This has massive strategic implications for the US. The US couldn't protect its bases in the middle east from a middle power like Iran and in fact its bases were the reason that its "allies" in the gulf were attacked. Iran would have no reason to attack those allies otherwise. The US has also shown that Israel is the only ally that it really cares about.
Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia are taking notes. Prediction: there is not going to be a war over Taiwan - Taiwan will gradually come to a Hong Kong like agreement with China.
Nah. Seeing how China reneged on the "one country, two systems" promise and wrecked Hong Kong has turned the Taiwanese people more firmly against reunification.
Iran would be attacking other nearby states regardless of whether they host US military bases. Iran has a long history of aggression, including sponsoring terrorist groups. Personally I favor a less interventionist US foreign policy but even if we completely disengaged from the Middle East it would still be a violent neighborhood — probably even more so.
During the Iran–Iraq War, which began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980,[1] the United States adopted a policy of providing support to Iraq in the form of several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, dual-use technology, intelligence sharing (e.g., IMINT), and special operations training.[2] This U.S. support, along with support from most of the Arab world, proved vital in helping Iraq sustain military operations against Iran.[3] The documented sale of dual-use technology, with one notable example being Iraq's acquisition of 45 Bell helicopters in 1985,[4][5] was effectively a workaround for a ban on direct arms transfers; U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East dictated that Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism because of the Iraqi government's historical ties with groups like the Palestinian Liberation Front and the Abu Nidal Organization, among others.[6] However, this designation was removed in 1982 to facilitate broader support for the Iraqis as the conflict dragged on in Iran's favour.
Nov. 4, 1979 Iran took fifty two American's hostage and held them for 444 days.
Iran has been calling for the death and destruction of me, my family, and my country my entire life. Seeing the Iranian mullahs, both the leaders of Iran and the highest religious leaders of one of the largest groups of muslims, call for my and my families deaths and the destruction of my civilization my entire life is the largest factor instilling fear and distrust of islam in me. I have never seen huge protests in the US calling for Iranian deaths. Yet no one bats any eye when examples such events in Iran are shown in media. It is just a given an cool with the world that Iran hates Americans and want us dead.
The continued bombing/killing of Americans throughout the middle east during the 1980s furthered highlighted to me that Iran targeted Americans for acts of violence.
The high ranking Shia mullahs/religious teachers that run the Islamic Republic ordered 3,000-30,000 of their own murdered in the streets for not wanting religious police to rape/murder them/their children/their sisters/moms if they didn't wear hats.
The highest of the Shia religious leaders don't need much 'justification' they happily order their religious police/religious proxies to carry out acts of mass violence.
To be fair, such rhetoric in Iran was around long before this war.
It is also common knowledge [1] that more-pious followers of Islam - particularly in Middle Eastern countries - are considerably more receptive to Islam's more radical teachings and commands on the topic of the treatment towards non-believers (which makes up the bulk of Western nation populations), than Jewish or Christian followers are to their respective religion's teaching and commands in regards to the same.
In 1953, the UK and US collaborated to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in favor of strengthening the power of the Shah over the country. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was unpopular with the Brits after he attempted to nationalize the country's oil interests, which were being exploited by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. After convincing the Eisenhower administration that Mosaddegh's government would pull Iran into the Soviet sphere of influence, the CIA and MI6 helped plan and execute the coup by the royalists. Several hundred people were killed in the riots; Mosaddegh was convicted of treason and held in house arrest for the rest of his life; many of his supporters were jailed or killed.
The continuing bombing/killing of civilians in the middle east by Americans further highlights to me that the United States will never be able to overcome the violence it has inflicted on the world by continuing to inflict more violence.
"The continued bombing/killing of Americans throughout the middle east during the 1980s furthered highlighted to me that Iran targeted Americans for acts of violence."
was to say that there was actions and intent to act behind the supreme religious leaders calling for the death/destruction of my entire country/society (they weren't just words), not to say an entire peoples/society is irredeemable (as the Islamic Republican of Iran and it's supreme religious leaders have labeled mine).
Oh well if only 10 year old me knew that something happened in 1953 I'm sure I would internalize actually I WAS deserving of death and slept better when the leaders of one of the largest sects in Islam and the nation they controlled wanted 10 year old me, my parents, my grandparents, my friends, my country/civilization dead. That 40+ years of calls/demands for death and ending a society were ok because 1953. Silly me.
"you see Timmy, some times religious leaders have to call for the death/destruction of a society because of something that happened 30-70 years earlier".
If 10 year old you was born in Shahist Iran, then you, your parents, your grandparents, your friends and your political leadership might be tortured or executed by the American regime for exercising free speech or opposing domestic policy.
You are indeed luckier than those 10 year olds, for enduring death threats and not summary executions. Your fears are the ones lucky enough to be considered silly, theirs are mortal panic.
"you see Timmy, sometimes religious leaders have to call for the death/destruction of a society because of something that happened 30 (now 70) years earlier".
"You see Timmy, your kneecaps are smashed because Mr. Nixon doesn't think you deserve free speech. Don't take it personally, and don't oppose us or your teeth are next."
Wild take but I condemn both. My nation removed Nixon in disgrace and we despise him almost universally. I condemn him and I condemn the horrible acts done by the United States. Do you not agree that supreme religious leaders shouldn't call for the death and destruction of entire societies ever? You can be against both.
The Taiwanese know they can't take on China directly, they now know that Western support is meaningless - in fact it pushes them more into conflict with China. Given a choice, I think the Taiwanese would prefer a Hong Kong like outcome to a Ukraine/UAE like outcome.
AFAIK Iran never directly attacked several countries (e.g. UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi, Bahrain) before this war.
The question you have to ask is, in the story of offense vs defense, can Taiwan mine that srait and deny China access, or does China posses anti-mine technology that counteracts that.
TW gets most of energy and calories from strait shipping. It would be PRC mining/denying TW for lulz if anything. Ultimately TW going to have to look to see if they want to be HKers, who got less retarded after kissing PRC boot (see HK kids going to SZ to party) or whether TW wants to be Gaza who capitulates to Israeli demand, because reality is with sufficient force asymmetry, one can destroy civic life enough to force capitulation. And PRC can do that to TW, trivially, with mainland fires alone. The only hold back is the "family across the strait" narrative.
TW forceful reunification even if depopulated husk basically done deal, the real question is whether PRC wants to do an Iran and push US security out of east Asia, which is ultimate grand strategic goal. And to be blunt TW is perfect casus belli to spark this. PRC would be net worse off long run getting TW peacefully and but still deal with US security in region. Hence whether Iran can squeeze US out of CENTOM (even marginally) will set huge precedence.
Isn't a big draw for reunification the advanced manufacturing in Taiwan?
Forced reunification would risk destroying that, either as incidental damage through military operations, or as sabotage.
Far better would be to sit back and allow the US to continue proving itself incompetent and unreliable, until being subsumed like Hong Kong doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
The down votes to this suggest that many in the west are in denial. China doesn’t need to fight a hot war with Taiwan, they can incrementally pressure Taiwan while their western allies issue impotent statements.
China also doesn't need to annex Taiwan. Chinese people have been brainswashed by the PCC into thinking that it was a life-or-death issue for the country. It is not, and China could live another millenia without controlling the island.
If anything, Taiwan proves that Chinese people can be perfectly fine and rich without the authoritarian grip of the PCC. That's the most likely reason why the PCC clique wants to invade TW.
It's not an existential issue for China. It's an existential issue for the CPP, because Xi made it so. He made reunification with Taiwan by... 2049 (IIRC, but I admit I'm fuzzy on the exact date) a test of the legitimacy of the CCP. So it's an existential issue for the CCP because Xi ran his mouth, basically.
The downvotes suggest that many in the West see it as unconscionable to call people “retarded” for preferring not to be invaded. If someone made a comment like this in my house, I would kick them out immediately and might well never speak to them again.
Taiwan is culturally and historically tied to the mainland, and China is ascendant economically and geopolitically. I can more easily understand why a Taiwanese citizen would chose to be under Chinese sphere of influence over US.
have you spoken to anyone who grew up in China? every single chinese-born person i interacted with (all in the USA) seemed to approve of the government. these were students and professionals working in the west, so probably more educated and western-leaning than the average chinese. not once did i hear a chinese person i knew complaining of repression. not saying it doesnt happen, but i don't believe its a major concern for vast majority of chinese. im happy to be proven wrong though if others have conflicting data.
I have spoken with people who grew up in China. I have also spent time there. The education system is geared around brainwashing the children as early as possible, into thinking that the PCC is China and criticizing the PCC is criticizing their country.
China is not a free country; there isn't free information or free speech. I'm sure that many North Koreans also think that their country is perfectly fine and Comrade Kim is the best leader they could have. The pig in his sow likely thinks that he lives his best life. Does it mean that it's true?
Most people I discussed it with, including PhD students, had very little knowledge of their country's history in the 20th century, of what really happened during Mao's rule and after.
Besides, China is a country socially deeply divided, and the PCC doesn't incentivize social empathy in its population - quite the inverse. So I'm not really surprised that rich kids in USA universities (so, the top of the cream of the regime) don't complain about the system and have never experienced hardship personally.
Have you discussed it with people who were locked up in their buildings during Covid? Or farmers who were evicted to make place for promoters who bought their land on the cheap? Or maybe the Tibetan monks that immolated themselves to protest against the destruction of their culture? Lu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace prize, who spent the rest of his life in prison, for saying the wrong (non violent) things?
> an authoritarian regime, with no respect for human rights
I mean Alex Pretti was murdered because he was exercising his 2nd amendment rights and was getting beaten after having been disarmed and never displaying his firearm.
Headlines are full of people who are dying without medical care because they're being incarcerated and shipped overseas due to legal technicalities.
Nice whataboutism, nothing has changed since the USSR, I see! The US also has its problems; this doesn't give the PCC a free pass. And those issues will likely go after the elections, something people in China haven't been able to do since the PCC took over the country.
Anyway, shall I discuss the cultural genocide being committed on the Uighurs, or the Tibetans? Or, in a quite bizarre fashion, the descendants of the Mongols? [1]
The goulags created during covid? And let's not talk about all the horrors of the Mao-era PCC. Etc, etc...
The KMT is not in power right now because they are pro-one china/unification. If it was just western-filtered copium, the KMT would not keep losing popular elections. The DPP remains in power because it isn’t the KMT.
Your view, as a matter of fact, is mainland-filtered copium. Yes, the rich Taiwanese mainlanders who used to dominate Taiwan politics want a return to the past, but native Taiwanese are more populous and have less vested interest in unification with the mainland do not.
> Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia are taking notes.
Donny also goes back on his word constantly. Look at all the trade agreements that he signed before 'liberation day'. Look at really everything afterwards too.
Even if Iran wanted to sign something, they can't. It will mean nothing. They know that.
HN, why allow these one sided discussions? This response was flagged dead because only 'correct' opinion is allowed, all challenges are hidden/flagged dead:
"US seized Maduro overnight, PRC strongly condemned. The PRC anti-air defense system did nothing. Venezuela was PRC's top ally in South America.
US killed ayatollah khomeini and his comrades in one day, PRC strongly condemned. The PRC anti-air defense did nothing.
US struck and removed most military threats in Iran in a few weeks, PRC strongly condemned. Iran was PRC's top ally in middle east.
US enacted blockade on Iran ports, and seized many oil tankers sending oil to PRC , PRC strongly condemned. PRC desperately needs the Iranian oil, now reaching deep into its 3 months reserves, which parts of it were used to prepare attacks on Taiwan.
US just enacted economic sanctions on honeypot oil refineries in China, which takes in Iranian oil. I'm sure PRC will strongly condemn.
PRC is a paper tiger, nothing more, nothing less."
China not intervening in Venezuela or Iran situation does not make them paper tigers.
It makes them ... not idiots. They are not interrupting the ennemy while that ennemy makes a mistake.
And also, saying that "US struck and removed most military threats in Iran in a few weeks" is massive overstatement. Iran military targets went from being obliterated, to almost half destroyed, to 60% remain working and active, to "a lot more then we think is still functional" which only god and Iran knows what it means.
trump did literally everything backwards. he should have started with the blockade and increased the pressure over time, with decapitation strikes at the end if needed. also..help arm the people of iran before doing anything else. that would have made iran look like the aggressor when they eventually bombed their region.
instead the islamic republic's "strategic patience" fully paid off and now most rational people sees them as victims.
what trump's doing is like trying to cure multi-drug resistant bacterial infection with whatever random antibiotics are on hand - the very thing that created resistance.
If the goal is to overthrow the regime by force, you need boots on the ground. The basic approach might be something like the Iraq war but bigger, and with an actual plan for the aftermath. And it might end up being the biggest (or at least the most intense) war the US has fought since WW2.
Air strikes are effective at killing people and destroying property, but their impact on the situation on the ground is limited. Even if you manage to destroy the regime, there needs to be an alternative with sufficient legitimacy and institutional support to replace it. But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge. So you either need occupying forces to provide the institutional support, or the likely outcome is a civil war.
> If the goal is to overthrow the regime by force, you need boots on the ground.
You have the Artesh in Iran, their standard military which is bigger than the IRGC and aren't under Islamist rule and they are loyal more to the democratically elected government than the Islamist one.
> But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge.
They never destroyed the Artesh, that army has been the same since before the 1979 revolution, so your analysis is wrong for Iran since they do have those power structures in place. If you destroy IRGC the rest of Iran would run just fine. They have elections, they have a democratically elected government of reformists who want to move away from Islamist rule, those elected politicians however don't have the power to do that currently but if you shift the power enough it could happen.
Destroying the regime is much easier than destroying the IRGC. The former requires killing enough key people and destroying enough key infrastructure to make the regime unable to govern and take initiative. The latter requires killing most of the people with the weapons and ideological commitment to continue fighting. If you do the latter, the country will not be in a state where it can hold democratic elections.
The Gaza war is a good example. Israel quickly reduced Hamas to a mostly reactive resistance force. But it was unable to destroy Hamas as a relevant force.
As for the standard military, authoritarian regimes are also keenly aware of the threat posed by the military. That's why they have large internal security forces, such as the IRGC. Common practices to mitigate the threat include promoting harmless unambitious people to leadership positions and trying to keep the ranks free of people with strong ideological commitments. While the standard military outnumbers the internal security forces, it tends to consist of people willing to serve the regime and choose the status quo over a civil war.
> Destroying the regime is much easier than destroying the IRGC.
IRGC is an oil money empire, they aren't ideological warriors they are mercenaries that fight for money, remove the oil and the empire crumbles. Its like removing ad revenue from Google, it would destroy the company and what is left would be a small husk of its former self.
So blocking the oil will massively weaken IRGC and keep Artesh the same, since Artesh is made up of people who actually want to fight for the country.
Sure they have some nice statements about ideology and saving the world etc on top, but the main driver is the money.
Ideological commitment and personal beliefs are orthogonal, much in the same way as religion and personal faith are orthogonal. IRGC members are ideologically committed, because they have chosen to serve the regime. They are committed, because if the regime ever fails, things will be bad to them personally.
Authoritarian regimes also understand that they need to keep their core supporters happy. If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.
> If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.
90% of IRGC funding comes directly from their own oil empire, without oil they barely have any funding. They can't make the other parts suffer before themselves here since they get it directly from owning the oil exports, it doesn't go via the government.
If they start trying to take money from the military then they would start the civil war themselves, they can't do that.
90% of revenue, not funding. Most of it is revenue from the businesses they run, and most of that goes to ordinary business expenses.
In any case, it's just an arrangement that has worked for the IRGC so far. If it stops working, the regime can make other arrangements. Such as extracting more money from the 90% of the population that are not particularly relevant to the continued existence of the regime.
Yes, US sponsored chemical weapons attacks on Iran claimed 30 to 50 thousand Iranian lives that is still grieved like an open would today. To say nothing of downed civillian passenger jet by the Americans and the coup to oust Mossadegh.
Notably, Iran did not retaliate in kind to the US sponsored Iraqi attack with chemical weapons, now considered weapons of mass destruction. This might be related to the notion that WMDs are un-Islamic, which got formalized as Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons.
Iran also has a doomsday clock ticking down saying Israel will get destroyed by 2040, only reasonable way that can happen is a nuclear weapon. If they really didn't want a nuclear weapon they wouldn't be so against bans on them enriching uranium.
Edit: Since some people don't seem to believe me:
> The clock was programmed to count down from 8,411 days, corresponding to a 2015 statement by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who predicted that "Israel won't exist in 25 years".[1][2][3] He claimed in his statement that there will be nothing left of the Jewish state by 2040.
And how exactly is that the responsibility of the United States? And why just in Iran? There are so many other conflicts in the world. Sorry, but this argument has never made sense.
> The thread isn’t eliminated and America looks weaker.
The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this. If USA pulls out Israel will finish the job for sure since Iran isn't in a position to stop Israel bombing their powerplants, and without power they can't do anything.
So the question now is what state we can get after the threat is eliminated, not if the elimination was successful.
> The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this.
I guess we will see. They have worked out how to control the straits quite effectively and made the US look very foolish. It’s weakened a load of US relationships and damaged a load of economies.
For a regime that’s eliminated, it’s sure proving hard to wrap things up, and the oil is not flowing.
It’s going to be interesting to see what any peace settlement looks like as the longer it goes on the worse it hurts everyone. Will Iran be the first to cave?
Trump’s reason for going to war with Iran had nothing to do with Iranian civilians lives or internet access privileges. The optimists say it was because of Iran’s nuclear weapons, slight optimists say it was over oil, cynics say it was a distraction from his role in the Epstein files. Literally no one thinks he actually had Iranian civilian best interests in mind.
Let me be more precise. One is enough to start a war and iran is a imperial local power that is constantly attacking its surrounding region with proxxies. The idea that only the mighty and resourceful can start wars is ridiculous. germany was an underdog in a jonny come lately situation compared to the french and British empire and started two wars. Same is happening here. Asymetric agressor can still be an agressor.
I think that’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, but it seems to me that if the Iranians actually claimed they were 11 days away from a nuclear bomb during the prewar negotiations, it’s likely that the blockade first would not have been the right leading move.
Plus I believe that if you took the “11 days away” claim off the table I don’t think you accurately say that a blockade without the military campaign first would have been successful. Seems like we are in a “what came first the chicken or the egg” moment.
There is no doubt in my mind that a blockade with an intact Iranian navy would not necessarily look like this one.
> if the Iranians actually claimed they were 11 days away from a nuclear bomb during the prewar negotiations
Do you want to cite a good source for this? I think you're confusing having enough 60% enriched uranium for "11 bombs" with "11 days." If Iran was 11 days away then what was the point of the 12-day war last year? The first step would be not blatantly lying to the public
There's way more evidence that iran wasn't building a nuke than that they were:
Gabbard Says Iran Did Not Rebuild Nuclear Program After 2025 Strikes, Contradicting Trump (March 19, 2026)
Like i said, that is what the administration (Witkoff) communicated. You can believe it or not, dispute it all you want, but the only opinion of any importance here is if they (either Iran, the administration, and frankly also Israel) believed it. In that case, it would be a dangerous thing for the US and Israel to ignore. Some would suggest impossible to ignore.
In my opinion if it’s not true and Iran communicated it…that would be a huge miscalculation by Iran.
Are you suggesting there can be no difference between public rhetoric, the truth, and what might be said behind the closed doors of a diplomatic negotiation between adversaries? Especially with Trump?
Which, again, has zero to do with my initial post. Again, the point was that we cant assume a blockade without the initial military operation would have been successful. And it’s a moot point anyway because only one of those three parties needed to believe that Iran was that close to having a nuclear device for a military operation to have taken place. Your opinion (or anyone else’s) of the trustworthiness of the Trump administration has zero bearing on whether or not they could or would launch a military operation. They obviously did.
But you're basing your information off of the things people who are known to lie to you are saying. You're building your house of logic on quicksand.
I'm arguing you can't trust what they say about what was said at these meetings, because they've shown they can't be trusted to tell the truth at any time. Bessent says they said that, but you can't trust him. He's a liar. This is the problem when you have an administration that lies all the time even about little things. You can't even begin to actually trust the big things.
Its incredible how a living US president, in the 21 century, managed to transform the US into nothing more than a second rate regional power.
I know the inventory size of US military forces...spare me that argument. A superpower is defined by what it can make happen, not what it owns. Russia owns nukes and can't take Kyiv. The US owns eleven carrier groups and needs Pakistan to pass notes to Tehran. Inventory is not power. Outcomes are.
You’re just making the mirror image error of the current American regime. It’s not that the US could bomb Iran into submission if only it were more powerful; the strategy is flawed, it cannot work even in principle, because the IRGC prefers being bombed to sacrificing their nuclear capability and regional proxies.
exactly this... this has been strategic disaster from US perspective. a blockade plus covert ops could have split IRGC leadership - instead public decapitation caused rally round the flag effect and gave immediate legitimacy to khamenei heir. completely idiotic
HN, why allow these political discussions where one side is just flagged into oblivion and it becomes purely propaganda against the USA?
The follow were flagged into oblivion:
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Rekindle8090 2 hours ago [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]
I think if you see the country gunning down protesters and beheading women as "the victim" you're fundamentally unserious. The only victim is the people of the iranian regime. Calling Iran as a regime a victim is ridiculous. It's a fascist death cult"
nradov 3 hours ago [flagged] [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]
The primary goal of the attacks was to degrade the Iranian nuclear weapons program. We can argue about whether that was a sensible goal, but a naval blockade certainly wouldn't have achieved it.
my thesis is that the IRGC has successfully established deterrence by demonstrating relative resilience against US attacks (still have boats and missiles), ability to meaningfully strike US bases and its Allies, and willingness to sacrifice a lot of Irans civilian infrastructure. its hard to sift through the propaganda on both sides, but I haven't yet seen anything to disprove this convincingly. anyone else?
I also believe they have the upper hand as they are willing to play the long game. It's like when Russia attacked Ukraine, they gambled on taking Kiev with paratroopers on the first few days. Didn't work and they got stuck.
It will be ironic if Iran gets a stronger position than they had before the war as a consequence of a peace treaty.
It's not really an "if". Iran is in a stronger geopolitical position (than the one they held before the war) today. Any deal they make can only improve things for them, by definition (or else they wouldn't take it).
That's precisely the trap the Trump administration has created for itself. If the only way out is to lose, then you've already lost. And Iran knows it.
> Iran is in a stronger geopolitical position (than the one they held before the war) today
Why do you say that? IRGC lost 90% of their corrupt income when USA blockaded their shadow fleet of oil tankers, they are weaker than ever right now, it is hard for any organization to survive long when losing 90% of their income. They rely on a large amount of mercenaries currently to keep the population under house arrest, but what happens when those no longer get paid?
The blockade is 100% unsustainable. It's a joke. The world can't absorb a 25% cut in oil production for anything more than a few months. Reserve capacity is already being tapped. The futures market says it's only a mild disruption because the futures market is predicting (correctly, so far) that it's all a joke that will disappear in a confusing TACO in a few days.
> The world can't absorb a 25% cut in oil production for anything more than a few months.
IRGC can't absorb that for more than a few months either, and if the world wants to open the strait they would rather attack Iran over the strait than attack USA, so there is no way this state will benefit IRGC if it keeps up.
It was IRGC mining friendly countries waters and attacking ships in friendly waters, every country affected has the right to go attack IRGC over that but they choose to wait and see for now. But if it gets as bad as you suggest then they will just force Iran to open it, they wont force USA to do anything since its not USA that is illegally blocking it.
> IRGC can't absorb that for more than a few months either, and if the world wants to open the strait they would rather attack Iran over the strait than attack USA, so there is no way this state will benefit IRGC if it keeps up.
This is not at all obvious to me. Money and economic power historically is downstream of military power - men with guns can expropriate whatever they want or need from their unarmed, isolated population. The only thing that is potentially upstream of military power is ideology, which also favors IRGC and Iran security forces as they seem to be most ideologically fervent faction in Iran.
> they wont force USA to do anything since its not USA that is illegally blocking it.
The USA is literally blockading the strait to prevent tolling. I mean, in some sense you're right: the Trump threat is fake and he'll cave. But the policy you're ascribing to Iran, incorrectly, is actually what your government claims to be doing!
I remain just absolutely dumbfounded at the ability of this administration's defenders to just dig in on obvious lies. Surely on some level you get that you're being lied to, right?
> The USA is literally blockading the strait to prevent tolling.
USA is blockading Iran, they don't blockade anyone but Iran.
> But the policy you're ascribing to Iran, incorrectly, is actually what your government claims to be doing!
I'm not an american. And no, USA doesn't block anyone but Iran here, blockading an enemy nations ports is fair game during war, blockading third party ports that tries to sail through their own waters like Iran does is not. The strait isn't Irans strait, they put mines all over the place in Omans waters, that is extremely illegal and basically a declaration of war against Oman to do so.
Edit: Maybe you misunderstood USAs blockade as they blockading anyone who pay Iranian tolls. No they don't do that, that was just a deranged statement by Trump, CENTCOM later announced the real blockade and it was just a blockade against Iranian ports, nothing about Iranian tolls.
"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz." - President Donald J. Trump
The inability of people to reason from clear evidence about this president, and instead project onto him whatever rationalizations they've come up with, is absolutely astounding.
Now, again, that is what the president SAID. It is clearly not the actual military stance of the USN in the strait, because that would be insane. But it remains US policy and to argue otherwise is... yikes.
I agree that they have this strong position now, but the war is not over yet. I doubt they'll lose it in any meaningful way, but still it remains to be seen how they manage to capitulate it in a possible peace deal.
Again, they don't have to capitulate. They hold all the cards. The world needs that strait open, and 100%, undeniably, without any question at all will pay Iran tolls to get it.
To the extent that this ends in military action, it's going to be the rest of the world protecting the Iranian toll regime from USA piracy. Even Trump won't pull that trigger. Watch for the TACO.
IMO Ability to break US forward base sancturary breaks entire US expeditionary model. US+co land basing responsible for most of strike sortie generation/sustainment. Carriers are mathematically supplementary in theatre level conflicts.
Degrade land based strike sorties and support sorties and push CVG back to ~1000km (where strike stories drop to ~50% due to tanking) = entire strike sortie sustainment math breaks hard. Less strike sorties -> even more dependence on high-end munitions. Combined with resilient antiair also denied US ability to move to budget (i.e. JDAM) mop up phase. Strategically Iran being able to soak US damage and still fire back = US air campaign tactically failed to degrade Iran missile complex chokehold over region. Consider US used up ~half of highend standoff and interceptors (if you believe CSIS) then status quo after crippling forward bases simply broke US war logistics. US cannot sustain (not even matter of afford) to fight Iran with current highend munition burnrate + cvg sortie generation, and and defeat Iran tactically to rely on lowend munitions without more political exposure, i.e. a few more pilot rescues going to start meaningfully chip away at US CSAR fleet. Nevermind political fallout of failed rescue or F35 down in Iranian soil.
Hence Trump pivoted to threatened civil infra / counter-value, US saw limits / diminishing returns on ability to neutralize remaining Iranian counter-force threats. US simply cannot afford to prosecute prolonged counter-force standoff air campaig without further strategic exhaustion. Same reason Iran shifted to counter-value oil/infra because the damage to US basing already done, and their ability to degrade US CSG sorties limited.
thanks for your insights. do you have a background in defense?
much of what you are saying sounds plausible to me, but i really don't know much about modern military tactics. do you have any suggestions for where i can learn more about that topic wrt how it applies to this war?
> Obviously this applies to WestPac
do you mean a a potential war with China? i dont think China has leverage over a critical choke point like Hormuz and is instead exposed to one (Malacca) that US would surely blockade.
An AWACS was picked off sitting on the ground, that's a bad look. It took Russia years to get to that stage in the war.
One has to wonder how much of the bad US performance is due to deep, systemic problems and how much is due to a rushed and unplanned military operation.
One thing I noticed in the videos on Twitter of quadcopter type drones being flown into US bases in Iraq, is there doesn't seem to be any current defense. They were flying around with impunity, taking their time looking for a target. It's definitely scary.
It could be either unused base (Camp Victory in Iraq) or fiber optic drones, which are effectively invisible for current systems because you need to have good enough radar to see them thanks to their size and used material and they are not having any RF emissions like usual FPV drone would have
American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.
The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the Trump administration attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In the initial days of the war, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait, despite the base having air defenses, a rare breach that marked the first time an enemy fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years, according to two of the U.S. officials.
The U.S. bases that came under attack are home to thousands of American troops, and in some cases their families, though they were largely cleared out in the days and hours before the U.S. and Israeli went to war with Iran.
The Pentagon has not detailed the extent of the damage to U.S. military bases publicly or, according to the U.S. officials, to members of Congress.
“We do not discuss battle damage assessments for operation security reasons,” a Pentagon official said in a statement. “Our forces remain fully operational, and we continue to execute our mission with the same readiness and combat effectiveness.”
U.S. Central Command declined to comment on battle damage assessments.
Last month, the administration asked private satellite companies, including Planet Labs, to withhold imagery of the bases from the public, making the extent of the destruction difficult to assess, according to the U.S. officials and experts, including a statement from Planet Labs to their customers.
The administration’s request remains in place, a Planet Labs spokesperson said. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
Some Republican lawmakers privately have expressed frustration directly to senior Pentagon officials about their refusal to provide information about the extent of the damage or any cost estimate for repairs, according to two GOP congressional aides.
“No one knows anything. And it’s not for lack of asking,” one of the aides said. “We have been asking for weeks and not getting specifics, even as the Pentagon is asking for a record high budget.”
Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said the U.S. had achieved the military objectives of Operation Epic Fury. “As the president has said, this was the last, best time to strike, and — thanks to our heroic warfighters — the operation was a tremendous success,” Wales said in a statement. “President Trump took decisive action to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon to threaten the United States or our assets and allies in the region, and Americans are already safer for it.”
The damage to and cost of repairing the bases could reignite a yearslong debate over the merits of maintaining U.S. bases in such close proximity to an adversary like Iran. Some national security officials, including some serving in the Trump administration, have for years pushed to move U.S. bases in the region further east and away from Tehran’s reaches. The issue also could embolden critics of America’s military presence overseas who have advocated for shrinking the U.S. presence in the Middle East, one U.S. official and one person familiar with the matter said.
The three U.S. officials familiar with the damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East described it as extensive. The headquarters building for the U.S. Navy in Bahrain, the nerve center for the Navy’s operations in the region, sustained serious damage, the officials said. They said other parts of the base in Bahrain also suffered significant damage that is likely repairable.
Multiple hangars and warehouses at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait also were struck, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s unofficial assessment that was reviewed by NBC News. The assessment also shows a munitions storage facility at a military base in Erbil in northern Iraq was damaged and a runway at the sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar was destroyed.
U.S. bases had been cleared of U.S. troops and other personnel, so many of the bases were left essentially empty and vulnerable to attack by Iranian missiles and drones. Many of the troops who were temporarily relocated are expected to return to the bases once tensions in the region subside.
Thirteen U.S. troops have been killed in the conflict and as many as 400 have been wounded, although more than 90% have returned to duty, according to the U.S. military.
The Pentagon has refused to provide specifics, but during an April 8 briefing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine said the U.S. and partners in the Gulf region intercepted 1,700 ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones during the war. A fourth U.S. official said only a fraction of the projectiles actually got through the U.S. and ally defenses.
Congress is considering legislation to support the cost of the war, including unspecified repairs and other costs in a so-called supplemental bill that could exceed $100 billion, according to two of the U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the matter.
According to the AEI’s assessment, Iran hit more than 100 targets across 11 bases in seven Gulf countries. Those attacks fell on U.S. and host-nation bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
“As part of Epic Fury, the potential future costs to rebuild American military infrastructure overseas may include repair, reconstruction, outright replacement, or even abandonment/decommissioning of locales,” Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at AEI, said in a statement about the group’s assessment. “War damage also includes estimated costs for infrastructure that is unsalvageable.”
Eaglen’s cost estimate for repairing the infrastructure is more than $5 billion, but that amount does not account for some of the radar systems, weapons systems, aircraft and other equipment destroyed in the Iranian strikes, she said. Eaglen has worked on defense and budgetary and military readiness issues for years and is a former Pentagon official.
The Iranians damaged at least two air defense systems in the region, according to the U.S. officials.
Iran has also destroyed U.S. military aircraft. NBC News reported that at least one fighter jet, more than a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones, two MC-130 tankers and four helicopters known as “little birds” were also destroyed.
Additional helicopters, tankers, an E-3 Sentry plane and two more helicopters known as Jolly Greens were also damaged, according to U.S. officials and information provided during a Pentagon briefing.
Radar systems in the UAE and a satellite communication system in Bahrain were also damaged the U.S. officials said, but it’s not clear whether Bahrain or the UAE would cover the cost of those systems.
internet archive, although more easily archive.today, should make a firefox extension to archive paywalled articles from people who have subscriptions and release them in the future (5, 10 years)
Unfortunately, archive.today can never be trusted to have a safe Firefox extension. It is difficult enough to trust the site anymore after it was found that it was engaging in a DDoS attack against a different site. Imagine the hazard from an extension.
In the same spirit, however, it would help to have an extension that auto-archives unpaywalled versions of paywalled articles, and makes them auto-available to users subject to the paywall.
The problem with INMEDIATE pirated access of paywalled content is that it really hurts journalism. I mentioned archiving paywalled content for preservation and reference years from now.
You argument is invalid because nothing that is not available to the public is being hurt. Your argument is like saying that redistributing wealth really hurts rich people, so the poor shouldn't do it, and should just suffer being poor instead. Your argument would have merit only if unpaywalled journalism was being hurt, but it isn't.
Not surprising. In years to come I'm sure we'll find the USG has lied as much to the public during this war as Russia and North Korea would to their citizens. The "laundry fire". The pilot "rescue". The lack of transparency on injuries and casualties. Look at Netanyahu's recent health issues. He didn't lie - he 'delayed the report'.
I think they just have a different strategy and goals than we in the West expect. We seem to think if we just kill a lot more of their guys that victory is certain but that's not the case.
missed the real message that "they" are desperate to hide, which is that Iran destroyed a great deal of infrastructure while causing very few casualties, because clearly they have very high precision armaments, and intel, so the message is : they can hit other targets at will and escelate
plus China stated that they are delivering new missles and systems that Iran payed for before this began, right about
The casualties are low largely because US troops simply abandoned their bases and moved to hotels, treating the citizens of their gulf allies as human shields.
I would expect more of this. Most of Iran's military infrastructure is deep under 500 to 800 meters of hard rock, heavily funded by US tax dollars bully lunch money and the oil industry. Most everyone else's military infrastructure is mostly on the surface just begging for attention.
My personal preference would have been that the US had built it's bases in the same manor is Iran or better. At least I think we could have possibly done better. Keeping most infrastructure under ground means less dependency on power for cooling, more surface land for other functions. Maybe put some earth-bermed greenhouses on the surface and grow some produce for the locals.
For sure no fast FOB but they can store planes underground and they can be towed out and prepped fast just as they are doing with their missiles today. The wings come off rather easily. My remote site ordered one by mistake from the old CAMS system. The driver was just as confused as we were.
I should add that one way to think of it is that Iran built those amazing underground missile cities just for the US to take over. It won't be easy and there will be mass casualties but I think that since we paid for them we should annex them. Some countries in northern Europe have similar underground bases. I would love to visit them. The closest to that I have been inside was NORAD.
So you are ready to sacrifice thousands of lives for that?
It's not up to either of us but to your point I suspect that will occur regardless of what you or I desire. We stepped into the bog of eternal stench that is country #7 Iran. This has been planned for a very long time but every president has been able to back out of it.
Trump started it and only has authorization for about another 5 business days but I suspect congress will begrudgingly approve bipartisan authorization to not only keep our soldiers on the ground but to send another 500k to 700k as anything less would likely be ineffective against their defenses. This can not be solved by technology alone. I can only hope that we undo what we created 50 years ago and give Iran back to it's people and stop the endless proxy wars. Since I can spend hope it's free and nearly meaningless I also hope we welcome our soldiers back with more dignity than we did for the Vietnam veterans this time.
Obviously not me personally but is absolutely up to the USA that created the current Iranian government to do so. We made the mess and should clean up the mess. Iran used to be one of the top five most technologically advanced countries and one of the most progressive countries in the middle east up until the point we twerked it up by putting zealots in power and repeatedly funding them.
From what I know the Islamic republic was founded in part as a reaction to US & British meddling in the internal Iranian affairs. Do you really think the US can achieve anything positive by putting troops on the ground? Have you learned nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea?
From what I know the Islamic republic was founded in part as a reaction to US & British meddling in the internal Iranian affairs.
Yes, exactly this. The US (CIA) and Britain (MI5) were playing let's topple a government and this was the outcome. Even if indirect the end result is that we created the current mess. What I stated holds true.
Do you really think the US can achieve anything positive by putting troops on the ground?
I did not say that. I said that is the only way the desired end result is going to happen and that toppling them through technology will not work such as air strikes, electronic warfare and such. There will be mass casualties, I said that.
Have you learned nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea?
It is not up to me to learn something. If it were up to me there never would have been any kinetic wars at all. I prefer to start with economic warfare and then use discreet covert operations until they succeed. It takes longer but people are impatient and greedy. That's not my fault as far as I know.
I've enjoyed our conversation but I must get back on the gaming machine and sink some pirate ships to get my reputation up with the Brethren. Perhaps we can pick this back up tomorrow.
This has massive strategic implications for the US. The US couldn't protect its bases in the middle east from a middle power like Iran and in fact its bases were the reason that its "allies" in the gulf were attacked. Iran would have no reason to attack those allies otherwise. The US has also shown that Israel is the only ally that it really cares about.
Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia are taking notes. Prediction: there is not going to be a war over Taiwan - Taiwan will gradually come to a Hong Kong like agreement with China.
Nah. Seeing how China reneged on the "one country, two systems" promise and wrecked Hong Kong has turned the Taiwanese people more firmly against reunification.
Iran would be attacking other nearby states regardless of whether they host US military bases. Iran has a long history of aggression, including sponsoring terrorist groups. Personally I favor a less interventionist US foreign policy but even if we completely disengaged from the Middle East it would still be a violent neighborhood — probably even more so.
> Iran has a long history of aggression, including sponsoring terrorist groups
The US has a longer history of aggression and sponsoring terrorist groups:
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-pro...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...Nov. 4, 1979 Iran took fifty two American's hostage and held them for 444 days.
Iran has been calling for the death and destruction of me, my family, and my country my entire life. Seeing the Iranian mullahs, both the leaders of Iran and the highest religious leaders of one of the largest groups of muslims, call for my and my families deaths and the destruction of my civilization my entire life is the largest factor instilling fear and distrust of islam in me. I have never seen huge protests in the US calling for Iranian deaths. Yet no one bats any eye when examples such events in Iran are shown in media. It is just a given an cool with the world that Iran hates Americans and want us dead.
The continued bombing/killing of Americans throughout the middle east during the 1980s furthered highlighted to me that Iran targeted Americans for acts of violence.
> [...] Iran targeted Americans for acts of violence.
Remind me, what happened in Iran in 1953?
By bombing an elementary school and killing 200 girls, you gave the "mullahs" enough justification to call for death and destruction.
Nov. 4, 1979
The high ranking Shia mullahs/religious teachers that run the Islamic Republic ordered 3,000-30,000 of their own murdered in the streets for not wanting religious police to rape/murder them/their children/their sisters/moms if they didn't wear hats.
The highest of the Shia religious leaders don't need much 'justification' they happily order their religious police/religious proxies to carry out acts of mass violence.
To be fair, such rhetoric in Iran was around long before this war.
It is also common knowledge [1] that more-pious followers of Islam - particularly in Middle Eastern countries - are considerably more receptive to Islam's more radical teachings and commands on the topic of the treatment towards non-believers (which makes up the bulk of Western nation populations), than Jewish or Christian followers are to their respective religion's teaching and commands in regards to the same.
1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-m...
In 1953, the UK and US collaborated to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in favor of strengthening the power of the Shah over the country. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was unpopular with the Brits after he attempted to nationalize the country's oil interests, which were being exploited by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. After convincing the Eisenhower administration that Mosaddegh's government would pull Iran into the Soviet sphere of influence, the CIA and MI6 helped plan and execute the coup by the royalists. Several hundred people were killed in the riots; Mosaddegh was convicted of treason and held in house arrest for the rest of his life; many of his supporters were jailed or killed.
The continuing bombing/killing of civilians in the middle east by Americans further highlights to me that the United States will never be able to overcome the violence it has inflicted on the world by continuing to inflict more violence.
"The continued bombing/killing of Americans throughout the middle east during the 1980s furthered highlighted to me that Iran targeted Americans for acts of violence."
was to say that there was actions and intent to act behind the supreme religious leaders calling for the death/destruction of my entire country/society (they weren't just words), not to say an entire peoples/society is irredeemable (as the Islamic Republican of Iran and it's supreme religious leaders have labeled mine).
> Iran has been calling for the death and destruction of me, my family, and my country my entire life.
America has been kidnapping, killing and torturing Iranian civilians since before you were born: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK
Oh well if only 10 year old me knew that something happened in 1953 I'm sure I would internalize actually I WAS deserving of death and slept better when the leaders of one of the largest sects in Islam and the nation they controlled wanted 10 year old me, my parents, my grandparents, my friends, my country/civilization dead. That 40+ years of calls/demands for death and ending a society were ok because 1953. Silly me.
"you see Timmy, some times religious leaders have to call for the death/destruction of a society because of something that happened 30-70 years earlier".
If 10 year old you was born in Shahist Iran, then you, your parents, your grandparents, your friends and your political leadership might be tortured or executed by the American regime for exercising free speech or opposing domestic policy.
You are indeed luckier than those 10 year olds, for enduring death threats and not summary executions. Your fears are the ones lucky enough to be considered silly, theirs are mortal panic.
"you see Timmy, sometimes religious leaders have to call for the death/destruction of a society because of something that happened 30 (now 70) years earlier".
"You see Timmy, your kneecaps are smashed because Mr. Nixon doesn't think you deserve free speech. Don't take it personally, and don't oppose us or your teeth are next."
Which Timmy would you rather be?
Wild take but I condemn both. My nation removed Nixon in disgrace and we despise him almost universally. I condemn him and I condemn the horrible acts done by the United States. Do you not agree that supreme religious leaders shouldn't call for the death and destruction of entire societies ever? You can be against both.
The Taiwanese know they can't take on China directly, they now know that Western support is meaningless - in fact it pushes them more into conflict with China. Given a choice, I think the Taiwanese would prefer a Hong Kong like outcome to a Ukraine/UAE like outcome.
AFAIK Iran never directly attacked several countries (e.g. UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi, Bahrain) before this war.
The question you have to ask is, in the story of offense vs defense, can Taiwan mine that srait and deny China access, or does China posses anti-mine technology that counteracts that.
TW gets most of energy and calories from strait shipping. It would be PRC mining/denying TW for lulz if anything. Ultimately TW going to have to look to see if they want to be HKers, who got less retarded after kissing PRC boot (see HK kids going to SZ to party) or whether TW wants to be Gaza who capitulates to Israeli demand, because reality is with sufficient force asymmetry, one can destroy civic life enough to force capitulation. And PRC can do that to TW, trivially, with mainland fires alone. The only hold back is the "family across the strait" narrative.
TW forceful reunification even if depopulated husk basically done deal, the real question is whether PRC wants to do an Iran and push US security out of east Asia, which is ultimate grand strategic goal. And to be blunt TW is perfect casus belli to spark this. PRC would be net worse off long run getting TW peacefully and but still deal with US security in region. Hence whether Iran can squeeze US out of CENTOM (even marginally) will set huge precedence.
Isn't a big draw for reunification the advanced manufacturing in Taiwan?
Forced reunification would risk destroying that, either as incidental damage through military operations, or as sabotage.
Far better would be to sit back and allow the US to continue proving itself incompetent and unreliable, until being subsumed like Hong Kong doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
The down votes to this suggest that many in the west are in denial. China doesn’t need to fight a hot war with Taiwan, they can incrementally pressure Taiwan while their western allies issue impotent statements.
China also doesn't need to annex Taiwan. Chinese people have been brainswashed by the PCC into thinking that it was a life-or-death issue for the country. It is not, and China could live another millenia without controlling the island.
If anything, Taiwan proves that Chinese people can be perfectly fine and rich without the authoritarian grip of the PCC. That's the most likely reason why the PCC clique wants to invade TW.
It's not an existential issue for China. It's an existential issue for the CPP, because Xi made it so. He made reunification with Taiwan by... 2049 (IIRC, but I admit I'm fuzzy on the exact date) a test of the legitimacy of the CCP. So it's an existential issue for the CCP because Xi ran his mouth, basically.
The downvotes suggest that many in the West see it as unconscionable to call people “retarded” for preferring not to be invaded. If someone made a comment like this in my house, I would kick them out immediately and might well never speak to them again.
> turned the Taiwanese people more firmly against reunification.
I think this is Western-filtered copium.
The leader of Taiwan's largest opposition part just concluded a fairly conciliatory visit with Xi Jinping.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/what-the-taiwanes...
Taiwan is culturally and historically tied to the mainland, and China is ascendant economically and geopolitically. I can more easily understand why a Taiwanese citizen would chose to be under Chinese sphere of influence over US.
Maybe because the PCC is an authoritarian regime, with no respect for human rights (including using prisoners as living organ banks)?
"no respect for human rights"
have you spoken to anyone who grew up in China? every single chinese-born person i interacted with (all in the USA) seemed to approve of the government. these were students and professionals working in the west, so probably more educated and western-leaning than the average chinese. not once did i hear a chinese person i knew complaining of repression. not saying it doesnt happen, but i don't believe its a major concern for vast majority of chinese. im happy to be proven wrong though if others have conflicting data.
I have spoken with people who grew up in China. I have also spent time there. The education system is geared around brainwashing the children as early as possible, into thinking that the PCC is China and criticizing the PCC is criticizing their country.
China is not a free country; there isn't free information or free speech. I'm sure that many North Koreans also think that their country is perfectly fine and Comrade Kim is the best leader they could have. The pig in his sow likely thinks that he lives his best life. Does it mean that it's true?
Most people I discussed it with, including PhD students, had very little knowledge of their country's history in the 20th century, of what really happened during Mao's rule and after.
Besides, China is a country socially deeply divided, and the PCC doesn't incentivize social empathy in its population - quite the inverse. So I'm not really surprised that rich kids in USA universities (so, the top of the cream of the regime) don't complain about the system and have never experienced hardship personally.
Have you discussed it with people who were locked up in their buildings during Covid? Or farmers who were evicted to make place for promoters who bought their land on the cheap? Or maybe the Tibetan monks that immolated themselves to protest against the destruction of their culture? Lu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace prize, who spent the rest of his life in prison, for saying the wrong (non violent) things?
> an authoritarian regime, with no respect for human rights
I mean Alex Pretti was murdered because he was exercising his 2nd amendment rights and was getting beaten after having been disarmed and never displaying his firearm.
Headlines are full of people who are dying without medical care because they're being incarcerated and shipped overseas due to legal technicalities.
Nice whataboutism, nothing has changed since the USSR, I see! The US also has its problems; this doesn't give the PCC a free pass. And those issues will likely go after the elections, something people in China haven't been able to do since the PCC took over the country.
Anyway, shall I discuss the cultural genocide being committed on the Uighurs, or the Tibetans? Or, in a quite bizarre fashion, the descendants of the Mongols? [1] The goulags created during covid? And let's not talk about all the horrors of the Mao-era PCC. Etc, etc...
[1]: https://www.economist.com/china/2023/12/20/why-chinas-rulers...
The KMT is not in power right now because they are pro-one china/unification. If it was just western-filtered copium, the KMT would not keep losing popular elections. The DPP remains in power because it isn’t the KMT.
Your view, as a matter of fact, is mainland-filtered copium. Yes, the rich Taiwanese mainlanders who used to dominate Taiwan politics want a return to the past, but native Taiwanese are more populous and have less vested interest in unification with the mainland do not.
> Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia are taking notes.
Donny also goes back on his word constantly. Look at all the trade agreements that he signed before 'liberation day'. Look at really everything afterwards too.
Even if Iran wanted to sign something, they can't. It will mean nothing. They know that.
That's a pretty wild prediction - Taiwan is also a middle power and could beef up if it wants to.
HN, why allow these one sided discussions? This response was flagged dead because only 'correct' opinion is allowed, all challenges are hidden/flagged dead:
"US seized Maduro overnight, PRC strongly condemned. The PRC anti-air defense system did nothing. Venezuela was PRC's top ally in South America. US killed ayatollah khomeini and his comrades in one day, PRC strongly condemned. The PRC anti-air defense did nothing.
US struck and removed most military threats in Iran in a few weeks, PRC strongly condemned. Iran was PRC's top ally in middle east.
US enacted blockade on Iran ports, and seized many oil tankers sending oil to PRC , PRC strongly condemned. PRC desperately needs the Iranian oil, now reaching deep into its 3 months reserves, which parts of it were used to prepare attacks on Taiwan.
US just enacted economic sanctions on honeypot oil refineries in China, which takes in Iranian oil. I'm sure PRC will strongly condemn.
PRC is a paper tiger, nothing more, nothing less."
China not intervening in Venezuela or Iran situation does not make them paper tigers.
It makes them ... not idiots. They are not interrupting the ennemy while that ennemy makes a mistake.
And also, saying that "US struck and removed most military threats in Iran in a few weeks" is massive overstatement. Iran military targets went from being obliterated, to almost half destroyed, to 60% remain working and active, to "a lot more then we think is still functional" which only god and Iran knows what it means.
China-supplied hardware doing nothing useful may make them a paper tiger.
May. The problem is that China probably doesn't sell their top-of-the-line stuff, so we don't really know.
trump did literally everything backwards. he should have started with the blockade and increased the pressure over time, with decapitation strikes at the end if needed. also..help arm the people of iran before doing anything else. that would have made iran look like the aggressor when they eventually bombed their region.
instead the islamic republic's "strategic patience" fully paid off and now most rational people sees them as victims.
what trump's doing is like trying to cure multi-drug resistant bacterial infection with whatever random antibiotics are on hand - the very thing that created resistance.
If we are on the topic of what he should have done, I think the first on that list is not go to war with Iran at all.
sure, I'm just talking pure strategy e.g. if you were going to war with iran, what's would be the ideal play?
If the goal is to overthrow the regime by force, you need boots on the ground. The basic approach might be something like the Iraq war but bigger, and with an actual plan for the aftermath. And it might end up being the biggest (or at least the most intense) war the US has fought since WW2.
Air strikes are effective at killing people and destroying property, but their impact on the situation on the ground is limited. Even if you manage to destroy the regime, there needs to be an alternative with sufficient legitimacy and institutional support to replace it. But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge. So you either need occupying forces to provide the institutional support, or the likely outcome is a civil war.
> If the goal is to overthrow the regime by force, you need boots on the ground.
You have the Artesh in Iran, their standard military which is bigger than the IRGC and aren't under Islamist rule and they are loyal more to the democratically elected government than the Islamist one.
> But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge.
They never destroyed the Artesh, that army has been the same since before the 1979 revolution, so your analysis is wrong for Iran since they do have those power structures in place. If you destroy IRGC the rest of Iran would run just fine. They have elections, they have a democratically elected government of reformists who want to move away from Islamist rule, those elected politicians however don't have the power to do that currently but if you shift the power enough it could happen.
Destroying the regime is much easier than destroying the IRGC. The former requires killing enough key people and destroying enough key infrastructure to make the regime unable to govern and take initiative. The latter requires killing most of the people with the weapons and ideological commitment to continue fighting. If you do the latter, the country will not be in a state where it can hold democratic elections.
The Gaza war is a good example. Israel quickly reduced Hamas to a mostly reactive resistance force. But it was unable to destroy Hamas as a relevant force.
As for the standard military, authoritarian regimes are also keenly aware of the threat posed by the military. That's why they have large internal security forces, such as the IRGC. Common practices to mitigate the threat include promoting harmless unambitious people to leadership positions and trying to keep the ranks free of people with strong ideological commitments. While the standard military outnumbers the internal security forces, it tends to consist of people willing to serve the regime and choose the status quo over a civil war.
> Destroying the regime is much easier than destroying the IRGC.
IRGC is an oil money empire, they aren't ideological warriors they are mercenaries that fight for money, remove the oil and the empire crumbles. Its like removing ad revenue from Google, it would destroy the company and what is left would be a small husk of its former self.
So blocking the oil will massively weaken IRGC and keep Artesh the same, since Artesh is made up of people who actually want to fight for the country.
Sure they have some nice statements about ideology and saving the world etc on top, but the main driver is the money.
Ideological commitment and personal beliefs are orthogonal, much in the same way as religion and personal faith are orthogonal. IRGC members are ideologically committed, because they have chosen to serve the regime. They are committed, because if the regime ever fails, things will be bad to them personally.
Authoritarian regimes also understand that they need to keep their core supporters happy. If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.
> If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.
90% of IRGC funding comes directly from their own oil empire, without oil they barely have any funding. They can't make the other parts suffer before themselves here since they get it directly from owning the oil exports, it doesn't go via the government.
If they start trying to take money from the military then they would start the civil war themselves, they can't do that.
90% of revenue, not funding. Most of it is revenue from the businesses they run, and most of that goes to ordinary business expenses.
In any case, it's just an arrangement that has worked for the IRGC so far. If it stops working, the regime can make other arrangements. Such as extracting more money from the 90% of the population that are not particularly relevant to the continued existence of the regime.
That option came off the table when the IRGC went through killing thousands of their own civilians and turned off the Internet.
Yes, the Iranian government brutally murdered thousand of civilians in January.
Are Iranians safe now?
The US put the Shah in power which directly resulted in torture and killing of Iranians, and led to the Islamic Revolution.
The US removed Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrors specifically so that Saddam could bomb Iran, including with chemical weapons.
You sound like you’ve never heard the major arguments against your position.
Yes, US sponsored chemical weapons attacks on Iran claimed 30 to 50 thousand Iranian lives that is still grieved like an open would today. To say nothing of downed civillian passenger jet by the Americans and the coup to oust Mossadegh.
Notably, Iran did not retaliate in kind to the US sponsored Iraqi attack with chemical weapons, now considered weapons of mass destruction. This might be related to the notion that WMDs are un-Islamic, which got formalized as Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons.
Iran also has a doomsday clock ticking down saying Israel will get destroyed by 2040, only reasonable way that can happen is a nuclear weapon. If they really didn't want a nuclear weapon they wouldn't be so against bans on them enriching uranium.
Edit: Since some people don't seem to believe me:
> The clock was programmed to count down from 8,411 days, corresponding to a 2015 statement by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who predicted that "Israel won't exist in 25 years".[1][2][3] He claimed in his statement that there will be nothing left of the Jewish state by 2040.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Square_Countdown_Clo...
And how exactly is that the responsibility of the United States? And why just in Iran? There are so many other conflicts in the world. Sorry, but this argument has never made sense.
The USA is not responsible for Iranians' safety.
That's weird, I thought we were there to bring democracy to the people of Iran?
Well, that was the reason last Tuesday, or was it the Friday before that? I forget, since there's been so many.
The primary reason was always to eliminate the threat of Iran, if democracy could come out of it and so on that's secondary reasons.
What changed last month?
This situation is in large part due to bad decisions by American leaders, with this one being an absolute stand out.
The thread isn’t eliminated and America looks weaker.
> The thread isn’t eliminated and America looks weaker.
The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this. If USA pulls out Israel will finish the job for sure since Iran isn't in a position to stop Israel bombing their powerplants, and without power they can't do anything.
So the question now is what state we can get after the threat is eliminated, not if the elimination was successful.
> The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this.
I guess we will see. They have worked out how to control the straits quite effectively and made the US look very foolish. It’s weakened a load of US relationships and damaged a load of economies.
For a regime that’s eliminated, it’s sure proving hard to wrap things up, and the oil is not flowing.
It’s going to be interesting to see what any peace settlement looks like as the longer it goes on the worse it hurts everyone. Will Iran be the first to cave?
Is this what America winning looks like?
If this has been a simple humanitarian mission, then why hasn't the US got involved in other recent situations?
By that rationale, should America bomb China? Russia?
there is no rationale to pure nonsense
Trump’s reason for going to war with Iran had nothing to do with Iranian civilians lives or internet access privileges. The optimists say it was because of Iran’s nuclear weapons, slight optimists say it was over oil, cynics say it was a distraction from his role in the Epstein files. Literally no one thinks he actually had Iranian civilian best interests in mind.
There is another option - he was completely played by Netanyahu, possibly using some of those points.
The NYT article on it is interesting (and possibly paywalled). https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...
> it was a distraction from his role in the Epstein files
I would love to know who chose the name "Epic Fury" (other than some kid in a COD lobby). Epic Fury. E.F. Epstein Files.
That option was completely on the table.
No, it didn't. USA is not the world police. Trump literally ran on this, "USA first" and all that.
and we give a hoot exactly why? america first, yes? why aren’t we in sudan, a lot more dire situation. give us a break with this nonsense
It takes two too tango, so Iran would stop its proxxy warring on the us if the us stopped responding? How did that work out under biden and obama?
> It takes two too tango
Wot? Will this apply if goes after Greenland too like he has threatened?
Of course, Denmark is doing the fandango by not simply handing over the territory.
Same as the Ukrainian had the audacity to act as a sovereign nation and seek membership of alliances that benefited themselves.
Let me be more precise. One is enough to start a war and iran is a imperial local power that is constantly attacking its surrounding region with proxxies. The idea that only the mighty and resourceful can start wars is ridiculous. germany was an underdog in a jonny come lately situation compared to the french and British empire and started two wars. Same is happening here. Asymetric agressor can still be an agressor.
I think that’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, but it seems to me that if the Iranians actually claimed they were 11 days away from a nuclear bomb during the prewar negotiations, it’s likely that the blockade first would not have been the right leading move.
Plus I believe that if you took the “11 days away” claim off the table I don’t think you accurately say that a blockade without the military campaign first would have been successful. Seems like we are in a “what came first the chicken or the egg” moment.
There is no doubt in my mind that a blockade with an intact Iranian navy would not necessarily look like this one.
> if the Iranians actually claimed they were 11 days away from a nuclear bomb during the prewar negotiations
Do you want to cite a good source for this? I think you're confusing having enough 60% enriched uranium for "11 bombs" with "11 days." If Iran was 11 days away then what was the point of the 12-day war last year? The first step would be not blatantly lying to the public
There's way more evidence that iran wasn't building a nuke than that they were:
Gabbard Says Iran Did Not Rebuild Nuclear Program After 2025 Strikes, Contradicting Trump (March 19, 2026)
From the then U.S. Director of National Intelligence https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nucle...
Iran was nowhere close to a nuclear bomb, experts say (March 11 2026)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iran-was-nowhere-...
Like i said, that is what the administration (Witkoff) communicated. You can believe it or not, dispute it all you want, but the only opinion of any importance here is if they (either Iran, the administration, and frankly also Israel) believed it. In that case, it would be a dangerous thing for the US and Israel to ignore. Some would suggest impossible to ignore.
In my opinion if it’s not true and Iran communicated it…that would be a huge miscalculation by Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACqWRsde4Ys
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5751330-witkoff-ira...
The administration stated many times their nuclear stockpiles were already obliterated.
Ok…but that is irrelevant to my point.
How could they be 11 days away when we for sure obliterated it many months ago? It seems pretty central to the overall point.
Are you suggesting there can be no difference between public rhetoric, the truth, and what might be said behind the closed doors of a diplomatic negotiation between adversaries? Especially with Trump?
I'm pointing out you can't trust anything these people say. They were either lying before, they're lying now, or both.
Which, again, has zero to do with my initial post. Again, the point was that we cant assume a blockade without the initial military operation would have been successful. And it’s a moot point anyway because only one of those three parties needed to believe that Iran was that close to having a nuclear device for a military operation to have taken place. Your opinion (or anyone else’s) of the trustworthiness of the Trump administration has zero bearing on whether or not they could or would launch a military operation. They obviously did.
But you're basing your information off of the things people who are known to lie to you are saying. You're building your house of logic on quicksand.
I'm arguing you can't trust what they say about what was said at these meetings, because they've shown they can't be trusted to tell the truth at any time. Bessent says they said that, but you can't trust him. He's a liar. This is the problem when you have an administration that lies all the time even about little things. You can't even begin to actually trust the big things.
Its incredible how a living US president, in the 21 century, managed to transform the US into nothing more than a second rate regional power.
I know the inventory size of US military forces...spare me that argument. A superpower is defined by what it can make happen, not what it owns. Russia owns nukes and can't take Kyiv. The US owns eleven carrier groups and needs Pakistan to pass notes to Tehran. Inventory is not power. Outcomes are.
You’re just making the mirror image error of the current American regime. It’s not that the US could bomb Iran into submission if only it were more powerful; the strategy is flawed, it cannot work even in principle, because the IRGC prefers being bombed to sacrificing their nuclear capability and regional proxies.
> also..help arm the people of iran before doing anything else
What exactly would that be supposed to achieve? American belief that guns to random people solve everything is beyond absurd.
exactly this... this has been strategic disaster from US perspective. a blockade plus covert ops could have split IRGC leadership - instead public decapitation caused rally round the flag effect and gave immediate legitimacy to khamenei heir. completely idiotic
HN, why allow these political discussions where one side is just flagged into oblivion and it becomes purely propaganda against the USA?
The follow were flagged into oblivion:
" Rekindle8090 2 hours ago [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]
I think if you see the country gunning down protesters and beheading women as "the victim" you're fundamentally unserious. The only victim is the people of the iranian regime. Calling Iran as a regime a victim is ridiculous. It's a fascist death cult"
nradov 3 hours ago [flagged] [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]
The primary goal of the attacks was to degrade the Iranian nuclear weapons program. We can argue about whether that was a sensible goal, but a naval blockade certainly wouldn't have achieved it.
my thesis is that the IRGC has successfully established deterrence by demonstrating relative resilience against US attacks (still have boats and missiles), ability to meaningfully strike US bases and its Allies, and willingness to sacrifice a lot of Irans civilian infrastructure. its hard to sift through the propaganda on both sides, but I haven't yet seen anything to disprove this convincingly. anyone else?
I also believe they have the upper hand as they are willing to play the long game. It's like when Russia attacked Ukraine, they gambled on taking Kiev with paratroopers on the first few days. Didn't work and they got stuck.
It will be ironic if Iran gets a stronger position than they had before the war as a consequence of a peace treaty.
It's not really an "if". Iran is in a stronger geopolitical position (than the one they held before the war) today. Any deal they make can only improve things for them, by definition (or else they wouldn't take it).
That's precisely the trap the Trump administration has created for itself. If the only way out is to lose, then you've already lost. And Iran knows it.
> Iran is in a stronger geopolitical position (than the one they held before the war) today
Why do you say that? IRGC lost 90% of their corrupt income when USA blockaded their shadow fleet of oil tankers, they are weaker than ever right now, it is hard for any organization to survive long when losing 90% of their income. They rely on a large amount of mercenaries currently to keep the population under house arrest, but what happens when those no longer get paid?
That seems like a very brittle position to me.
The blockade is 100% unsustainable. It's a joke. The world can't absorb a 25% cut in oil production for anything more than a few months. Reserve capacity is already being tapped. The futures market says it's only a mild disruption because the futures market is predicting (correctly, so far) that it's all a joke that will disappear in a confusing TACO in a few days.
> The world can't absorb a 25% cut in oil production for anything more than a few months.
IRGC can't absorb that for more than a few months either, and if the world wants to open the strait they would rather attack Iran over the strait than attack USA, so there is no way this state will benefit IRGC if it keeps up.
It was IRGC mining friendly countries waters and attacking ships in friendly waters, every country affected has the right to go attack IRGC over that but they choose to wait and see for now. But if it gets as bad as you suggest then they will just force Iran to open it, they wont force USA to do anything since its not USA that is illegally blocking it.
> IRGC can't absorb that for more than a few months either, and if the world wants to open the strait they would rather attack Iran over the strait than attack USA, so there is no way this state will benefit IRGC if it keeps up.
This is not at all obvious to me. Money and economic power historically is downstream of military power - men with guns can expropriate whatever they want or need from their unarmed, isolated population. The only thing that is potentially upstream of military power is ideology, which also favors IRGC and Iran security forces as they seem to be most ideologically fervent faction in Iran.
> they wont force USA to do anything since its not USA that is illegally blocking it.
The USA is literally blockading the strait to prevent tolling. I mean, in some sense you're right: the Trump threat is fake and he'll cave. But the policy you're ascribing to Iran, incorrectly, is actually what your government claims to be doing!
I remain just absolutely dumbfounded at the ability of this administration's defenders to just dig in on obvious lies. Surely on some level you get that you're being lied to, right?
> The USA is literally blockading the strait to prevent tolling.
USA is blockading Iran, they don't blockade anyone but Iran.
> But the policy you're ascribing to Iran, incorrectly, is actually what your government claims to be doing!
I'm not an american. And no, USA doesn't block anyone but Iran here, blockading an enemy nations ports is fair game during war, blockading third party ports that tries to sail through their own waters like Iran does is not. The strait isn't Irans strait, they put mines all over the place in Omans waters, that is extremely illegal and basically a declaration of war against Oman to do so.
Edit: Maybe you misunderstood USAs blockade as they blockading anyone who pay Iranian tolls. No they don't do that, that was just a deranged statement by Trump, CENTCOM later announced the real blockade and it was just a blockade against Iranian ports, nothing about Iranian tolls.
> USA is blockading Iran, they don't blockade anyone but Iran.
For fuck's sake, as it were: https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2043344995181011027
"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz." - President Donald J. Trump
The inability of people to reason from clear evidence about this president, and instead project onto him whatever rationalizations they've come up with, is absolutely astounding.
Now, again, that is what the president SAID. It is clearly not the actual military stance of the USN in the strait, because that would be insane. But it remains US policy and to argue otherwise is... yikes.
I agree that they have this strong position now, but the war is not over yet. I doubt they'll lose it in any meaningful way, but still it remains to be seen how they manage to capitulate it in a possible peace deal.
Again, they don't have to capitulate. They hold all the cards. The world needs that strait open, and 100%, undeniably, without any question at all will pay Iran tolls to get it.
To the extent that this ends in military action, it's going to be the rest of the world protecting the Iranian toll regime from USA piracy. Even Trump won't pull that trigger. Watch for the TACO.
IMO Ability to break US forward base sancturary breaks entire US expeditionary model. US+co land basing responsible for most of strike sortie generation/sustainment. Carriers are mathematically supplementary in theatre level conflicts.
Degrade land based strike sorties and support sorties and push CVG back to ~1000km (where strike stories drop to ~50% due to tanking) = entire strike sortie sustainment math breaks hard. Less strike sorties -> even more dependence on high-end munitions. Combined with resilient antiair also denied US ability to move to budget (i.e. JDAM) mop up phase. Strategically Iran being able to soak US damage and still fire back = US air campaign tactically failed to degrade Iran missile complex chokehold over region. Consider US used up ~half of highend standoff and interceptors (if you believe CSIS) then status quo after crippling forward bases simply broke US war logistics. US cannot sustain (not even matter of afford) to fight Iran with current highend munition burnrate + cvg sortie generation, and and defeat Iran tactically to rely on lowend munitions without more political exposure, i.e. a few more pilot rescues going to start meaningfully chip away at US CSAR fleet. Nevermind political fallout of failed rescue or F35 down in Iranian soil.
Hence Trump pivoted to threatened civil infra / counter-value, US saw limits / diminishing returns on ability to neutralize remaining Iranian counter-force threats. US simply cannot afford to prosecute prolonged counter-force standoff air campaig without further strategic exhaustion. Same reason Iran shifted to counter-value oil/infra because the damage to US basing already done, and their ability to degrade US CSG sorties limited.
Obviously this applies to WestPac.
thanks for your insights. do you have a background in defense?
much of what you are saying sounds plausible to me, but i really don't know much about modern military tactics. do you have any suggestions for where i can learn more about that topic wrt how it applies to this war?
> Obviously this applies to WestPac
do you mean a a potential war with China? i dont think China has leverage over a critical choke point like Hormuz and is instead exposed to one (Malacca) that US would surely blockade.
An AWACS was picked off sitting on the ground, that's a bad look. It took Russia years to get to that stage in the war.
One has to wonder how much of the bad US performance is due to deep, systemic problems and how much is due to a rushed and unplanned military operation.
Russia lost its own AWACS early 2022 to a DJI drone attack, IIRC
One thing I noticed in the videos on Twitter of quadcopter type drones being flown into US bases in Iraq, is there doesn't seem to be any current defense. They were flying around with impunity, taking their time looking for a target. It's definitely scary.
Those are not US bases, those were Iraqi Armed Forced bases.
It could be either unused base (Camp Victory in Iraq) or fiber optic drones, which are effectively invisible for current systems because you need to have good enough radar to see them thanks to their size and used material and they are not having any RF emissions like usual FPV drone would have
They consider these bases expendable and nonessential, maybe even just political gestures.
Article doesn't fully load. It says "Just a moment. We are getting your experience ready." and is stuck there.
And Archive.Today can't seem to bypass that paywall:
<https://archive.is/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fworld%2Fi...>
(All current copies have the same issue.)
Full article:
American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.
The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the Trump administration attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In the initial days of the war, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait, despite the base having air defenses, a rare breach that marked the first time an enemy fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years, according to two of the U.S. officials.
The U.S. bases that came under attack are home to thousands of American troops, and in some cases their families, though they were largely cleared out in the days and hours before the U.S. and Israeli went to war with Iran. The Pentagon has not detailed the extent of the damage to U.S. military bases publicly or, according to the U.S. officials, to members of Congress.
“We do not discuss battle damage assessments for operation security reasons,” a Pentagon official said in a statement. “Our forces remain fully operational, and we continue to execute our mission with the same readiness and combat effectiveness.”
U.S. Central Command declined to comment on battle damage assessments.
Last month, the administration asked private satellite companies, including Planet Labs, to withhold imagery of the bases from the public, making the extent of the destruction difficult to assess, according to the U.S. officials and experts, including a statement from Planet Labs to their customers.
The administration’s request remains in place, a Planet Labs spokesperson said. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
Some Republican lawmakers privately have expressed frustration directly to senior Pentagon officials about their refusal to provide information about the extent of the damage or any cost estimate for repairs, according to two GOP congressional aides.
“No one knows anything. And it’s not for lack of asking,” one of the aides said. “We have been asking for weeks and not getting specifics, even as the Pentagon is asking for a record high budget.”
Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said the U.S. had achieved the military objectives of Operation Epic Fury. “As the president has said, this was the last, best time to strike, and — thanks to our heroic warfighters — the operation was a tremendous success,” Wales said in a statement. “President Trump took decisive action to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon to threaten the United States or our assets and allies in the region, and Americans are already safer for it.”
The damage to and cost of repairing the bases could reignite a yearslong debate over the merits of maintaining U.S. bases in such close proximity to an adversary like Iran. Some national security officials, including some serving in the Trump administration, have for years pushed to move U.S. bases in the region further east and away from Tehran’s reaches. The issue also could embolden critics of America’s military presence overseas who have advocated for shrinking the U.S. presence in the Middle East, one U.S. official and one person familiar with the matter said. The three U.S. officials familiar with the damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East described it as extensive. The headquarters building for the U.S. Navy in Bahrain, the nerve center for the Navy’s operations in the region, sustained serious damage, the officials said. They said other parts of the base in Bahrain also suffered significant damage that is likely repairable.
Multiple hangars and warehouses at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait also were struck, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s unofficial assessment that was reviewed by NBC News. The assessment also shows a munitions storage facility at a military base in Erbil in northern Iraq was damaged and a runway at the sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar was destroyed.
U.S. bases had been cleared of U.S. troops and other personnel, so many of the bases were left essentially empty and vulnerable to attack by Iranian missiles and drones. Many of the troops who were temporarily relocated are expected to return to the bases once tensions in the region subside.
Thirteen U.S. troops have been killed in the conflict and as many as 400 have been wounded, although more than 90% have returned to duty, according to the U.S. military. The Pentagon has refused to provide specifics, but during an April 8 briefing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine said the U.S. and partners in the Gulf region intercepted 1,700 ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones during the war. A fourth U.S. official said only a fraction of the projectiles actually got through the U.S. and ally defenses.
Congress is considering legislation to support the cost of the war, including unspecified repairs and other costs in a so-called supplemental bill that could exceed $100 billion, according to two of the U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the matter.
According to the AEI’s assessment, Iran hit more than 100 targets across 11 bases in seven Gulf countries. Those attacks fell on U.S. and host-nation bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
“As part of Epic Fury, the potential future costs to rebuild American military infrastructure overseas may include repair, reconstruction, outright replacement, or even abandonment/decommissioning of locales,” Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at AEI, said in a statement about the group’s assessment. “War damage also includes estimated costs for infrastructure that is unsalvageable.”
Eaglen’s cost estimate for repairing the infrastructure is more than $5 billion, but that amount does not account for some of the radar systems, weapons systems, aircraft and other equipment destroyed in the Iranian strikes, she said. Eaglen has worked on defense and budgetary and military readiness issues for years and is a former Pentagon official.
The Iranians damaged at least two air defense systems in the region, according to the U.S. officials.
Iran has also destroyed U.S. military aircraft. NBC News reported that at least one fighter jet, more than a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones, two MC-130 tankers and four helicopters known as “little birds” were also destroyed.
Additional helicopters, tankers, an E-3 Sentry plane and two more helicopters known as Jolly Greens were also damaged, according to U.S. officials and information provided during a Pentagon briefing.
Radar systems in the UAE and a satellite communication system in Bahrain were also damaged the U.S. officials said, but it’s not clear whether Bahrain or the UAE would cover the cost of those systems.
https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1svdezz/iran_ca...
internet archive, although more easily archive.today, should make a firefox extension to archive paywalled articles from people who have subscriptions and release them in the future (5, 10 years)
Unfortunately, archive.today can never be trusted to have a safe Firefox extension. It is difficult enough to trust the site anymore after it was found that it was engaging in a DDoS attack against a different site. Imagine the hazard from an extension.
In the same spirit, however, it would help to have an extension that auto-archives unpaywalled versions of paywalled articles, and makes them auto-available to users subject to the paywall.
The problem with INMEDIATE pirated access of paywalled content is that it really hurts journalism. I mentioned archiving paywalled content for preservation and reference years from now.
You argument is invalid because nothing that is not available to the public is being hurt. Your argument is like saying that redistributing wealth really hurts rich people, so the poor shouldn't do it, and should just suffer being poor instead. Your argument would have merit only if unpaywalled journalism was being hurt, but it isn't.
Not surprising. In years to come I'm sure we'll find the USG has lied as much to the public during this war as Russia and North Korea would to their citizens. The "laundry fire". The pilot "rescue". The lack of transparency on injuries and casualties. Look at Netanyahu's recent health issues. He didn't lie - he 'delayed the report'.
I think they just have a different strategy and goals than we in the West expect. We seem to think if we just kill a lot more of their guys that victory is certain but that's not the case.
missed the real message that "they" are desperate to hide, which is that Iran destroyed a great deal of infrastructure while causing very few casualties, because clearly they have very high precision armaments, and intel, so the message is : they can hit other targets at will and escelate plus China stated that they are delivering new missles and systems that Iran payed for before this began, right about
now.
The casualties are low largely because US troops simply abandoned their bases and moved to hotels, treating the citizens of their gulf allies as human shields.
Don't forget the emotional damage.
Their war propaganda is so much better than that of the US military.
Lego Trump, soul-crushing tweets, with Trump it is like taking candy from a toddler but still…
I’m glad the US is winning so hard they don’t know what to do about it.
Otherwise, they would look blatantly incompetent on a Russian army 3-day special operation level.
I am seriously no longer concerned about Greenland.
I would expect more of this. Most of Iran's military infrastructure is deep under 500 to 800 meters of hard rock, heavily funded by US tax dollars bully lunch money and the oil industry. Most everyone else's military infrastructure is mostly on the surface just begging for attention.
My personal preference would have been that the US had built it's bases in the same manor is Iran or better. At least I think we could have possibly done better. Keeping most infrastructure under ground means less dependency on power for cooling, more surface land for other functions. Maybe put some earth-bermed greenhouses on the surface and grow some produce for the locals.
You can't rapidly scale up an FOB under 800m of rock and you can't land planes underground.
For sure no fast FOB but they can store planes underground and they can be towed out and prepped fast just as they are doing with their missiles today. The wings come off rather easily. My remote site ordered one by mistake from the old CAMS system. The driver was just as confused as we were.
I should add that one way to think of it is that Iran built those amazing underground missile cities just for the US to take over. It won't be easy and there will be mass casualties but I think that since we paid for them we should annex them. Some countries in northern Europe have similar underground bases. I would love to visit them. The closest to that I have been inside was NORAD.
So you are ready to sacrifice thousands of lives for that?
So you are ready to sacrifice thousands of lives for that?
It's not up to either of us but to your point I suspect that will occur regardless of what you or I desire. We stepped into the bog of eternal stench that is country #7 Iran. This has been planned for a very long time but every president has been able to back out of it.
Trump started it and only has authorization for about another 5 business days but I suspect congress will begrudgingly approve bipartisan authorization to not only keep our soldiers on the ground but to send another 500k to 700k as anything less would likely be ineffective against their defenses. This can not be solved by technology alone. I can only hope that we undo what we created 50 years ago and give Iran back to it's people and stop the endless proxy wars. Since I can spend hope it's free and nearly meaningless I also hope we welcome our soldiers back with more dignity than we did for the Vietnam veterans this time.
Is Iran yours to "give back" to its people?
Is Iran yours to "give back" to its people?
Obviously not me personally but is absolutely up to the USA that created the current Iranian government to do so. We made the mess and should clean up the mess. Iran used to be one of the top five most technologically advanced countries and one of the most progressive countries in the middle east up until the point we twerked it up by putting zealots in power and repeatedly funding them.
From what I know the Islamic republic was founded in part as a reaction to US & British meddling in the internal Iranian affairs. Do you really think the US can achieve anything positive by putting troops on the ground? Have you learned nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea?
From what I know the Islamic republic was founded in part as a reaction to US & British meddling in the internal Iranian affairs.
Yes, exactly this. The US (CIA) and Britain (MI5) were playing let's topple a government and this was the outcome. Even if indirect the end result is that we created the current mess. What I stated holds true.
Do you really think the US can achieve anything positive by putting troops on the ground?
I did not say that. I said that is the only way the desired end result is going to happen and that toppling them through technology will not work such as air strikes, electronic warfare and such. There will be mass casualties, I said that.
Have you learned nothing from Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea?
It is not up to me to learn something. If it were up to me there never would have been any kinetic wars at all. I prefer to start with economic warfare and then use discreet covert operations until they succeed. It takes longer but people are impatient and greedy. That's not my fault as far as I know.
I've enjoyed our conversation but I must get back on the gaming machine and sink some pirate ships to get my reputation up with the Brethren. Perhaps we can pick this back up tomorrow.
I'm not sure the desired outcome will be achieved. Iran is not a pushover. Good night!