@Convivial Militarily, the air operations were conducted both efficiently and effectively and they irrefutably shaped the battle space in ways that are highly conducive to further strikes on vulnerable and exposed Iranian targets. However, despite its notable tactical successes, the strategic mission of the campaign is still incomplete. Iran remains a target rich environment which is precisely why I‘d recommend an immediate resumption of full-scale hostilities.

@DivineNymph Never smoked anything in my life except the occasional cigar but thanks for your completely vacuous remark. It’s been noted.

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout No. They don’t. What I see is daylight between two coalition partners, not strategic 3D chess. Either way, what’s needed is not one single bad cop but two. This is not a police interrogation in a free country with the rule of law, this is a war against a regime that has to be removed and not haggled with.

@CedricH
outside forces convince Iran to not negotiate.
Negotiations breakdown
Bibi blows some shit up.
Trumps calls for a ceasefire.
Negotiations resume.

outside forces convince Iran to not negotiate.
Negotiations breakdown
Bibi blows some shit up.
Trumps calls for a ceasefire.
Negotiations resume.

If you can’t see the pattern… 🤷

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout
It‘s not a pattern at all. You‘d like there to be one so you’re sketching out your preferred sequence of events in your head but that’s about it.

This most recent exchange of fire was initiated by the Iranians after Israel responded to renewed Hezbollah attacks. This attack was neither planned nor desired by neither the Israelis nor the United States. It’s a testament to a pointless ceasefire that is undermining US interests and cannot be maintained unilaterally in the face of repeated Iranian violations and aggression.
The point of the mutual understanding back in April was, at the very least, to compel the Iranian leadership to cease active hostilities and for Iran to end its interference with shipping in and around the Gulf.
Tehran hasn’t honored either commitment.

So let me present you with an altogether different pattern.
Trump wavers and pulls the plug on an unfinished campaign that hasn’t met a single strategic objective yet despite strong Israeli opposition to the timing of the ceasefire back in April.
Iran, recognizing the weakness and indecisiveness of the President violates the terms of the understanding that had been reached so it can assert itself in the region and test the resolve of the administration.
Instead of delivering a serious response, however, the President opts for insignificant tit for tat retaliatory measures to Iranian attacks in the Gulf region.
The Iranians, undeterred and unfazed by these limited responses, repeat and escalate the cycle by not only firing at US drones, but at US bases too and after that at Israel itself and now at a US Apache helicopter as well.
Finally, the Israelis launch attacks on their own, despite the farcical misgivings in the White House, and yet the President is still dithering and foolishly trying to hold back the one state that seems actually intent on finishing the job.

The US isn’t a mediator in this conflict. The United States is one of the warring parties and the initiator of the March/April campaign and of the subsequent naval blockade of Iran‘s ports.
Rather than restraining Israel, it’s time the US ended this conflict by putting an end to the regime in Tehran through a resumed military campaign.

@MoveAlong Thus far phase one is the one and only phase and the US government didn’t appropriately map out the campaign before it was launched which is why we are where we are.
I‘m essentially advocating for a second phase that closes the gaps that were left open by the 6 week overture.

@CedricH My earlier post wasn't my best effort I was a bit rushed for time.

Most anyone looking at this whole thing has to believe it was poorly planned. I suspect the military minds knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park and Trump wouldn't listen. He always thinks he knows more about everything than anybody.

I wouldn't be in favor of any more military action at this time. It's throwing good money after bad IMO. We're dialing with an authoritarian Fundamentalist Islamic Regime. While many if not most of the Iranian people oppose them they are in full control. The Revolutionary Guard hasn't changed at all ideologically since the revolution. I believe we could bomb them relentlessly from the sea and air for months on end and they will not surrender. To them there is no greater honor than dying a martyr in the name of Allah. I have to believe any type of invasion is off the table. We might take and hold some strategic locations just like we did in Afghanistan. But we will not take over the country.

I was in Vietnam in '68 and '69. I need not go into detail about how vastly superior military was in every imaginable way. While we spent incredible sums in wealth and blood we were never in control. We were operating from small islands of relative security spread out all over the country. We would venture out mostly in daylight and scurry back under cover at night. We bombed the North relentlessly with more ordnance than we expended in all of WWII with little effect.

I just don't think there is a military solution to this at least in the short term. It is shaping up like another failure on the Asian continent our part. This will likely end in a negotiated settlement and we will frame it as a win.

(I don't want to debate it but IMO Iran was in no way a nuclear threat to the US. That was a smokescreen and an excuse for the action we took)

@MoveAlong
Throwing good money after something bad? That’s nonsense. Unlike in Afghanistan or in South Vietnam, the United States is facing a conventional enemy with conventional, if asymmetrical, weapons systems that can be detected and destroyed or at least disabled.

These systems are used by the Iranians to attack commercial vessels, US forces, Israel and the Gulf states. Tehran also supplies them to terrorist groups and proxy militias throughout the region.

Iran has lost its air defenses. Hence, the nation’s air space is open and accessible to a new round of bombing. Estimates suggest that 50% of Iran‘s missile stock (that includes both short-range and medium-range missiles) has been destroyed along with two thirds of Iran‘s missile launchers.
Similarily, Iran‘s drone arsenal has been halved by this war. Meanwhile, Iran’s ability to reproduce its projectiles has been severely impaired if not halted altogether by crippling strikes on the entire depth of Iran‘s military-industrial base.

The loss of the rest of Iran‘s projectiles would deny a dangerous and aggressive state the very conventional-asymmetrical weapons that are used to threaten the region and international shipping alike.

Evidently, any comparisons to Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq are completely misguided and ahistorical.

Those campaigns were, in fact, prolonged land wars with elements of ground occupation and arduous counter-insurgency operations fought over 8-20 years.

The 6-week campaign against Iran was by all metrics a “small war” which makes it so impressive in its execution, since Iran is quantitatively and qualitatively the most powerful enemy the US has faced in combat since WWII. The US has deployed only naval and air power against Iran, assembled a much smaller force than it did in any of its major wars during the 21st and 20th centuries and yet the enemy was only able to down a handful of drones, an Apache helicopter and two F-15s.
Iran’s military was only able inflict a single lethal ground strike on US forces in Kuwait in the first days of the campaign and not a single successful hit after that.

Conversely, the coalition forces have established air superiority over Iran, suppressed the country‘s air defenses, sunk its conventional navy, eliminated many of the most influential and competent military and political leaders of Iran, further weakened the economic base of a nation that was already mired in multiple economic crises and set back its nuclear advances by years. All this comes on top of the destruction of Iran‘s military-industrial base and half of its offensive projectiles.

You are right, an invasion is off the table. However, the US doesn’t need to invade Iran to A) further destabilize the regime B) keep it from rebuilding its military-industrial base C) eliminate the remainder of its missile and drone stocks and D) to re-open the strait through a more muscular naval mission.
Those mission objectives can be delegated to the air force, the navy and the intelligence community.
A temporary seizure of Iranian islands in the Strait of Hormuz would fall to the Marine Corps.

As for your experience in Vietnam. You are right to assert that by 1968/69 the situation seemed arguably bleak.
That was principally because, up to that point, the US did not adopt a sound, population-centric counter-insurgency strategy but fought the Viet Cong like any other conventional enemy. After Tet and the departure of Gen. Westmoreland, Creighton W. Abrams changed the overall strategy. Enemy casualty numbers were no longer the dispositive variable. Permanent control over territory and the safety of the local population became the primary objective.
The strategic recalibration worked. The VC insurgency was defeated by the early 1970s. Most of South Vietnam was effectively pacified and the situation you were personally witnessing in 68’ no longer reflected the reality on the ground a few years later.
The war in that sense was won and the main conventional attack by the North was successfully repelled during the Easter offensive of 1972 culminating in a stunning defeat for the PAVN.
When all of the US forces were tragically and unnecessarily withdrawn, it was not the VC but a conventional invading army from the North that conquered the South in a way that it could never have, if the US had continued its support for ARVN.

@GeretJan I don’t care for either.

@CedricH Bless you nevertheless.

@GeretJan Well, thank you for your blessing! Those are always appreciated :)