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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

My predictions for the end of this war:

- The USA eventually declares some arbitrary "victory" condition.

- Iran will be left even poorer, and much less able to defend itself conventionally, but will remain under the same regime. Very likely they give up cooperating with atomic energy inspectors and do what North Korea did to a acquire weapons.

- Israel's ability to dictate US foreign and military policy will be degraded long term. What many commentators do not see is how anti-Israel younger consevatives trend in the US now. It will be decades or before a serious anti-Israel republican candidate will be fielded, but it is inevitable, and even your typical greatest-ally-wall-kissers will have to moderate themselves.

Will be very interesting to see what the mid terms bring. Some on the American right are already talking about voting democrat to protest - MAGA was specifically sold to them as an antidote to necon middle eatern entanglements.

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The problem the US and Israel now have is that no amount of preemptively declaring victory and withdrawing will make it safe to pass through the Straight of Hormuz again.

The US can't win without taking control of Iran's nuclear materiél. They can't do that without ground troops. And any ground invasion of Iran is going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Think Iran will reopen the strait if the US leaves or remain interested in punishing the US and nearby states that supported the strikes?

Iran won't be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea was under China's protection but no one is going to protect Iran. The USA, Israel, and maybe some of the Gulf states will continue occasionally "mowing the grass" whenever the threat level increases.

(I'm not claiming that this is a good scenario, just a likely one.)

I am not seeing a scenario were they can be stopped. They are already surviving under combined US/Israeli strikes. Short of being attacked with weapons of mass destruction...

... oh dear god this administration is dumb enough to try that, isn't it?

Iran can be stopped. Building nuclear weapons plus delivery systems isn't easy and requires a major industrial effort. They won't be allowed to sustain that effort, or rebuild the air defenses necessary to protect it.

There is no reason to believe that they haven't already developed and worked out the details of all that, in case they'd ever need it. Now the US and Israel have killed the only man who was preventing it from being done, the late supreme leader. I cannot imagine the next supreme leader (that is about to be announced) not immediately cancelling the prohibition on building nuclear weapons (to be made public only after they've been built, ofc), and giving the order to build ~10 nuclear warheads (the amount that they can build based on the amount of 60% enriched fissile material they currently possess). With two nuclear powers relentlessly attacking them, it would be suicidal of them to not order the immediate building of nuclear weapons ASAP.

You're really missing the point. Just because someone gives the order to develop nuclear weapons doesn't mean that their defense industrial base has the capacity to do it, or that it can be protected against future strikes. Furthermore, if Iran declared that it did possess working nuclear weapons that wouldn't be a deterrent: it would trigger an immediate and massive preemptive attack by the USA and Israel.

The point was addressed in the first sentence of my previous reply.

As for a preemptive attack, which I imagine you meant would be nuclear since they're already giving it all they've got with their non-nuclear attacks, it is already clear that Israel and USA don't have a way to stop Iran's faster missiles, and they would have no way to prevent Iran nuking Tel-Aviv and Haifa in return. At that point Israel would cease to exist as a state and as a society. They would never risk that. The entire decades-long war against the middle east by USA and Israel is fought for the benefit of Israel, not for its destruction.

No, you're still missing the point. I mean a massive US conventional attack. So far in the current conflict the US has used only a fraction of its capability, and only targeted military and government facilities. In a scenario where Iran claimed to have nuclear weapons then the US would hit much harder and aim to cause so much infrastructure damage and civilian casualties that Iran would be unable to build much of anything more complex than short-range rockets.

A massive conventional attack against a nuclear power is historically not a thing. That's the whole point of a nuclear deterrent. No one is attacking Russia or North Korea under pretenses of humanitarian interventions. A massive conventional attack that would tear Iran apart would be a sufficient reason to initiate nuclear armageddon between Israel and Iran, as it would be a doomsday event for Iran either way; might as well go down swinging. Again, that's the whole point of a nuclear deterrent. It's what Israel's Samson option is, even though none of their enemies ever possessed nuclear weapons.

No, you're still missing the point. The massive conventional attack will tear Iran apart before they construct enough nuclear weapons to present a credible deterrent.

No, you're still missing your own arguments, based on which this discussion thread has been based. Citing your exact words:

> Furthermore, if Iran declared that it did possess working nuclear weapons that wouldn't be a deterrent: it would trigger an immediate and massive preemptive attack by the USA and Israel.

I've been discussing this under the assumption from your own words that "it did possess working nuclear weapons" ('it' being Iran). If you are now changing this to a massive escalation before they even get it, then that is out of scope for this discussion. I would argue they are already doing that to the extent that they can, as they have to tread carefully since Iran can also destroy all key infrastructure in Israel as well.

Having a working nuclear weapon is not the same thing as having a viable vehicle to deliver the nuclear weapon somewhere useful, unless we're talking like, suitcase nukes or whatever. It's hard for me to estimate what the timeline would be to retrofit their existing ballistic missile platform to be suitable, but it's not a super easy task - timeline in peace times would be years, most likely. War likely accelerates it... unless the key people you need for the program, the supplies, testing resources, etc., are victims of the war.

'Working nuclear weapons' is a really broad scale so it's tough to extrapolate without knowing if it means "they can send a person with a low yield weapon somewhere and blow it up vs. "they can launch a high yield weapon on a ballistic missile anywhere within 2000km"

What are you talking about? US / Israel combined haven’t won this war yet. In fact, it’s not looking good for them.

This is an absurd fantasy. Most of Iran's military capability is deep inside mountains. If the US & Israel wants to adopt a strategy of Vietnam-style carpet bombing to devastate the entire country, not only will they be making themselves pariahs (which they're already on the way to doing) but they will be incentivizing Iran to hit Israel with dirty bombs, which will collapse the Israeli economy in short order.

> As for a preemptive attack, which I imagine you meant would be nuclear since they're already giving it all they've got with their non-nuclear attacks, it is already clear that Israel and USA don't have a way to stop Iran's faster missiles, and they would have no way to prevent Iran nuking Tel-Aviv and Haifa in return.

Israel generally has fairly solid intelligence in Iran and would almost certainly take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from building a Nuke...potentially all the way up to using small tactical nukes in targeted strikes on nuclear facilities if conventional attacks would be insufficient. Any preemptive attack would likely occur before Iran actually were acquire a viable nuclear weapon.

Another war? Huh, what will that do for the mid term election? How interesting.

Yet only one country in this comment is named a regime.

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