War with...Iran?

[Anacher]

The military build up near Iran is... At least worrying? It seems that the US might be closer to an actual war than I had previously realized. The amount of assets the US has moved into the region is staggering (more details in the linked piece).

But the worrying part is that sources from the administration talk about a larger conflict: not a single strike, but rather a campaign aimed at crippling the nuclear program, the missile program and regime change might be on the table.

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/18/iran-war-trump-military-strikes-nuclear-talks

The fallout from the Maduro snatching hasn't been that big, so that might be emboldening Trump.

 

[Anacher]

Funny, I was told we had eradicated the Iranian nuclear program last June.

Of course, it was obvious even back then that our unprecedented B-2 strike had eradicated nothing but some recently-vacated holes in the ground, at best. Netanyahu was in the White House last week, presumably communicating this unfortunate reality to Trump and finalizing the details of what's coming.

And the ever fun of "They have to make a deal!" Never mind that they had one... which was broken by previous Trump.

 

[Anacher]

Think impossible Death Star trench run made possible by American technology and patriotism. It’s like AI psychosis, except that you believe your military technology makes you capable of the impossible.

And it was against a country that was totally not Iran*.

*So much Iran. So much.

 

[Anacher]

I briefly scanned an article which said that Trump may want Israel to start the attacks on Iran, rather than US.

So he wants to be seen as being led by Netanyahu? HMV, follow his master's voice?

Agree to my terms or Israel will attack you!

 

[Anacher]

Fucking hell. Rubio talking about how we had to strike Iran first because Israel was going to strike them, and then Iran would attack US bases.

“The imminent threat was that we knew if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded," Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill, where he was briefing lawmakers.

We know this is of course bullshit (or it's not, which I don't know if it's better), but the number of US aircraft in the region hadn't been as high as is now since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They've been building up for a strike for awhile.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...live-updates/#link-M5JAWJEFPFAFXC73Y2535MXQMI

And then we have a Trump press conference where he decides to talk about curtains.

Edit: (added a link to thehill if the Wapost link doesn't work)

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5763685-rubio-defense-iran-threat/

 

[Anacher]

JFC, he did. In the middle of a news conference about Iran, he's talking about curtains. American servicemen are dying and Trump's bragging about the fucking drapes.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled coverage of Joe Biden being old and senile.

And he was talking about how he never gets bored... in the most monotone sleepy voice I could think of.

 

[Anacher]

I don't think they need anyone to tell them that. They're going to have at least a broad picture of US magazine depth on interceptor systems and everyone can do maths like dividing 4 million by 50 thousand and coming up with a very large ratio of attack to interceptor munitions.

Because we already have 4 years of information about the economic imbalance these cheap OWA drones bring to warfare from Ukraine having to learn how to deal with them. And the US has now firmly jammed its dick into the same electrical outlet, but voluntarily and without even beginning to make the same adaptations that Ukraine has been doing for those four years. In part because a large part of the job of the the US MIC's lobbyists is to make sure the words "low" and "cost" never appear in the same sentence.

The worst thing is that since they've done their "decapitation strike" they've probably devolved everything to localised command, meaning that if they now want to stop, well, they have to convince dozens of newly autonomous regional commanders to stop, and since they've mostly hit the cities where the more progressive Iranian citizens who were more opposed to the regime live and the dispersed rural fighters are going to be the most ideological and most committed to fighting America, that's going to be harder than it was a week ago.

So, if you wanted a picture of the dumbest possible way to attack Iran, this is at the very least the AI slop version of it.

There is so much moronic planning by the current admin, and they should've seen it coming. Or they forced out all the people who did, or just ignored them.

What I'm talking about is the US kept using expensive missiles to intercept drone. Patriots, SM-3s, missiles from aircraft (probably AMRAAMS). Ukraine has been dealing with saturation drone strikes for years now. They save the expensive missiles for the hypersonics or ballistic missiles, and use other methods to shoot down as many shahed type drones as they can. Gepards, MG teams, counter drones, etc.

Does the US have those in region? Gonna guess no. Once the patriots run out in theatre, it's going to be a bad day for the US bases and allied infrastructure. It's a race to see what runs out first.

 

[Anacher]

Oh and as an addendum to my post above... the US has already reached out to Ukraine for help dealing with the issue...

 

[Anacher]

Wasn't that how the drones were dealt with during the first Iranian waves of attacks on Israel during the Biden admin? Which.. seemed to work just fine?

I think in general, you don't want fighters hunting slower drones when Air Defense systems are also operating. Too good of a chance to shoot down your own airplanes.

 

[Anacher]

Trump says he needs to be involved in selecting Iran's next leader, Axios reports​

Regime change? No, no, we're doing regime consultancy now.

And if we don't like the person you picked we'll arrest or kill them and then you can pick someone else!

 

[Anacher]

Honestly this is one of the biggest reasons I've been advocating renewable energy--wars in the Middle East. If not for oil no one would give a shit about these savages blowing each other's kids up, and the U.S. in particular would not have to get involved. Now Trump has earned us another two generations of being targets for terrorist wackos. Fucking great.

This is actually why Europe won't be as impacted by the LNG impacts compared to others. They went all in on renewables. (Which of course Trump hated). It makes them less beholden to not only Russia, but the US and the mideast.

 

[Anacher]

The UK is heavily reliant on fossil gas for heating. For electricity it runs reverse auctions to set the price for generation in a given time slot. This means the price for electricity in that slot is set by the most expensive generator in the time slot. Over 90% of the time that is fossil gas fired generation. We are about to get spanked hard with massive energy price increases all round.

Edit to add : we used to have loads of fossil gas in the North Sea, but we’ve pumped out the easiest stuff, now we are mainly reliant on imports.

I suggest building more windmills off the coast of Trump's golf resort.

 

[Anacher]

The USAF is configured to penetrate contested airspace, not effectively defend friendly airspace. The Soviet/Russian model of putting a lot of emphasis on very capable SAM systems is better for that. That's why all the money goes into stealth. And it works, as we've seen, and the US gets away with it because the number of platforms even capable of reaching the US from a non-allied country, esp in the lower 48, is tiny.

If it came down to it and Canada attacked the US with Shaheds in the northeast or great lakes or northwest areas, or Mexico near say San Diego, could the US stop it? Not really, no.

When we want to design something to defeat an equivalent, that's when the costs go up. Competitor makes fast missile, you make faster missile, etc. But all expensive. Cheap saturation weapons aren't flashy. No one wants to fund that because it feels like a waste to the budget people.

To tweak a quote "Quantity has a Quality all on its own". The quote was about soldiers, but it works for drones/missiles as well.

 

[Anacher]

Yeah, exactly—without even having to worry about voters being the ones getting bombed. It is very clearly untenable, and Ukraine is correct to try to parlay their experience here into better aid. No one else has fought a sustained attack at their scale. And Russia's experience would make them dangerous to NATO, even with the overwhelming advantages in other areas.

The Germans, Poles, and Danes have all been watching. A number of partnerships are happening between Ukraine and those countries making weapons and with observers.

 

[Anacher]

Trump is a fan of decapitation strikes. That goes back to his first term. I think he doesn't understand why Iran has not surrendered already, because he doesn't really get that there are organizations that are not fully cults of personality and that can therefore withstand a decapitation. Certainly there was a lot of that with Khomeini, and then again but maybe a less degree with (Ali) Khamenei. I know little about it, really. But I at least can imagine a government that can carry on a war without its former top tiers of politicians and generals because the next in line are capable enough for that.

Khamanei had managed to stay in charge of his system for a long time, and that tells us that he was a capable politician - no other politician was able to outmaneuver him and displace him from that leadership. But that's in part because the system allowed him to appoint the members of the council from which he drew his official authority.

The council picked Mojtaba Khamenei as successor. That is certainly a sign of a council that doesn't think they're beaten yet. They didn't double down and they didn't replace Ali Khamenei with a less ideological, less hostile to America/Israel figure. They could have. It was at least in part to send that message, both to their attackers and to the people of Iran. It could also be a sign of a different kind of weakness - defaulting to the son. But only if there was a more capable leader they could have chosen instead that would also send the same message.

I read this article from The Atlantic, and I think it fits as well. Basically it calls this "Victory Disease". Basically, the easy victories elsewhere convinced him that this one would be easy too. (Never mind what the experts said... he fired most of them anyway).

Gift link to the Atlantic article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2...opy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

 

[Anacher]

Sorry, another thought on the matter:

Personally, I don't think Israel will consider the mission truly finished until they can get inside those underground facilities and ensure every piece of equipment needed for making a nuclear bomb is destroyed. That means convincing Trump to stay in the fight, and it means boots on the ground. Maybe mostly Israel boots, but ground forces of some type.

Because Trump knows that he will have a huge blowback at home, he's going to try to goad anyone else to rebel/have troops on the ground. The Kurds, Israelis, anyone... since he didn't plan for a damn thing beyond the start of this shitshow.

 

[Anacher]

A fun article wherein we all say, "no one could've seen this coming!"... except everyone could except the current US regime.

Short version... Ukraine offered anti drone defenses... and the US didn't do anything with it,

https://www.axios.com/2026/03/10/us-ukraine-anti-drone-offer

 

[Anacher]

So, I'm trying to make a summary of the first couple of weeks of war.

• no war plan
• no war objectives beyond "bomb everything we can find"
• the strait is closed
• no plan for the inevitable oil crisis, including even surprise that this has happened at all
• No regime change because the population isn't armed, there's not a strong opposition at all and the Kurds have said "been there, done that, not doing that again"
• new tariffs for allies because why not
• ~150 US soldier wounded and ~8 dead
• the war has expanded to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein, Iraq (edit: goates pointed out correctly that I've forgotten to include Oman, Cyprus and Azerbaijan - thanks for the correction!)
• ~175 dead little girls because the US used 10+ years old plans to bomb a school
• 3000+ deaths between Lebanon and Iran
• the whole peninsula's economy is doomed
• Russia is making money
• China is collecting data and their ships are getting through
• $12b wasted on this crap
• a few airframes are gone
• you've pissed off basically ALL your allies at the same time while tanking the global markets

Have I missed something?

Good job US of A. Really good job.

-Burn through all the expensive interceptor missiles shooting down cheap strike drones.
-Publicly invite the Kurds to rebel after breaking multiple agreements with them in the past.

 

[Anacher]

This just has to be plain old ass-covering. Invading Iran has been discussed on the regular since the Shah fell and every single time, Iran's ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz has been a leading factor in deciding it wasn't worth it.

Though I suppose that with Hegseth and Gabbard in charge, complete moronity is viable explanation for ignoring decades of intelligence conclusions that an Iranian war was stupid.

Trump does have a distain for experts since he knows all and everything is simple. So even if there was anyone left who would tell him that this was all an idiotic idea, he'd ignore them anyway.

 

[Anacher]

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.

I just hung out with a Iraq and Afghanistan vet this last weekend, and he is of the same mindset of your friend. He also had many nicknames for Hegseth and Trump that I'm not allowed to use here.

 

[Anacher]

Iran is controlling the US response. The US depends on the strait, and Iran controls it utterly. The US can't hope to take that control away without a massive offensive that has to utterly obliterate the entire regime across the whole country. Remember, the missiles Iran is using have an effective range of a few thousand kilometres, so they could be fired into the strait from anywhere in Iran.

The US has caused a lot of damage, true. Iran is winning the war and forcing the US to back down. Trump is getting pressure from the moneyed interests, who all stand to lose as this continues. They never thought Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, which is what everyone on the planet knew would happen except US "leadership" under the mad king, Trump. He's buckled under the pressure and since he never defined any goal for his war, there's nothing for him to hold on to. Why bother fighting when he'll lose money and gain nothing?

Sadly, since US diplomacy is utterly worthless and the US cannot be trusted on any treaty, it'll be up to other nations (prob the EU+UK) to broker the peace and return Iran to something like the treaty Obama made with them.

The Straits fall under a quote from Dune (and probably other places).

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it".

More so if they decide which ships can pay a toll to leave (say to China) and all others are not allowed.

 

[Anacher]

Well, given that the market share has been in the 90 percent range for a couple of years I would expect it to go up. I'm not sure the Iran war will change that much when it comes to EVs for Norway.

Random fun fact:
(quoting from the linked article)
In January 2026, only 98 diesel cars were sold across all of Norway, alongside 29 hybrids and 7 petrol-only cars.

https://electrek.co/2026/02/03/even...s-norway-only-sold-98-diesel-cars-in-january/

 

[Anacher]

Not to worry, I'm sure we can make due with a few less dolls.

And you only need 3 pencils, not 30.

 

[Anacher]

Cyan, Magenta and Yellow pencils /s

And Cyan is already out for some reason.