Everything is changing. Including our influence.
Even the fanciest self propelled artillery is getting destroyed by these little cheap buggers.
You make an incorrect conclusion which is unfortunately both quite popular and incorrect among westerners who read two and half editorials about Russo-Ukrainian war in some NYT/WAPO/whatever and think they now understand modern warfare. The reality of the situation is that drones are a very useful tool, but any side achieving actual air supremacy would result their fighters and bombers cruising over frontline and enemy towns on low altitudes taking out any high-value targets at whim. The situation would be similar to boots-on-the-ground phase of The Iraq War, resulting one of the sides to rapidly gaining ground and winning the war. Keep in mind that the cited "40k per-hour" price is quite cheap compared to per-hour operation cost of any kind of big ground force.
In fact, last thing US wants is to be in Russia's shoes unable to meaningfully advance into the territory of by all measures much weaker enemy.
But I am sure of who I wouldn't put in charge of critical military operations.
You mean like when the Zionists openly stopped food from getting into Gaza, while the western governments were backing the Zuonists? Those people concerned with civilian casualties?
An enemy unconcerned with civilian casualties, give me a break.
We just failed to do all of those things quite visibly.
Iran made a choice not to escalate to destroying desalination capabilities and that's why a lot of Saudis and Emiratis are still alive. It's not because we protected them.
US Naval doctrine has been a paper tiger ever since that Millenium Challenge exercise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil#2002_State_of_the...
The sort of gear that could count atoms from Fukushima drifting across the oceans to end up in HVAC filters in middle North America.
1. Didn't read them and know that they expire in 10 years.
2. Think that 10 years is a long enough time in the future where whatever happens then doesn't matter to their current goals.
3. Would like to see a nuclear-capable Iran.
For what it's worth, January 2026 already passed 5 months ago.
> Would like to see a nuclear-capable Iran.
Postponing their nuclear programme with at least 10 years is absolutely worth doing. Because realistically you cannot, I repeat, cannot force them to stop it. If the regime wants to continue, it will and their facilities deep under the mountains are impenetrable.
> Or alternatively, in 2026 Iran would have been hooked on closer economic cooperation and trade, (relative) reformers would be in power, and the deal would have been renewed.
That's called imperialism. I believe it's no longer fashionable.
What do you mean culture and value system? You think isolation and nuclear weapons are parts of the Iranian culture????
And yes, Iran had multiple bouts of reformer presidents. Reformer within the limits of what the Supreme Leader would allow of course, but there is still a massive gulf of difference between them and the hardliners. A few years of visible economic development under reformers would have nudged things in the reconciliation direction.
Again, yanking the deal, even before the current strikes during negotiations, ensures that Iran will never fully trust the US. So realistically, what other choices do they have other than procure nuclear weapons for protection?
The topic is Iran. A theocracy with an unelected supreme leader with final say on political decisions and candidates for all elections in the otherwise relatively democratic system. Reformer in their context (hence the relative qualifier I used) is people like Ahmadinejad who are for rapprochement and trade with the world, but without too many concessions. We're not talking about socially progressive or "western" or anything of the like. They are infinitely better than the hardliners aligned with the IRGC who are against anything other than autarky and building more strategic security via stuff like nukes. The reformers got their way with the JCPOA, and were proven wrong by the orange moron destroying that. Since then the hardliners have been in power and they are not going anywhere now.
> people like Ahmadinejad
Oh, this guy:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-23538717
Let's look at some of his policies:
- Holocaust denial
- Calling for the destruction of the state of Israel
- Provided funding, training and arms to Hezbollah and Hamas
- Condemned by the UK, Germany, Austria, and even the UN
- Condemned the Palestinian Authority for holding peace talks with Israel
- A nice quote of his: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
Thank you for explaining to all those who won't listen to me because I'm Israel and therefore biased, what a "reformed" Iran would look like. Now they can understand just how hateful the current "unreformed" Iran looks like.
Is Iran, ran by hateful men, but open to trade, integration, reform, inspections and having a lot to lose perfect? Of course it fucking isn't. But realistically it's the best we could have had.
Instead we have Iran ruled by even more hateful men. Men that saw their families blown up in front of them, and have nothing to lose. The economy is already shit, and they don't care about regular people, and as we saw in the recent protests, power structures are intact and they do not hesitate using them to enforce their rule. Men who were demonstrated multiple times that American promises don't mean anything. Those men also have a pretty clear path on how they'd be left alone - Kim's nuclear weapons / threat of destroying Seoul.
How is that any better? It isn't. It's drastically worse for everyone, from the common Iranian suffering under the regime to every single one of us that will have to live under the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and worldwide economic disruption via Hormuz and direct sabotage.
> open to trade, integration, reform, inspections
The Iranians are as interested in reforming their society into American ideals, as Americans are interested in reforming American society into Iranian ideals.
Did you mean Ahmadinejad or Rouhani? The negotiations technically started under Ahmadinejad but Rouhani would be more reasonably considered a reformer, and is probably more relevant in the context of the JCPOA's lifecycle
How is that worse than the current situation? Iran is closer to nuclear capability now than in your counterfactual, yet those who disagree with you are the ones who want a nuclear-capable Iran?
The Just Cash Pallets Over Americans agreement, where Iran was rewarded for all the wrong things and the public kept in the dark.
Military power projection is the reason the US was able to destroy a significant portion of Iranian leadership, nuclear infrastructure, and weapons infrastructure with no retaliation from Iran back in the US nor any pushback from any of Irans allies.
Military hegemony has nothing to do with being a perfect police force that can stop anything from happening anywhere.
>but we still couldn't have stopped them with our vaunted carrier-based power projection, or with our exhausted ABM capabilities.
Who is “we”? Your account started posting nothing but anti-US stances and pro-China/Iran stances since this conflict began.
Military hegemony in the gulf region would mean being able to force Iran to stop attacking gulf targets, rather than negotiating a ceasefire because both sides are hurting. What we have is a multipolar situation, it's not arguable, it's right on the scoreboard.
A hegemon would be able to unilaterally open the straits.
Best for everyone to recognize it and act accordingly. It's got nothing to do with cheerleading, that stuff is for rubes.
First, Iran doesn't have allies, it has friends of convenience (Russia like the military cooperation but don't like the cheap oil competition, China love the cheap oil competition but don't care for the damage, etc).
Second, US bases and US allies (in the actual sense of the word) were attacked by Iran, successfully. US and all its allies were also impacted by the trivial closure of the Hormuz. US allies now will forever know that the US is not a reliable ally and can't protect them; stocks of crucial materiel were wasted on achieving nothing; and high oil prices will cost the US domestic politics dearly. US power projection whacked a few nutjobs from a regime full of them. Oh, and they're a theocracy that believes in martyrdom! And the new supreme leader is a strong proponent of nuclear weapons (unlike his predecessor and father), and saw half his family blown up in front of him.
> Military hegemony has nothing to do with being a perfect police force that can stop anything from happening anywhere.
Being unable to enforce your will on an enemy is not "hegemony". Iran will walk out of this conflict with their nuclear programme back on track, a revenge minded regime, and maybe even a toll on an international strait to fill up their coffers.
US does not have capability to destroy them. It can make lives of civilians hard, as it tried, but foreigners attacking civilians dont make regimes fall.
Iran didn't attack the desalination plants because that would amount to actual warcrimes - and they care about their public perception in the broader community of nations. Unlike, of course, Israel and the USA, who don't mind turning a few schools and hospitals to smithereens.
You might call this "assured non-mutual destruction", and of course it helps that the US is located away from Iran's immediate neighborhood, but destroying the lifelines of the GCC countries would assure an economic collapse globally that the world has never seen before. Imagine something on the lines of oil at $300 a barrel, zero fertilizer, zero semiconductors, zero plastics, the works. And Iran could just as easily turn Israel to glass, with a death by a thousand papercuts (or drones, whatever your flavor). Of course, all of this at a huge cost to itself.
Such as a Russian strategic bomber base thousands of miles from the front?
Ukraine has other long-range strike drones but haven't heard of more than a thousand miles range.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb
https://sofrep.com/news/deepstrike-campaign-drone-attacks-ag...
Spiderweb was a modern-day Doolittle Raid. It didn't scale, at least not immediately, but it still changed the tenor of the war. It put the Russians on notice that they weren't safe. Not that the Russians care, but most countries would. Imagine if someone attacked an Air Force base in the US with similar tactics and a similar outcome...
Sure it was a huge shock to Russia but clearly was a once-off, and required undercover Ukrainian operatives to assemble the smuggled drone parts near the Ukrainian or Kazakh borders, and Russian truckers to unwittingly move containers. All of that operation was revealed and probably can not be repeated; the operatives were evacuated.
> It put the Russians on notice that they weren't safe. Not that the Russians care, but most countries would.
Well there was no GSM jamming near sensitive Russian sites but there is now, and that seems to be annoying Russian civilians intensely, along with internet blocking.
The US war on Iran also demonstrates the problems of drones too: the US is currently able to wage a war 6000 miles away from its shores, because of the use of an awful lot of weapons systems that aren't drones. Iran is unable to dislodge that military, or even meaningfully impact its ability to carry out said war, not 100 miles away from its shores, despite a heavy use of drones to attempt to do so.
The war also demonstrates another big issue... the continued delusion of many civilian and military leaders that strategic bombing alone is sufficient to win a war despite this failing literally every single time it's been attempted in the past 100 years.
That used to be true, but I don't think that the case anymore. UA is now striking logistics ~150KM behind the contact line with drones. Regular artillery can't do that. Guided rockets maybe could, but they'd be more expensive and come in smaller quantities.
> US is currently able to wage a war 6000 miles away from its shores
For a rather restricted use of "wage a war". They did not stop Iranians from doing their thing. Bombing alone does not have a history of winning wars.