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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#401

Post by manyaoman »

Dig1t wrote: post #299
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.

From the article: >Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time. >It should go without saying that creating the conditions where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error, precisely because it means you end up in a war when it is in the junior partner’s interests to do so…

For me that was the best insight in the whole article. Here are a few extra sentences for context:

> So Iran would now have to assume that an Israeli air attack was also likely an American air attack. It was hardly an insane assumption – evidently according to the Secretary of State, American intelligence made the exact same assessment. But the result was that by bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities in June of 2025, the Trump administration created a situation where merely by launching a renewed air campaign on Iran, Israel could force the United States into a war with Iran at any time.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#402

Post by Pay08 »

lmm wrote: post #69
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 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…

It's surprisingly difficult to find ships if they don't want to be found. Iran has been able to maintain it's shadow fleet for decades for a reason. It'd be more difficult to get a boat that close to the USA for sure, but not impossible. What is more likely are attacks by the various Iranian terrorist organisatons that have been showing up especially in the UK [1, 2].

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/four-arrested-on-suspicion-of-syp...

[2] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-890851

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#403

Post by PowerElectronix »

redwood wrote: post #211
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…

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?

Trump is quoted saying that Iran would surrender or be pverthrown way before they would close the strait.

This operation was cobbled together between Trump, Hegseth, Rubio and Vance without consulting anyone outside that circle. The way they have been selling it, espwcially the strait stuff, smells of unplanned developements all around.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#404

Post by watwut »

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…

Israel just communited genocide in one place and displaced millions in two others.

It "ordered" wast places full of people to lead, destroyed bridges, created shoot at will area on other side and is getting ready to move settlers there.

Isreal is not defending itself. It is cleansing and expanding, feeling entitled to kill at will everyone not them.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#405

Post by SubiculumCode »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #250
SubiculumCode wrote: post #233

This kind of amateur analysis is not worth being front page of HN. Its not that it doesn't make a few good points, but overall, it just isn't high grade strategic analysis because it lacks a lot of information by the post's own admission.

Nah it's good. It shows exactly how far you can get with just a modest understanding of what strategy actually is at the level of nation states plus publicly available facts from the news. Especially in the heavily jingoistic american context, where all of the focus is implicitly on the military means and technology and execution, but people have lost sight of, maybe can not even state plainly, what the point of a mi…

It doesn't even consider potential primary objectives, especially when viewed alongside the recent actions in Venezuela:

1. If US was to replace Iran as the one to control exports of oil through the strait, then thos would gain huge leverage on China via control of energy exports from Iran, Middle East more generally, as they have already done in Venezuela.

2. Making it clear that partnership with Russia and China will not provide security, which was shown to be worthless. This counters “The East is rising and the West is declining”, a go-to Xi Jinping line.

4. Securing South America for near-shoring production, decoupling of supply chains from China. Iran, China, and Russia have lots of

5. Disrupting Iranian ability to support Russia against Ukraine via manufacturing of drones in Iran and in Venezuela.

Whether these points are actually part of the strategy, I do not know, but they have been raised by others in the space, and seemed absent in the article.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#406

Post by duped »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #309
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…

"further radicalization," If by that you mean Iranians in Iran chanting "better our a-hole than yours", I'm not so sure that's radicalization.

No it means people driving cars into synagogues and shooting up bars.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#407

Post by ritonlajoie »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #237
yanhangyhy wrote: post #7

The reason for the Iran war is very simple: Israel’s instigation, a potential strike against China, and Trump’s political immaturity.

> a potential strike against China I think this is understated in every analysis I've seen. I would bet good money this was part of the main selling point for the US. Just type in "China Oil" into any search engine or even filter the search to 2023 and earlier. China's oil consumption was surging significantly and they get a huge chunk of their oil through the Strait. It wasn't until 2024 I believe that they started…

I do agree. China has only 3 overseas military bases, and only 1 official one, guess where is it ? Djibouti, overseeing the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb in the Red Sea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#408

Post by dzonga »

somenameforme wrote: post #152
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…

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…

I learnt something new - wow - we are truly led by idiots.

who rigs the results of a war game and believes the results - only an idiot drunk on power.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#409

Post by ozgrakkurt »

solatic wrote: post #267
ozgrakkurt wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to terrorists or use those weapons at all? This does not happen even in the most insane examples like North Korea. The more likely outcome would be that they would be able to avoid getting their schools/hospitals etc. bombed. In your mind US should just nuke iran so there is regime change? Can you calculate how this would play out after that happens?

> What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to terrorists or use those weapons at all? a. They have armed and financed their terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and others), who used those arms and capital to commit acts of terrorism against their regime enemies (the US and Israel). b. Witkoff literally offered them free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes and they turned him down, bragging…

Israel can't just be bombing Iran and then nuking them when Iran retalliates by bombing them back. Because this will be too much bad PR even for Israel as the vast majority of people will find evaporating people indiscriminately is unacceptable.

With all this considered I think it is clear why Iran is able to bomb Israel back and Israel can't just nuke them.

I think the points you made about why Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists make no sense. Because Iran would, presumably, get obliterated when those terrorists use those weapons on any country.

As far as I know, full-on invasion of a country that has nuclear weapons has never occured in history so far. So Iran having nuclear weapons in a defensive capacity is obviously good for them. In fact all countries having nuclear weapons in middle east might have made it more peaceful but would have been obviously terrible for Israel/USA

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