War with...Iran?

[CPX]

Iran is Shia, not Sufi, but yes that division is the root of it. In general though, nobody really likes Iran in that neighborhood.

Saudi and Iran also started normalizing relations in 2023. I hope that might have something to do with refusing airspace.

 

[CPX]

Iran is not an Arab country, it's Persian.

 

[CPX]

Almost. It's a multi-ethnic country.
Ethnic Persians (Farsi) are only 60% of the population. There are some differing numbers for the rest, but Azeris (a Turkic people) are 16-20%, Kurds at least 10%, and there plenty more: Baluchis, Lurs, Mazandaranis, Semnanis, Turkmen, Arabs...
The diverse makeup, and having only ~60% being faithful Muslims (*), is a big part of the reason why it was always a difficult country to govern.

(*) going by Western surveys. There are a lot of atheists and agnostics, and some Zoroastrians, Christians ans Jews.
The regime claims 99.4% are Muslim which is bullshit.

I didn't say Iran was a single-ethnicity state. Incredibly few state ever meet that qualification, though not for lack of trying.

 

[CPX]

Trump just announce corroboration that Khamenei is dead.

Of course. Far more useful for certain interested parties to make a martyr for followers to rally around rather than let mortality work someone naturally into irrelevance.

 

[CPX]

I didn't say you claimed it was a single ethnicity.
My point was that with the largest ethnic group comprising only 60% of the population, it can't really be considered a Persian/Farsi country.

No. I will not go down this road of pedantic bullshit with you. Such a conversation would go wildly off topic and not in ways any of us would enjoy.

 

[CPX]

IMO this is a very important characteristic of the country (which very few people know), and key for any informed discussion of "the day after" issues, but you do you.

Nope. I don't play minutiae pedant games with someone that wants to set unknown conditionals and qualifiers. I don't know what % threshold a country's population needs to be for you to consider it a $culture or $ethnicity country, and I certainly won't care when you play coy and smug about it.

 

[CPX]

Kurdish state in the cards?

Any Iranian Kurd leader believing this administration after the Syrian Kurds were betrayed not once but twice will be lucky to survive their own people after the Turkish military gets done bombing what the Israelis and US miss.

 

[CPX]

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.

You sure about that?

UK Reform is openly embracing it.


France's zealots apparently decide that RN isn't zealous enough for them.

That's just two examples. The US is only alone in that we have them in power right now. A lot more European nations are one bad election from a rehash of joining the 2003 Coalition of the Willing than you might be comfortable acknowledging.

 

[CPX]

There are some in Reform, like Danny Kruger, who is a lunatic. Meanwhile Farage hints at things that his US funders want him to espouse, but he's still nervous.

Every country in Europe has a problem with the far right, but most such parties so far are not talking about the return of Christ.

Which just reinforces my claim: pick a European nation and they are just one bad election away from those views coming out into the open.

 

[CPX]

I’m sure Erdogan will be thrilled to bomb those groups.

Likely with the help of whatever forces the Syrians and Iraqis can muster to help bomb, too.

 

[CPX]

Kushner is going to be found dead or disappeared. You don’t fuck with people who are okay with dismembering a journalist with saws.

Well someone's either found OR disappeared. Not really room for both.

 

[CPX]

Is it bad I really want a 'shopped version of W's "mission accomplished" but with Trump and the banner saying "Mission pretty much complete, well mostly" or whatever his previous word salad of the war's over for realsy was.

Reddit got you, fam.

 

[CPX]

The Guardian's Jennifer Rankin writes a damning roundup of the EU's various and tepid responses to the US/Israel illegal war on Iran. No unity, no message, no courage except for Spain's Sánchez:

She goes on looking at the statements given this week across the EU and from analysts who are a bit more honest about what is and is not going on in the Union. Rankin calls von der Leyen's speech this week "blunt" where she says

other action from France and the UK are mute. Only Sánchez appears to be speaking truth to the powers.

Seeing this kind of mixed response to an easy chance for a unified repudiation does not really inspire confidence in any power bloc to assert enough influence to affect any sort of outcome...honestly feels like anywhere at this point.

 

[CPX]

A "decapitated" country with a 100% destroyed military...can still close a geographic choke point with such minimal effort necessitating this weird social media call to aid. I wonder how many of those US military personnel in the area enjoy being made to look so incapable.

Will be to hopefully in two sentences.

Were those sentences? I lost track.

 

[CPX]

Fiber optic drones work just fine over open water.

USMC demonstrates via exercise, Ukraine demonstrates via warfare.

 

[CPX]

You can also have Russian friends with a factory where the US can't bomb. The question there is just how much payback is Putin after for the US giving arms to Ukraine.

Russia-to-Iran logistics aren't exactly speedy nor fully out of range of Ukraine.

 

[CPX]

I'm sure all those Board of Peace members would help secure the Strait if they were asked.

 

[CPX]

Now I'm picturing Trump doing that Gollum scene with looking back at the camera from opposite sides of the tree or whatever...

I was thinking more the "Shadow Cabinet" scene from Babylon 5.

 

[CPX]

Publicly available data claims the new B-21 Raider can also cary the JASSM, though unknown how many.

 

[CPX]

Cross-post reply from the Ukraine thread:

https://share.google/LObKJZKxg5sFe3Ods

Finnish president Stubb floats the idea of EU military assistance to the US in Iran, and in return the US would supply aid to Ukraine.

Honestly, the only path I can see to end in some sort of peace without catastrophic damage requires another major power intervene. The US has no offramp. Israel is full mask-off. The Gulf states seem intent on eliminating the competition.

 

[CPX]

The major power intervention is China steps in and brokers a peace deal that gets the oil flowing again.

When that happens, it starts the slow process where China takes the place of the US as the de facto global leader and the rotten hollowed out US economy crashes. The good news or bad news is that China will sit back and watch the US, Israel, Europe, flail around and bleed and suffer for a while until they have no choice but to intervene.

I'll believe China has a chance to fill that role when they manage a peaceful transition to Xi Jinping's successor.

 

[CPX]

Gun to my head, if someone was to ask me what I thought the quickest and least bloody end to this ridiculous war was- I’d say China should give Iran a Nuke and create a bilateral nuclear defense agreement with them.

China would not need to gift nuclear weapons if they enter a defense pact with Iran. For Iran, any defense relationship with China would sit upon poor foundations.

A) China still aims to take Taiwan and may expend similar resources as Russia did Ukraine. The drain of resources left Syria and Armenia both twisting in the breeze, with the former collapsing from lack of support and the other losing territory to a Turkish-backed Azerbaijan. China attacking Taiwan could leave Iran exposed.

B) Xi Jinping will eventually no longer lead China. If everyone's lucky (hah), they transition quietly behind the scenes to a capable successor. But that's the rub. There's none. Their transition of power not only faces high risk of internal violence but also a lack of competent leadership.

Europe's too fractuous both on their own and in the face of the US and Russia to either side. The only other power with maybe enough credibility is India. While they're vulnerable to B a bit, they still have a not-completely-gone process and, unlike China, not gearing up for the violent real estate game as far as I can tell.

 

[CPX]

This is great news if it's true. TACO is the best thing we can hope for at this point, followed by adults working with Khamenei to reopen the Strait.

Trying to figure out of this is the diplomatic equivalent of being a pidgeon or a grackle. Either way, shit out a giant mess to leave others on cleanup is sadly better for everyone involved.

But I'm not sure I buy the claims of winding down since we just launched another 2500 Marines in that general direction.

Those boats have time to turn around.

 

[CPX]

So he's got what, 30,000 ish troops for his invasion? That's probably an order of magnitude too few to actually subdue Iran and occupy it. But it is plenty to cause a mess and get a lot of people killed and wounded for absolutely nothing.

Iraq peaked in 2007 with 170K US troops and another 10K coalition troops with them. That's after four years. The invasion was 150K US.

 

[CPX]

It could be viewed as a type of asset allocation or risk mitigation. Meanwhile, the US and its proxies focused on expensive military assets that are few in number, and as is becoming more clear, less-than-invincible. The results of this conflict could end up as a cautionary tale for future historians.

"Quantity is a quality of its own." -Unknown