A lot of people saying this, what would this actually entail? My money is much more on this being a "1 and done" exchange. Iran poses very little threat now, launchers being taken out everyday, leadership chain wiped out, seemingly no other Iran allies getting pulled into the fold
The propaganda at the moment is israel is winning, iran isnt using missiles because of "air superiority", and the US is able and willing to detroy the nuclear capacity via the air. All of these claims are false. Iran's capacity to strike back remains vast using only its own resources.
What the US has been dragged into by israel is an amazing opportunity for a US peer competitor (china) to grind down its arms -- it would be remarkable if China doesn't take it. It can hardly afford the US to be a well-armed protector of Taiwan.
The iranian regieme's apparent hesitation at the moment is not as extreme as russia's on the first days of the ukraine war, and look at where we are now. This apparent hesitation is waiting for israel to deplete its missile defense, waiting for a more stable intelligence environment (presumably moving assets, etc. around out of uncovered israeli operations), and most of all, waiting for a moment to strike off-guard.
What propaganda ? I’ve seen the footage of Iran firing flak cannons somewhere in the direction of f35s. Not a single Israeli plane has been lost…where is the lie ?
Iran has a population of 92mil and an economy vastly stronger than iraq 2003* why assume they want the current leadership to remain in charge? Why assume they wanted nukes ?
You mention China grinding down its enemy ? What about the fact the air force is actually performing real missions being and gaining real experience ? Is a few bunker busters going to grind down the USAF ?
All we can work backwards from are the most reliable facts we have before the war, about capabilities on the ground. We know the rough size of the iranian missile programme, of the country, economic, various military assets and similar.
We can work backwards from this to ask, "what would we be able to see had Israel achieved its claim re iran" -- and we're talking extraordinary levels of destruction in iran, across the country, and so on. We don't have any evidence of operations of that scale even taking place, let alone having been successful.
It is most likely, at the moment, that at least some alleged air force victories by israel are actual missiles they've issued from neighbouring states on the land.
However, either way, all of this is speculation. What can be stated with near certainty is that any picture presented in the media is an extremely careful creation of the propaganda arms of our states, and not a credible military briefing.
Our only access to reliable inferences is purely rational and hypothetical: what are X's aims, what are their claims, what are they claimed strategies, what are their capabilities and so on.. and then what would we see *if*...
The source of most of the videos from both sides is random social media users.
Even the videos and info from the IDF I would regard as credible, since they released similar videos and info from the Lebanon operation last year that was consistently corroborated by evidence from social media (there was no internet blackout in Lebanon so every IDF strike on an urban area had multiple videos from different perspectives).
I called the war for Russia ~2 years ago, just as the "counter offensive" by Ukraine was starting. Go back, if you wish, to that time in the news and find exactly what english-speaking western median, and social media, was saying.
What is the picture you get, of Ukraine and its counteroffensive, delivered to you from these sources?
It's always a little stunning just how easy it is for publics to be manipulated. Oh what a world.
Anyway why don’t we see videos from Iran of Israeli jets being shot down ? Why is there no footage of Irans airforce engaging Israel ? Why didn’t the B-2 spirits get attacked ? You can say it’s all lies and propaganda , but it’s not because there is no evidence to the contrary being presented.
I can make no specific claims as to any actions by any one involved in the conflict, if iran had shot down f35s presently, it'd be highly likely covered up by both sides. Iran to protect knowledge of its capability, and israel to ensure domestic morale is maintained.
Either way, that wasn't my claim.
> Iran to protect knowledge of its capability
Protect knowledge against who? Israel will know if one of their planes were shot down, US will know. Besides, Iran claims to have shot down f35s, so they clearly want people to think they have that capability.
I was not making a claim about F35s anyway, I have no specific information nor have I considered any, on relevant claims about F35s
Iran claims to have shot down f35s
It's like they forgot about photoshop and just went full on AI. Photoshop would've done a much better job (in the right hands).
You had a hilariously large F-35 in one picture, like 5x normal size. In another picture, you had a downed F-35 was blown to pieces yet somehow the afterburners were still lit.
I guess they convinced some of the very lowest-information members of the populace, but damn.
This is rich. It took minutes to claim the air over Iran, what exactly gives you the impression of strength? Two US carriers parked off the coast is enough to not only maintain that superiority, but to down the entirety of their very aged air force.
> Iran to protect knowledge of its capability
Let’s think this through. You could announce that you’ve downed an advanced fighter without explaining how and unless the US or Israel gets a hold of the wreckage to do an investigation, nobody but the pilot will know how it was downed. This logic that Iran is trying to protect some super secret method of downing advanced fighters doesn’t pass the smell check.
For those reading the above, wondering about this phenomenon, read Baudrilliard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Even if you don't agree with Baudrilliard's overall thesis, the facts he brings up are still cogent (e.g. a photo from the Exon Valdez spill was used instead of an actual photo of the Iraqi military's destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields). The media has been a critical aspect of war since at least the Falklands War.
[1] https://iranwire.com/en/politics/136431-how-the-snapback-mec...
Just like foreigners who are lazy leeches on the social system and at the same how somehow steal our jobs.
Generous estimates place relevant bomb capacity in the US at 100, though I believe only ~1/3 of that is confirmed. Reports say ~10 were used. So, speculatively, the US has used 25% of its capacity to bust deep fortifications -- and, imv, failed to make a dent.
Credible estimates I'm aware of talk about dozens of bombs (per similar deep fortification), seriously depleting US capacity. It's unlikely the US would be willing to use up more than 50% of its bombing capacity here -- since a very large number of bombs are required for deep fortifications of this kind.
ie., US capacity is about "destroying two mountains", and it really needs at least to retain capacity to destroy one.
A well-designed nuke could take out the mountain, that's really the best air-supplied shot at taking the thing out.
Either way, none of this can be confirmed without ground forces. So one wonders if at least some of this theatre is to provoke iran enough to react in a way that justifies a ground invasion.
To your point, yes, china would absolutely love the US to degrade as much capacity as it possibly can. One images, even, they'd spin up a nuclear programme in iran very quickly again, just to try to drag the US back in. The US has done much worse.
China's geostrategic goal at the moment is stamp on the rope-pins around the US elephant: ukraine, iran, israel, and so on. Have the US blow as much as possible of its rapidly depleting military arsenal everywhere but around china.
Trump was the first president to really take this problem seriously, it's a little unfortunate that he's found himself in the same trap as every US president for the last 25 years.
The US spends more on military than most of the rest of the world combined. Every conflict there’s a contingent of people claiming the US will soon be out of munitions and can’t continue. Now the statement is made on the first attack. The US is oddly perceived as weak by this contingent, which flies in the face of reason.
In absolute numbers yes, as a fraction of GDP that is currently not true (US ranks 8th place there). US doesn't even spend the 5% Trump demands other allies should spend.
It's highly debatable whether the US can contain china at its present size, let alone in a few years. China is vastly large than the soviet union, in comparison to the US, at the height of the cold war -- and merely to contain a smaller adversary, the US had to significantly outspend it.
The US can dominate its region relatively cheaply (ie., the western hemisphere); but if it wants to retain the ability to project power across the world, and be the primary power in theatres of interest (middle east and china esp.) then it's woefully underspending.
The US is armed to take on a world without peer competitors. If it had to fight a proxy war with china, dominate the middle east, and supply a land war in ukraine -- it would loose all three.
The asymmetry of power needed for the US to dominate the world is enourmous -- this was only cheap when the single adversary was a much smaller russia.
The US does not have the manufacturing capacity to replace 50% of its bunker-buster arms "suddenly". It simply cannot do it. So if a war breaks out tomorrow, where it needs these arms, they're gone.
The west is simply not equipped to wars with peer competitors. It's equipped for the taliban, not nations with fleets of air craft carriers.
> It's equipped for the taliban, not nations with fleets of air craft carriers.
The US has more carriers than all other nations combined, times 2.
> The US does not have the manufacturing capacity to replace 50% of its bunker-buster arms "suddenly". It simply cannot do it. So if a war breaks out tomorrow, where it needs these arms, they're gone.
During a time of war every manufacturing plant capable of being reconfigured to make arms or vehicles is. Just like in WW2.
The rest of this is just silly. The US “owns” the oceans. We go where we want when we want any call it “freedom of navigation“ and nobody stops us.
I’m sorry I offended your country’s capabilities vs the US, but there’s a reason the US hasn’t been invaded yet and it’s because it’s an impossible feat.
This is so irrelevant to the conversation, that it indicates you don't understand what's at issue or the basic geopoltical terms in which to evaluate US strategic capabilities.
The US isnt trying to prevent invasion, it's trying to dominate every region of the world. It's military is extremely over-sized to merely defend america. It's extremely undersized to dominate every region of the world in 2025. This is why comparing sizes of militaries is irrelevant and extremely misleading. Essentially all other militaries are concerned with only local defence and power projection.
From ~90s to 00s the US military was big enough to dominate the world, because it had no rivals. When you have rivals even half your size, to dominate them, you need massively out-class them. Consider that during the cold war the US spent 10% of its GDP, vastly more in real terms than the soviet union.
China can dominate its region of the world very cheaply compare to the US dominating *china* ! because defence is vastly cheaper than offence and geographically local power projection is relatively cheap. China is not designing a military to contain all of south america -- the US *is*
The US is trying to maintain arms to entirely ensure its own defence under any possible threat *AND* dominate russia in eastern europe, china in the south china sea, the middle east, ensure all shipping lanes are open, staff miltiary bases throughout europe, asia, etc. -- and the vast array of proxy countries in which it maintains a military pretence. There are 100k troops in europe, 40k+ in japan, and so on.
The US doesn't evaluate its military capability in terms of "what happens if mexico invades"
If the US had lost a B2 during the operation, then sure, that would be a major loss. But as far as I can tell we did not.
If we get involved in a ground invasion, sure, that’s a different matter.
A ground war in europe, one in the middle east -- all of the US assets in distant seas, its bombs in distant lands. Pretty good time to be a china on tour.
Sure, maybe some targeted commando raids here and there. They’re already doing that.
Large scale invasion though? Almost logistically impossible unless you’re telling me the maps I’ve looked at my whole life are state propaganda too.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-navy-receives-second-o...
This is not a serious suggestion.
As far as I can tell, israel is doing everything it can to escalate the situation to a place where the US is forced into it. We'll have to see if it can be avoided.
The problem for iran is that while they may believe the US is unwilling to escalate, and so be happier to go "arms down" -- they won't be allowed to by israel. So they're being forced up the escalation ladder.
There are very many things that they can do which would destabilise US military and economic interests directly. One imagines israel will do everything i can to provoke such a response.
In any case, I'm talking about inferred goals, capacity, strategy. I'm constructing a viable theory of what their strategy would be if they achieved their aims.
The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air. It might be that israel is content to lose on these objectives, and so be it.
I expected that most of my comments here would be heavily downvoted, and its somewhat suprising that they arent. Most people are operating from a profoundly heavily propagandized view of foreign policy, and of their own countries -- and whenever one raises thinking about these issues in ways which suspend this propaganda one gets a very angry reaction: everyone one is a nationalist, either midly or extermely, but a nationalist never the less. Asking people to thinking critically about their nation is tantamount to asking them to thinking critically about their mother.
Either way, I comment regardless for the few who are able to think clearly on these matters.
Oof, OK, I suppose not, you only said "The [my emphasis] ground invasion hasn't started yet". There is some degree of ambiguity there. Forgive me for thinking you were saying one will happen.
> The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air.
Ah! Is that a prediction you insist will happen? That there will be no regime change and no end to Iran's military nuclear programme without a ground invasion? Great! That's a testable hypothesis. Let's see.
> It's also an inherently ridiculous thing to say -- if I am wrong about highly complex geostrategic outcomes then i should never think about them again?
No, not at all (and I certainly didn't say "think", I said "speculate"). It's just a way of seeing if you put your money where your mouth is. If there is an incentive to someone predicting wrongly I'm more likely to take them seriously!
if either were, this would be the first instnace in history -- so, presumably, i could be forgiven for the mistake
but either way, I dont think israel believes they can be either
This is key. The only way for this set of actions to go well is if there is regime change, otherwise the most likely outcome is that Iran's resolve to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible has been dramatically solidified.
Like you though, I struggle to see any clear path for positive regime change to occur. The nearest attempt would be boots (but whose?) on the ground, but even that seems unlikely to work out well. Maybe there could be some sort of internal resistance, but I don't see how they could operate successfully while the country is under external attack.
My assumption with how things are at the moment is that the actions by Israel and the USA have all but guaranteed that Iran acquires a nuclear weapon in the next few decades, and so have dramatically increased the risk of Israel being attacked with one. One has to assume that radical Islamist terrorism in western countries will increase too.
sure it can. First, bomb the crap out of anything reachable and destroy normal economy. Then pull a Syria, a "democratic uprising of the freedom-loving people", perhaps get some help from friends at Al Qaeda or wherever the current Syrian freak is from, and Bob's your uncle.
Do I think israel is inclined to try, or otherwise, risk failure on the back of US blood and treasure? More or less, yes -- i think that's quite likely.
The US invasion and occupation of vietnam, afganistan, iraq, etc. were all mad. The US foreign policy elite are not very competent because america doesnt receive any real blowback from its failures -- so there's no conditioning mechanism to force it into instutitonal competence.
Do I think such an elite would do one more stupid thing? yes, its actually far more improbable that they'd learn caution
They've bankrupted america, caused half the world to turn against them -- all the while presiding over the rise and enrichment of a peer competitor (china). You could not describe a more incompent, warmongering, self-destructive set of foreign policy institutions.
It's what happens when you are isolated on your own continent and rarely have to pay for your decisions.
Israel's state government is absolutely filled to the brim with war hawks - but they're not stupid. The situation they want to contain is too large to fix with IDF ground forces, they necessarily have to involve US force structures to seriously challenge Iran. And even then, it feels likely that we'd be looking at an Afghan War situation where guerrilla combat absolutely shreds the modern forces the further they push in.
...but I will repeat myself - this is an attack of opportunity for Israel, not a desperate scramble to destroy nuclear assets. Israel's long-term goal is to become the unquestioned geopolitical power of the Levant, even outside America's auspices. They can do that by leveraging the dumb-as-a-brick administration to provoke Iran into a response, at which point they will fight until attrition forces them both to retreat. Now Israeli forces are the de-facto security guarantor in the region, and we already know they draw their borders however they like.
Mind you, this isn't the last you'll hear about "Iran's nuclear program" - it hasn't outlived it's usefulness, quite yet. Israel will continue targeting them not until nuclear assets are destroyed, but until America perceives itself to be backed into a corner with no choice but to search Iran door-to-door for a hidden bomb. (Stretch Goal - +100 Brownie Points: get America to launch a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran and increase the escalation ladder beyond what any peer power can compete with.)
Source please.
What do Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Dubai have in common?
All of their oil tankers sail through a 20mi strip of water called the Straight of Hormuz, completely bordered by Iran on one side. Saudi Arabia has access to the Red Sea and a bunch of pipelines to take some of their oil there, but most of their maritime ports are in the Persian Gulf.
You don't need hypersonic ballistic missiles to take out an oil tanker. Save those for Israel, all you need is a few drones, speedboats, and mines.
Oh, what's that, a good chunk of attack drones undergoing "field trials" in Ukranian population centers are Iranian-made purchased by Russia? And those drones are designed to be launched from mobile trucks in any non-descript garage instead of static missile silos?
We've seen what a rag-tag group of Yemeni rebels with some light rockets have done to ocean shipping at the chokepoint to the Red Sea, now we're gonna see what the people supplying the Houthi's can do at the chokepoint to the Oil Sea.
Hope y'all enjoyed your sub-$2 gas prices.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-urges-china-dissuade-...
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called on China to encourage Iran to not shut down the Strait of Hormuz after Washington carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Rubio's comments on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo" show came after Iran's Press TV reported that the Iranian parliament approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of global oil and gas flows.
For as long as I've been alive, every action from the US in the middle east been a "1 and done" exchange, and Bush famously hosted a "Mission Accomplished" party two months after the start of the invasion of Iraq.
I'd be surprised if this was the only action from the US' side during this war, based on history, but maybe things are different today, seems highly unlikely though.
Shame politicians always seem to lack a spine when it matters.
Either way: This doesn't stop here, and it was never about these bogus nuclear weapons (which are just around the corner since the 80's) just like Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction. They want to place a puppet government...what could go wrong?
It's possible that #2 will happen via domestic uprising, but not at all clear whether the result of that would be a friendlier regime that is less interested in going nuclear. It could very plausibly instead be hardliners who are pissed the regime failed to put up a strong enough fight. (I think that would be what would predictably happen in the US in this scenario, for instance!)
And if it's not a domestic uprising, it's a bloody regime change war like the ones fought in the 00s, which ... didn't turn out great, if you recall!
Possibly #1 is a better outcome. But I'm very skeptical that "we'll just bomb a big country periodically" is a strategy that will never escalate into protracted war.
Chance of terrorist activity on US soil in the next 10 years has increased.
I don’t think it’s improved things for the US.
Neighboring countries like KSA have openly declared their intention to get nukes.
They could give the nuke to a proxy (or have it stolen) who then detonates it either at a US military base in the region or on US soil.
You're implying that a foreign power bombing Iran would make the people less likely to support their government. Do you have justification for that?
I think you're underestimating how many Iranians the CIA allowed to be tortured and raped in the Shahist regime. Agree to disagree?
Are you sure about that now? Did you miss the part where your president was openly discussing plans on annexing territories from it's allies?
Ah, the American exceptionalism..
USA is the most murderous country in the world, by far
The Glorious Revolutionary Militia of country X, using Iranian built and supplied drones or missiles, blows up young American soldiers in a country half the electorate didn't even know there was a presence in. Iran disclaims all involvement, but says they sympathise with the legitimate frustration of the locals. Do you think the United States gets involved in a hot war against Iran based on that?
Remember the Beirut truck bombings. The biggest single day US Marine loss of life since Iwo Jima. Reagan (and Mitterand) immediately says there will be no withdrawal. They shoot a lot of artillery in the general direction of Hezbollah from a boat, then immediately withdraw all troops.