The Marine with the broken hand is also the Green Party candidate for US Senate in NC: https://ballotpedia.org/Brian_McGinnis_(North_Carolina)
War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
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The Marine with the broken hand is also the Green Party candidate for US Senate in NC: https://ballotpedia.org/Brian_McGinnis_(North_Carolina)
MAGA was against it when Trump was against it, and now that Trump has done it, they're for it.
More along that line of discussion. The gulf countries are important in energy, transport, world trade, banking, compute power. Just one scary example from the (paywalled) Foreign Policy article "The Iran War Is Jeopardizing the Entire Global Economy"
The overall American political reaction to the war seems at least part predicated on the idea that Americans live separately from the world economy and actions can be taken in Iran without changing life at home. I don't see how that can be true now.
Speaking of insanity, I was just watching Trey Crowder's YouTube rant and he mentioned that there are all these Americans and Brits stuck in Dubai and that, while the British government was busy reaching out to them to help arrange their evacuation, the American government has no similar capability.... Indeed, it seems that if you are an American stranded by the American government making war, it's on you to find a way home. Government 'effenciency' in action.
The other side of this for China is it gives them an idea of how many missiles and drones they will need to out last the US and anyone else that comes to Taiwan's aid if/when they do decide to attack. Iran has been able to build thousands while under heavy sanctions. How many can China build (or has already built)?
I'm hearing about the energy price increases from foreign relatives—and they're asking me what's going on in Washington.
Regarding the effect of those costs on Americans, it's only yet another economic stumbling block amongst the numerous tariff spats, domestic and international law violations, and other shenanigans outside of the Iran conflict. The question is whether one or a combination of them will become the straw to break the camel's back of the American consumer in particular or the economy in general. The Administration is seemingly wanting to test the limits of the vaunted American Exceptionalism.
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.
Iran has already shown their inability to damage the US and Israel's war-making capability with drones and missile launches during the 2025 Israel-Iran war, and Israel in particular demonstrated the ability to fend off mass missile strikes while degrading the opposition's ability to fire them during their combined campaigns on Gaza and Lebanon.
Ukraine's problems with Russia's missiles and drones aren't necessarily anything to do with the capabilities of those weapons themselves, but that Ukraine doesn't have any reliable way of disrupting their production.
The US and Israel have air superiority (if not outright air supremacy) over Iranian airspace, and are actively attack Iran's weapons facilities. The US and Israel don't need to have an inexhaustible supply of interceptors -- they just need to have enough to outlast Iran's existing missile stock, and there's a good chance that they do. Drones on their own can be intercepted by less expensive means.
Ukraine's problems with Russia's missiles and drones aren't necessarily anything to do with the capabilities of those weapons themselves, but that Ukraine doesn't have any reliable way of disrupting their production.
The US and Israel have air superiority (if not outright air supremacy) over Iranian airspace, and are actively attack Iran's weapons facilities. The US and Israel don't need to have an inexhaustible supply of interceptors -- they just need to have enough to outlast Iran's existing missile stock, and there's a good chance that they do. Drones on their own can be intercepted by less expensive means.
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.
Yeah, I think you’re dramatically overstating the ease with which a Shahed can be artisanally manufactured. They’re not going to be made in some dudes garage.
And the existing drones aren’t guerilla-style distributed in ones and twos through the country. They’re in military warehouses and Air Force bases.
For sure Ukraine has shown us that drones allow a smaller military to punch above its weight and that’s a problem. But the US will have both air superiority and incredible battlefield visibility with satellites - something they have never fully provided to Ukraine.
Iran builds ~500 Shahed drones a month with the ability to surge to 10,000/month [reuters] at a cost of 20-50K each
US produced 600 PAC-3 Patriot interceptors in 2025 at a cost of $3-4 million each ( = 50/month)
US produced 11 THAAD interceptors in FY 2024 and 12 in FY 2025, surging to 96/year for 2026 (or 8/month) at a cost of ~12 million each
I don't know Iran's ballistic missile production rate, but it's a good guess that it's much higher than 8/month
Following the lessons of America in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's forces are organized into a "Decentralized Mosaic Defense" system of 31 autonomous military commands that have individual pre-set objectives and a "negative command structure" which means they will continue attacking autonomously and asymmetrically until they are ordered to stop, in other words decapitation strikes or taking out command and control just means there is no one that can order the missiles to stop coming.
EDIT - asymmetrically meaning they will try to inflict economic damage by keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, hitting oil terminals, hotels where American troops are stationed, etc., making the protracted war as painful as possible for the rest of the world.
They are planning to hunker down and wait out the Americans/Israelis. Iran understands that if they come to the negotiating table now, they will just be subject to strategic bombings and decapitation strike every couple of years going into the foreseeable future. Iran will make the war as painful as possible for the West.
See the Houthis or Taliban for a smaller version of their strategy. That is why there will be American boots on the ground, and why the boots on the ground will be a disaster for America.
US produced 600 PAC-3 Patriot interceptors in 2025 at a cost of $3-4 million each ( = 50/month)
US produced 11 THAAD interceptors in FY 2024 and 12 in FY 2025, surging to 96/year for 2026 (or 8/month) at a cost of ~12 million each
I don't know Iran's ballistic missile production rate, but it's a good guess that it's much higher than 8/month
Following the lessons of America in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's forces are organized into a "Decentralized Mosaic Defense" system of 31 autonomous military commands that have individual pre-set objectives and a "negative command structure" which means they will continue attacking autonomously and asymmetrically until they are ordered to stop, in other words decapitation strikes or taking out command and control just means there is no one that can order the missiles to stop coming.
EDIT - asymmetrically meaning they will try to inflict economic damage by keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, hitting oil terminals, hotels where American troops are stationed, etc., making the protracted war as painful as possible for the rest of the world.
They are planning to hunker down and wait out the Americans/Israelis. Iran understands that if they come to the negotiating table now, they will just be subject to strategic bombings and decapitation strike every couple of years going into the foreseeable future. Iran will make the war as painful as possible for the West.
See the Houthis or Taliban for a smaller version of their strategy. That is why there will be American boots on the ground, and why the boots on the ground will be a disaster for America.
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And who's going to fund that? Iran's leadership is in disarray, and while you may think of that as "dozens of newly autonomous regional commanders to stop", it's much more likely to wind up similar to Gaza where military weapons production and importation ceases because the institutions of society itself are too damaged to function beyond what's needed to eke out a basic existence.
When I say that Ukraine can't reliably disrupt Russia's weapons production, I'm not simply talking about the physical production, but the economic capabilities and motivations that underpin it.
Iran is simply in no place to sustain a long-term conflict with the combined might of the US and Israel. Last time they tried, they capitulated within 12 days, and that was with the US largely staying out of the fighting.
Iran, a country larger than Mongolia, will be reduced to an economic situation comparable to Gaza? By what forces?
There’s a lot of runway between here and there.
Iran also has a very nonstandard economy due to living under sanctions for so long and some weird economic incentives. There's a lot of cryptocurrency activity going on there, for example.
They've designed in the devolution to local command in the expectation of the destruction of central command, it's not an ad-hoc adaptation, so they almost certainly have a plan for how to sustain it. They've also just been handed a refresher on the unifying national story that was the losses they sustained in the Iran-Iraq war (without which the regime would likely have softened after the death of Khomeini).
They've designed in the devolution to local command in the expectation of the destruction of central command, it's not an ad-hoc adaptation, so they almost certainly have a plan for how to sustain it. They've also just been handed a refresher on the unifying national story that was the losses they sustained in the Iran-Iraq war (without which the regime would likely have softened after the death of Khomeini).
Yemen is in no place to sustain a long-term conflict with the US and Saudi Arabia, with a starving population and humanitarian crisis, economically devastated. But the missiles keep coming.
The US lost 3 FA-18's ($60M ea, and from falling overboard or similar rather than being shot down) and had 7 MQ-9 Reaper drones ($30M ea) shot down by Houthis during Operation Rough Rider. And the Houthis are still running Yemen and the missiles are still coming, with no way to get them out without a massive and bloody ground invasion.
LATE EDIT: also, Iran capitulated in July, and in 7 months later in February America/Israel simply attacked them again, killing Khameni and the senior leadership.
So Iran has been given a very clear message what capitulation/appeasement means: a continuous future of air strikes and "mowing the grass" whenever it is politically expedient for whoever is in power in Israel or America.
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Robert Pape explains why air power has never produced regime change in 100 years of bombing campaigns:
View: https://youtu.be/Fv7EslZ3ZAE?t=83
Time article with an interview:
https://time.com/7382278/iran-bombing-regime-change-pape/
View: https://youtu.be/Fv7EslZ3ZAE?t=83
Time article with an interview:
Q: What is the escalation trap, and how does it apply to this conflict?
[Robert Pape]: The escalation trap occurs when supreme confidence in tactical success leads to not taking seriously that the enemy will become more nationalist, more aggressive as a result of the attack. With precision smart bombs, the trap is especially seductive. Smart bombs are nearly 100% tactically successful. But the goal is not just to crater, knock down buildings, [or] kill individuals. The goal is to produce a change in the policies of the enemy government. For that, you need to change politics in your direction, not just destroy objects or kill people.
However, even when the attacker may have 100% tactical success, politics almost always moves in the opposite direction of what the attacker wants. The bombing itself infuses nationalism in the regime and across the society, and that nationalism as it's infused in the politics, radicalizes and makes the regime and society more coherent against the foreign attacker, more willing to take risks, to retaliate against the foreign attacker, more willing to accept costs, not to give in to the foreign attacker.
You see this on display in Iran in the last few days. In President Trump’s interviews, his public statements have ranged from describing a short campaign to a potentially longer one. Thirty-six hours ago he publicly spoke about off-ramps. That's the illusion of control, the very illusion of control that is encouraged in the smart bomb age. When a leader sees a PowerPoint briefing that shows over 90% probability of destroying that target, that creates the illusion of control. However, it's a mirage. Tactical perfection does not automatically lead to strategic success and overconfidence that it does is the trap that leads to the opposite—strategic failure.
https://time.com/7382278/iran-bombing-regime-change-pape/
That might help Israel, but in the case of the US they're too busy using their lasers to shoot Mylar balloons on the Mexican border.
The Canadian gov't is also busy arranging flights to get Canadians out of harm's way. I wonder if any Americans will try to get on board those planes?
People keep making this claim without addressing Japan. Let's hope it doesn't go that far, but the precedent exists.
I'm kind of confused by the emoji reactions to this post. "Love," "haha," and "laugh" are kind of weird reactions to "we can't stop missiles from hitting residential neighborhoods." But even so, it's very unlikely that there's insufficient supply across the middle east, and this is just some people trying to justify a larger budget going forward (which they will get).
Oh, the right absolutely does -- anti-semitism is bipartisan. But when three people on a bridge hold a Nazi flag, it's national news and they get called out. When hundreds of people in New York protest outside of synagogues, we're told it's really in opposition to the state of Israel and we waive away that Jews in synagogues who are not elected officials of the state of Israel are getting harassed. We should call it out on both sides when we see it.
Eh, that feels like an iffy comparison. Japan capitulated due to years of attrition in direct combat action, years of bombing, two atomic bombs, and the very real threat of being invaded by both the US and the USSR. Japan did not capitulate just because of air campaigns.
And even if you believe that it did, is one debateable success amongst dozens of unambiguous failures really the evidence standard you want to use, for any role other than Devil's advocate?
To put it bluntly, I think it would be healthy for the current US regime, as well as for many Americans, if there were obvious consequences to them traveling the world blowing up anything they dislike the looks of. On top of that it'd be pretty funny if even after years of cheap drones vs expensive and slow to produce interceptors this hasn't been part of the consideration when making the choice to bomb Iran.
Yeah, well, Hegseth is running the show, so what do you expect?
If bringing Japanese to the conversation, the perfect example why bombing campaign along DOES NOT work and backing the video's theory would be the Bombing of Chongqing. With terrain similar to Iran (Chongqing was and still is a city built on mountains), the city endured more than 6 years of intense air bombing and did not capitulate at all.
I hope Americans are ready for 100 dollar oil and boots on the ground which is going to happen period. There is no choice in the matter. I say 5 weeks from now.
No two conflicts are the same and I agree that there are a lot of significant differences.
Still, Iran has been subjected to years of sanctions and multiple limited direct conflicts. They have also been involved in conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Gaza, and Iraq (through aid and likely quite a few little green men)
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.
Mmm. I took the point to be "without boots on the ground, too".
So like, Japan fought a very long and bloody war using all kinds of military assets. It's wasn't "just" an atomic bomb that brought about the regime change...
I'd need more context to say protesting outside of synagogues is problematic. Does the synagogue support Israel, does the rabbi? If so, that seems like a good reason to protest there.
Ultimately if the admin wants to go in, I guess they go in. I would just have expected the military commanders to have pointed this out as a danger. Surely not all the people who can count were fired for having the wrong genitals or purple hair?
Systems like Iron Beam have been in development for a long time. They need infrastructure level support, note the yellow power cables and blue water lines feeding that beast. That's fine for stationary defense of say an airbase or city, a warship can provide the power and cooling, but has layers of other systems and mobility to deal with such threats.
A point defense battalion could hypothetically deploy such an asset, these are not particularly mobile systems, no shoot and scoot tactics. Perhaps useful for establishing a protected beachhead on say Yonaguni.
That's also what the interview with Robert Pape posted up-page says. The escalation ladder it lays out is as follows:
1. Bomb Fordow, be happy that you blew it all up, but over time suffer nagging doubts that you actually got the nuclear material.
2. Six months later you are now fearful that you missed the underlying target at Fordow so you do regime change. This also does not prove the elimination of the nuclear material
3. Six months later the same fears return. Partial ground invasion and occupation of some assets like oilfields.
It's presented as a consequence of having a high level of control over the tactical and operational levels of actions, the "smart-bomb trap" guarantees that you will hit what you decided to hit, but that level of control and certainty fails to extend to the strategic level (did you achieve what you decided to achieve) so it propels escalation.
It's an interesting viewpoint from the military planning side. On the political side, it could be as simple as a leader looking for distractions to domestic problems. Having a boogeyman with existing military capabilities, but not near-peer and far away provides an evergreen resource for this. Granted, there's a risk of things heading sideways at a point—either militarily, politically, or both.
It’s a useful psychology exploit for lots of things, including storytelling. You give someone a big gun and they will find reasons to use it, but guns can’t solve every problem so they just use it more.
What exactly do you think goes into a shahed that makes it so difficult to manufacture? Other than the explosives your favorite "builds stuff" youtuber could easily do it.
Any country that expects to be attacked by a larger country is obviously going to disperse their forces so they're not easy to take out in a handful of locations. What, you think Sweden builds the Gripen to take off from highways in case Russia attacks, but it never occurred to Iran to disperse their forces?