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by mjburgess 357 days ago
Even if its an israeli ground invasion only, that's still a massive arms injection --- at the same time the US is supplying a ground war in europe.

A ground war in europe, one in the middle east -- all of the US assets in distant seas, its bombs in distant lands. Pretty good time to be a china on tour.

1 comments

Brother take a look at a map. Exactly how does Israel pull off a sustained ground invasion of Iran, even if the US committed to help?

Sure, maybe some targeted commando raids here and there. They’re already doing that.

Large scale invasion though? Almost logistically impossible unless you’re telling me the maps I’ve looked at my whole life are state propaganda too.

Procuring two landing craft means Israel has the capability to sustain a sea invasion of the scale required to subdue a 92 million population? It would require something like a modern day Normandy to pull this off.

This is not a serious suggestion.

Yip, so it would require US support.

As far as I can tell, israel is doing everything it can to escalate the situation to a place where the US is forced into it. We'll have to see if it can be avoided.

The problem for iran is that while they may believe the US is unwilling to escalate, and so be happier to go "arms down" -- they won't be allowed to by israel. So they're being forced up the escalation ladder.

There are very many things that they can do which would destabilise US military and economic interests directly. One imagines israel will do everything i can to provoke such a response.

You have literally worked yourself up into hysteria if you think Israel is in any position to invade Iran, even with US support.
What do you mean by "in a position"? Do i think it would be successful? of course not, that's mad.

Do I think israel is inclined to try, or otherwise, risk failure on the back of US blood and treasure? More or less, yes -- i think that's quite likely.

The US invasion and occupation of vietnam, afganistan, iraq, etc. were all mad. The US foreign policy elite are not very competent because america doesnt receive any real blowback from its failures -- so there's no conditioning mechanism to force it into instutitonal competence.

Do I think such an elite would do one more stupid thing? yes, its actually far more improbable that they'd learn caution

They've bankrupted america, caused half the world to turn against them -- all the while presiding over the rise and enrichment of a peer competitor (china). You could not describe a more incompent, warmongering, self-destructive set of foreign policy institutions.

It's what happens when you are isolated on your own continent and rarely have to pay for your decisions.

And if a ground invasion doesn't happen will you agree to never to speculate on the subject again?
No, nor have I said a ground invasion will happen. It's also an inherently ridiculous thing to say -- if I am wrong about highly complex geostrategic outcomes then i should never think about them again? By that logic, the entire US foreign policy establishment would likewise have to suspend its activities.

In any case, I'm talking about inferred goals, capacity, strategy. I'm constructing a viable theory of what their strategy would be if they achieved their aims.

The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air. It might be that israel is content to lose on these objectives, and so be it.

I expected that most of my comments here would be heavily downvoted, and its somewhat suprising that they arent. Most people are operating from a profoundly heavily propagandized view of foreign policy, and of their own countries -- and whenever one raises thinking about these issues in ways which suspend this propaganda one gets a very angry reaction: everyone one is a nationalist, either midly or extermely, but a nationalist never the less. Asking people to thinking critically about their nation is tantamount to asking them to thinking critically about their mother.

Either way, I comment regardless for the few who are able to think clearly on these matters.