War with...Iran?

[Paengwyn]

I think not because of either. They don't want to be implicated in disrupting half the world's oil supply and economy. There's a definite risk Iran can cut off all oil shipments in the Persian Gulf.

There are also concerns related to international law and being dragged into in yet another illegal war by the US:

https://archive.is/NjyUQ

 

[Paengwyn]

What a world: Iranians in the US, the Middle East, and inside Iran are cheering, and the Columbia group that helped organize the protest encampment tweeting “death to America.” Keir Starmer is, after Venezuela, again going on TV to make sure we all know he did absolutely nothing. And the EU is planning an emergency meeting on Monday (can’t have those on a Sunday, I suppose).

And it’s not turning into a regional conflict because nobody is siding with Iran. Reportedly, Saudi Arabia pushed Trump to attack, too.

Starmer is declaring he's 'done absolutely nothing' because after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and subsequent failed attempts at nation building, the proportion of the UK population that wants the country to be involved in American wars of aggression is vanishingly small if it exists at all.

Unlike America, the UK has mechanisms to remove the Prime Minister mid-term and involving the country in America's military adventurism will guarantee Starmer is ejected, especially considering how unpopular he is already.

 

[Paengwyn]

Why are Europeans so full of shit?

"We have no religious zeolots" - Brought to you by the continent that had: The Crusades (yes, plural), the Spanish Inquisition, literally contains the motherfucking Pope, over a millenium of dynastic rulers supposedly ordained by God.

Yeah, bro, totally alien concept for Europeans...

The last crusades were 500 years ago, the Spanish Inquisition disbanded nearly 200 years ago and the Pope isn't salivating at the idea of bringing about Armageddon and the return of Christ by bombing Iran. Sure we have religious zealots, but they're not currently running our governments.

 

[Paengwyn]

Yeah, the problem is not the article.

The problem is that people in this thread did not read it.

Instead, many people just took the poster's word on the contents of the article because it confirmed their biases.

The take aways really should have been:

1. It wasn't said directly by Hegseth, but it is still shitty that he's doing things that are emboldening this behavior (prayer meetings at the Pentagon, etc.).
2. It is FUCKING AWESOME that over a hundred complaints have been filed by NCOs over the remarks made.

If you want to go down that route, I read the article at the time it was posted.

Religious fundamentalists have enormous influence within the US Government in a way that they do not in Europe; no European ambassador could state that Israel is entitled to the entire Middle East based on Biblical claims [1] without losing their job.

Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist through and through: he has Deus Vult (a crusader battlecry) tattooed on his arm [2,3], retired from the National Guard due to his religious beliefs identifying him as a potential insider threat [4], and wrote a book entitled American Crusade which calls for a '360 degree holy war' against 'the forces of [...] “Islamism” [...].' [3].

To bring this back on topic, it is hardly unreasonable to connect the emboldening of religious extremists within the US military's command structure, and the effect that will have on decisions made regarding the aerial bombardment campaign in Iran, to Hegseth's documented behaviour and attitudes.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5gkkgdzkyo
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/2024120...om/2024/12/05/us/hegseth-church-crusades.html
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/22/trump-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-book
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20241117035159/https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/11/16/pete-hegseth-tattoo-national-guard

 

[Paengwyn]

Here's Bellincat's piece on the missile strike on the school:

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/202...-missile-strike-next-to-girls-school-in-iran/

 

[Paengwyn]

The picture is taken shortly after the girls' school has been hit, showing an American Tomahawk hitting a different nearby target.

The logic is that only the same actor (the US in this case) is likely to be striking different targets that are very close together in a short timespan.

That and the fact neither that Israel nor Iran are known to be operating Tomahawks. It seems reasonable that the US would fire multiple missiles in quick succession considering the objective (using the term loosely here) seems to be to cripple the IRCG. Firing one or two missiles, waiting a bit to see what was hit, and then launching some more would give uninjured survivors of the initial strike an opportunity to escape with materiel etc. that could otherwise have been destroyed.

 

[Paengwyn]

'If you don't fight the war we started for us there will be consequences' is certainly a diplomatic masterstroke.

Threatening the third largest, and largest allied, oil producer (per Wikipedia) in the world when oil is already over $100/barrel; what could possibly go wrong?

 

[Paengwyn]

Some reporting on this subject from TMZ, concentrating on Iran's stockpile of partially enriched uranium. They mention the uncertainty you highlighted as well as the high risks involved. Personally I think they're overstating the capabilities of US special forces and the chances of success, but I'm no expert on the matter.

I agree, this all seems a bit too fantastical in my admittedly non-expert opinion. All of the options presented seem to rely on Bond villain levels of complacency on the part of the IRGC.

I can't imagine the IRGC would attempt to move the uranium without using decoy convoys and, based on the strategies we've observed thus far, I expect they would launch waves of Shaheds at any force attempting to dig their way into the facility at Isfahan or elsewhere. Ground forces can only carry so much ammunition, the same goes for combat aircraft with the added limitation of fuel capacity restricting time on station.

It's one thing to raid somewhere like Caracas where the defenders aren't expecting an attack and can't indiscriminately target the site with missiles and drones; it's something else entirely to raid a relatively isolated facility where the attackers have to dig their way in while under fire. There's also potential for a spectacular propaganda victory for Iran should they manage to collapse the entrance behind a force that has successfully dug its way in with an SRBM or similar, and if that's occurred to me then I'm certain the IRGC has thought of it.

 

[Paengwyn]

The highly enriched uranium (60% enrichment) fits into four scuba diver tanks. It is trivial to hide. And the last enrichment step to weapon grade uranium requires about 100 centrifuges and a month or so of operation. Equipment that easily fits into a mom&pop workshop.

Iran already did the hard part. Besides of political reasons, they didn't do the last step because that uranium is hellish dangerous and keeping it in a subcritical arrangement requires controlled environments and careful planning/engineering. A weapons grade uranium pit is also insanely valuable, so I guess that they want to have everything around bomb manufacturing and delivery perfect before engaging in the last step.

That's interesting - I knew uranium is dense but I wasn't aware it's that dense. It's rather worrying that 440kg of it will fit into a space that small all things considered.

I was thinking something along the lines of the vehicles used by SEG and the Royal Marines to move nuclear warheads, fuel and waste around the UK.

 

[Paengwyn]

Link

…like whatever the hell we’re doing here.

(seeing some unconfirmed chatter about the potential use of a MOAB, something we last used in Afghanistan for no reason under Trump’s first term, but…not confirmed, pure speculation).

Why not just drop a massive bomb on one of the holiest cities in Shi'a Islam, and the holiest city in Iran, that certainly won't radicalise anyone...

I guess (hope?) this was aimed at Fordow and not within the city limits, but it's hard to know when the Secretary of Defence wrote a book calling for a 360-degree holy war.

 

[Paengwyn]

Except, of course, the Straight of Hormuz and all the oil that flows through it. That's the strategic asset, and, if you want to make it safe for shipping, that will require militarily seizing quite a few miles of the Iranian seaboard. So the question is ultimately going to be one of: do we accept that the straight is closed and that oil is going nowhere, or, do we deploy the army to seize the Iranian seaboard to make it difficult for Iran to keep the straight closed.

Given our history with oil and the fact that we have a relic dictating from the white house, I'm not optimistic.

Bessent is suggesting that the US Navy, with support of an international coalition, could escort tankers through the strait once it's 'militarily possible'. This all smacks a bit of Graham's 'come fight our war for us else there will be consequences', except this time the consequences are risking your ships or oil price inflation. It feels a bit like the penny might be starting to drop that they've bitten off a bit too much here.

I also don't think it's occurred to Bessent that Iranian and Chinese flagged tankers are transiting through the strait because Iran is allowing them to, or that anyone else who tries is going to be on the receiving end of an anti-ship missile or USV.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/12/iran-war-live-updates-oil-trump-middle-east-crisis-israel-lebanon-iraq-latest-news?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with:block-69b312888f08300dbfa3dbcb#block-69b312888f08300dbfa3dbcb

 

[Paengwyn]

My bet, either he was asked how the world economy would react to some form of invasion or it's about using nukes.

I'm not putting it past them to think that nuking something in Iran is their card out of this mess they put themselves in.

¿Por qué no los dos?

On a more serious note I don't think I've ever heard someone sound that scared.

 

[Paengwyn]

An Iranian backed Iraqi group is apparently claiming responsibility for the KC-135 going down. That might also explain why the one which did manage to land is missing half of it's vertical stabiliser.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...ility-downing-us-military-aircraft-2026-03-13

 

[Paengwyn]

Why sail through the strait when you could drive amphibious assault vehicles from Kuwait? - Hegseth, probably.

If they're going attempt it they must be planning an aerial assault, anything else seems like a one-way trip to the bottom of the sea.

 

[Paengwyn]

I was thinking something more along the lines of Russia's highly successful initial attempt on Hostomel Airport rather than a parachute drop. The one that was so successful that a Georgian commander was allegedly running VDV troops over with his Mercedes Benz after running out of ammunition...

 

[Paengwyn]

Australia confirmed they won’t be sending any ships and the UK said they’ll send mine sweeping ships. Japan just said there are high hurdles to sending ships (basically, no), and South Korea said they’re considering the suggestion (a face saving stalling tactic, basically).

Israel isn’t being asked to send any ships AFAIK.

The UK's planning to send aerial minesweeping drones rather than ships on the basis that 'sending ships, as requested over the weekend by the US president, could worsen the situation given the volatile nature of the war' [1]. This is as close to telling Trump to do one as the UK can get considering our self-inflicted economic stupidities and that various administration official have assured us all there are no mines anyway.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/15/uk-plans-minesweeping-drones-help-reopen-strait-hormuz

 

[Paengwyn]

Financing Iran to fight back. The US government is insane.

This rather torpedoes any of the post facto justifications for the war:

• They were going to build a nuclear weapon, so we've decided to help fund it
• They were going to attack us first, so we're helping them buy more missiles to keep attacking us
• We wanted regime change, so we're going to prop up the regime financially
• We wanted to destroy their military capabilities, so we're funding their re-armament efforts

We should never have killed that gorilla. Stop the planet I want to get off.

 

[Paengwyn]

I guess this confirms the speculation around what Bessent was so worried about:

https://www.axios.com/2026/03/20/iran-invasion-kharg-island-strait-hormuz

 

[Paengwyn]

Kharg Island isn't in the Strait of Hormuz. It's about 300 miles northwest of the Strait.

Well yes, but when have minor details like that ever concerned Trump? After all, some genius appears to be proposing blockading an island that would require the blockading force to sail through Iran's blockade at the strait, that or we're about to witness the pound shop equivalent of Operation Market Garden.

 

[Paengwyn]

As an aside, judging by the headlines in some of the papers, Israel has started the process of manufacturing consent here in the UK.

The fact Iran has missiles that can apparently reach Diego Garcia does raise questions about why the UK only has ship-borne ABM capabilities, particularly as they are fitted on the Navy's six Type 45 destroyers [1], where only three are in currently in active service. Having said that, not having sufficient ABM capabilities to protect the UK from incoming IRBMs seems like the perfect excuse to not get involved...

Also the Daily Mail is claiming the Navy has moved a submarine to the Arabian Sea to '[give] Britain the capability to launch long-range strikes if regional conflict escalates' [2]. Considering the drip feeding of UK bases and assets into this mess it does feel a bit like the government is hoping nobody will notice if they move slowly enough. I guess we'll know for sure if we start hearing about Iran having weapons that can hit the UK within 45 seconds or similar nonsense.

[1] https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10249/CBP-10249.pdf
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk...-sea-amid-regional-tensions-daily-2026-03-21/

Consent to what? All I see in the major british MSM is reports that the UK (along with several EU nations, S. Korea and Japan) is willing to unite in an unspecified effort to keep Hormuz open(*).
Which should be moot anyway, as Iran announced today the Strait will be open for all except "enemy linked" shipping. AFAIK, neither the US nor Israel ship any oil or natgas through Hormuz, so that should mean open in practice, right?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/l...-of-hormuz-open-israel-hit-tehran-retaliation

(*) aside from abiding with defense treaties the UK has with several Gulf states, but that's purely defensive.

Today's front page articles from the print editions of The Telegraph and Times:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...reach-of-irans-missiles-israel-warns-starmer/
https://www.thetimes.com/world/midd...es-war-diego-garcia-distance-europe-7rfbpp5gh

They're somewhat reminiscent of the infamous 'Brits 45 Minutes From Doom' article headline from The Sun in 2002, albeit less melodramatic.

 

[Paengwyn]

Who would lose the most political face by honesty? The UK can't afford effective missile defense or a conventional military able to project power.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEzpBpZ4LqA


Missile/drone defense is more functionally important to security than being a fig leaf for US operations.

Our government's been neglecting the Navy since forever and seemingly decided years ago that there would be no need to fight a conventional war ever again. All of the British armed forces have been shaped (cut to the bone) around the assumption that they'd just being bombing jihadis in the desert somewhere and now it's come back to bite us. Considering how much of a cock up the Ajax AFV programme has been, and the fact the Warrior IFV turret upgrade was cancelled because MoD ran out of money, partly due to the Ajax train wreck, I can't say I'm at all surprised by the contents of that video.

There was a running joke in the defence world about the Crowsnest Radar being such a screwup that you were better off having a gap on your CV than admitting to having been involved with it. Forgetting that the casing on an anti-submarine radar might need to be waterproof was a truly a masterstroke.

 

[Paengwyn]

Seems like the latest piece is Tories handing the bag to Labour in the hopes the latter will get blamed for it. No shit Britain isn't a world power anymore. People need to absorb this fact.

It's going to be a long time before the UK accepts that, we still haven't managed to get over not having the empire.

 

[Paengwyn]

There is a subset of Reform/Restore support that seems to think we can get it back.

I'm sure they'll all be lining up to volunteer to help occupy Iran, after all it was part of the 'informal empire'.

 

[Paengwyn]

Blowhards on social media will speak shite. A good friend is an ex-officer in the US Army who saw service in Afghanistan. He has a white hot rage that is directed at Trump and Hegseth and their utterly stupid war, but he isn’t posting on Linkedin. Sample size N = 1 and all that, but he won’t be the only one.

Military/Defence LinkedIn is a weird place, occasionally something completely mad breaks containment. I saw some posts from purportedly ex-SF people related to the inquiry into the SAS allegedly committing war crimes in Afghanistan a while ago saying how Starmer should be arrested for treason because he was on the side of the Iranian regime. They also seemed to be all in on Reform so make of that what you will.

I told LinkedIn to stop recommending their stuff, but I'm of curious, in that morbid sort of way, about what they think about the current situation.

 

[Paengwyn]

I don''t want to make assumptions nor speak ill of your connections but that is just internet-naivety with an unhealthy dose of echo-chamber?

Probably, it was more how they got from Afghanistan to Iran that intrigued me considering this was well before any of this kicked off, that and the fact that someone thought posting that where potential employers can see was a good idea. They were just random recommended posts rather than anyone I know, so make all the assumptions you like. The veterans I've worked with are definitely not that way inclined.

 

[Paengwyn]

This appears to be the original source of the image, third to last paragraph:

https://no01.substack.com/p/march-19-21-god-is-a-comedian

 

[Paengwyn]

TACO

BBC Live Reporting



It’s likely this is all bullshit especially because if things are going well you don’t then add you’ll threaten the same thing again in 5 days.

It’s literally the TACO stock plan.
I’m guessing a whole lotta people shorting stocks on Friday, selling Monday.

The IRGC says they've not been in contact with Trump, direct or otherwise. Smells like bullshit market manipulation to me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce35wke27ynt?post=asset:a19495c2-b263-49b8-b04b-a8879eb9ab57#post

 

[Paengwyn]

TACO Monday doesn’t really roll off the tongue.

Market Manipulation Monday?

 

[Paengwyn]

What is likely to be the case is that the IRGC will not be running the country in a few more weeks. And if you're at all saddened by this, you might want to read up on the recent slaughter of civilian protesters, beatings of women, mass executions, and their infamous prisons for political dissidents (including Canadian tourists, whose government I'm sure is very concerned).

I know full well this is bait, but I resent being accused of being in anyway supportive of the Iranian Regime so here you are:

The Iranian regime's actions are appalling and it has very clearly committed numerous crimes against humanity in its efforts to suppress the protests in recent months, as well as various war crimes by bombing civilian centers and infrastructure. None of this is acceptable and ideally all of the perpetrators would be charged and tried at The Hague.

You know who else has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity recently? The American government, purely because they're too arrogant and lazy to update their targeting data, thereby blowing up a school full of children. While we're at it, the Israeli government has been busy committing crimes against humanity because their definition of acceptable collateral appears to include any man, woman or child who happens to be within 500m of where a suspected Hezbollah or Hamas militant might have been at some point in the last 20 years. None of this is acceptable either and ideally all of the perpetrators would be charged and tried at The Hague.

It is entirely possible to condemn all of these things at once without experiencing cognitive dissonance, and to suggest otherwise is, quite frankly, insulting.

 

[Paengwyn]

I'm not saying that opposing the war is supporting the regime. I'm just observing that this thread has featured denials of the regime's murder of civilians, people entirely willing to take everything coming from Iran at face value, and the one recent condemnation of the regime was immediately followed by a much longer paragraph condemning the United States and Israel. Not even a word about Iranian drones targeting civilian airports, hotels, and residential areas. Notably not accidentally crashing into a house, but deliberately targeting civilians to create chaos. So if posters were supporting the regime, the posts wouldn't look much different from what they are. We've already seen this with the Gaza war and Hamas.

I know full well this is bait, but I resent being accused of being in anyway supportive of the Iranian Regime so here you are:

The Iranian regime's actions are appalling and it has very clearly committed numerous crimes against humanity in its efforts to suppress the protests in recent months, as well as various war crimes by bombing civilian centers and infrastructure. None of this is acceptable and ideally all of the perpetrators would be charged and tried at The Hague.

Silly me for thinking that airports, hotels and residential areas aren't civilian centres and infrastructure.

It's notable that you failed to quote my post, because if you had your entire argument would fall flat on its face. This is a poor effort even by your standards.

 

[Paengwyn]

This is an interesting development:

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/202...illage-missile-munitions-weapons-war-conflict

Given the proximity of the village to what appears to be an Iranian ballistic missile site, I'm assuming laying aerially distributed anti-tank mines is an effort to prevent missiles being moved into the site to be launched or moved to another location that this more difficult to target.

 

[Paengwyn]

There seems to be potential for another 10000 troops with additional armoured vehicles to be sent to the Middle East. Apparently massing ground forces is now something you do after you've won decisively.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/26/iran-war-live-updates-trump-deal-us-military-strikes-israel-lebanon-hezbollah?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with:block-69c5c7908f0836c671f19313#block-69c5c7908f0836c671f19313