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Monitoring the situation in Iran

Yeah most Middle Eastern militaries are an absolute joke. They don't evolve with the times and talk major shit while parading 1960s Russian bullshit tech.

I would say in some ways the US is downgraded since the first Gulf War, but they're constantly applying lessons learned in terms of hunting people down. They might not have the sheer force in terms of soldiers though, but enemy commanders are absolutely fucked.

Lessons learned in HUMINT from the last 20 years are invaluable. You cannot hide anymore unless you completely go off grid, even then, there's no guarantee.
 
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Conflicts like this really highlight just how central Carrier groups are to force projection.

Just listened to a war college guy on the radio explaining the roles of each carrier in the region.

One carrier is operating in an offensive role, projecting power and striking targets, while the second one is in a defensive posture - focused on sea and air control and keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and secure against Iranian threats.
 
Through the lens of that worldview, how do you explain Iran in the 60s and 70s?
Attempts to conduct internal reform which ultimately were met with backlash from within the conservative culture that had dominated Iran (and other Islamic countries) for generations. It's the same perspective that views many events in the twentieth century as part of a prolonged struggle among Arab and Islamic nations to redefine their identity in light of the rise of Western Empires.
 
First deployment of...

Black-Tomahawk-Missile.jpg


The TLAM BBC (Big Black Cruisemissile)
Once you go black...
 
Attempts to conduct internal reform which ultimately were met with backlash from within the conservative culture that had dominated Iran (and other Islamic countries) for generations. It's the same perspective that views many events in the twentieth century as part of a prolonged struggle among Arab and Islamic nations to redefine their identity in light of the rise of Western Empires.

And what happened to eliminate the people pushing Westernization, and put the prime movers of that conservative culture in power?
 
Conflicts like this really highlight just how central Carrier groups are to force projection.

Just listened to a war college guy on the radio explaining the roles of each carrier in the region.

One carrier is operating in an offensive role, projecting power and striking targets, while the second one is in a defensive posture - focused on sea and air control and keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and secure against Iranian threats.


In terms of strategy, I would put teenagers trained in Western warfare against Iran's most senior military commanders. They're just comically stupid.
 
Is the lesson learned that they should hit the next bad guy even harder and faster and hope the fallout is less this time? We'll check back in 10 years and see.
The lesson actually taken from the post-9/11 wars seems to be 'don't try to occupy' rather than 'never use the military offensively again'.

In an alternate timeline where the post-9/11 wars never happened, or if they had more positive outcomes, we would probably be expecting a US ground invasion imminently, but nobody even really considers that a possibility now because of how those wars went.
 
The left is freaking out because l goes against their Islamofascist globalist agenda.

Never saw a single Gaza supporter say anything about the tens of thousands of Iranians slaughtered last month begging for this help. The only real feminists are Iranian women dying to remove the hijab and morality police.
 
And what happened to eliminate the people pushing Westernization, and put the prime movers of that conservative culture in power?
They weren't eliminated, they were deceived by the Khomeini regime into believing it had the best interests of the people in mind. Remember that there were strong British interests backing the Shah and his reforms (British oil, basically, and most of the profit was not given back to Iran). It was very much a case of western capitalism exploiting a weak third world country, but the Iranian share of those profits, although small in relative terms, was still enough to finance an unprecedented leap forward in quality of life for large parts of the country.

Then you have class struggles, globalization, and the cold war going on in the background. Arab and Islamic nations were still drawing inspiration from Communism for their new identities. Add all that together and you get Khomeini's successful campaign.
 
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They weren't eliminated, they were deceived by the Khomeini regime into believing it had the best interests of the people in mind. Remember that there were strong British interests backing the Shah and his reforms (British oil, basically, and most of the profit was not given back to Iran). It was very much a case of western capitalism exploiting a weak third world country, but the Iranian share profits, although small in relative terms, was still enough to finance an unprecedented leap forward in quality of life for large parts of the country.

Then you have class struggles, globalization, and the cold war going on in the background. Arab and Islamic nations were still drawing inspiration from Communism for their new identities. Add all that together and you get Khomeini's successful campaign.

I think you just made the case of how radical Islamization isn't necessarily a foregone conclusion, but rather a response to imperialist interference, when an otherwise liberalizing Westernization culture would have naturally taken over like it has in mostly everywhere else in the world that doesn't experience endless war.
 
Crazy. Looks like it's confirmed now he's killed (along with lots of other high level people) going by all you guys pasted tweets above.

I wonder how all this intel shit works. Is it simply boring shit like James Bond stuff like moles, tagging cars and tapping phones. Or more high tech than that? Who knows. Maybe it's as simple as a chauffer is paid off by the US to signal to them when the target is at home. Then.... Boom.
 
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Dubai airport hit?

That is insanity.

Yeah the arseholes just started firing at everything and anything - they basically took the "use it or lose it" idiom to heart. Not sure what they were thinking wasting missiles firing at largely abandoned US facilities and various other civilian heavy locations.
 
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Dubai airport hit?

That is insanity.
My son was watching a livestream of a french youtuber he follows that lives in Dubai (Unchained). He mentionned that it's Iran firing missiles at u.s bases that gets intercepted and then the missiles fall on the ground.

No idea if that's the case, it's what I overheard
 
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I'm gonna share a few thoughts on the nature of war in general.

The reason Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan went so poorly is because after a point, a country like the United States literally can't win a traditional war because society loses it's taste for it, the nature of war is women getting raped, civilians getting killed, an overall very bloody and unpleasant business that was only able to be done because the public could be kept in the dark and the only way to win is to win at any cost and not worry about the "optics", but as soon as the age of TV started and people starting seeing images like the Tet Offensive, that was over.

But we seem to have entered a new age of warfare again, where we just commit a bunch of strikes very specifically rather than the full scale "boots on the ground" invasion, which can only play out one way by this point, America might literally never fight another like Iraq ever again (if we're smart)

But I wish Trump good luck on this endeavor, Iran was a band aid that needed to get ripped off sooner or later, I remember a lot of discussion about a potential war with them in 2006.
 
I think you just made the case of how radical Islamization isn't necessarily a foregone conclusion, but rather a response to imperialist interference, when an otherwise liberalizing Westernization culture would have naturally taken over like it has in mostly everywhere else in the world that doesn't experience endless war.
It's not as clear cut as that, I'm afraid. And it goes back to before the first world war. If you want to dig deeper into it, it goes back centuries. Within the Islamic Empire there were forces pushing for radicalization and forces pushing for westernization, even before the rise of Western Empires that happened in the 19th century.

It's easy to put the responsibility for this outcome solely on the west, but it ignores the fact that Islam was sinking from its enlightened heights of the 14th century even as America was yet to be colonized.

It ignores the fact that Islamic Empires attempted to conquer Europe in the 17th century and were almost successful in doing so. They reached as far as Vienna before they were pushed back, and the cultural influence that had on the west was probably an unforseen consequence, from the point of view of the ruling powers of the time.

It ignores the Islamic slave trade which was of larger scale (iirc) and longer duration than the European and American ones. It ignores the fact that Muslim terrorism by non state actors (that was secretly indirectly funded by Islamic states) is not a new invention either, and was practiced at least as far back as the 18th or 17th centuries.

There's a ton of history we don't learn about and much of it has to do with the empires that came before the west.
 
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No one told them about Zoom

Not surprised the attack was during the day - whether it was forced upon by intel or not.

If there's one thing about Trump is you never know what you'll get. Very unpredictable. That can be both a good thing and bad thing pending what's involved. He does this all the time signing this or that with his magic marker, or doing tariffs or business deals out of nowhere. One minute everything is chill. Next thing you know he says something or signs something at 2 pm that affects the stock market making it skyrocket or drop like a rock.
 
The reason Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan went so poorly is because after a point, a country like the United States literally can't win a traditional war because society loses it's taste for it, the nature of war is women getting raped, civilians getting killed, an overall very bloody and unpleasant business that was only able to be done because the public could be kept in the dark and the only way to win is to win at any cost and not worry about the "optics", but as soon as the age of TV started and people starting seeing images like the Tet Offensive, that was over.
Vietnam war was about ego of LBJ basically. There was no real goals and USA did not go full throttle from the start.
Iraq War originally went well and Saddam was killed fast. But then they decided to play into the nation bulding and perform de-baathification to create a "democracy".
The issue in Afghanistan was basically geography and another case of "nation building".


Voice of america was a democrat propaganda machine. In the age of Internet you don't need any of that.
 
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