• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Monitoring the situation in Iran

already posted?
"According to the Israeli channel i24news, Netanyahu chaired a security meeting on Sunday that lasted about five hours, during which he outlined priorities for potential action against Iran. This could involve strikes against Iran, though its full scope and specific targets have not been publicly confirmed."

 
already posted?
"According to the Israeli channel i24news, Netanyahu chaired a security meeting on Sunday that lasted about five hours, during which he outlined priorities for potential action against Iran. This could involve strikes against Iran, though its full scope and specific targets have not been publicly confirmed."


Feels made up, esp the name. I don't see any mention of this so far on Israeli news.
 
Hope the islamic state goes down.

Good luck to the Iranian protestors.

Also, fuck western media and their love for islamic theocracy.

Meanwhile places like the UK are welcoming the same thing Iranians try to fight...
 
China and Russia, especially Russia, must be shitting themselves right now. This is a perfect window for the US and its allies to tilt the balance of power hard in their favour. If the regime in Iran falls, it likely blunts Putin's momentum in Ukraine and the rest of Europe by removing a major source of leverage and support, and it also forces Beijing to reassess its own risk calculus on Taiwan.

My Persian mate is crossing all his digits so hard right now.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, this is very strange. I've seen nothing on the news about this is Portugal. I'll take a closer look today.
If it weren't for Gaf I wouldn't even know about this. We don't like this Iranian regime, so this is odd.
 
Had a peek over in purple land and they never fail to amaze. An Iranian gets dogpiled because he dared praise Trump/Netanyahu. Regardless of your position on the Gaza war, you should be in full support of these brave protestors, regardless if you hate Trump or not!

xwv363KOKLz9aozB.png


e6nv0kY0zR8uimOt.png
My understanding is that there are several Iranians in that discussion and they don't see eye to eye. Is that not the case?

I mean it's easy to want a regime change but making it happen is a completely different story.
 


Just a quote from this interview, with an Iranian women, that had to escape the Islamic regime.
But I think there is some degree of expectation, some degree of anticipation inside Iran. That's exactly reminding me of the situation back in June when the war happened. I was on the phone begging my family and friends to evacuate Tehran because of the warnings of the IDF. And everybody was so content that the IDF is not after the Iranian people. They know exactly who they should go after. They have their addresses. They know how to do it. This is a surgical operation. And I remember back then I wrote an article and I tried to pitch it to several outlets. Everybody refused that. Nobody was willing to um allow me to say this that the Iranian people are looking outside for help and support. Of course, after Iraq, of course, after Afghanistan, it is very hard to come up with a similar scenario, right? But uh the Iranian people are so weakened and so desperate that they welcome any form of support from outside.
 
If protesters survived this night, they might have a chance. But at one point they will certainly lose steam if nothing changes.
Ayatollah Khameini just gave a defiant speech which was broadcast on Iranian TV which makes it sounds like he's not planning on going anywhere

This may not be going well for them. It's now daylight again there so hopefully some of those Starlink-equipped journalists will be able to get information out of Iran
 
It's mostly plausible, even if it's completely made up.

(The point about storing supplies underneath mosques connected by tunnels seems fake)

There's absolutely no reason why the Iranian army would have to hide anything under mosques and in tunnels when they already have their own army bases and warehouses. It's like the person who came up with that was mentally in Gaza and thinking of Hamas who need to conceal their weapons caches from Israel's sight.
 
There's absolutely no reason why the Iranian army would have to hide anything under mosques and in tunnels when they already have their own army bases and warehouses. It's like the person who came up with that was mentally in Gaza and thinking of Hamas who need to conceal their weapons caches from Israel's sight.
Yep, you've articulated it perfectly.
 
There's absolutely no reason why the Iranian army would have to hide anything under mosques and in tunnels when they already have their own army bases and warehouses. It's like the person who came up with that was mentally in Gaza and thinking of Hamas who need to conceal their weapons caches from Israel's sight.
Israel and the US have bombed Iran before in the past and would happily do so again with the right justification. It sounds dumb but having Gaza-style tunnels makes a lot of sense for the regime in the event they actually do encounter a "regime change" event. Leaving everything they have above ground for the US and Israel to easily destroy seems like a bad idea, especially after the US already destroyed Iran's nuclear research laboratories with a single strike
 
I think the US' plan is to continue choking Iran's economy from the outside.
Well when they have started seizing tankers it was bound to happen. The main issue for now is that there is no real way to change Iranian regime from the outside.

Personally I think Iran will become less centralized. IRGC still has too much control still - thanks to liberals allowing IRGC to get more and more power over there. I think Iran will return to its classics with multiple "centers" (granted historically it has been like this). Unlike "arab spring", Iran has just too long of a history to be a country - kingdom, empire etc. It is an ancient entity and thus even their revolutions were about going against the ruling party rather than the country itself (unlike arabs). Some regions will become independent from IRGC so ayatollah and co. won't rule like a "king" anymore and he will need to come to the agreements with kurds for example and so on.

Unless of course something unexpected happens - like he kicks the bucket or army revolts.
 
Last edited:
The best way to do that now is to go after the shadow fleet, transporting oil for Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
The US has captured 2 of them recently. But there are almost 900 of them.
According to WSJ, Russian subs escort the fleet, making it a major challenge to seize the vessels swiftly.

Any strategy to capture hundreds of tankers will have to address that.
This is World War type stuff.
 
The thing with subs is that you never know where they are at any given moment. That hasn't changed.

I would not be surprised if the US already knows where they are.

Besides, we just saw the US take an oil tanker inf front of a Russian sub and they did nothing to stop it.
 
Last edited:
I would not be surprised if the US already knows where they are.

Besides, we just saw the US take an oil tanker inf front of a Russian sub and they did nothing to stop it.
The US knows where all Russian subs are at any given moment, and they know where ours are

But these oil tankers have no official owner since they are part of a "shadow fleet" which doesn't exist so the Russians can't actually do anything about their seizure without admitting the tankers really belong to them. So yes, they will just watch

If we tried to actually touch a real official Russian warship or vice versa, that would be an act of war. That's why their subs just watch when we seize the tankers but also why we ignore their subs and don't go near them
 
Last edited:
Besides, we just saw the US take an oil tanker inf front of a Russian sub and they did nothing to stop it.
There was news that the submarine and the ship were only on their way to the tanker, not nearby.

The US knows where all Russian subs are at any given moment, and they know where ours are
Unlikely. Satellites cannot see underwater, and the US greatly surpasses Russia in terms of reconnaissance satellites.
 
Unlikely. Satellites cannot see underwater, and the US greatly surpasses Russia in terms of reconnaissance satellites.
My last experience with submarines is from over 20 years ago, but this is my understanding too.
There are other ways to acquire educated estimates about their location, but I don't think there is any technology that makes it possible to pinpoint them at any given moment.

He may be right though that they cannot be used as a deterrent in this case, without admitting a connection to the fleet.
 
Last edited:
They've used quotation marks in the headline. They're just reporting the way the state news is covering the protests. Sky News isn't calling the protesters terrorists.
Yes. The issue is that there is limited coverage outside of reporting on state propaganda, statements from politicians, or the occasional human rights group. Since the legacy media don't have people on the ground in Iran they tend to ignore the rest.
 
According to WSJ, Russian subs escort the fleet, making it a major challenge to seize the vessels swiftly.

Any strategy to capture hundreds of tankers will have to address that.
This is World War type stuff.
Russia doesn't have enough subs to escort all those tankers, not by a long shot. And I bet most of their fleet is in port or tied to strategic missions. They can't just shadow every tanker around the world.

'Sides, I think WE shadow every russian sub anyway, at least the boomers, and those russian attack subs have their missions to shadow our boomers. Trying to protect a tanker fleet with subs is foolish as all get out and would cripple them. That's a job for cheap(ish) frigates. Plus we can come in by air, so the subs only real recourse would be to sink their own ship, if they even could.
 
Unlikely. Satellites cannot see underwater, and the US greatly surpasses Russia in terms of reconnaissance satellites.
Ohhh, I wouldn't be too sure about that. Plus last I heard there was tech that could actually track the tiny hump of water on the surface caused by a sub cruising underneath (when you consider the size of these things and the [relatively] shallow depth they tend to operate, it's not that crazy of an idea. Then you have the listening stations, god only knows how much better those have gotten.
 
Russia doesn't have enough subs to escort all those tankers, not by a long shot. And I bet most of their fleet is in port or tied to strategic missions. They can't just shadow every tanker around the world.

'Sides, I think WE shadow every russian sub anyway, at least the boomers, and those russian attack subs have their missions to shadow our boomers. Trying to protect a tanker fleet with subs is foolish as all get out and would cripple them. That's a job for cheap(ish) frigates. Plus we can come in by air, so the subs only real recourse would be to sink their own ship, if they even could.
Yeah, our subs follow theirs around, and theirs follow ours around. The game of American and Russian submarines following each other around the oceans pre-dates satellite monitoring by decades and was a fixture of the Cold War and it continues today

This was famously shown in The Hunt for Red October
 
Russia doesn't have enough subs to escort all those tankers, not by a long shot. And I bet most of their fleet is in port or tied to strategic missions. They can't just shadow every tanker around the world.

'Sides, I think WE shadow every russian sub anyway, at least the boomers, and those russian attack subs have their missions to shadow our boomers. Trying to protect a tanker fleet with subs is foolish as all get out and would cripple them. That's a job for cheap(ish) frigates. Plus we can come in by air, so the subs only real recourse would be to sink their own ship, if they even could.
In that case, does this mean the naval side of the operation shouldn't take exceptionally long to complete?

What do you think are the main challenges in that arena? And why was this fleet allowed to grow to the size it is today?
 
In that case, does this mean the naval side of the operation shouldn't take exceptionally long to complete?
Well the problem is that even the fast ships are not that fast. Considering that those oil tankers - some empty, some not - are also not stopping it kinda becomes something like OJ chase. They can intercept them near coasts because there is a limited distance the helicopters can travel and so on. Or the helicopter carriers should reach close enough and they are also not that fast.

And why was this fleet allowed to grow to the size it is today?
Because of the international law. In theory seizing tankers like that is illegal that's why they were using tricks like "switching flags" and so on. They have the right to seize the tanker if - for example - it contains something dangerous and so on.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom