War with...Iran?

[terrydactyl]

Well the good news is this isn't the Cold War, so the Strait being closed isn't an immediate flashpoint for further conflict.

I don't think China will be happy though, this isn't looking good.

From what I've seen of China over the decades is an ability to take the long view. And tend to come out ahead in the end.

 

[terrydactyl]

Dubai airport is closed and there are reports of drone attacks there. That effectively shuts down Emirates Airlines as that's there central hub.

My wife is scheduled to fly through there next week. I thing the trip is cancelled.

 

[terrydactyl]

The Ayatollah is 86. They had a succession plan going out several layers deep.

Trump told the Iranian people to overthrow their govt. With what weapons? IRGC and the militias are the ones armed.

If the people had the ability to overthrow the regime would they have been massacred in the tens of thousands just a few weeks ago?

He won't put boots on the ground so unless they can knock out all of the Iranian elites by missiles and bombs, the situation on the ground is unlikely to change.

If anything they should be airdropping weapons.

This reminds me of Bush Sr. telling the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam. Meanwhile our army was letting Saddam's army take home its heavy weapons like tanks. Remember how that went for the Kurds?

 

[terrydactyl]

War with Iran? Good. Long overdue. Iran has been fomenting violence and terror as well as oppressing its own population for decades. They've been at war with their neighbours, and us, for a very long time.

Just my opinion.

I could name a half-dozen other countries that are just as bad. Remember Afghanistan? Why single out Iran? Hell, the current administration it trying to put lipstick on Russia.

 

[terrydactyl]

Khamenei, assuming he is dead as per my previous post, died early this morning (MidEast time), in the first wave of the attack. There are good indications that so did Iran's Minister of Defense and the commander of the IRGC.
That means a leadership vacuum, in which case you have mid-level people making decisions they've had to make.

I've heard the Iranian leadership is like the Mafia, all vying for power. And if the Don is wiped out, it's an opportunity for those mid-level types.

 

[terrydactyl]

I'm waiting to see what lipstick the administration will put on the fallout when this plays out. Disruptions to markets, alliance frayed. Worse may be either, after bombing the hell out of them, an Ayotollah is still in charge and nothing really changed. Or they get regime change, except it's not a regime they like.

 

[terrydactyl]

This is fairly typical for any authoritarian society.

So The Death of Stalin was more like a documentary.

 

[terrydactyl]

[Trump] denounced the Iraq War as “the biggest single mistake made in the history of our country,” criticized “nation-builders,” and vowed to “measure our success” by “the wars we never get into.”

--Max Boot

 

[terrydactyl]

Joke's on you, they instead bombed a girl's school, so now those kids don't grow up at all, so they can't hate America.

Has that been confirmed? The problem is neither side's words can be trusted.
Didn't someone say the first casualty of war is the truth.

 

[terrydactyl]

Iran was doing fine until the Shah happened. Still can't understand why anyone would want his son in charge. Was a fairly brutal regime. So massive swing and the seizure of our embassy. A failed rescue and they didn't release the hostages until Reagan was sworn in. and Jimmy went back to peanut farming. Granted, what they have now is not good either. Killing the head of state is not a good move. Brand new martyr. Hopefully Congress has a spine and sez, no war for Donald, as he can start one but only they can declare one. Pretty glad I filled up my car.

Edit, to show how old I am, My first vote cast was for Jimmy Carter. Parents were not happy.

That 'happening' was the US overthrow of an elected government and it's replacement by a dictator. A lot of Americans don't know how much the the US hates democracies.

 

[terrydactyl]

Zoroastrianism is, surprisingly, a recognized legal religion in Iran, as are Christianity and Judaism. As long as the adherents don't criticize the regime or break Muslim Sharia law.
Agnosticism or atheism, or any other religion, are however illegal, and can get a person executed.

I believe the regime's goal is to use these minority religions as a tool to claim they are a free society. Much like the Nazis had model concentration camps.

 

[terrydactyl]

Bibi's literally in Berlin right now. Where it's safe.

Not as far as I know (and as part of a protest group which tracks his location closely, I'd know).
Where did you see that?

Yeah, I thought he is wanted for crimes against humanity. Safe to say he won't step out of the country.

 

[terrydactyl]

Meanwhile, WaPo has given Reza Pahlavi a soap box, even calling him "a leader of the Iranian democratic opposition"

Sickening.

 

[terrydactyl]

Are you suggesting there are good reasons to think that Reza Pahlavi's long-standing calls for democracy (via constitutional monarchy) are insincere? Or are you pointing to other issues such as a lack of support within Iran?

His father was also a "constitutional monarch." I suspect he'd like the same power as his brutal father.

 

[terrydactyl]

I'll put in my prediction here so I can refer to it later, right or wrong.

Because Trump won't put troop on the ground (which would be another Iraq) and the Iranian people do not hate the power to take on the security apparatus, the status quo will hold. The Islamic state will still be in power, albeit militarily damaged. Trump will move the goalpost, declaring victory and claim he 'taught them a lesson.' Meanwhile the Islamic state will declare victory having fended off the enemy.

All this with live lost, markets disrupted, and international relations in taters.

 

[terrydactyl]

Sadly in the realm of geopolitics this may just be "good enough" for everyone's sake. It sucks for the Iranians but taking them off the world stage is going to be a huge lift for the rest of the region and maybe even the rest of the world. And they may just "get there" eventually but it'll be on their own.

I disagree on this point. Iran will still be a force that will leave the region nervous. They'll still have their proxies in the region, and their missiles which they will rebuild probably with more urgency.

 

[terrydactyl]

This is a big assumption that Iran will not collapse after this war ends. The decapitation strike mentality is and always has been a bandaid but it has shown us that many states do collapse with enough disruption of leadership and resupply from allies. There is an underlying strategy here that is directly attempting and succeeding already at removing Iran’s revenue streams and organizers of them from its partners in Russia and China (oil and arms for starters), so the post-war maintenance of trade disruption will be key to stopping a military rebound.

My assumption is based on the history of dictatorships that were not militarily invaded. I'm hard pressed to think of any states that collapsed that way. Argentina after the Falklands is one. But look at Sadam in 1991. The typical way it happens is when the dictator falls is when he looses the backing of his military, and I don't see the Revolutionary Guard turning on the regime.

 

[terrydactyl]

I mean, that's precisely my point. I think the US gets a slight pass since it's essentially inconceivable that there would be, in the modern age, a strike on Pearl Harbor. If it comes to that then basically nobody on Oahu would be considered safe. But still I'm not exactly going to say the aggressor is intentionally bombing children if they're firing on Pearl Harbor. That's simply the name of the game with warfare. This school was in even closer proximity to a military installation. If Iran was really concerned about those kids and given their dicey geopolitical situation in the last 50 years, there should never have been civilians anywhere near that site.

Schools on US bases is a matter of convenience given the relative low risk. For Iran, human shields by design.

That quite a "No true Scotsman" argument.

 

[terrydactyl]

Emirates Airlines is hoping to resume some flights out of Dubai. That movie line comes to mind:

Do you feel lucky?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/world/middleeast/dubai-flights.html

 

[terrydactyl]

Trump said they're offering amnesty to the IRGC to surrender and that many have.

That probably means they will bunker down and see if US troops hit the ground.

If not, they can keep their power and money going since they controlled large parts of the economy.

They can't keep their story straight minute to minute. They claim we're not invading. So amnesty from what or who?

 

[terrydactyl]

Rubio gave their rationale: Israel was 100% going to attack Iran and the US knew that their Middle East military assets would be targeted in the retaliation, so it was safer to join and participate the attack.

I'm not agreeing with them, I'm laying out their justification.



"we knew that if Iran was attacked ... they would immediately come after us and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow."

View: https://x.com/Acyn/status/2028574121483993523

Like climate change deniers and flat Earther, sociopaths will find an explanation for anything. Logical is a different matter.

 

[terrydactyl]

More re Kurds:
Axios claims Trump talked to Iraqi Kurdish factions the day after the war started trying to get them to support an uprising of the Iranian Kurds; there are already several Kurdish groups organizing in the background, in Iran as well as in Iraq.
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/02/trump-iran-war-kurds-iraq
No idea if this is true, but it's untrue that Israel still has close ties to Kurds in Syria & Iraq.
Israel did nothing do stop the recent massacres & rapes of Kurds in Syria by armed forces answering to the A-Shara'a gov't (whereas it did stop the massacre of Druz), and hasn't had close ties to Iraqi Kurds since Netanyahu returned to power in 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Kurdistan_Region_relations

I wonder how many Kurds remember when Bush Sr. told them to revolt against Sadam in '91. Remember how that went? And do you think they'd trust Trump?

 

[terrydactyl]

US troops told that the war with Iran is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ

I knew Hegseth was a dangerous idiot, but this is very worrying.

Edit: I see I’m a little late to this one.

How is Hegseth different from the Iranian Mullahs? Both claim their violent acts are inspired and ordered by God.

I never thought I’d be seeing equivalence between the Islamic Republic and the USA.

I've been watching the Holy Republic of America rise since he days of Jerry Falwell.

 

[terrydactyl]

I'm not aware of another western country, with a historically white Christian tradition where there is any significant number of Christian zealots. The United States is alone in this.

Currently. It's interesting that in the past there were many western countries that were zealously Christian. But over the centuries they became more moderate while the US seems to have gone in the opposite direction.

 

[terrydactyl]

That the U.S. military went along with all this, and persists in going along with all this, tells you absolutely everything you need to know about the U.S. military.

The U.S. military had a long tradition of saluting and obeying orders, as it should be. You do not want a military that thinks obeying is optional. The exception is illegal orders.

 

[terrydactyl]

Paradox of Tolerance.

Yeah, I read somewhere that the US's religious freedom has led the religious extremists, vs European countries with state religions, e.g. the Church of England.

 

[terrydactyl]

It is actually more the opposite. Fundamentalist Christianity has been consistently shrinking and that has just driven them to be more angry, desperate and the ones that are left are the craziest ones. The US's problem as mentioned above is that Trump and friends have appealed to them and used them as a large part of the MAGA base and somehow gotten into power which has then put a lot of these nutbags into power. The actual churchs' influence have never been lower on their own.

Very slightly declining, per Pew,

"...the evangelical share of the adult population also has ticked down, going from 26% in 2007, to 25% in 2014, to 23% in 2023-24."

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-religious-identity/

 

[terrydactyl]

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...

Eh, you do understand "have" is present tense. And you're pointing out ancient history.

 

[terrydactyl]

Trump: "I guess the worst case is we do this and then somebody takes over who is as bad as the previous person. That could happen."

You can see the goal post moving already.

 

[terrydactyl]

Add in Suez (France and Britain and the origin of Europe’s “dependence” on the US military, pushed on us by Eisenhower) and British fuckery in Africa and Asia in the 40s and 50s.

And bringing it back to the current topic, Britain had a hand in the Iranian coup that installed the Shah in 1953 at the behest of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

 

[terrydactyl]

Trump threatens to cut off all trade with Spain and use bases in Spain for missions in this war on Iran.



https://www.politico.com/news/2026/...-to-cut-off-all-relations-with-spain-00808978

A great example of trump's ignorance. As Spain is part of the EU, he'd have to cut off the whole EU.

 

[terrydactyl]

Oh, come now, they never disliked military aggression. It's all the stuff we have done after the direct aggression is over to try and fix what we broke that they loathe. From their point of view, we are supposed to break things and then just leave whatever mess we make behind.

I keep thinking of a scene from Fall of Eagle where Kaiser Wilhelm says "I never wanted this war!" And his Chancellor later says "Yes, he wanted a victory."

 

[terrydactyl]

Yet more evidence that public opinion is fundamentally irrelevant in America. Forever War 2 3: Electric Boogaloo, here we come.

It's that line attributed to William Randolph Hearst to a correspondent, "You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war."

 

[terrydactyl]

Iran has an assessed stock of something like 80,000 Shaheds. And you can put them anywhere and everywhere.

Shutting down production of a weapon like Shahed is very difficult because they're simple, cheap, and can be built without a lot of infrastructure.

They can keep building them, dispersed, and keep launching them, from anywhere, and every time they do that they've spent $50,000 at most and the US has spent a million minimum to intercept. That's the economic disparity problem the US is now fighting. It's not about the capabilities of the weapons, it's about the cost of the weapons.


Air superiority is not going to help as much as you think it is, when you're fighting an enemy who is able to attack you with weapons it builds in sheds and garages and forces you to spend a massive amount of money to stop every attack.

And you can be pretty sure they are being built in mine shafts 1,000 underground.

 

[terrydactyl]

The was an occupation. Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers with boots on the ground.

For reference, that's of a country a fraction of the size of Iran, and an occupation force roughly the size of the active duty US Army today.

I think it would take much more than that to successfully occupy Iran.

Keep in mind, with Japan, the Emperor publicly addressed the people and said Japan was surrendering. And the vast majority of the population accepted and obeyed. It was a rare case and the occupation was quite peaceful. That's not happening again.

 

[terrydactyl]

Iraq having nationwide blackouts. Looks like Trump admin forgot that Iraq gets 40% of its power from Iran. Opps.

https://www.turkiyetoday.com/region...lls-citizens-to-leave-immediately-3215617?s=1

You can be sure Trump doesn't care one whit about Iraq. Have they ever given him gifts like the Saudis do?

 

[terrydactyl]

Back in 2006, Thomas Ricks wrote Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. In it, he details how screwed up the Bush administration was in it's invasion and occupation of Iraq. One would think officials would have absorbed the lesson.

It's looking like Trump is saying hold my beer.

 

[terrydactyl]

That would be the quagmire to end all quagmires, given the size and population of the country. I don't think even Trump and his minions are that stupid.

I heard that about George W back in 2003. Never underestimate the stupid when they band together.

 

[terrydactyl]

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.

In case you had any doubt, this is not about democracy, it's about have pliant leaders installed. See Venezuela.

 

[terrydactyl]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7SnaMphvug


Get ready for gas shortages like in 1979. Fights, National Guard having to provide security for fuel trucks, people stealing gas from neighbors, odd and even plate fuel days. I wonder how the MAGA folks react to this, they can't continue to blame Biden.

These are not bright people. Hell, they're still using Hillary as a strawman.