Ask HN: Will US send ground troops to Iran? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will US send ground troops to Iran?

I think it will come down to the government's tolerance for casualties. This has not been a, erm, popular subject since ‘Nam but people forget too easily. If they think they’ll profit from it, they’ll throw them in. They’re NPC’s after all, not their kids.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's limited special forces / ground troops to secure Straits of Hormuz. US has sufficiently pissed off gulf allies that securing this reliably may be the only way to regain their trust. Not to mention avoid global economic collapse.

It's likely. Actual troops will be a more attractive target than commercial ships for Iran to send drones at. Dead Americans don't cause the markets to drop. And ultimately, "line goes up" is the only moral that politically matters to this regime.

(Also I'd be highly surprised if they haven't run the numbers and calculated scores for which specific units contain the most non-citizens, new citizens, and other untermensch. So from their perspective it's basically a 2-for-1)

Not a chance. Iran is much much bigger georaphy than Iraq. And now all countries are better prepared for their traditional foes than bygone era. US has done a misadventure thinking it is the middle East of early 2000. No now everyone is prepared thanx to Russia and China taking turns to equip traditional foes. Even though the Indian media did not say outright but even India and Pakistan war last year was a tough one for India. It was no easy victory. Rather there was no victory. Just ceasefire. Now everyone is prepared.

I'm sorry, do you not understand what the US is these days? Who runs it? They already have. Yesterday news started leaking about a 2-5,000 unit deployment.

But friends and family of military already knew before that.

...and their geo location is much more in favor for their defense than the deserts of Iraq. If Trump thinks he can send troups there, this will fail: Iran has much more soldiers, 10.000 USD ultracheap drones etc.

This will rater end as "Vietnam 2.0" with this move: Lot of military equipment locked-in for years in a conflict you cant win.

They already are aren't they?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15643983/Trump-depl...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/why-th...

https://archive.is/uVFSV

You would be much better served blacklisting those websites and read the NYTs article. It's time to take a moment and reflect that if you cant read the news you might be the problem

Yes. 5000 marines for now but they will ultimately have to send more if a goal is regime change. They will also need more to carefully breach and clear the deep bunkers that the bunker buster ordinance can not penetrate likely also containing tripwires. There will also need to be some to patrol the shorelines of the straight, a lot more. IRGC are 200K highly trained zealot soldiers.

For that kind of scope we are not talking just "some" more than 5000 but hundreds of thousands of soldiers, thus full invasion to a country twice the size and population of Afghanistan.

Agreed. The reason I said 5000 is due to 5000 marines in route as we speak. I do not know what their orders involve but it can't be the Strait. I am hoping it is to pop open all the deep bunkers, destroy the remaining missiles, missile production machinery, sweep for leaders in hiding, search for radioactive material and find the missing limited edition Marvel comic collection.

This will get flagged for being political.

It might be a good thing to resolve the crisis - just take over entire coastline to some depth where the first easily defendable natural barrier occurs, throw all locals out of there and make sure no one can infiltrate - then threat to shipping will be gone.

What video game rules do you think the real world operates under?

While there's coast near Bandar Abbas (sez Google), there's a whole lot of mountains inland of that. Not sure what the range of Iranian weaponry is, but digging troops out of mountains is something that tends to be avoided. There is a mountain division in the US inventory as I recall, but (a) no clue what its strength is and (b) also no clue when it last played in the hills post-WW II.

If the Marines actually face well-armed zealots, it's going to look far too much like WW II in the Pacific. Are the US-ians ready to re-experience such casualties? Cuz I expect the zealots would be willing to do so. And Ukraine has shown the power of man-portable weaponry against the traditional tools of 20th century military operations.

Surely no going to the mountains. Coast needs to be taken to prevent launch of any boats of mini-subs for minelaying. Of course, preventing drone launch will require capturing entire country - Shaheds have 1500+ km range - that isn't an option.

Iranian missile capability is almost extinguished as it is, and drones are to be defended from using Ukrainian interceptors - first line of defence, on the ground on the coast, and second line, on ships themselves.

Ah, and Iranian electric grid needs to be knocked out, and kept like that. It was done easily in Iraq in 1991. It alone prevents nuclear enrichment for the lack of electricity.

It will perhaps never result in victory, but sustain suppression may be enough, Cuba-like.

So before long the new generation born to secular parents will only have known life under US oppression and will be eager for the revenge being promised by the religious extremists. Sounds like a great plan for creating more terrorists!

One thing apalling in the western and especially US mindset is that middle East ppl are terrorists. No Iran was never involved in any acts of individual or planned terrorism. Covert CIA like spy operations: Yes because everyone is it's enemy (I'm neither a fan of US nor Iran. I don't care who wins. I don't care who survives. But the bloodshed troubles me) It's just face-palm moment to realize that whoever has other sensibilities is an extremist or maybe terrorist.

Well, I'll apologize for using the word. Usually I try to be a bit more nuanced with my analyses. But in this case it seems entirely appropriate to throw that fearmongering word right back at people driving the bloodshed with overly simplistic tales of being able to subjugate a country by keeping its electric grid destroyed from the air - especially a country where only a scant few weeks ago the narrative was all about how the population overwhelmingly desires a secular society and is eager to throw off the chains of its oppressive regime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com