However, no one has guns, and government-backed militias roam the streets to maintain order.[1] There is no possibility of military coup. Many officers lives and livelihoods are at stake post-revolution, and they will go to great lengths to protect it. Remember, they killed 30K of their own to quell an uprising.[2] Surveillance is everywhere online and in person.[3] One spy in ten can ruin a revolutionary group. To make things worse, there is no unification around a leader or what should come next.
If anything, this war demonstrates the tyranny and tentacles of the modern state. The well seems forever poisoned once power is lost to despots.
[0]: https://gamaan.org/2025/08/20/analytical-report-on-iranians-...
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/19/g-s1-114144/iran-voices-war
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/27/i...
[3]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/iran-built-a-vast-camera-...
Didn’t we just see in Syria that’s not the case. It is supremely hard to nation build a large failing state no matter who’s attempting it. Having the guns to challenge the internal security forces seems like a necessary first step.
There is absolutely no way to know if it's true or not
"Israeli military reportedly acknowledges 70,000 killed in Gaza after previously casting doubt on health ministry’s count" - https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/30/middleeast/israeli-milita...
According to [0], in 2025 Iran had 86M people. Ukraine had 29M (~33%), Germany (highest in Europe) had 83M (~96%, uh?), Iraq had 46M (~53%), and Russia had 146M (~168% / ~59% reversed).
Wildly, wildly wrong about Germany but not too far off the rest[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
[1] Although if you include Turkey in "Europe", "more than any country in Europe" droops a little because Turkey's 86092168 (99.456%) is basically identical to Iran's 86563000 when it comes to projection and estimation errors.
If this happens and Cuba decides to launch drones/missiles against the US homeland, it's not an exaggeration to say that Cuba is flattened and invaded that same afternoon. After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution.
Having difficulty projecting force from the air with fighter bombers launched from air craft carriers and refueling caravans from the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean Sea against a determined enemy that has been preparing for this eventuality since 1979 is one thing. Being able to fly non-stop B-52 and B-2 sorties from home air bases with single-digit-hour flight times is a different thing entirely.
The USA has been attacked before but it has never been invaded and forced to fight a war on its own soil against foreign enemies. It's possible that they unconsciously believe war is something they bring to others, never something others bring to them. It's impossible to predict how traumatizing it would be for them if that belief is proven wrong. They could absolutely reach for nuclear weapons if that threshold is reached.
Yes and the most important lesson of recent history is for have-nots to become haves ASAP.
Ukraine begs to differ.
that's a surprising thing to hear. where do you draw the line between terrorism and war? I see a distinction without much of a difference.
Ever heard of the independence war?
It would depend on their patience.
The insurgency in Iraq was eventually suppressed (American COIN manuals were updated). The insurgency (?) in Afghanistan outlasted the patience of the invaders.
So how long do the 'gun nutters' want to keep at it compared to the opposing force?
Further, it's worth asking how effective, on average, is violent disobedience. Generally speaking a movement has about double the odds of success by not using violence:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...
This is the typical comment you expect from reddit.
i doubt we will see this in my lifetime
Guns are not only for counter-insurgency on invasion/warfare. For most people I know who own guns, that's not even on their top 10 list of reasons. But if you don't think they'd be a factor, then you disagree with some of the top generals around the world.
Iran has been on the receiving end of weapons of mass destruction, that is, chemical weapons, by way of US sponsored Saddam Hussein and lost close to half a million of their people. Yet they never for once retaliated with such weapons which to them is against their Islam.
There are three points of having nukes:
1. Deter other countries with nukes from using them against you, or your military ally.
2. Prevent total annihilation in the war. You can lose the war, but not too much.
3. Burn the world to ashes. Very few countries can do it. It effectively forces the whole world to make sure that this scenario does not happen. So you can be sure that scenario where Ukraine conquers Russia and completely destroys it - will be prevented by the very Ukraine supporters. They don't want to live in the nuclear post-apocalypse, because there are scenarios where Russia fires every single nuclear missile on every major city on the Earth. As Putin framed it: We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will simply drop dead.
America lost several wars, recently they lost Afghanistan war and right now they're losing Iran war. They won't invoke nukes to overturn the table, they'll accept the lose.
How do you know? Trump's frustration is on the rise; at some point he very well may threaten nuclear strikes.
Another scenario is, he tries to invade, an Iranian drone makes it through and sinks a big US ship, hundreds or even thousands of American soldiers die in a very short period of time. Now everyone's upset and the American public screams "revenge".
Then anything can happen, really.
The problem with the post ww2 world is that the old definition of winning a war no longer holds. You just don’t see wars of conquest very often and they don’t seem to work when they happen.
The closest I can think to winning off hand is a few of the colonial civil wars. Vietnam for instance won in the sense that they outlasted the US and have a nominally communist government but it is not an outpost of the Soviet Union and it’s a major trading and tourist partner of the US.
Iraq is not led by a belligerent to the US dictator and Afghanistan isn’t home to training camps for terrorists dedicated to attacking the US (yet).
These were all extremely stupid, expensive and inhumane military actions. But the US never went into them to hold territory. So “there until we got tired of it” is as close to winning as it was ever going to be.
Nobody is disputing the fact that the US spends more money on arms than anyone else and has the shiniest of toys as a result, but "winning" in war is about effecting the outcomes that you want, not about whether your weapon systems are superior.
The US military has clearly failed to deliver the outcome that Americans wanted in many recent conflicts (Vietnam, Taliban); counting those wars as "lost" makes a lot of sense.
You are making the folly of thinking of war like lawsuits, where one side wins and the other side loses, and the losing side goes home with nothing. This is not so.
If you're walking home from work and some person tries to mug you, even if they are unsuccessful, that will permanently change your behavior as if they had successfully robbed you anyway. Maybe you'll change your route. Maybe you won't walk and drive instead.
Is it strategic deterrence, or just being so unreliably and inconsistent that insider information becomes more valuable?
Is it strategic to demonstrate a lack of planning or that you are a poor ally incapable of garnering support (either domestically or abroad)?
Then there's nuclear defenses - if a country would have an effective anti-ICBM system (like Star Wars or whatever), it would make a nuclear counterstrike ineffective and end Mutually Assured Destruction. On paper anyway, in practice there are no perfect anti-ICBM systems, and they're effectively cluster bombs so in theory after the initial launch they can break up into half a dozen "dumb" nukes. Good luck hitting those.
I mean I guess that's one way to talk about a country that shoots back when it is invaded!
No one said the US is acting smartly, either, but it should not be surprising that the US would react harshly to a neighbor sending rockets.
Who can recover from this, especially a small nation? You might as well declare everything to be radioactive.
So they'd react harshly even when they started it.
What are you talking about?
The US never bombed (South) Korea and they certainly didn't win the air war against North Korea.
Boy they've really normalised this, haven't they?
No, it's not okay to destroy civilian infrastructure and make people homeless just because you dropped a pamphlet 30 minutes before you did do
Don’t forget this is the internet where 12 year old girls turn out to be 40 yo men.
Yes remember when they invaded Saudi Arabia? That taught everyone an important lesson on the consequences of terrorism on American soil.
It seems to have made things better for the Taliban.
Cuba is the easiest target the US could have. It's very close to the US and very far from any potential ally. The US has never shied away from committing acts of extreme cruelty, well into terrorist or war crime territory. From dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, phosphorus bombs, drone bombing innocent people, schools, hospitals, institutionalized torture, etc. even with far weaker reasons.
There is no scenario where a direct attack on the US wouldn't lead to an extremely violent response in complete disregard of Cuban lives. And get away with it.
Yes that would be a typical US solution. Let's liberate the Cuban people! By flattening them.
There are no good guys in this conflict.
(A lot, is the answer)
That doesn't excuse the Iranian regime, but the US is not exactly helping, is it.
> Worst outcome is the US attacks Cuba ..
As you probably know POTUS was announcing already that Cuba would be next.
The US isn't magically off limits.
It lacks the ideology to fight such a war, since you have to be ready to die. That's why Yemen and Vietnam won, while Venezuela folded. This is also why US "culture" is so much more powerful as a weapon than the aircraft carriers.
The thing with war is that once you have it for a certain amount of time, you create a generation of people whose kids died, wife died, neighbors and family died, you have nothing to loose anymore.
There is a critical mass of casualties upon which you effectively create a population whose sole purpose, for generations, will be to resist and harm you, and that is not dependent on culture or whatever "tourism orientation" a country is labeled.
You... didn't learn history from before 1945 did you?
I don’t know, maybe it’s time for USA to just stop getting involved in wars.
In this case it's especially depressing that the war's rationale exists only because Trump wanted to tank the deal made by Obama. Which was not a perfect deal but better than the status quo back then, and much better than any likely outcome of this war.
Politics will exist for as long as there are people.
Any country not able to or interested in waging occasional war will be destroyed by countries that can and do.
Simple as that.
But please I'm interested in hearing any utopia arguments that claim we can/should deprecate war. And remember - you have to convince your country along with every other country.
You could at least say something like "we have to bomb the people so they can be free" or "don't you know the Iranians were seconds away from nuking new York, because they have no regard for their own survival".
We should "deprecate" offensive wars of choice based on lies because the opportunity cost is enormous (what could we have bought with the 200+ billion they're already looking to spend here?).
Every time we do this we create more terrorists (see the blowback incidents weve already had from this war), which results in more egregious government overreach on the domestic population (see patriot act and the experience of commercial flight in today's world).
And those are just some of the basic reasons. I don't have time to write them all.
I sort of think it maybe is an exaggeration, you're evidently of the opinion that the U.S happens to have enough battle ready troops with the requisite hardware positioned within a few hours of Cuba so that they can invade and flatten in the time it takes to fly from Miami to Havana?
I don't know, but a Destroyer would take about 10 hours to get from Florida to Cuba.
It seems your definition of invade and flatten is just dropping bombs, but that definitely does not handle the invade part of things, and it remains to be seen as to whether, with drones, being able to fly non-stop is the great technological advantage it once was.
Some preliminary evidence from around the world suggests in a drone led conflict it confers the ability to have expensive hardware destroyed and pilots killed non-stop.
Cuba simply isn’t Iran. They’re a blockaded island with not much military experience. Iran is a huge mountainous country preparing for war for the last 40 years with first hand experience of getting blown up from above and from the inside by USA allies and surviving just fine.
E: 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production.
This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is.
The primary historical impediment to electric vehicles was high up-front cost, in turn driven by high battery costs. However:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-pric...
We're soon to have electric cars (and trucks) that cost less ICE ones, on top of the lower operating costs. Which in turn cost even less when more solar and wind are added to the grid because the "charge more when power is cheap and less when it's expensive" thing lowers their operating cost even further and reduces the amount of natural gas you need in the grid because periods of lower renewable generation can be offset by deferred charging instead of natural gas peaker plants.
Even without any purposeful efforts to do anything about climate change, the economics point to fossil fuels declining over time as a proportion of energy. Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years and the next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result rather than impede it. Which makes a long-term strategy of building the capacity to target petroleum infrastructure something that could plausibly be increasingly irrelevant by the time it would take to implement it.
But at same time, extend IRBM range by 1000km, and replace refineries with hyperscalers, or whatever targets that worth deterrent value (energy at top of list). Refineries just most immediately very high value targets that happens to be closest to missile range.
But the assumption is less about US adaptability/smartness, as the way commodity conventional strikes is trending, CONUS _ will _ be vulnerable eventually. Fortress America is as much function of geography as technology. Just like how 20 years ago Iran couldn't hit Israel or many GCC companies even if it wanted to... now it can. The natural outcome of longer and longer range strikes is at some point US becomes in range of Monroe neighbours who doesnt want to be Monroed.
It's the stated goal of one of the parties to keep or increase fossil fuel usage, isn't it?
> Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years
Magic 8 Ball says "yeah, in the past, 2028 isn't looking good though"
> next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result
Which will be blocked and/or immediately overturned by the current/next Republic Congress/Senate/SCOTUS/President.
Of course US can try to coerce INF for conventional in Americas, but commoditized conventional precision strike are conventional... and commoditized, it's the kind of product where specialized dual use components may need to be sourced... among millions of TEU traffic, but otherwise local industries can build, like Iran.
There's also no global pariah status for proliferating conventional missiles for self defense and hence accessible to many players, coercion / enforcement would require trying to mow grass to keep capabilities out of 600m people...in perpetuity... tall task even for even US. Especially considering form factor of missiles... i.e. sheltered / hidden, they are not major battlefield assets like ships and planes that needs to be out to have wheels turned.
Ultimately it's not about winning vs US, it's about deterring US from historic backyard shenanigans by making sure some future time when US is tempted, and US always tempted, it would risk half of CONUS running out of energy in 2 weeks.
Like the Iran logic is extremely clear now, no amount of defense survives offensive overmatch, the only thing left is to pursue some counter offensive ability that can have disproportionate deterrence value. The thing about US being richest country is US has a lot of valuable things.
IE, they'd get to retain higher profits.
What I think would really happen, is the rest of the world would suffer and run out of energy. Not the US.
Gulf coast PADD3 refineries = disproportionate production of diesel, aviation, bunker fuel for CONUS use. Something like 70% of all refined products used in US comes from PADD3, other refineries cannot replace PADD3 complexity/production levels (think specialty fuels for military aviation, missiles etc). US economic nervous system is EXTRA exposed to gulf coast refinery disruptions. PADD3 refineries (or hubs / pipelines serving east/west coast which more singular point failure) itself enough to cripple US with shortages even if all exports stopped. Gulf gas terminal is for export i.e. doesn't materially impact CONUS, it's deterrence conventional counter-value target. There's also offshore terminals. The broader point being gulf coast has host of targets along escalation/deterrence ladder.
Other refineries can indeed take up the slack. Especially if the US stops exporting. Trains can deliver fuel, trucks. The US military would not be crippled, most certainly, and the domestic US would see primary production kept in-nation, not exported.
I'm not sure why you think that only Gulf refineries can make jet fuel.
NOTE: I'm not saying it wouldn't be a key attack vector, or non-disruptive. I'm just saying the US would do what it always has done, as any nation would do, it would ensure survival first, and so the rest of the world would suffer far more.
Some specific products like SPECIFIC mixes of aviation fuel, only some PADD3 refineries are setup to produce or produce significant % i.e. IIRC something like 90%+ of military JP5/JP10 come from PADD3. That's why I said "specialty" aviation fuel, not just general aviation fuel. Or taking out out Colonial pipeline which ~2.5m barrels - US doesn't have 10,000k extra tankers or 5000 extra rail carts in reserve for that contingency. Turning off export has nothing to do with this, there isn't enough to keep in-nation due to refinery mismatch, or not enough hardware to move it in event of pipeline disruption.
Of course predicated on timeline/execution, i.e. US can potentially fix refinery mismatch and harden/redundant over next 10 years. We don't know if/when Monroe countries will start adopting their own rocket force. Just pointing out after Iran has demonstrated defense is useless for midtier powers and mediocre offense can penetrate the most advanced defense, the only rational strategic plan is go hard on offense for conventional counter-value deterrence. The logic like Iran, it matters less RoW suffers more, only specifically that US suffers as well, the harder the more deterrent value. And due to sheer economic disparity, could be trillions for US vs billions for others, even if trillions for US is relatively less.
The US was ensuring survival just fine when it was big on soft power. If you let go of soft power your remaining choices are diplomacy (which takes skill) and hard power (which takes a different kind of skill). If you go down the hard power road (which the US seems to be doing) you will end up with a very long list of eventually very capable enemies. It's a madman's trajectory and historically speaking it has never worked. I suspect it also will not work for the US.
The US is essentially a military/petro-oligarchy wrapped inside a republic pretending to be a democracy.
If the global oil economy is badly damaged, the US will be badly damaged with it.
This isn't about who can blow the most shit up. It's about global standing in the economic pecking order, which is defined in part by threat credibility, but also by control over key resources.
If some of those resources stop being key, that's a serious problem for any hegemon.
We're seeing a swing towards global decarbonisation, and this war is an ironically unintentional turning point in that process. The US has had decades of notice that this is inevitable, but has failed to understand this.
For the 20 years war you are probably talking about: I wouldn't call significant civil unrest in opposition of the war "getting bored"
This is not to be underestimated. It is very rare to be able to project military power far from one's capital. That the US is able to do it at all is remarkable. We should not expect it to be easy.
Or perhaps these bases aren’t just in allied countries “at their grace”. These alliance systems don’t just solely benefit America.
Cuba is not stupid. They will attack the infamous Conquistador Torture Base on their soil and US ships that carry out high piracy of their trade vessels.
Taliban is back in power, having stronger grap on power then before. Meanwhile, everybody knows what happens to those who cooperate with USA - they get abandoned and betrayed.
The bay of communism needs to be regularly watered with the blood of pigs or something.
Unless it's by a right-wing white male, obvs., in which case they get promoted / lauded / re-elected / etc.
I agree with you in principle, but I worry that the United States hasn't been stockpiling enough ordinance to keep that up for very long at all. We don't keep many munitions factories on a hot standby either.
But it is, the US is no position to flatten anything.
Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran? will be lost
And these are heavily embargoed 3rd world countries.
In the first days of the Israeli-US war in Iran (a country under decades of embargo by the way) the US, Israel and vassals lost 60+ planes (plus who knows what else they are not reporting.
Trump is not coming out of this, if he makes the grave mistake of sending troops to their demise this administration is done.
The US is certainly in a position to flatten (with conventional force) anything in the Carribean, whatever failures it had in long counterinsurgencies where the logistics tail wrapped nearly halfway around the world. (And however badly it would probably fail in occupation in many of the places it could easily flatten close by, for that matter; flattening is much easier than occupying.)
> Afghanistan? Lost Vietnam? Lost Ukraine? Lost Iran?
Lost Ukraine? Ukraine hasn't lost and the US was never a direct belligerent in that conflict.
It seems Iran offered little to no defense against bombing raids. This may have changed recently.
How will the Americans do that? Nuclear bombs? Because it doesn't seem to me that they have the conventional arsenal to flatten a country like Cuba.
With what? The UK has already said we're not saving you this time. You're on your own now.
Exactly. On asymmetrical warfare, one side needs to get lucky all the time while the other only needs to get lucky once.
> Mass-produced drones today are a simple airframe, a lawnmower engine, and the smarts of a cell phone. Ukraine has people making them in basements. Presumably, so does Iran.
Their cheap and simple nature allows them to easily swarm targets and saturate their defenses. You can defend from a dozen incoming drones, but a hundred is significantly more difficult.
Also, consider the massive quadcopter shows in China as an example of how a well placed shipping container can swarm a target and make a devastating attack. Ukraine demonstrated one and disabled a significant part of the Russian bomber fleet.
> Worst outcome is the US attacks Cuba, Cuba allies with Iran, it turns out that Cuba has been stocking up on Iranian drones, and Cuba becomes a forward base for drone and missile attacks on the southern US.
Cuba would be foolish not to do that at the first opportunity, not to attack the US, but to neutralize any offensive from the US. Without a navy, a land invasion, or an effective blockade, is impossible.
The reality of Hormuz was well known decades ago - even in 2002 Millenium exercise a bunch of speedboats and motorcycles stopped the US Navy from opening hormuz. [1]
Moskva was taken down by a well coordinated strike that distracted its one (1!) fire control radar. It was also alone. Those are important factors. [2]
A blanket comparison of Russia's attempts to eliminate Ukraine's industry with US Navy's ability to eliminate Iran's is ... questionable. We've flown 1000s of uncontested sorties over Ukraine, and Russia has been relegated to knocking down apartment buildings with Iran's own drones.
It is entirely possible that the US Navy is commanded by myopic idiots who fall for those tricks, but I doubt it.
Finally, it's not entirely clear that the large population won't, itself, become at least partially an asset of the resistance.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/04/14/ukrain...
Russia has literally taken over the industrial heart of Ukraine in the east and southeast regions. With boots on the ground, tanks, everything. They claim it as their land. And yet they can't stop Ukraine from building drones.
That's far more than the US/Israel have done or are willing to do. It's extremely realistic that they do not have the capacity to destroy Iran's drone making capabilities, ever.
Population size is relevant but not the most important factor. Russia has 146,000,000, more than 4x than Ukraine. It doesn't guarantee that Russia will win the war.
> On the naval front, Ukraine sunk the Moskva with a few truck-mounted missiles.
Ukraine also had Bayraktar TB2 overhead which distracted Moskva's crew and provided targeting information. Russia probably didn't sent a fighter to down it because skies around Ukraine are contested. Skies not only around but over Iran are not reallty contested. Having said that Iran could sink an american ship if the navy will become complaicent and will assume there are no threats.
> The size of Iran means that knocking out drone and missile production for long won't work. Russia has been trying to do that to Ukraine for years now.
Russia cannot fly planes over Ukranian territory. The US can fly not only F-35 but even B-52. That's a big difference. The only thing which could prevent the US from knowking out missile and drone production is insufficient intellegence.
There is, at this point in time, literally 0 evidence B-52s are flying over Iran with JDAMs. Every single photo we saw of B-52s literally shows them with AGM-158, which means they are launching outside Iran aerospace.
The biggest evidence for B-52s not flying over Iran is that there have still not been any losses. Go look at attrition rates in Linebacker 2 for comparison.
By your logic an OSINT account can show a picture of a SU-34 in the air with 4 UMPK bombs, write "On its way to Odessa" and people will think Russia has air supremacy over Odessa.
The US on other hand is flying over the Iran for a month so the claim that they started to use B-52 in addition to smaller jets is not extraordinary. It would be strange to deploy B-52 with GBU only to strike something on/near the Iranian border (where there are not many targets which would justify GBU usage) so it's a logical conclusion from the posted photo that B-52 can fly over the Iran (at altitude beyond MANPADS reach).
> USAF B-52H refueling from a KC-135 tanker on its way to strike Iran.
with emphasis on "on its way", so not "over" Iran. So not sure your link proves your original point (which, if I understood right, was that these Americans are flying these bombers over Iran itself).
It's also telling that the Americans haven't managed to gain their much desired air supremacy, lots of Dohuet fanboys in the US Military, hopefully this war will bring their Air Power ambitions a notch or two down (even though I have my doubts).
> Having said that Iran could sink an american ship if the navy will become complaicent and will assume there are no threats.
Also, this is an election year in the US, and the war is already hugely unpopular, so despite all of Hegseth's posturing, they're probably playing it extra extra safe. That's also the reason why Trump is so angry that other countries aren't willing to take the risk in their place...
I think OP meant land mass not people with the country comparison.
Well, looking at the news, it turns out they can't because every time they've put something up it's ended in a horrific crash.
The US is militarily weak, and is utterly reliant on its NATO allies, who don't want to get involved in the current round of war crimes.
You know what engenders nationalism? Attack on your way of life and the murder of someone you know by said attack.
If the enemy does the same kind of mindless killing to the civilians, then I would have different ideas.
You mean like bombing a school and killing about 150 schoolgirls?
The USA had a lot of local support and goodwill in Afghanistan, and turned it into support for the Taliban, because they kept killing civilians in their attempts to beat the Taliban with bombs, because they wanted to limit the unpopular ground troop deloyments. The chance that the same will happen in Iran is precisely 100%
Even Hamas knows western powers don’t do this on purpose - which is why they take up arms inside of civilian facilities. The Iranian people know the US doesn’t intentionally kill little girls.
Meanwhile the Iranian government quite literally has killed upwards of 30,000 people (maybe some were little girls even) and is hanging people in the public square for protesting.
Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region. Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school? We should be talking about Iran and their revolting crimes instead.
You can't say for sure that you wouldn't wilfully join up if you were in that kind of information environment.
If the Fox news watching Americans can be broadly supportive of this war, you'd best believe that there's an equally large contingent of Iranians who feel an equal and opposite antipathy towards the US.
After a bombing campaign, most of the people tend to hate whoever bombed them.
On the other hand, until a couple of years ago, Iranians and Israeli never directly exchanged even a bullet between them and yet Iran was dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so YMMV.
Something the current US regime might have forgotten.
Nah, it wouldn't have worked with Khamenei after a few decades of destroy America and Israel rhetoric. It was a good decision to eliminate him and most of Iran's hardliner senior leadership. Now maybe they can make a "deal" with whoever they're replaced with, but I doubt it. The trouble was going all in without a clear plan. Or maybe they have one but they keep it to themselves?
Second, Khamenei in fact presided over Iran who exercised restrain in their responses to attacks and was willing to enter international agreements. And followed them to reasonable level. They did cause destabilization by proxis, they were still regime they were. But like, what Iran regime learned was that restraint makes them look weak and makes them be bombed every couple of months. And that negotiation and international agreements mean nothing.
Third, frankly, as evil regime was, American history and role in Iran was destructive one. You cant take down elected president, put cruel monarchy in power and then play victim when revolution happens. And yes, who ends up winning bloody revolution does not tend to be nice pro-democratic side either. It tends to be the side willing to kill and risk more.
The zionists do not want an economically prosperous Iran. They actually want Iran to descend into civil war and starvation. Also the reason why Europeans hate this war- we all know were the refugees will end up.
Israel has been killing iranians for quite some time. Here are some notable examples from the last twenty years or so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassinations_of_Iranian_nucl...
While I understand why Israel would want to target Iranian nuclear scientists, I find it much harder to comprehend why Iran would go out of their way to bomb a Jewish community center in South America.
The rebuild phase where allies put a lot of effort and money into rebuilding Germany did a lot to ensure good result there. And you still see fascists being popular in Germany, especially in former easter block. It is just that everyone else is still traumatized by the past, school system make sure everyone knows past and nazi propagation is literally illegal.
It doesn't mean that people like America- or Israel.
Every country has it's own elite who have their agenda independent from whatever the White House wants.
Cuba allying with Iran is pure fantasy though. There's no logistical connection between the two nations. It would be as irrelevant as Greenland allying with Antarctica.
The impetus for the blockade on the Strait goes away when the US pulls out. Even the UAE said as much as which is why they are currently trying to pass a UN Security Council Resolution stating as much and get the RoW to show enough teeth to get Iran to back down.
The ships the LCS are intended to replace are significantly more capable at absorbing damage from this type of threat. If you are willing to go up to destroyer class, you are probably approaching immunity for this scenario.
> Former CIA intelligence officer Robert Finke said the blast appeared to be caused by C4 explosives molded into a shaped charge against the hull of the boat.[6] More than 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of explosive were used.[7] Much of the blast entered a mechanical space below the ship's galley, violently pushing up the deck, thereby killing crew members who were lining up for lunch.[8] The crew fought flooding in the engineering spaces and had the damage under control after three days. Divers inspected the hull and determined that the keel had not been damaged.
Iran knows that the US population really really doesn’t want a ground invasion. Right now, we have lost a handful of lives from missiles hitting US bases, but it’s not the same as a ground war.
Cuba, however, would very much get a ground invasion if they start striking the US with missiles. It’s not even a question. And I also assume their leaders are not religious fanatics with any interest in martyrdom.
Germany has 83.000.000 people
Cuba is in no shape to do anything. Even if they had drones, the leadership there is very unlikely to use them since doing so would result with almost 100% probability in the US killing or capturing them.
It's not really a lawnmower engine, but the L550E clones used in the Shahed drone are roughly the same scale as a big lawnmower engine (higher power/weight, but similar horsepower), and they've successfully taken out $100 million radar installations.
agree with analysis of iran industry etc, cant see cuba happening. usmil could roll over cuba in a few months and the local population probably wouldnt be hostile
Is that really true? Just claim that Iran's Nuclear ambitions have been destroyed, and anyone who needs oil can "Buy it from the US or get it themselves from Hormuz" - mission accomplished!
With the US withdrawing (or atleast not attacking), Iran can stop the drone attacks and open Hormuz - collecting fees from passing ships, call it reparations and a win!
TIL: Germany has less than 45m inhabitants. Less than Spain! /s
Not necessarily disagreeing with your other points, but Germany has a population of ~84 million, so comparable size.
And the other thing is that I just dont understand how that can be called a regime change. Venezuela was not regime change either - Venezuelan regime stayed exactly the same as before, but now USA is co-responsible for the abuses.
Watch orange man pull that one out. There are no rules of behavior anymore, he can do whatever the fuck he wants, laws, treaties, morals, future and so on be damned, ego whims dominate the decision chain. Who is going to do anything. The only exception is israel, they seem to have a massive leverage on him and utilize it to the fullest.
Also he and his clan are heavily gaining from insider trading on those huge swings, we talk about billions here on just closest circle and everybody knows this. Also, US is gaining on big oil prices, another reason to sow more chaos. Not happy times ahead.
That's a funny way to spell "kompromat".
The current USA leadership, I’m afraid it isn’t impossible.
He’s a fucking moron.
Nope, your numbers are way off.
It's a great sign for the US military as a whole: That is the primary American tactic to defeat China, using land forces hidden on the First Island Chain with anti-ship missiles, to control the seas around China. More here:
Even just the blockade cannot be considered as anything else but an act of war, even if, as usual, USA does not declare the wars it starts.
In the past, USA at least made attempts to appear that it follows the international laws, but today it makes great efforts to perfectly match the stereotype of the lawless "Imperialist Americans" that was used in the past in the propaganda of the former communist countries.
Any act of war that Cuba would ever do against USA would be perfectly justified by the already done actions of USA, which make random Cubans suffer from serious shortages.
I think most of what you said is just speculation, not founded on reality. The only thing that would stop the US from invading Iran in under 3 months is political will.
Russia doesn't have the scale and power of the US airforce, or the ability to project that power using the US navy and all the bases in the middle-east. Any comparison with russia at all makes me question your entire analysis.
Iran is big and geographically challenging, Afghanistan is notorious in the same sense as well, even more so by their infamous defeat and expelling of Russia in the 80's. The US invaded afghanistan in a matter of 1-2 months and held on to the country for 20 years.
Establishing a FOB initially will be challenging but with Kuwait and KSA eagerly cooperating, it won't be a challenge.
Drones are effective when your enemy is nearby and you can project it against them. Iran can threaten just about any US interest in the region but not the US homeland itself. They can't attack Europe because that would risk drawing them into the conflict, so their only option is to attack existing enemies in the region and do their best to inflate the price of oil.
And therein is their strategy that might win the war, it isn't all the reasons you listed, but political will as a result of economic pressure. The US lost in Afghanistan, Vietnam, and even arguably in Iraq because of loss of political will to continue the conflict. But then again, the current administration will not be deterred by pesky things such as the will of the american people, they'll use it to declare emergencies and attempt to hold on to power instead. The only thing that can defeat the US right now is the republican party in the US willing to turn on their beloved dictator.
> Ukraine has people making them in basements. Presumably, so does Iran.
The US has bunker-busters.
Even though your analysis is full of many technical flaws the most critical flaw in my opinion is how you aren't considering aerial advantage for the US, but yet you seem to think drones are an advantage. Drones are only useful at attacking pre-determined regional targets to influence political will. For the US however, unlike Russia, the US doesn't have a decrepit airforce, and doesn't flinch at launching $70~M/launch tomahawks. The ukrainain army right now isn't withstanding a constant barrage of bomber jets dropping on them. Russia is several decades behind US equivalent fleets from what I understand.
The US military hasn't been sitting on their hands watching the Russia-Ukraine conflict either. They've been testing all kinds of anti-drone tech in the desert for a while now, but this is the real opportunity for them to battle-test different techniques. No one is sanctioning the US either (more like sanctioning itself), and there is no real or practical shortage of war-chest funds (unlike Russia), and having a big war every two decades means the US military-industrial complex far more capable to meet the supply-chain logistics demands.
The US military certainly is the biggest in the world, dwarfing all other countries' militaries combined. But the thing most people don't realize is that is not what makes it the most capable invading force in the world, it is the sheer efficiency of the logistical effectiveness unseen the history of war before, backed by the ability to fund years-long wars without so much as flinching on the domestic economy front.
I would argue that the if the political will existed, the US can invade the entire region, from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas in less time than how long Russia has been at war with Ukraine. Even if the US couldn't use the bases and airspace in Europe at all, the calculus remains the same.
> This worked a lot better when the trouble spots couldn't do much to them.
Huh? what do you mean? They're entirely designed to address hostilities, they're not designed establish access in a non-hostile littoral, this goes back to WW2 beachead establishments (like normandy). The carrier ships are never meant to be close to land to where they're a target, but the carrier group itself is entirely designed to establish a beachead and deploy an expeditionary force under hostile conditions. I admit, maybe my history recall is lacking, do you know of any post-WW2 conflicts where the US navy established a beach head as part of an invading force that didn't face both aerial and naval resistance? Iran and Afghanistan didn't require it, neither did Korea or Vietnam as far as I know.
I want some of the good stuff you are using!
Much thanks to the impenetrable Mexico border, through which no foul thing has ever slipped past... /s
Iran can very much sneak drones into the US and do an Operation Spiderweb-style attack. Won't happen next week, but Russia thought they were done in 3 weeks.
There is value in much of what you're saying in your post, even though I don't necessarily agree 100% with all of it. However, no one involved in planning or starting this attack, underestimated the size of Iran at all. All of that would have been covered by all briefings. The US admin and military knew all of this, and frankly has planned all of this.
The US has some of the most capable spy networks, knowledge, and military experience on the planet. And yes, even the current admin takes advantage of this.
So the real question is, what is the end goal? None of the noise we hear from mouthpieces is really it. I suspect that causing trillions in damage to Iran is likely simply it. A bloody nose. I'd be astonished if 1000s of exit strategies weren't deep planned, maybe a dozen best-outcomes planned, before a single plane bombed anything. The US knows how to exit this.
The US military, and daily briefings have all covered every aspect of what's been happening in the Ukraine war. They know. They've been studying it. They're not surprised by it. They 100% knew that Iran has been supplying drones to Russia in vast quantities.
What I strongly suspect is that Iran is being given a message. One it didn't listen to when it was bombed months ago. Don't help Russia. Don't align with China. Don't sell oil to China. And also?
Right now, all those drones made-in-Iran? All the munitions. All the missiles. All the tech they've been shipping Russia? It's ground to a complete halt. So whether or not Iran was stubbornly going to continue to export these things to Russia, it can't, as it needs them domestically now.
Russia is now cut off from that supply chain, because Iran needs it for itself.
If you look at what's happening, Russia has been forced to withdraw from the world stage as it is bled dry by the Ukraine war. It first pulled back from Syria, and it (Assad) fell. It pulled out of Cuba, out of Venezuela, all troops and aircraft and support. Russia has ceased to be a world power, it's literally done. It's become nothing but a regional power, incapable of projecting any power on the world stage.
The Ukraine war is serving its purpose. The West and the US are only supplying enough weaponry to keep Russia bleeding. Never enough weaponry for the Ukraine to win, never enough support, the US just trickles weaponry to them. The Ukraine just serves one purpose -- keep Russia fighting, keep it off the world stage, keep it bleeding all its power and might until it's a complete empty husk.
Yet as Russia has pulled back, China has attempted to moved to fill that vacuum. It's been buying oil from places like Venezuela, and Iran. It was extending soft power into Cuba. The US cannot tolerate this, and back to the start, I suspect that this is also a secondary message being given. A message to China. "Don't do this".
Cutting Russia and China off, each for different reasons, could be viewed as a good success for the US. My thoughts are -- what's next? What other thing does the US want to cut off from China, and Russia?
Because I suspect that's where things will pivot to.
--
(One thought here is, about exit strategies, is that just walking away and leaving the straight Hormuz a mess, will literally force Western allies to police that straight with their navies. The US has been pulling back from policing shipping lanes world wide over the last 20 years, and unhappy with its allies for not taking up the slack, or what it deems a "fair share". With Hormuz, US allies will be forced to take up the slack, an interesting outcome. This too would be an immense success for the US.)
If it can't be done by the US navy, it can't be done by Western navies either. What will actually happen is the Eastern countries (including Australia for this purpose!) will just pay the toll. Much cheaper than a military operation.
Iran has already achieved an important objective: getting un-sanctioned.
All this "message" stuff? That's not coming in the public messaging.
> If you look at what's happening, Russia has been forced to withdraw from the world stage as it is bled dry by the Ukraine war. It first pulled back from Syria, and it (Assad) fell. It pulled out of Cuba, out of Venezuela, all troops and aircraft and support. Russia has ceased to be a world power, it's literally done. It's become nothing but a regional power, incapable of projecting any power on the world stage.
This has certainly happened, but Russia can stop at any time. It's their Afghanistan (again) or Vietnam. Your analysis also completely leaves out the EU and rNATO role.
> It's been buying oil from places like Venezuela, and Iran. It was extending soft power into Cuba. The US cannot tolerate this, and back to the start, I suspect that this is also a secondary message being given. A message to China. "Don't do this".
Intercepting international trade on the seas is just piracy. China may get the message but they're under no obligation to respect it.
The rest I fully agree with, although its a half-assed effort that will likely backfire long term.
Isn't this just wishfull thinking?
I mean, more mature administrations than Trump's have blundered into Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan without real exit strategies...
Re: Iranian drones to Russia:
Russians now (for quite some time) have their own production and development of Shahed derivatives, I doubt there are shipments from Iran to Russia.
Re: policing Hormuz:
Europe won't do it, for the same reason US is not doing it (it is an impossible task).
Re: the overall aim:
deny China the access to the Gulf oil, succeeding so far, but ultimately pointless (China will be lifted by greatly increased demand for its renewables and battery tech, as well as their electric cars)
It's nice to wave away policing Hormuz, by simply asserting it can't be done. Is this accurate, however?
In terms of oil, the US has recently cut China off from Venezuela as well. Short term supplies are important, "the future", a cloud of probabilities about oil shortags helping China, is not immediately apparent. It's suffering shipment halts from two lead suppliers now, both which were non-open market shipments, and volumes are unclear.
I wonder, what if the Ukraine suddenly stepped up and crippled deliveries of Russian oil to China? Or what if Saudi Arabia was told "don't do that". From where I sit, it's China that's being most directly affected by these actions in terms of energy supply.
Note that as long as there is a risk (even 1 to 20, maybe 1 to 100) that your tanker will be attacked, you just won't sail. (The logic of commercial shipping.)
Hence, blocking Hormuz does not mean total blockage, just a credible threat.
How do you propose to stop such a threat?
Adding warships to the mix, to shoot down incoming drones, simply adds those warships to the risked assets. What happens if a couple of escorts are hit/sunk?
We were not able to stop Houtis. What makes you think we can stop Iranians?
I do not understand this whole "Cripple China" thing. What do you think will happen if China decides that US is REALLY GOING AFTER IT NOW?
Maybe it will be enough for them to just stop shipping crap to US. What will the US do if suddenly the shop shelves become empty, CCCP-style?
There have been plenty of analyses pretty much all concluding the same thing. How do you propose to do it? In normal times there were > 150 per day travelling through the gulf. Remember the coastline of Iran along the Gulf is about 2000km, all allowing them to launch strikes against ships (and they don't need to be sophisticated). So would you put a warship with every cargo ship? Occupy the whole coast? I don't see any feasible solution to police it.
Oh how cute, we are dusting off the cover on the greatest hits! I remember hearing this one back in the early 2000's! Unrelated, how many WMDs did they find in Iraq again? You know what, never mind, i'm sure it was just LOADS obviously!
> The US knows how to exit this.
Oh yeah, how's that? They gonna spend twenty years and $2.3 trillion dollars there?
Not only is China still receiving oil from Iran but Russias oil revenues have spiked significantly because of the conflict with the FT considering Russia the biggest winners of this conflict so far.
Hard to really analyze your post because you look at geopolitics through the lens of Jack Bauer