Iran spends about 2.5% of its GDP on defense, compared to USA at around 3.5%. How much should they be spending?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...
Expand on this logic please.
European countries are protected by NATO and a nuclear umbrella.
Why would you expect a nation state to not invest in its military?
Well, protected by the United States primarily. They've mostly divested from military spending and capabilities over time, which is the ideal thing, but it seems like maybe we can't live in that ideal world, anyway...
I'm not suggesting that Iran shouldn't have a military, but instead questioning the purposes for which it would have one. Today its military is used for sending missiles at Gulf States, funding Hezbollah, and oppressing its people. So for it to have little to no military practically speaking would be a good thing.
Second at 2.5% GDP (again these figures are highly questionable) that's plenty to have defensive capabilities versus neighbors. There's nobody there to really worry about because who outside of the United States is going to invade Iran? And even then the US is only doing it because they won't stop doing crazy shit and launching missiles at everyone.
Well, they're currently being attacked. "Defending against attackers" is a pretty important purpose for a military.
If you're going to use that as such a loose category than the list of countries that have been attacked expands quite a bit. Israel has attacked Iran, while Iran has attacked Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA, and maybe one or two others that I'm not thinking of.
Does that mean that someone should bomb US because of your regime? I mean... you have more homeless people living in tents than most cities post some natural disaster, your people can't afford education, healthcare nor (as above) homes, and you guys are spending money to bomb a place half a planet away that is in no way endangering you... and that after you've bombed it once before and "completely destroyed the nuclear program"... and before that and before that.
I mean... i understand americans are well... americans, but you guys can't even imprison pedos running your country, why should you decide who to bomb?
I mean.. what's next? Iranian special forces will eventually start destroying stuff in US, and you guys will claim "terrorism" or something again... well, it's not terrorism if you're in a war.
UK and France have nukes, european nato part isn't going to be invaded without nuclear exchanges.
Apart from that, each country is specialized on various things and combined military is quite capable.
Sure, it's not US level of spending... which is probably a good thing given the US basically cut education and healthcare for a few generations for that.
I like to think this is true, but how many French soldiers coming home in body bags defending Lithuania will it take before they say enough? Are they going to just resort to nuclear weapons against Russia immediately? I don't think the nuclear umbrella is the trump card that it you might be portraying it to be. It's really difficult to say who would use those and when. There are some obvious cases, but there are also some not so obvious ones.
But nukes aren't enough. You're not winning the Ukraine war with your nuclear umbrella for example - that's being won on the ground with Ukrainian blood.
> Apart from that, each country is specialized on various things and combined military is quite capable.
Combined command of a military like this is incredibly difficult, and while I'd certainly agree that some specific militaries are quite capable of [1], I think the political and organizational system in Europe really poses a challenge. But even so those militaries lack power projection capabilities and lack in some other key areas.
[1] In order probably Ukraine -> UK -> France -> Poland and then nobody else registers. Ignoring Russia because they're not really European IMO.
> Sure, it's not US level of spending... which is probably a good thing given the US basically cut education and healthcare for a few generations for that.
Nah, we actually have money to easily afford both we just have a bunch of morons in charge (Democrats and Republicans) who, particular to healthcare, have gotten us the worst of both worlds. Education we're #1 there's no question about that.
Then sanctions came, no more very cheap wood pulp for the german industry, and after a year of sanctions, the russians built (i think) 4 large paper factories, so even after the sanctions end, that business is not coming back to germany.
US is in 53. place in child mortality ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an... )... but hey, those bombs need to be used up, so the taxpayers can pay for new ones, right?
"Good sign" of what, though? Air superiority? I guess, sure. But we've constructed a strategic situation for ourselves where mere air superiority is losing.
The straight remains closed. Because let's be blunt: if we can't reliably fly a F-15E or A-10 in the region, there's no way an oil company is going to bet its crew and cargo.
Honestly the best situation here is that Iran merely decides to toll the straight. That's "losing" too, but at least one with a merely "large financial overhead" on international energy traffic instead of a disastrous 15% off the top cut in capacity.
Iran is winning. This is the difference between tactics and strategy.
building all of this military infrastructure at the expense of living conditions for its people
Just yesterday, Trump was talking about another $1.5 trillion for defense in the coming fiscal year, and saying the US can't afford things like daycare, medicare etc.
Iran's military budget as a % of GDP has historically been inthe low single digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_Iran
Which makes them irrelevant here in this discussion but sure yea. Russia (those sneaky guys who invaded Ukraine and are being supplied by Iran) provide targeting information to Iran, Iran has missiles, we can't shoot them all down, and here we are. It's unfortunate but that's what happens in a war. Frankly, these are very good lessons learned by the United States and they're going to come in handy if we end up in another war.
> Just yesterday, Trump was talking about another $1.5 trillion for defense in the coming fiscal year, and saying the US can't afford things like daycare, medicare etc.
We can easily afford both, but we choose not to because our political system is full of morons and corruption, but instead of Iran being more like the US and being dysfunctional in this regard, it should be more like Norway (excluding population differences) and pump and sell the oil and do so for the benefit of their citizens instead of this authoritarian rah rah death to America and death to Israel nonsense.
> Iran's military budget as a % of GDP has historically been inthe low single digits:
Figures provided here are inaccurate and don't account for spending on proxy groups, for example.
This is an interesting take given that the US seems to have ignored many of the most important lessons from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
As for "end up in another war", the language you chose is very revealing. You don't just "end up in...war". Wars don't start themselves. Someone starts them and in the case of the US, it's almost always the US.
> instead of this authoritarian rah rah death to America and death to Israel nonsense.
After US and israel bombing them.... again... what do you think, will there be more or less "death to US" chants? Also, considering the number of dead people in iran, lebanon, palestine and other countries, the next step is probably special force work in US... the ones you guys call "terrorists".
or at least US citizens should protect legitimate entitlements and inspect everything to cut down on corruption
At least something positive
Taking money from social programs and piling into the military which contains "a lot of fraud, waste, abuse and grift across the board", certainly is a choice. Sort of the opposite of a smart choice, but definitely a choice for sure.
Americans do have a real chance to make it happen, if they show a political will
Congrats. Finally somebody who wants to dismantle US government.
How can you believe that the US has "complete control over the skies" given today's events?
Of course in any war someone can fire back at and sometimes hit your aircraft even if you have complete airspace control.
Whatever it wants, as long as that doesn't include flying aircraft or going through the strait.
Also, I think the US is still predominantly using standoff munitions instead of switching to dumb munitions because the airspace is still contested.
Yes the US probably is still using precision weapons because, well, unlike the Iranian government we don't want to use so-called dumb munitions and indiscriminately bomb civilians or civilian targets. And of course in general, why even fly into the airspace if you don't have to - malfunctions happen too.
Are you referring to the "precision" weapons that hit the girls' school?
And the US has been very keen to bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure, along with Israelis, since the start of the war [0]. The US-Israelis are guilty of war crimes.
The recent bombing of an unfinished bridge is another example of the US-Israeli actions, especially since they did a double-tap to kill rescuers. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Qeshm_Island_desalination...
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/firestorm-for-hegseth-a...
If we had complete control over the skies, we wouldn't be losing aircraft, would we?