America May Soon Face a Fateful Choice About Iran

President Biden could face the most fateful decision of his presidency: whether to go to war with Iran, alongside Israel, and take out Tehran’s nuclear program, which is the keystone of Iran’s strategic network in the region. Iran has been building that network to supplant America as the most powerful force in the Middle East and to bleed Israel to death by a thousand cuts inflicted by its proxies.

But honesty also requires me to acknowledge that some things are true even if Netanyahu believes them. And one of those things is that Iran is the biggest indigenous imperial power in the Middle East, and through its proxies it has been dominating the politics of millions of Arabs living in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq and Yemen — dragging their citizens into wars with Israel that few of them have any interest in. No leader in any of these Arab states today can make decisions hostile to Iran’s interests without fear of being killed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/opinion/iran-israel-war.html

Iran is huge, with very rugged geography and a very large population which is armed to the teeth. A full-scale invasion of Iran with boots on the ground would be lunacy. If it took something like 200k soldiers to conquer Iraq, it would take at least (sic) one million to conquer Iran.

That's just not gonna happen. Taking out Iran's nuclear program with surgical strikes seems like a much more sensible approach if you ask me.

0 chance an invasion ever happens. For an invasion you need a beach head then a foothold to be launching all those deployments. Name one country in the ME that would be a good launchpad that’s reasonably close by? Iraq? Its government is Shia and Iran aligned. Pakistan? Doubtful. Jordan? No chance. Saudi Arabia? Maybe but then that means saudis are complicit and would have their cities bombed

Even us naval assets sitting there although they’d be able to inflict some damage would be sitting sucks for retaliation.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 1 2024 08:42pm

Russia supplying Iran with nukes?

https://x.com/GlobeEyeNews/status/1819392994866614340


Russia's IL-76 aircraft, known for transporting weapons, has landed in Tehran, Iran.


This post was edited by zorzin on Aug 2 2024 10:14am

It’ll be foolish to think that Iran doesn’t already have nukes.
I mean.. the Pakies already have them since the 70s.. how difficult it is for a country to buy some ?

This post was edited by WhiteSouned on Aug 2 2024 11:39am

Good point.

if he goes to war with Iran direct, he might just keep his presidency for a while more.

Nukes are not a chocolate bar that you buy off the shelf and consume whenever you feel like it

They're incredibly intricate weapons which require a large team of highly trained scientists and engineers to operate. Without that they're more likely to fire a dud (which provides casus belli for the would-be victims to annihilate them), or blow themselves up. This is why nukes are rigourously tested before using in war.

Not only has Israel whacked all their top scientists, we've also seen their uranium centrifuge concentrators, they're old-ass Soviet Union centrifuges which are highly outdated and they don't have the engineering expertise to efficiently utilize them

This post was edited by El1te on Aug 5 2024 03:56pm

A rocket attack at an Iraqi military base injures US personnel, officials tell AP

WASHINGTON -- Several U.S. personnel were injured in a suspected rocket attack at a military base in Iraq, U.S. defense officials said Monday, in what has been a recent uptick in strikes on American forces by Iranian-backed militias.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/rocket-attack-iraqi-military-base-injures-us-personnel-112594222

Russia and China are discussing the possibility of a barter trade, with the first deal involving agriculture expected as early as this autumn, Reuters reported on Aug. 8
The deal would be the first such instance in around 30 years, as barter trading between Moscow and Beijing ceased after the fall of the Soviet Union.

https://kyivindependent.com/russia-china-discuss-barter-trade-as-sanctions-hamper-payments-reuters-reports/