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Comment by mupuff1234 | Hacker News Reader

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Please don't do this here. It's not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for, and we have to ban accounts that post like this.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on, that would be good. This means, among other things, no nationalistic flamewar.

Noted, sorry!

Feel free to delete the flagged sub-thread.

I do not think you understand what Iran is.

It's an emerging country. It's gigantic. It's more than twice Afghanistan population, but with actual production facilities. They are richer than Irak was, but they have mountains.

Also, Ismail Khan is likely in Iran, but still have his power base in Afghanistan. Likely, Taliban warriors won't care about ideological differences and go fight on the Iran side even without him.

You have to see Iran like an ex-USSR nation. You do not want to invade. It would be too costly. At least Vietnam War level.

Not invade, just wipe out most of their military capacity from air and from sea and wrap it up.

Iraq had ~400 SCUDs/ballistics. Iran has ~4000 ballistics, with 30 years more development. Not leading tech, but accurate enough CEP (10s of meters in case of attacks on US bases in Iraq), and large enough numbers to satuate regional missile defense. Which realistically means all of MENA energy infra will be destroyed before US can hunt down Iranian launchers. 1/3 global oil and lng exports. Which is bad for region and US alliance like EU, JP, SKR who depends on MENA energy. US as large producer can't fill this gap. MENA energy exporters with US basing knows this, and will unlikely allow US to use their territory. That basically removes chance of coalition efforts unlike gulf war since most US allies don't have carriers, and the few that do have limited capabilities and barely add to sortie rate. Which leaves US carriers, of which US realistically could only commit 5-6, and at maximum surge rate can't sortie enough simultaneously to preempt/diffuse threat of Iranians missiles. Not to mention risk to 6 carrier groups. What happens if they somehow got hit. How PRC will react to losing their oil imports, and realizing most of deployable US carriers can't reinforce IndoPac. Or that if you take off 1/3 of global fossil fuels, most developing countries will be outpriced in the ensuing scramble. The short of it, is Iran can (on paper) mess up world as much as US can mess up Iran.

> Not to mention risk to 6 carrier groups. What happens if they somehow got hit

=> US carrier group can be only where it can't be hit. But yes, it would be a PR nightmare.

after wwii, vietnam, desert storm and the ongoing ukraine war, i have a sense that people vastly underestimate how much personnel and ordnance is necessary to wipe out the military capacity of a country with 100m inhabitants.

a realistic count probably starts at 1M boots on the ground, possibly 10M or more. even summoning all csgs for the task would only yield a force of ~75k personnel, which is one or two orders of magnitude too small. deployed half way around the world in a hostile region.

could us hurt their most valuable assets? for sure. wipe them out? not even close.

Maybe the western world shouldnt wreak more havoc and massacre on the rest of the world just because the oil giants and the military industry want more money. All the middle eastern wars and the south east asian wars were a giant disaster propped up by lies and false flag operations. Your and your parents hard earned tax dollars paid the rockets that killed all these people. So instead of campaigning for more wars, you should campaign for less taxes

Are you nuts? This would start a world war.

It's a nutty idea, but it wouldn't start a world war. The US attacked Iran in 1988 and that didn't start a world war. All of the other regional powers hate Iran. Russia, China, and India aren't going to defend Iran and have very limited capabilities to project power into the Persian Gulf region anyway.

Russia and China were totally different in 1988. They had no geopolitical power. China hadn't developed it yet and the USSR was on the verge of or early stages of imploding.

We have no idea what would happen

Russia wasn't supplying from Iran in 1988, China and India didn't have the navies that they have today. China just needs to sit and watch and keep repeating "stop fighting, start peace talks" and watch the US get all worked up. Or maybe invade Taiwan in the meantime.

Biden will not directly attack Iran anyway. But he is going to approve strikes on Iran affiliated groups such as Hezbollah and friends.

War is incredibly costly in terms of lives and money? And we haven’t exhausted diplomacy?

Is it? The first phase of operation iraqi freedom took about a month before the iraqi army was no more and had very little casualties. [0]

I'm not even saying destroy their army, just destroy their advanced capabilities and let them know that if they try to build or acquire anything that is more than a rifle it will be immediately destroyed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#:~:text=In%20the%20in....

You seem to imagine their military production facilities aren't protected by mountains. And that they have 0 S300/buck so or won't receive the s400 that Russia can't currently use.

Those can be overwhelmed by sheer force, and their numbers are fairly limited.

The mountains are more of an issue but how many giant underground military complexes can they actually have? probably not more than 5.

Enough to built a dirty bomb and set it off in any country in the area that would have supported the strike.

You don't attack a country that can produce fissil material.

There's always Maverick, Rooster, Phoenix, and Hangman to take care of those pesky mountains, don't you think? /s

George W. Bush forgot about the "now what" part of that war of aggression on a former ally, though.

Now nothing, they can keep on with their live, they just can't have fancy military toys unless they move towards a more liberal and democratic path.

Don't forget, the country _was_ on a liberal and democratic path under Mossadegh several decades ago. It just wasn't a path that the US and the UK liked. Hence began a series of "interventions" which eventually resulted in the present regime.

This would be the right place to insert that old (Santayana?) quote about history, I guess.

> Don't forget, the country _was_ on a liberal and democratic path under Mossadegh several decades ago.

False. Mossadegh had already suspended elections prior to the coup, which is one of the reasons he lost popular support.

Citation please? Not a sarcastic question, asking so that I can learn. My source was Ryszard Kapuscinski's book.

... and a few more. That apart, none of what you've said excuses the CIA interventions which eventually let Khomeini take power.

I misspoke; Mossadeq dissolved the parliament and rigged a referendum allowing him to do so rather than suspending elections.

Also, the CIA was likely not actually responsible for the coup anyway: https://web.archive.org/web/20150603235034/https://www.forei...

I would strongly suggest living outside the United States for a little while to grow out of this 'Team America World Police' mindset.

May be you should ask Romania, Poland, Sweden or Finland how they feel about having NATO’s protection/presence against Russia’s aggression. “Team America World Police” as you mocked.

May be you should ask "Team America" why they are meddling with countries on the other side of the world. Maybe sitting besides two gigantic pools of water helps?

Maybe because it helps tip the balance in your favour? Dunno about you but we've had just about enough Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. We're gonna have have "US hegemony" for a change now, being "US satellites", as Russia likes to picture it.

We appreciate it very very very much and welcome you with open arms.

Yeah, right. Because the Al-Qaeda and ISIS affilated Taliban are more Liberal and Democratic that US signed an agreement with them and handed over Afghanistan to them.

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