Apparently Iran is closing the Hormuz Strait…
ETA: Apparently not “Iran” per se, but elements of the revolutionary guard at least.
Dec 11, 1941? April 25, 1898? June 18, 1812?
The main difference is that Iran is a real country with a long historical tradition within the borders of modern day Iran, and more importantly the Iranian people believe in the concept of a unified Iran.
Iraq was not like that. It was random lines in the sand drawn by the British and French with little regard for who the people the new country would include are.
That’s why Iraq fell apart when ISIS showed up - none of the Iraqis believed in Iraq enough to fight for it.
Iran is nothing like that.
Also, it seems like your news about Iraq is about 10 years out of date, after ISIS was defeated Iraq really got its shit together.
My middle eastern history is sketchy, but it does seem that Iraq is (was) a largely artificial ‘state’ created by fiat quite recently.
I could not guess what Iranian people believe, though. Did they all support the Islamic Revolution, for example? I don’t know…
Sorry, posts crossed. I will freely admit that I have no first hand knowledge of current Iraq.
If they have got their shit together, that’s great. Probably no thanks to Bush, though?
@Babale , I think you missed the “not” that I’ve bolded.
Germany declared war on the United States.
To also be fair, he did negotiate the peace. After massively expanding the war, of course.
If you check, I believe you will find that the American declaration of war on Germany in World War II, the American declaration of war on Spain in the Spanish-American War, and even the American declaration of war on England in1812 all happened without the US being directly attacked first.
It’s a matter for debate. The US seems to have generally had a policy of isolationism and non-intervention for a large part of its history. But we are in danger of getting off-topic: that’s probably a different thread…
Germany declared war on the US but it didn’t directly attack the US between its declaration of war and the US declaring war back.
Regardless, yes, that’s the weakest of the three examples.
Moderating:
Thank you, yes we are. I’m giving the thread a VERY brief pause (5 minutes) so everyone has a chance to read this note and move back to discussing the current situation rather than past situations in this thread. No note directed at anyone, it seemed a benign, organic side track, but please spin off your own thread if you want to discuss historical declarations of war. Though, sadly for the world, speculation on if air war without boots on the ground can effect regime change is on topic.
How to Reply as a linked Topic
Click Reply, in the upper left corner of the reply window is the reply type button, looks like a curving arrow point to the right.
Choose Reply as linked topic and it starts a new thread. As an example, you can choose GD, IMHO or The Pit for it.
That is actually the best method.
Back to the thread’s topic… Iran has been launching missiles at Israel, at American bases in the region, and even at Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh. An Iranian UAV hit a hotel in Dubai, and there’s a report of a death in Abu Dhabi.
But they’ve had a hard time doing this. It doesn’t appear that they’ve fully rebuilt their ballistic missile and launcher stocks since the 12 day war, and the launchers they do have are taking heavy fire from Israeli jets as they try to operate again.
A direct UAV hit on a multistory building in Bahrain:
Modern Israeli multistory buildings are built with a central column of reinforced bomb shelters going up the height of the building. In the 12 day war almost all casualties came from people who were out of their shelter for one reason or another - there were a handful of cases where a ballistic missile struck a shelter directly and killed the people inside, but for the most part, if you took proper shelter, you were safe.
These Gulf countries do not have the same types of defences. Iran seems to be lobbing most of their missiles at Israel, but the few they send at Arab countries will probably end up causing far more casualties per missile.
This military operation strikes me as a blatantly pre-emptive measure, whereas the U.S. used to reach for at least a token offense (e.g. the impressment of our sailors, or the destruction of some ship ) before the President would mount a political campaign of ultra patriotism, followed by some sort of congressional action (even if it was just a general power of the President to attack whenever he might decide it was prudent).
It’s surreal that the Democrats in Congress are now calling for a vote to authorize Trump’s use of force. I suppose the intent is to vote it down publicly, forcing him to withdraw. Given American sentiment anytime we start to talk about “the troops”, I doubt that’s assured.
Regardless, it surely feels that we’ve witnessed a seismic change in how the U.S. conducts war - Presidents decide to launch it, then Congress just watches the decision - does it even matter if they vote in support? A campaign to rally public support is superfluous.
What it looks like to me: US held out hope for internal revolution to happen, but when they saw that was being put down, said OK, plan B: hit the regime hard and see if that motivates some of the power centers to rise with the people to put in something more to our liking.
And seeing how the Trump crew works, to him a “win” for “liberty” would be that what factions of the same regime end up filling in the vacancies agree to submit themselves to playing nice with him oil-business-wise. See: Venezuela.
If we’re allowed to count contrived excuses I’d say “ask the Native Americans”. Or the Haitians or Dominicans if you want to stick to the last 120 years. But seriously it has never really been US policy to not take armed initiative until we are attacked first.
Yes, basically Trump and Netanyahu have very different motivations.
Some thoughts:
Apparently this is the first time America is using one way attack drones in combat. Our version of the Shahed drone?
Speaking of Shahed drones, I watched a video of one striking a US radar installation in Bahrain. So unlike prior Iranian attacks on American targets, this is not kayfabe, it’s Iran actually doing their best to destroy American targets.
I would think this change in strategy reflects the fact that Iranian leadership, unlike many in this thread, does indeed view this operation as posing an existential threat to the regime.
Considering the reports that Khamenei has been killed have been out for some time now, with still no refutation from Iranian sources - not even a recorded video of him - I am becoming more and more optimistic that he might truly be dead. Good riddance if so.
Remember the old expression about “the fog of war”. Only a few top officials of the regime know the facts about Khamenei’s current circumstances. All else is rumour. And killing him would be mostly symbolic – I don’t think it would have much effect on regime change. This is the problem with this sort of aimless bombing campaign – it has no specific end-goal except the vague hope that the Iranian people themselves will topple the regime, and meanwhile wreaks massive destruction and suffering among ordinary Iranians just going about their business.
As I’ve said before, I believe most Iranians are good and decent people with a wonderful culture. Indiscriminately throwing bombs at them is not helpful to anything.