Russia-Ukraine war is 1M+ combat casualties deep and is nowhere near finished. You are out of touch.
The middle east is a much more tangled web of alliances and hatreds, i think the iranian regime falling would have much more harder to predict second order geopolitical effects.
The whole of Europe is affected, it might seem contained only if you live very far away. Every European country is affected in one way or another.
It's not a stalemate if Ukraine ends up losing 30% of its territory. That's Russian victory.
Russian goals were:
- Quick decapitation - fail
- Change of government - fail
- Prove that majority of Ukrainians are phone Russians and the moment greater Russia comes everyone will see that Ukraine is not a real state - fail
- Make second Belarus out of Ukraine - fail
- Stop NATO enlargement, Finland and Sweden joined NATO essentially doubling border with NATO - fail
- Dissuade Ukraine from joining EU and make it pro Russian first - fail
- Prove that Russia is a great military power on par with US that can topple regimes at will - fail
- Make Russia strategically independent- fail, Russia is now completely dependent on China
- Destabilize EU - fail, Europe is united like never under US/Russia/China threat
This war will enter history as one of the worst blunders.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine, an area three times larger than the country I live in (the Netherlands).
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/24/mapping-russian-att...
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
I wish... But estimates say between 230,000 and 468,500 dead orcs.
Casulties, not deaths.
Why do we never learn from history?
Will there still be no possibility of ground deployments?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war
The previous campaign lasted a whole 13 days and WW3 didn't start. I'm not sure why anybody thinks it'll be different now or why Russia or China would bother going to war for Iran. That makes zero sense.
We did not move 1/3 of operational USAF capacity and 33% of our deployable Navy for limited strikes.
You can stop when you have no idea what you're talking about, you know.
Boots on the ground can happen at any time if Iran manages to either hit one of the thousands of US assets in the region or worse they resort to terrorism with a theatrical attack like 9/11 which ended up costing so many lives , money and freedoms ranging from TSA literally up your ass to the destruction of privacy online and offline…..and of course as we all know boots on the ground
Of course Russia or China won't go to war for Iran - nobody is saying that. They can get involved though, just as Europe is involved in Ukraine war.
bombing of: -N.Vietnam -Germany -Serbia -Sudan -Tunisia -England
Exception:
-Japan
That is not to say bombing doesn't have its uses in war. The bombing of the oilfields of Ploesti in Romania severely damaged the German war machine. But it took Russian boots on the ground in Berlin to effect a German surrender.
>The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission
Very foreboding.
(Crazy idea, maybe the people shouldn’t be left in the dark about their government’s war plans by having a deliberate legislative body debate and vote on it)
And they will again appear weak and incapable, unable to help their allies
Iran and Russia have various partnership agreements, but are not allies. And Russia has already demonstrated that it doesn't support what are, on paper, close allies in the CSTO, so not defending a non-ally strategic partner really doesn't move the needle on their credibility.
Which they did just start to do.
As for the nuclear threat, literally Iran said it was going to destroy Israel to the point it had a massive countdown clock in Tehran until Israel blew it up, so meh. If I was on the receiving end of that threat I'd make it a policy to respond to it, escalation or not. I make no claims of the accuracy of the threats past IAEA being unable to verify they aren't enriching stuff.
Doubt it'll escalate into WW3. The only other powers involved are Russia, who are totally hands tied with Ukraine if they like it or not and China is only interested keeping what's left in its sphere of influence later through their outreach initiatives. I suspect most Middle Eastern countries will be quite happy about this conflict as they have persistent problems with Iran as well from the Houthis, Hezbollah and tens of other factions. They won't want to say anything though in case their own citizens turn on them.
The cringeworthy thing is how the US gov are communicating this and that does the operation a lot of damage. It's really quite terrible. Sounds like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds after too many sugary drinks. Urgh.
Thats because its not written for you and I. Its written for people who struggle to communicate at an adult level, which is a shockingly large portion of the US.
Trump speaks like a 4th grader and it is extremely effective.
The policies on the left tend to have a lot more nuance, which is much harder to fit on a hat.
https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1154545/Ukraine-strikes-cargosh...
(not just once)
Iran's involvement in the Ukrainian conflict is mostly business-like, it didn't even send troops (unlike North Korea, for example).
I don't see these two conflicts merging to a WW3, if that is what you were implying.
Unless Russia gives some nukes to Iran, which again I somehow don't see happening.
That's one thing that's scary about Iran. ayatollahs with nukes are unacceptable ... even in Putin's assessment.
Additional context: the comment above me stated 2m people have emigrated from Russia to Israel it’s more correct to say that they have emigrated from the Soviet Union