Hacker News Reader

Comment by energy123 | Hacker News Reader

They lack the capability to do much aside from disrupt shipping with SRBMs. They've taken down only one drone, which is one less than the Houthis. Their ballistic capability is heavily degraded. Their military leadership is gone. Their airforce is gone. Their air defense is gone. They're a paper tiger and I don't understand why people still think there's the prospect of some kind of grand retaliation. They're not holding back, they just can't do anything.

View on HN

As if conventional responses are the only way to retaliate. We are talking about Iran here. They're all about asymmetric warfare.

Their intelligence heads are also all gone. What kind of response do you envisage?

Well. Some guys with a tiny fraction of the funding Iran has managed to fly a few airliners into some buildings a few years back.

So, I imagine there are perhaps unconventional options available to a country which is fully willing to fund terrorist groups for decades against a country with a very large amount of largely unprotected infrastructure.

But who knows? It just seems a bit premature to argue Iran's defeat. Feels a bit... mission accomplished.

Even more reason for them to go. It’s not good enough to continue taking it from Iran.

Ahh, trying to bomb your way to regime change in the Middle East. This feels so familiar. What could possibly go wrong?

If only those who advocated for war were forced to fight in them.

I fought in Iraq.

Will you be volunteering to fight in Iran next? And any wars that fall out of it from a country with twice the population of Iraq being destabilized?

I am already volunteering

But I dont think we are invading

Obama attacked Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. We aren’t there now are we?

December 1, 2012 - 300th drone strike on Pakistan.

Obama executed 563 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan alone while in office.

> Obama attacked Pakistan

I’m scratching my head on this because Pakistan was and is still a US ally, but I guess you mean the Bin Laden operation?

No, the 300 drone strikes.

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

From your link: "However, despite the public opposition of Pakistani officials, multiple former Prime Ministers gave covert permission to the United States to carry out these attacks."

Makes sense, they were in the tribal areas where I assume the government was losing control of their monsters.

Point is we weren’t at war with those countries.

Clinton - Yugoslavia 1999

Obama - Airstrikes on Libya in 2011

Goes back to the War Powers Act of 1973.

[flagged]

Thanks!

[flagged]

They were already doing that in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq and Bahrain. They weren't holding back before, and they won't hold back after. But their ability to do that is now severely degraded. The officials overseeing these programs are now gone. The weapons they were sending to these groups are now reduced.

> Their intelligence heads are also all gone. What kind of response do you envisage?

It does not mean that their ability to gather intelligence or use it is 100% gone. It most likely means they are a bit in disarray because of their top-down command structure. And maybe it takes a day or two until they put someone in charge.

Ukraine just demonstrated how to mess with long range aviation parked in the open.

I'm not saying it's easy, but there are many soft targets in America.

But yeah, who knows. The wise choice here is to go home and not play. The US and Israel are not about to invade with ground forces.

And if they were it'd be without support from European countries.

What planet have you been living on the past 25 years? Iran has a population of almost 100 million as well as a sizeable diaspora across the world. If even a small percentage of the population engages in terrorism, that translates into thousands of potential actors. And unlike a state-to-state war, this is the kind of distributed, unpredictable threat that’s much harder to deter or contain.

A tactital victory does not translate to a strategic victory. I'd like to remind you the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco by George W, that was followed by more than 10 years of war and hundreds of thousands dead.

Agree that they can't retaliate through their military, but if they did it would likely be through terror attacks on civilians.

It's going to be a very bad time for American interests and people outside of the United States in the next few years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com