[whynotminot]

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.

[mjburgess]

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.

[JoRyGu]

You have literally worked yourself up into hysteria if you think Israel is in any position to invade Iran, even with US support.

[mjburgess]

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.

[bigyabai]

Operations are defined by goals. If you want to invade or launch a special forces op into your enemy territory, you need a small and attainable goal. Not "eliminate all nuclear threats" but more like "clear this area of nuclear materiel" in any areas you consider suspect. Otherwise you end up deploying troops that never come home.

Israel's state government is absolutely filled to the brim with war hawks - but they're not stupid. The situation they want to contain is too large to fix with IDF ground forces, they necessarily have to involve US force structures to seriously challenge Iran. And even then, it feels likely that we'd be looking at an Afghan War situation where guerrilla combat absolutely shreds the modern forces the further they push in.

[mjburgess]

"they're not that stupid" has not been a good predictive theory of western foreign policy since the victorian era

[bigyabai]

Look, I don't want to get pissy because your track-record in this comment chain is mostly on-point. Boots are about to deploy on Iranian soil, and it's going to be a deliberate bloodbath for the first few days. Israel is going to piss and moan until America sends over more assets and materiel, at which point we'll be firmly in WWIII territory. It's downright bad, and you're not at all hyperbolic to lay things out like this.

...but I will repeat myself - this is an attack of opportunity for Israel, not a desperate scramble to destroy nuclear assets. Israel's long-term goal is to become the unquestioned geopolitical power of the Levant, even outside America's auspices. They can do that by leveraging the dumb-as-a-brick administration to provoke Iran into a response, at which point they will fight until attrition forces them both to retreat. Now Israeli forces are the de-facto security guarantor in the region, and we already know they draw their borders however they like.

Mind you, this isn't the last you'll hear about "Iran's nuclear program" - it hasn't outlived it's usefulness, quite yet. Israel will continue targeting them not until nuclear assets are destroyed, but until America perceives itself to be backed into a corner with no choice but to search Iran door-to-door for a hidden bomb. (Stretch Goal - +100 Brownie Points: get America to launch a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran and increase the escalation ladder beyond what any peer power can compete with.)

[tome]

And if a ground invasion doesn't happen will you agree to never to speculate on the subject again?

[mjburgess]

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.

[tome]

> No, nor have I said a ground invasion will happen

Oof, OK, I suppose not, you only said "The [my emphasis] ground invasion hasn't started yet". There is some degree of ambiguity there. Forgive me for thinking you were saying one will happen.

> The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air.

Ah! Is that a prediction you insist will happen? That there will be no regime change and no end to Iran's military nuclear programme without a ground invasion? Great! That's a testable hypothesis. Let's see.

> 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?

No, not at all (and I certainly didn't say "think", I said "speculate"). It's just a way of seeing if you put your money where your mouth is. If there is an incentive to someone predicting wrongly I'm more likely to take them seriously!

[mjburgess]

P(neither of those aims being achieved from the air|current strategy) = 90%

if either were, this would be the first instnace in history -- so, presumably, i could be forgiven for the mistake

but either way, I dont think israel believes they can be either

[kybernetikos]

> 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.

This is key. The only way for this set of actions to go well is if there is regime change, otherwise the most likely outcome is that Iran's resolve to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible has been dramatically solidified.

Like you though, I struggle to see any clear path for positive regime change to occur. The nearest attempt would be boots (but whose?) on the ground, but even that seems unlikely to work out well. Maybe there could be some sort of internal resistance, but I don't see how they could operate successfully while the country is under external attack.

My assumption with how things are at the moment is that the actions by Israel and the USA have all but guaranteed that Iran acquires a nuclear weapon in the next few decades, and so have dramatically increased the risk of Israel being attacked with one. One has to assume that radical Islamist terrorism in western countries will increase too.

[twelve40]

> these cannot be achieved from the air

sure it can. First, bomb the crap out of anything reachable and destroy normal economy. Then pull a Syria, a "democratic uprising of the freedom-loving people", perhaps get some help from friends at Al Qaeda or wherever the current Syrian freak is from, and Bob's your uncle.