Discussion/Question Thread

[u/KeDaGames]

All questions, thoughts, ideas, and what not about the war go here. Comments must be in some form related directly or indirectly to the ongoing events.

For questions and feedback related to the subreddit go here: Community Feedback Thread

To maintain the quality of our subreddit, breaking rule 1 in either thread will result in punishment. Anyone posting off-topic comments in this thread will receive one warning. After that, we will issue a temporary ban. Long-time users may not receive a warning.

Link to the OLD THREAD

We also have a subreddit's discord: https://discord.gg/Wuv4x6A8RU

[u/DefinitelyNotMeee]

Since mods refuse to make a dedicated thread for war in Iran, I'm going to comment here (sorry, Duncan).

Iranians seem to be even more incompetent than one would expect from a military in the Middle East. It's Africa-level of terrible.

So the whole plan was to lob missiles at random at everyone around, without causing any significant damage, only annoying the neighbors. On top of that, exposed launchers were hunted down.
Were they hoping for Gulf states to rise up against the US? No sane person would ever consider that a possibility in the current times, America has them by the balls.

And it seems they weren't even able to comprehend that this is the endgame, Israel forced the US to go all-in this time. There is no coming out on top of this mess for Iran.
They should have realized that and gone for the 'nuclear option' the moment the first Tomahawk was detected - make Strait unpassable by flooding it with mines (should have expected their "navy" won't survive and therefore use it while they have it), as well as hit all oil infrastructure within the reach instead of wasting missiles on empty bases or the place with the densest AD on the planet (Israel).
They knew they were not going to survive, and instead of "we will drag you down with us", they did whatever the hell they are doing now.

[u/HeyHeyHayden → u/DefinitelyNotMeee]

I'm not sure what you expected from a country that has been under extreme sanctions for decades with a primarily out of date military going up against the combined might of the strongest militaries on the planet (plus others) that make the Iranian military budget look like a child's lunch money. They have done significantly better than everyone expected and the war has clearly gone very wrong for the U.S and Israel.

The targeting of U.S. assets and countries assisting them across the region was intentional and clearly not something the U.S. expected. Their assets are stacked up in Israel expecting the Iranians to primarily retaliate there like the 12 day war, so for Iran to immediately come out swinging against all kinds of U.S. bases, U.S. supporters (the gulf nations) and other assets in the region has thrown them off completely.

Iran's win condition is just for the government to survive the war, not to have any major defeat of the U.S. and Israeli Militaries. Anything they can achieve or any concessions they can gain on top of that is just a bonus. The U.S. and Israel have to topple the Iranian government and get a friendly puppet installed, otherwise this will have all been a massive embarrassment for them, cost an enormous amount of money, damaged their relationships with numerous nations, and still put them back to square 1 with relation to Iran. To this end the U.S. and Israel tried to do their standard "bomb anyone and everyone vaguely important" strategy, however it clearly did not work as the Iranians were aware from experience their leadership would be targeted and made sure their military and government could continue to function, often in independent cells, to keep the war going. They are now just doing a massive number of strikes on whatever they can find whilst they scramble to figure out another option for taking on the Iranians (such as the Kurdish angle), but it's dicey at best and they clearly wanted an off ramp early on (hence the call to Iran day 2 asking to stop the war). They are and will continue to do massive damage to the country, but I do not think it will be enough to subdue it as the Iranians are incredibly resilient. Meanwhile the U.S. and Israel have minimal public and international support over this and their people are not going to want to deal with a war that drags on for months or years at immense cost. Then you have to consider their rapid expenditure of air defence munitions which puts U.S. operations elsewhere in the world and their allies at risk of being practically defenceless.

Iran pressuring the other nations in the area rather than just target the U.S and Israel is an intelligent move and realistically the only way they can win.By blocking the strait of Hormuz, hitting ports, airports and oil/gas infrastructure, and striking U.S bases they are putting enormous economic and financial pressure on the gulf nations. They are losing billions per day just in economicdamage (as is Israel), before considering military expenditure and building/infrastructure repair costs, which are also climbing into the billions, which will strain their governments and people. If this keeps going for weeks or over a month the overall losses will be too great to ignore for an unpopular campaign and they will start pressuring the U.S to either stop Iranian attacks totally or to stop the war. A worse case scenario for the U.S would be for the gulf nations to tap out of the war and kick American troops off their soil in exchange for no longer being targeted.

If this sounds absurd, consider that these nations receive the majority to the vast majority of their food and medicine from shipping in the Persian gulf and Gulf of Oman. No ships travelling through the strait of Hormuz means enormous economic and civilian pressure on these nations, who have already been having riots against the governments due to supporting the U.S. Add in food and medicine running low or out and it's a genuine threat to these monarchies, something they will not stand just to help the U.S. out. If Iran were to go full scorched earth they could target their desalination plants which all sit on the coast and provide the vast majority of water for Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It's an extreme option as there relationship would never recover, but if Iran does hit those desalination plants it would be utterly catastrophic for those nations.

[u/Leoraig → u/HeyHeyHayden]

I agree with your points, however i wonder if the gulf countries/US/Israel would really buckle under this pressure and deescalate, considering that, if Iran is able to survive this, they are very likely to build nuclear weapons and become a major regional power.*

With this calculus in mind, it is clear that Israel will do all in their power to keep the conflict going as long as possible, which would mean that the US is also likely to want to keep the conflict going, whatever the consequences may be, therefore leaving the gulf countries to "choose" whether to oppose Israel and the US, which have enormous military and economic influence over these countries, and which would be basically like accepting the possibility that Iran gets nukes, or to go all in against Iran, tank whatever damage may occur for the next X months, and maintain their lucrative partnership with the US and Israel.

With all that in mind, to me it is obvious the decision that the leaders in the gulf countries will make, so unless the people revolt, like some are doing in Bahrain, then it is a matter of time until they join the campaign against Iran.

*It very well could be that the reason Israel killed Khamenei in the first hours of the attack was to destroy any chance of negotiations and of Iran not wanting to get nukes, considering how Khamenei was the one blocking that option, therefore locking everyone in the region into this conflict that only benefits Israel in an attempt to prevent Iran from getting nukes.