Comment by TheAlchemist
17 hours ago
Regardless of how it ends, and it can go both ways, we're witnessing history here. This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine. Iran is a major partner for Russia and China, mostly for military technology and oil. Hope it's not a start of WW3.
> This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine.
Russia-Ukraine war is 1M+ combat casualties deep and is nowhere near finished. You are out of touch.
But russia-ukraine is also a much more contained war between 2 parties that will likely end in a stalemate.
The middle east is a much more tangled web of alliances and hatreds, i think the iranian regime falling would have much more harder to predict second order geopolitical effects.
> But russia-ukraine is also a much more contained war between 2 parties that will likely end in a stalemate.
The whole of Europe is affected, it might seem contained only if you live very far away. Every European country is affected in one way or another.
It's not a stalemate if Ukraine ends up losing 30% of its territory. That's Russian victory.
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I hope you're joking. This is such "Ukrainians are just Russians by a different name" logic. China, Belarus, and North Korea are deep in this conflict, so are all the European countries. There's no stalemate end to this war, only a temporary cease fire or the collapse of Russia.
Russia and Ukraine are now at war for the fifth year running, you're just used to the fact that there is ongoing war in Europe.
Depends how you count “big”. Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths, and has completely changed how Europe thinks about security- it’s hardly a sideshow. Then again, not much territory has changed hands and there has been no regime change yet.
> not much territory has changed hands
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine, an area three times larger than the country I live in (the Netherlands).
Majority of that is since 2014, gains since 2022 are way lower
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> Russia-Ukraine has had about 1 million deaths
I wish... But estimates say between 230,000 and 468,500 dead orcs.
One million casualties is injured, missing, and dead… not just the dead.
> 1 million deaths
Casulties, not deaths.
The casualty-to-death ratio in Ukraine is surprising for modern times, especially on the Russian side. Counting civilians, Ukrainians, Russians, I can see the death count being close to 1M. Partisan sources already put Russian combat losses at around 1.2M personnel. Ukrainian losses might be more than half what Russian losses are. The 1M deaths estimate doesn't seem outlandish.
No it's not. This is an air strike campaign, no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks. There is no chance China or Russia get involved, like last time, so "WW3" is completely non-credible.
> ...no boots on the ground. It'll end in two weeks
Why do we never learn from history?
There are no ground ops and there is no possibility of any significant ground ops given current deployments.
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Yes ... why do we never learn from history? What's with the selective memory?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war
The previous campaign lasted a whole 13 days and WW3 didn't start. I'm not sure why anybody thinks it'll be different now or why Russia or China would bother going to war for Iran. That makes zero sense.
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Chinese state media is already reporting it's "unlikely to be contained" https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/28/WS69a2a669a310d686...
A regional war isn't a world war
Bombing never wins wars, with one exception.
bombing of: -N.Vietnam -Germany -Serbia -Sudan -Tunisia -England
Exception:
-Japan
That is not to say bombing doesn't have its uses in war. The bombing of the oilfields of Ploesti in Romania severely damaged the German war machine. But it took Russian boots on the ground in Berlin to effect a German surrender.
Being Serbian, the bombing campaign of 1999. was successful. It lead to the (temporary, 12-years long) regime change, and to the de-facto independence of Kosovo. It ended the war.
While it's possible, it's unlikely. Iranian regime is in a corner - they have no choice anymore but to escalate, and escalate quickly.
There might be boots on the ground eventually given Trump's speech.
>The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission
Very foreboding.
Iran is hitting back at US bases so it could be related to those risks, rather than a full invasion.
(Crazy idea, maybe the people shouldn’t be left in the dark about their government’s war plans by having a deliberate legislative body debate and vote on it)
It's a sinister statement, but despite everything the U.S. has moved to the region, they didn't move the stuff they would need to move for ground operations.
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Could be more of an intimidation tactic. The United States of Israel wouldnt go to a land war in Iran, that's unwinnable
This is about Iran, not Iraq.
There's no land campaign. It's an isolated series of strikes for PR reasons and wishful thinking about Iran collapse.
What happens when Iran responds by firing missiles on Israel or on a US ship and inflicts major casualties on either targets, though?
Even the US can't move an Iran sized invasion force overnight. It was a couple of years from 9/11 until the invasion of Iraq.
Exactly. See, sinking of the General Belgrano.
Otoh, what russia desperately needs in the short term is oil prices to go up, so there is probably a major silver lining for them.
> Otoh, what russia desperately needs in the short term is oil prices to go up, so there is probably a major silver lining for them.
And they will again appear weak and incapable, unable to help their allies
> And they will again appear weak and incapable, unable to help their allies
Iran and Russia have various partnership agreements, but are not allies. And Russia has already demonstrated that it doesn't support what are, on paper, close allies in the CSTO, so not defending a non-ally strategic partner really doesn't move the needle on their credibility.
Isn’t this a fact set in stone by now? Armenia, Syria, Iran in the previous months
Iran’s oil is sanctioned hence not on public market. Does it really have much influence?
China buys Iranian oil, if they’ll start to but oil from non-sanctioned countries it will push prices up. But the biggest reason for prices to go up is the risk that Iran will attack tankers in the strait of Hormuz or oil infrastructure on Arabian peninsula.
It does, but the primary concern is iran stopping oil transit by other countries in the strait of hormuz, not their own oil.
Which they did just start to do.
Yes, because if it stops flowing, demand on the public market will increase, and prices will rise.
WW3 started with the invasion of Ukraine.
I don't think it's bigger than Russia-Ukraine - it's part of it. This is all about destabilising Iran's incumbent government, which is probably a good thing at the moment. It'll damage supply lines to Russia's Ukraine offensive, give the chance for Iranian citizens to rise up against Khamenei and the IRGC and break the command chain for their foreign proxy operations. Part of Dugan's work on geopolitics, which they seem to be following to the word (c'mon guys seriously?) suggests that Moscow and Tehran should be allied which they are behind the scenes.
As for the nuclear threat, literally Iran said it was going to destroy Israel to the point it had a massive countdown clock in Tehran until Israel blew it up, so meh. If I was on the receiving end of that threat I'd make it a policy to respond to it, escalation or not. I make no claims of the accuracy of the threats past IAEA being unable to verify they aren't enriching stuff.
Doubt it'll escalate into WW3. The only other powers involved are Russia, who are totally hands tied with Ukraine if they like it or not and China is only interested keeping what's left in its sphere of influence later through their outreach initiatives. I suspect most Middle Eastern countries will be quite happy about this conflict as they have persistent problems with Iran as well from the Houthis, Hezbollah and tens of other factions. They won't want to say anything though in case their own citizens turn on them.
The cringeworthy thing is how the US gov are communicating this and that does the operation a lot of damage. It's really quite terrible. Sounds like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds after too many sugary drinks. Urgh.
> The cringeworthy thing is how the US gov are communicating this and that does the operation a lot of damage. It's really quite terrible. Sounds like it was written by a bunch of 9 year olds after too many sugary drinks. Urgh.
Thats because its not written for you and I. Its written for people who struggle to communicate at an adult level, which is a shockingly large portion of the US.
"for you and me," not "for you and I." Would you write, "for I"?????
I don't think that's the case. I think it's some of those people got elected.
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I doubt either of them is keen to enter the fray here. Russia is making shaheeds at home now anyway
As big as this is, the Russia-Ukraine war pretty much marked the end of the post-WW2 era and redefined global relations between the powers. In that sense, this is yet another major shift within this new era. But also, the series of events that led to this point does connect to the Russia-Ukraine war, and maybe doesn't happen without it.
More like this is a small piece of the puzzle in Russian-Ukraine war. Iran plays quite a big role in supplying Russians. If Iran is taken out, power balance in that war may change too.
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Uh, Iran is involved in the Ukraine war, and this even goes so far that Ukraine has attacked Iranian shipping in the Caspian sea.
https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1154545/Ukraine-strikes-cargosh...
(not just once)
So?
Iran's involvement in the Ukrainian conflict is mostly business-like, it didn't even send troops (unlike North Korea, for example).
I don't see these two conflicts merging to a WW3, if that is what you were implying.
Unless Russia gives some nukes to Iran, which again I somehow don't see happening.
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Putin said it himself, there are over 2 million russians in Israel - they will not participate
Russian Speakers* a lot of them are from previous Soviet republics like Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Ukraine
In Georgia, they speak Georgian. Azerbaijani is a Turkic language.
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thats definitely not the reason they wont participate. Its just a public excuse
I have to wonder how many are in governmental roles and realized they can steer the US into conflicts and ruining itself without any of those involved identifying as Russian. It's the cleanest backdoor for espionage that there ever was.
"russia controlling the us" is such a 2015 narrative, you ought to update your positioning..