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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#741

Post by jameshilliard »

krige wrote: post #47
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 agree that a revolution in Iran is not impossible, I rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly and moderate; after the indscriminate military action of the past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd again.

> I rather doubt that whoever comes next will be western friendly and moderate

The Iranian people(not the Islamic Regime which is despised by the vast majority of the people in Iran) tend to be very western friendly and tend to be much more secular than most populations in the region.

> the indscriminate military action of the past few weeks they are probably more likely to get ayatollah'd again.

The Iranian people are well aware that the airstrikes are not at all indiscriminate but are targeting the Regime(there are plenty of videos coming out of Iran of people filming and cheering as airstrikes hit Regime targets), indiscriminate military action would be what the Islamic Regime did when they killed tens of thousands of civilian protesters by firing automatic weapons into crowds of people. The Iranian people understand what is happening.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#742

Post by jameshilliard »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #484

It's not a war in Iran. It's an unprovoked war by the USA and its handler, Israel, against Iran. People are being killed, by choice, by the USA and Israel, and the USA and Israel are irreversibly destroying their own personas on the world stage. Even US hostage Merz is starting to stutter about it. Everywhere that isn't the USA or a USA vassal, they call the USA and Israel "The Epstein Coalition". That's how it is vi…

> It's an unprovoked war by the USA and its handler, Israel, against Iran.

Iran via their proxies have waged war for years against the US and Israel, the war is in no way unprovoked.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#743

Post by jmyeet »

AYBABTME wrote: post #737
jmyeet wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tl;dr here is, with all due respect, that your premises are basically all wrong. > (1) reducing oil shipments to China is good posturing for the US No, it isn't. For several reasons: 1. China has stockpiled ~1.4 billion barrels of oil. it'a net importer. Supplies from Russia aren't disrupted. At present, Iranian oil is still gointg to China; 2. China is rapidly decreasing its dependence on fossil fuels with renew…

I mostly agree with everything you say, I just see the balance lying elsewhere on the spectrum. I think China is on it's way to securing its energy supplies with renewables but not quite there, and that the US is taking this window of opportunities to do what it can to attempt to degrade China. Whether China plans to actually invade or blockade Taiwan or not doesn't matter if the US thinks it will. AFAICT the US is c…

The US is an arms dealer empire. It's economic strength and power come from its ability to sell weapons. The military budget is pushing $1 trillion (and probably will exceed it with supplemental funding for the Iran boondoggle). Rumor has it the administration will be asking for $1.5 trillion in the next Budget. That is a staggering and utterly unsustainable level of spending. Most of that is going to defense contractors.

The US doesn't want to live in a multipolar world. It wants to remain the hegemonic global superpower, basically to make a handful of really wealthy people even more wealthy at the expensive of everyone else.

So do I believe the US wants to treat China like an enemy that "needs" to be degraded? Absolutely. Do I think it should be that way or has to be that way? Absolutely not. But that is a minority position in US political circles. One thing the Republicans and Democrats are united on is the US imperialist project.

You have a handful of candidates like Graham Platner who think the path forward with China is one of cooperation not competition [1]. The Democratic Party, just like the Republican Party, hates this kind of rhetoric. That's what we're dealing with.

Part of selling that is convincing everyone is that China is or wants to do the exact same imperialism that the US is doing. What's China actually doing? The Belt and Road Initiative [2] where China basically sues its massive trade surplus to go around the world and build ports, airports and roads and to fund mines, farms, power plants and oil and gas. All on significantly better terms than the World Bank and IMF offer [3], so much so that Africa is considered "lost" to US interests in favor of China.

Fun fact: the United States Africa Command is headquartered in Germany [4]. Why? Because no African country wants it. It's one region where the US only has a handful of bases (eg Djibouti, Kenya).

When the country that produces most of the world's weapons is telling you that there's some big military threat that can only be solved by selling more weapons I just ask: consider the source.

[1]: https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/2028936316285546537

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

[3]: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/chinese-and-world-bank-len...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#744

Post by sysguest »

markdown wrote: post #439
rurp wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Even though I think the Iranian regime has been extremely incompetent overall their war strategy has been surprisingly lucid. They aren't actually risking much more by attacking neighboring countries that are already cooperating with the US. How much is Qatar's military involvement going to move the needle when you're already facing a full-on war with the US and Israel? Raising the overall costs to the US…

Yup, Iran is threatening regime change by targeting the financial stability of American voters. It's their only play, really.

well... I actually think even when trump is impeached, the democrats will continue -- even more so, to call mr trump "a weak president"

I mean, can US and its allies exactly stop at status quo?

Iran just learnt it can missile nearby neighbors and demand $2M toll fee on the strait users...

even if US just backs down from "epic wut", will iran become "the good guy" and never missile neighbors and stop demanding that $2M toll?

nope: rather, that would mean US and allies will lose its deterrence against Iran completely

iran'll start bullying more on those neighbors, and the toll fee will go up: $2M to $5M to $10M to... even $100M -- I mean, what's stopping iran from doing so?

anyway, I'm just surprised everyone in this forum is trying their best only to say "trump is such an idiot to start the war (well duh?)", and not to look at what choices each nations had/have after trump's dickhead move

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#745

Post by lmm »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #662
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of command and are effectively moving and acting by momentum This was by design via the mosaic defense tactic. They know the US prides itself on decapitation strikes, "taking out the leader of x" was a monthly headline during our time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and during the events of ISIS/syrian civil war. It's how the special forces operated, taking out a "leader", c…

What would such predelegated instructions look like, how large is the state space in that flowchart? How effective is control theory with a tiny state space? This doesn't sound like a survival plan, but a self-splintering plan: some military units will capitulate or defect while others fight on, when pushed till the edge, or is there some kind of direct-democracy-within-the-IRGC? that doesn't sound plausible... Basic…

The Swedish military famously works the same way (or at least used to) - they're trained to uphold the Swedish constitution themselves regardless of what their leadership says, with the result that they saved many lives in former Yugoslavia despite orders not to intervene: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/09/20/trigger... .

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#746

Post by jameshilliard »

znnajdla wrote: post #240

No one seems to discuss the worst case scenario for this war. In the best/average case the world takes an economic hit. But I can think of one really big black swan event which no one seems to even consider (except Nassim Taleb). This war could trigger regime collapses all over the Arab world and put populist leaders in charge who rise to power on the basis of Gaza genocide fury. That would be catastrophic to Israel:…

> That would be catastrophic to Israel: they could face Iran from the air and Arab ground forces from multiple directions. In fact there are already signs that Egypt is moving towards that, troops are moving in to the Sinai. There is a real chance that Israel could cease to exist.

Israel is a nuclear power, there is no conceivable scenario in which Israel would cease to exist that doesn't involve nuclear war. Israel also has a long history of defeating coordinated attacks from their neighbors with conventional means alone.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#747

Post by andrewflnr »

jmyeet wrote: post #735
andrewflnr wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's built strategy suggests they want to invade Taiwan. What else are those bridge barges for? And yeah, it's a dumb idea, but Taiwan, unification in general, seems to be one of the handful of things China can't quite manage to be rational about. They didn't have to grab Hong Kong ahead of time either.

There are three things people often don't seem to realize about invasions: 1. What a barrier water is still to this day; 2. How many troops it would take to occupy a country; and 3. The logistics required to support an invasion. Knowing these things, even a little bit, can dispel a lot of fearmongering nonsense one will see. On a clear day, you can see the white cliffs of Dover from Calais, France. I believe at its n…

I already agreed it was a dumb idea. If that always stopped the leaders of powerful countries from starting wars, we wouldn't be talking about Iran.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#748

Post by lmm »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #491
Dig1t wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it's huge sums of money flowing through our political system and effectively buying our politicians I disagree strongly with this assertion. But for sake of argument, let's assume it's true: American politics is permanently captured to Israel's interests. That still doesn't explain this war. "I think most folks understand that this war was a misfire for the United States, but I suspect it may end up being a terribl…

> If, on the other hand, we acknowledge "Netanyahu...is playing an extremely short game because it benefits him politically and personally to do so," we can allow for similar levels of narcicism and stupidity in the U.S.

Sure. I don't doubt that many US politicians would start a costly war if it benefitted them. But who are the US politicians it has benefitted?

Trump hasn't gained anything from this war. Nor has Rubio or anyone else in his administration. Netanyahu, however, has benefitted politically and personally, even if only in the short term. Any effort to understand or explain the war should incorporate that.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#749

Post by jameshilliard »

geraneum wrote: post #158
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…

> Would it be fair to characterise these provocations as all involving Iran providing resistance to Israel aggressively expanding its borders? Considering the results of this war so far and the one before, as well as Iran's military strategy, it doesn't seem plausible to think Iran sees (or ever saw) Israel as a threat to its borders' integrity. This may be the basis for Iran's strategy in the region in some version…

> IMO, the regime is not as much worried about Israel as it is about the US.

The Islamic Regime is not a normal rational actor, their opposition to Israel is driven primarily by their ideology.

> Just compare the number of missiles and drones they shot at Gulf countries vs Israel.

This is probably more just a matter of Iran having more short range weapons than long range weapons, Israel is a long range target that much of their weapons will be unable to reach.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#750

Post by eonwe »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #466
watwut wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel does not want functional moderate goverment in Iran. It would bomb and kill anyone who tries that. Israels plan is to periodically bomb and keep Iran failed state. It is working on making itself larger cleansing whole areas around it and settling it.

> Israel does not want functional moderate goverment in Iran Israel would probably be fine with a moderate government in Iran. A moderate Tehran doesn't encourage Hamas and Hezbollah to randomly lob rockets into Israel. Even if Israel disagreed, a moderate Iran balances Israel in the region. An Iran that has beef with literally every single one of its neighbors other than Turkmenistan cannot provide that balance.

I think Israeli position is what a security researcher states in this FT article: https://www.ft.com/content/dd070ee7-7021-4f90-86ec-690fe6aa3...

> Summarising the Israeli government’s position, Citrinowicz said: “If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn’t care less about the future . . . [or] the stability of Iran. > > “That is a point of difference between us and the US. I think [Washington is] more concerned about nation-building and threats to their regional partners,” he added.

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