with moral outrage at the horror of it all. If something is routine there isn't much of an alternative than to discuss it as routine. This article is actually unusually good, I wouldn't be surprised if the site was generally anti-war. It isn't unusual for the level of analysis to b…
It’s really quite amazing how the US went in without seemingly an iota of planning beyond “kill ayatollah for regime change”, but at this rate we will see US regime change before Iranian.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.
Trump casually talks about destroying the energy infrastructure, power plants, desalination plants etc. This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death. To willingly deprive a country of 100,000,000 people of water and power coming into summer would surely be a war-crime.
> This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death
But the Russians have been doing it. Iran may have targeted an Israeli power plant. The precedent, unfortunately, is set.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US public discourse is so dehumanized today that anyone who is not "with them" is literally not a human anymore. Even within the country itself "the leftards" are considered an obstacle which can be removed if only enough force is applied. Sending armed agents at protesters is seen as being the same thing as sending pest control to clear out beaver dams on the creek. Nobody cares what the beavers think, they are…
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> The conservatives, when they protest (Tea Parties) leave public spaces in fine shape
We're just skipping Charlottesville and the Capitol? We have idiots on both of our fringes. But only one of them is in power right now.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> America has lost the capability to manufacture anything at scale We make plenty of stuff at scale. We just haven’t designed any of military around it since WWII. > unclear if we can do much other than threaten sanctions and nukes We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America.
>We could learn from our allies in Ukraine. Give them capital and manufacturing bases in America. The soviet union collapsed as a result of military overspending and massive supply chain corruption in an attempt to keep up with an opponent with lower levels of corruption and a far more powerful industrial base. Which is to say, inviting the gold toilet brigade from Ukraine to come and build our weapons while showerin…
> inviting the gold toilet brigade from Ukraine to come and build our weapons
Ukraine is a massive weapons manufacturer. It's a small country holding Russia's entire military-industrial complex at bay. We have a lot to learn from them, even if it's just tactics and industrial organisation. And those lessons don't only apply to fighting pisspot dictatorships like Putin's.