Hacker News Reader

Comment by jleyank | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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