How do you think a nuclear weapon in the hands of a theocracy whose leaders regularly chant “Death to America” is going to go. They already have 60% Uranium purity and it doesn’t need the complex trigger mechanism that Plutonium requires. It’s not the desired purity level but it can be detonated.
The time to topple Iran from within is now. There will never be another chance like this in the foreseeable future.
Religious war or not, one needs a list of civilian and military infrastructure to take out in this round of destroying Israel; they are not doing it randomly, nor do they have unlimited capabilities, plus there is the risk of (more) escalation. Israel can also rebuild power plants and factories just like Iran can. Economic warfare, including disrupting air and sea shipping, might be more damaging in the medium, if not necessarily the long, term. Short term is to cause damage to exact a price.
I would not say this war can be analysed “rationally”— in fact peace and even alliance would be optimal by certain measures— but that is outside the scope of this thread.
post deleted
That’s not a goal, that’s a strategy, and it still doesn’t answer my question - how can bombing another country win a war?
I suppose the answer will depend on whether you are addressing this question to Iran, to Israel or to the USA.
Good news! Trump says talks are productive, and no new strikes! Problem is, Iran says there haven’t been any talks:
Trump backs down again. What a dumb, self inflicted disaster. Losing a war against a long time adversary with a military a tiny fraction the size of ours. Thousands dead and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted with absolutely nothing substantive to show for it.
The logic, insofar as there is any, goes like this: the war has crashed the global oil market so hard that the administration needs the enemy’s oil to keep gasoline prices from eating the midterms. They are unsanctioning the people they’re bombing because the bombing is working too well at the thing they didn’t want it to do. The sanctions were necessary to stop Iran funding the war, but the war made the sanctions too effective. So so the sanctions had to be lifted to fund the war effort against the country that no longer needs sanctions because the oil revenues that sanctions were preventing are now required to prevent the economic damage caused by preventing those revenues, which is itself a consequence of the military campaign designed to make the sanctions unnecessary by making Iran the kind of country that doesn’t need sanctioning, which it would be, if the sanctions hadn’t been lifted to pay for making it that.
I would make fun of Trump’s bluffing and miscalculation, but I am just relived.
TACO is more a hopeful statement than a taunt at this point. It’s going to become the thing people say instead of “touch wood”.
The article linked below is a really concise and complete summary of the current situation of the Iran war from the US’s perspective. How the war repeats the mistakes of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and risks becoming another quagmire.
It lays out the difficulty in achieving either:
I had some idea of the complexity of an operation to seize enriched uranium, but not the full picture. I didn’t realize it was stored in gas from, for instance.
It suggests a limited exit:
Trump should declare that the U.S. military has substantially achieved the more limited set of military objectives—degrading Iran’s capabilities—and signal a willingness to halt further escalation.
and more importantly:
Iran may reject such an offer initially. But over time, a U.S. posture oriented toward de-escalation could shift international pressure onto Tehran. Key global actors, including China, Europe, and Gulf states, all of whom have strong interests in stabilizing energy markets, would have incentives to push for an end to the conflict; they would apply greater pressure on Iran to de-escalate as well.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Speculation for and/or Consequences to the US and Elsewhere for Engaging in the Bombing of Iran and Other Targets
Moderating:
This really doesn’t belong in this thread. I’m going to move it to the Spec thread. No warning, but I’m sure you’ve seen the many modnotes in this thread.
This topic was automatically opened after 12 minutes.
Moderating:
How, especially since this is sans any sort of cite, is this not speculation? Which I have now explained in mod notes twice in less than 48 hours?
How is this not speculation about what caused the conflict? And again, something I’ve noted on repeatedly.
Several others in the thread participated, all of whom should have known better. To all posters, I mentioned the “cusp” in the previous recent notes. We are tipping over it, so here are some instructions to the thread.
First, @Magiver - your uncited speculation kicked off this last one. As such, I’m considering a warning, but I’m going to give myself a fresh cup of coffee before I decide. @Banquet_Bear and @Alessan, your personal passions about Israel are getting in the way of staying on top of what’s going on right now (the purpose of the thread). If you want to throw blame or blamelessness around for the start of the event, take it to the Causation thread.
To all other posters, if you see someone post something that belongs in the other threads, flag it, do not respond to it. Or, respond in the appropriate thread and link back to the post here. Ideally both.
OK - I withdraw the speculation of what Marines would be used for in the goal to secure the Uranium.
Moderating:
I’ve pulled out at least the majority (hopefully all) the posts that returned to the thorny topic of causation and placed them in the appropriate thread. @Magiver, I’ll give you credit for pulling back your claim, but the real issue is that it was the wrong thread to begin with, however, I do see you posting in the proper thread right now so I’m not issuing a warning at this time.
A reminder to all - if you see a post that belongs to one of the other threads Please flag it and do not respond here. A lot of the posts moved were responses to one or more posts that should never have been here.
If you, in a moment of passion, DO post it here and you’re still in the edit window, edit it, or at a minimum put it in the “Hide Details Option” so it doesn’t further drag us off topic. If you’re out of the edit window, flag it yourself and we moderators can move it for you.
The thread is now open.
ETA - To try to keep these issues from coming up so frequently, I’ve amended the thread title in { } to include a reminder.
This doesn’t sound good at all.
It appears that the bombing is continuing.
But no, we DO have something substantive to show for it! We’ve depleted our hella expensive munitions, disrupted global commerce, wrecked whatever shreds of alliances we still had, gave our military lots of live-action training exercises, and unalived a bunch of those evil Iranians. Surely that’s substantive? For certain values of “substantive.”
ETA: @ParallelLines – I wrote this reply before seeing your posts. Is this sufficiently on point or should it be in the consequences thread?