US Military asks troops for 'creative and unconventional' ideas to punish Iran | Hacker News Reader

US Military asks troops for 'creative and unconventional' ideas to punish Iran

cnn.com

36 pointsbushwart61 comments

Turn all the under-mountain missile cities into super-mega-mall-cities with Whole Foods, McDonalds, indoor shooting ranges, nail salons, super-walmarts, hotels, apartments, casinos, mega strip clubs and free e-bikes to get from business to business as the tunnels go on for miles. Free unlimited, uncensored WiFi, everywhere. Air conditioning, everywhere. Make each section walking-friendly. Import millions of tourists. Free around-the-clock child care. Customer service center at every entrance with scantily clad male and female greeters that know how to say "I Love You" in every language. Free insulated water bottles with US and Iranian flag logos and unlimited free refills of any drink. Adult VR video viewing massage booths in every tunnel. Free DMT IV drip booths. Free Carls Jr. vending machines. Free trains, busses and camels that transport or relocate people from their homes to the apartments or hotels in the tunnels. Free health spa. Free tattoos with exotic inks that glow. VIP tunnels for wealthy tourists that lead directly to underground high security parking for the casinos with VIP casino entrance and private rooms. Sulfur hot tubs. Medical spa with full time doctors and nurses, waiting room has VR video games.

How to pay for this? Sell their boring equipment. They can bore through solid granite at a relatively high speed. It should cover all of the above for years. After that runs out augment funds with some oil revenue. Get investors from around the world. Convert Iran into the tourist capital of the world and the place of least regulations. Or keep the boring equipment and keep adding new businesses, hotels and apartments.

Most Iranian civilians should enjoy. Some IRGC may be turned. The ones that are not turned will not be able to resist checking it out. Some will come around with time. It's on Mossad to get the remaining hold-outs into a DMT and/or massage booth.

Veteran, not active duty. Hope it still counts.

Uh the problem is Iranians have no purchasing power because of runaway inflation due to crushing US-imposed sanctions. None of the above would be possible without first ending sanctions.

Ending sanctions would be part of the deal and of course required to sell the boring equipment and to get oil revenue fully back online.

I should add, maybe give each family $100k. $500k to each family that lost kids in that school.

Yes. It's closest in concept to natural disaster recovery. The US has actively harmed the poorest Iranians' personal finances and their ability to make money. Such an influx would flow rapidly into economic activity because these people have an inherent high marginal propensity to consume and would use the funds to rebuild their lives and businesses. This is how to avert mass migration, reduce suffering, build soft power, build goodwill, and do what's right.

Sanctions where circumvented by russia and china. The economic malaise was caused by using the oil wealth to fund proxxies.

Crypto and NFTs would solve that.

This sounds like an abandoned Async ad for the backrooms.

There would be much time for breeding prodigiously, with a ratio of say 10 females to each male. Could be selected by a computer.

I think most Iranians would disagree. But hey, when did this stop you?

I think the real test will be:

- If the powers that be think this is a good idea and implement some version of it.

- How many Iranians take the camel, truck, bus, train to the retrofit optimized party tunnels and how many of them move into the tunnels.

- How many IRGC are flipped.

To punish them for being invaded by us? The abuser saying "Why did you make me hit you?"

We had to destroy the village to save it.

Even if one is against bombing Iran on account of its civilians, one shouldn't act like Iran under its current rulers is a peace-loving nation that keeps to itself. I'll join the chorus if Trump bombs Greenland or Canada.

> one shouldn't act like Iran under its current rulers is a peace-loving nation that keeps to itself.

I guess the US should be bombed too by that logic.

The point was that Iran, under its theocratic rulers, is not a peace-loving nation that keeps to itself. That is the case regardless of whether Iran's rulers choose Mahatma Gandhi or Genghis Khan to be their great satan.

The point was that the US, under its theocratic rulers, is not a peace-loving nation that keeps to itself. That is the case regardless of whether Iran's rulers choose Mahatma Gandhi or Genghis Khan to be their great satan.

Americans worry about theocracy when the right wing SCOTUS bans abortion. Iran hangs people for apostasy *

Different strokes for different folks, but to me, drawing an equivalence of the US, even with its current deplorable (I could search for other adjectives, but why reinvent the wheel) government, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is "pass the bong" territory.

* https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-hangs-two-men...

Grammatically, "under its theocratic rulers" is parenthetical to "is not a peace-loving nation that keeps to itself" in these sentences. Arguments about degrees of theocracy aside, the US engages in constant outward violence without peace-loving motive, including sometimes extrajudicially and against civilians.

The comment to which I replied appears to draw an equivalence of the US and the IR, both in terms of theocracy and pugnacity.

The former charge (ie: that the US and the IR are similarly theocratic) was the more satisfying to rebut, since it's so straightforward.

The latter charge (ie: that the US and the IR are similarly warlike) is less wrong. In a HN comment thread on the internet, my chances are slim of convincing someone who believes it to be spot-on that it isn't.

You can say that about most US allies in the middle-east. I don't see the US waging war on them.

Under Trump, the US seems more likely to turn on an ally if the ally is a peace-loving nation that keeps to itself.

That said, when tensions rise between the US and another country, it doesn't automatically confer sainthood on the other country .

I think you're mixing a term of art with the common English definition.

>“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

Still somewhat better than just asking ChatGPT, I guess?

They've been doing that (ask an LLM) since the start, and look at how much "success" we've had!

Re-route all phone traffic to Comcast Customer Service.

You have no idea what you've unleashed. What if this is actually done? They said "punish", not eternal damnation! Somehow, we must prevent CENTCOM from finding this comment. We can get away with abducting Venezuelan presidents, even prejudicial executions of narco sailors, but this would set a precedent the world cannot afford.

And I think you should consider some serious self reflection. If you are having such extreme ideation, you may need help.

Someone who had no idea where he was getting himself into has no idea how to leave.

Airdrop Hershey’s chocolate over Tehran.

Modern post-enshittification Hershey's chocolate is a war crime for being awful.

Is it even legal to call that “chocolate adjacent product” chocolate in Europe.

"chocolate product", these days, or so it seems.

The big question is why ask meatbags for creative solutions, when they have access to these WMDs like mythos?

The easiest weapon to use is demographics: Offer a visa to any Iranian woman under 25.

Send Trump to Iran. Inside a gift box with a fancy bow. Iran destruction guaranteed.

If you don't believe me, look at the ruins formerly called White House

There is a chance that the ground will open and the strait water will become lava, but is a risk that I'm willing to take

Blast Ted Nugent at them.

Air drop kid rock on Tehran

Without a parachute. win-win.

Here is an idea: the only way to win is a large and extremely costly invasion, actual troops on the ground for probably a decade.

Nobody wants to pay that price. It was insane to start this war, and everybody knew it but Netanyahu and Trump. I can't believe Rubio was stupid enough to go along with it.

American exceptionalism is a poison to the mind. Elect people who are "true believers", and this is the expected outcome.

What every admin in this century has done is to avoid declaring what construes "winning" -- which is rather convenient to them as far as how they are to be judged on waging that war.

>"US Military asks troops for 'creative and unconventional' ideas to punish Iran"

I don't know, how about:

make peace with them?

(I'm guessing that that idea is either too creative and/or too unconventional to be considered! :-) (And yes, I am bracing for the disingenuous one or two line bot comments and downvotes!))

So, with a false pretense, you destroyed their country, which already had scarse resources, and now you would just "offer peace"? Not that I disagree with making peace, but it simply looks extremely unjust

If this had been a Democrat admin, can you imagine the derision from the Republicans of 10 years ago? To start a war, get 6 months in, and start asking around for ways to win? Seriously? I can taste the outrage it would have been. But now? Where did all these rational Republicans go?

Bomb some (more) schools.

Thats bound to punish them and win hearts and minds.

I would be more careful about such jokes.

Could be deliberate theater. The real plan is a containment and a slow economic collapse of Iran anyway.

If the EU and Japan pay higher energy costs, that is an added bonus for Trump.

Because isolation totally works, looks at Cuba and North Korea

I mean, it sorta works; but, only because of sheer luck. Both of those countries have no real power. Cuba, in particular, has negative value on the global scene and NK only has somewhat empty threats of nuclear weapons. The only true fear is dealing with NK's populace flooding into SK or China during any regime collapse.

And Iran, for that matter

> Could be deliberate theater. The real plan is a containment and a slow economic collapse of Iran anyway.

Doesn't seem like there's a coherent plan. What you are saying is the old plan from long before Trump, that was torpedoed. Going back to that is saying they've failed in whatever this was.

Also that is iran's plan as well, survive while the US suffers and eventually gives up like Vietnam ...

> If the EU and Japan pay higher energy costs, that is an added bonus for Trump.

US also pays added costs... and Trump is hurting from that

The only one profiting is China since they've mostly transitioned away from oil...

> The only one profiting is China since they've mostly transitioned away from oil...

They had to use their own oil reserves to regulate the market, where they win is in soft power

> soft power

hows that going for them?

> hows that going for them?

"In its July 15 report — based on interviews with more than forty-two thousand people across thirty-six countries — Pew found that China is now viewed more favorably than the United States in most nations surveyed." [0]

[0] https://www.cfr.org/articles/china-now-outranks-the-united-s...

fta: "this is a story driven more by an American decline in soft power than by a Chinese surge."

sonething tells me this will shift by the end of the decade

You say 'The Real Plan' like there was any amount of planning done in the first place. We've now found ourselves on top of a bucking bronco, with every 'exit' looking worse than previous status quo.

There are short term and long term plans. The long term plans are:

- Remove Ghaddafi and have chaos in Libya (accomplished).

- Remove Saddam and have chaos in Iraq (accomplished).

- Install a puppet regime in Egypt and suppress the muslim brotherhood (accomplished).

- Remove Assad and install an ex al-Qaeda (note the irony) puppet (accomplished).

- Have regime change in Iran (ongoing).

Syria took nearly a decade. The US does not need outright military victory, it uses proxies and will at some point try to activate the Kurds or someone else.

If Iran is destabilized enough to undermine the Caspian Sea coalition and get the resources of Turkmenistan, that is also a victory. Unless the other theory is right and the US wants to export its resources first.

We don't know the exact plans, but the grand scheme is not Trump's idea. It goes back to the Bush era.

It can be true that Trump was the useful idiot who actually signed off the Iran plan, which another president may not have done. But the plans are there, including Caspian sea plans from decades ago.

Or there is no long term plan. Every leader is just larping as Leeroy Jenkins for short term political points which sometimes works (Crimea 2014) but unfortunately for Trump, Israel had wrong intel and whole assumption of regime change in Iran was build on invalid data.

Kind of like Russians storming into Ukraine in 2022 thinking that it is Prague 1968 but it turned out into Afghanistan 1979 and then slowly mutated into World War 1 1914

> The real plan is a containment and a slow economic collapse of Iran anyway.

Quite optimistic to assume that there ever was a plan. Reminds me of the '4D chess' masterminds sitting in the Kremlin.

The only two people here still defending Trump's Iran war are doing it from fresh throwaway accounts. It's not looking good.

He is going to buy them both a horse.

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