[Archio]

We (the US) just bombed Iran last summer. We are moving the largest buildup in decades of armament and materiel to Iran's doorstep RIGHT NOW, and it seems extremely likely we are about to bomb them again.

What exactly do you want to happen here? In your view, am I taking the side of the Ayatollahs because bombing isn't enough and we should be nuking Tehran instead?

It's telling that perceived tacit support of an Iranian regime — which America is more hostile to perhaps more than any other nation on the planet — is more disturbing to you than the deaths of 20k+ children in Gaza.

[nsvd2]

It's possible, of course, to oppose the Ayatollah as a dictatorial regime and oppose excessive American intervention.

[pessimizer]

It's not, really, if you are now ignoring all of the dictatorial theocracies that we support enthusiastically, and focusing on the ones that America is looking for an excuse to intervene in.

And this is not a "why focus on this thing when there are other things" fake argument. These protests were engineered by people with the intention of intervening, and a lot of that engineering the involved manipulation of western media narratives and the creation of fake organizations to become sources of information. It's not coincidence or luck that you're focused on Iran; people were sitting around planning an invasion of Iran and part of their planning was "How can we get the public to focus on Iran enough to give Congress cover to ignore another Executive war?"

The actual narrative, undisputed by even the people involved, is that

1) a currency crash was intentionally instigated in Iran by the West, which caused protests. We have bragged about this.

2) Many of the educated Iranian middle class joined these protests to argue against the regime in general, which they always do.

3) US and Israeli-supported terrorist organizations took advantage of those protests (like a black bloc) to start burning down buildings and burning cops alive, armed by the west and networked through smuggled Skylink terminals,

4) the US and Israel bragged that the protests were materially supported by covert western intelligence in order to push the crackdown to atrocity levels, and to eliminate even the general public's support for the protests (which would be some restraint to the government.) They literally said that many of the protesters were Mossad agents. You might as well be saying "please kill them." It's as if Al Qaeda announced that they were materially supporting and completely infiltrating BLM protests, and when many BLM activists were arrested, they were carrying Al Qaeda satellite terminals and arms smuggled from Pakistan.

(The Iranian middle class was even out, because they aren't traitors, they just don't want to live in a theocracy. The West are who turned Iran into a dictatorship by replacing Mossadegh with the Shah. The West helped Iraq use chemical weapons against Iran. We care nothing about Iranians, we just want to steal from them. We're thieves, and we're consciously moving to a economic strategy of piracy in order to take advantage of our navy.)

5) The US moved as much navy to bear on Iran as it did when it invaded Iraq, and said that unless some magic words were said that nobody knows, it would invade.

You might be comfortable being manipulated like this, but I am not.

[remarkEon]

The case for intervention in Iran is much stronger, from the perspective of the United States, if you zoom out and realize that a larger fight in the Pacific is brewing and it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC. Not saying I agree with this, necessarily, but it helps to steel man the more sophisticated cases when you are trying to understand complex geopolitical events.

To the extent that the protests are being "engineered", certainly there are elements of that, but why wouldn't there be and why would that be bad a priori? The regime is uniquely terrible in the world, and if you listen to Iranian ex-pats who fled it seems clear a lot of the kids that supported the revolution in 1979 quickly realized that it was a mistake, and that they underestimated the extent to which the new regime would prioritize regressive islamism over actually addressing what were at the time legitimate economic inequality issues.

[hollerith]

>it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC.

Washington has an easier way to do that: namely, to use its navy and the Sentinel Islands (controlled by Washington ally India) to prevent the transit of tankers from Iran to China.

[remarkEon]

Yes, possibly, but running an indefinite blockade or interdiction operation is still costly. It is lower in complexity in terms of operational capabilities required than a decapitation strike against the potential co-belligerent, although this is rapidly changing, but in order to effectively run one you are dedicating a very sizable percentage of your overall combat power away from the front. Additionally, I am skeptical that the Indian Navy could handle such an operation independently. Their fleet size has grown over the last decade, but, as alluded to, interdiction operations are increasingly complex so they would likely need assistance at least at the beginning. It's also, I think, a stretch to call India an "ally" per se of Washington today (maybe "partner" would be more accurate), and I find it hard to believe that India would effectively enter into a world war on behalf of the United States.

There is an argument to be made that a maritime interdiction operation is a better approach, and the information I would need to decide definitively which approach I think is better is likely very classified.

[hollerith]

>I am skeptical that the Indian Navy could handle such an operation independently.

No need for them to: they just have to permit US warplanes to operate from the Sentinel Islands.