4/3/2026 at 4:34:28 PM
During the entire gulf war (Iraq, 1990-91), only two F-15s were shot down via surface-to-air engagement. At the time, Baghdad was known to have the highest density of SAM protection out of any city in the world.An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign.
by roadbuster
4/3/2026 at 6:55:36 PM
New reporting that an A-10 ~was also shot down~ has also gone down (unconfirmed if it was shot down)https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/03/world/iran-war-trump...
> A second Air Force combat plane crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The A-10 Warthog attack plane went down near the Strait of Hormuz about the same time that an Air Force F-15E was shot down over Iran, the officials said. In that incident, one crew member was rescued and search-and-rescue operators are looking for the second airman. Officials provided scant details about the A-10 crash, including how and where it happened.
there's some additional osint rumor mill that a blackhawk helicopter involved in rescue operations was also shot down but claims that crew been recovered
by fooey
4/3/2026 at 7:50:39 PM
On top of these cases there is all of the aircraft that has been destroyed while grounded. The high tech AWACS getting blown up was a big hit, among others. The losses are likely much worse than we know since the military has been trying to keep a lid on most of them.by rurp
4/3/2026 at 8:06:17 PM
Not to mention the multiple THAAD radars taken offline. Those are $500M assets - and only 8 exist in the world. 24,000 precise transceivers all liquid cooled… not available on Amazon for next day deliver either.by ttul
4/3/2026 at 8:14:33 PM
a single AN/FPS-132 radar costs $1.1 bln, not $500m. And Iran stuck 17 of the CENCCOM sites hosting radars of all kinds across Qarar, Bahrain, Iraq, UAE, Saudi, Jordan, Israel, etc).Total cost is so much bigger, it is staggering. The whole CENTCOM is blind basically, as well as Iron Dome which relied on these radars - all blind now, in addition to long-range early nuke detection to protect CONUS is also blind.
in addition to cost, they all require Rare Earth Minerals, and China has banned the export of these (they own like 99% of the market).
So not only CENTCOM is blind and incurred damage in high single digit billions, but also will be unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades) even if the funding were made to be available
Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questions
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/world/middleeast/iran-str...
by bijowo1676
4/3/2026 at 9:47:11 PM
>So not only CENTCOM is blind and incurred damage in high single digit billions, but also will be unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades) even if the funding were made to be availablenot just what i quoted, but your source does not say any of what you are saying.
your source says: Satellite images show damage near vital equipment on sites in at least five countries https://archive.ph/QHNXW
by fsckboy
4/3/2026 at 9:10:57 PM
> Iron Dome relied on these radars — all blind now.Iron Dome’s primary fire-control radar is the Israeli EL/M-2084 Multi-Mission Radar, not the USA’s AN/FPS-132
by schappim
4/3/2026 at 11:18:44 PM
GCC radars are needed for early warning, not only fire control.the evidence is Alert system may not even work for missiles, or give very short warning (seconds to 1 minute instead of the usual 10 minutes)
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-03-...
If we are speaking of interception/penetration, these are also solved by Iran using several strategies that Israel/CENTCOM did not expect:
1. use of cluster munitions
2. exhaustion of expensive interceptor inventory (exchanging $7000 shahed drone for $3-5 mln worth of PAC-3 interceptors)
3. Use of penetration aids
4. Changing trajectory at the terminal stage
5. coordinating swarm attacks (let AD to intercept SRBMs, while the real damage is caused by abundant cheap Shaheds that fly too slow and low to be detected)
https://www.csis.org/analysis/unpacking-irans-drone-campaign...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/iran-cluster-b...
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 3:47:32 AM
Both you and the Guardian are confused (or perhaps the Guardian is just trying to ride the popular understanding of the "Iron Dome" as a super catch all missile defense system vs reality). The Iron Dome has nothing to do with shooting down ballistic missiles. The Iron Dome isn't designed to target ballistic missiles: it targets short-range rockets and artillery like the ones fired by Hamas and Hezbollah, and has been modified to also target slow-moving drones (although the Iron Beam is intended to be the main drone defense system in the future). The Iranian missiles are targeted by different systems: David's Sling and the Arrow 2 and 3.The Iron Dome does not depend on the American radar system in Qatar that Iran hit. It would be crazy for it to do so when it only targets short range attacks. If someone is telling you that the "Iron Dome is blind" because an American radar in Qatar got hit by a missile, you should probably update the amount you trust that source negatively, since not only is that not true, but it doesn't even pass the sniff test to anyone who knows what the Iron Dome is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome
by reissbaker
4/4/2026 at 5:28:04 AM
> The Iron Dome has nothing to do with shooting down ballistic missilesThis is not true, Tamir interceptors have been upgraded to target ballistic missiles. It is extremely visible when this happens, as the interceptors fly a very different path than usually.
by walletdrainer
4/4/2026 at 3:53:35 AM
you are arguing semantics, both me and Guardian using the term "iron dome" as a collective of all air defense systems in Israel (not that one system built to counter cheap rockets), because all these systems are integrated into one military network, including the GCC/CENTCOM radars that were destroyed.if you replace "iron dome" with "air defense network" everything else would still be true
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 4:10:08 AM
The problem is you do not understand how these systems work and are making claims that don't pass the sniff test to anyone who does know how these work. For example, you claim multiple times that Shahed drones have somehow exacerbated these Iron Dome missile interceptor issues, and now claim you're not talking about the literal Iron Dome — you're talking about who knows what (you don't specify any actual, concrete system and instead use a metaphorical understanding from the popular press). The problem is: actually, the literal, real Iron Dome does target Shaheds! So if it's the radar system that was the problem and caused the metaphorical Iron Dome to be "blind" — why did drones matter, if those are targeted by the literal Iron Dome that doesn't use that radar? Are you meaning to talk about David's Sling, which targets missiles and drones? But David's Sling is a medium range system that doesn't use the American radar in Qatar either! Arrow 3? Guess what — it has nothing to do with Shaheds, and has nothing to do with the American radar system either — it uses an IAI radar system.The Iranian hit on the American radar in Qatar hasn't left the "Iron Dome" blind, figuratively or literally, and your proposed mechanisms of actions don't make sense.
by reissbaker
4/4/2026 at 4:42:10 AM
you have constructed a strawman argument and are arguing with it, mostly semantics and splitting hairs.Perhaps a problem here is that we are mixing up two theatres: Israel and GCC.
Iron dome exists in Israel, but the radars and air defense network was degraded in GCC, it is these patriots there that are having interceptor issues and shahed drone issues.
Israel is not being bombed by shaheds, it is being bombed by ballistic missiles that they are having problems intercepting and alerting population in advance.
you can check with the sourc elinks I provided that confirm that the radars in GCC were part of the early warning system for israel, and hitting radars in Qatar has impacted directly AD network in israel (reduced alert time significantly)
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 5:07:17 AM
None of your links support that claim or even try to make it. The Haaretz article is complaining about a day of unusually short missile notifications on March 7, a week later than the Iranian strike on the radar (and now a month-old claim, which lasted only a day — if that was due to the radar, why did it not start the day the radar was actually hit, and why did it only last a day when the radar remains ruined today?). One of your articles is about drones, which has nothing to do with the radar system, and you are now backpedaling all of your drone-related claims for Israeli air defense despite making many drone claims earlier (why is that?). The other is the Guardian article that doesn't make that claim, and one is about the American Patriot missile defense system, not Israeli ones.Recent reporting has indicated that contrary to your claim that the American radar system getting hit has left the Iron Dome "blind," Israeli missile detection has actually improved over the course of the war:
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/society/artc-israel-up...
https://www.nbcrightnow.com/national/israel-using-ai-to-fine...
Which makes sense, because:
1. Israeli air defense was not dependent on that American radar system (unlike what you keep claiming).
2. Israel has had many more data points on Iranian missile launches since the war started.
by reissbaker
4/4/2026 at 5:14:10 AM
> israel using ai to fine-tune alertsohh, they use AI... this sounds like a YC startup pitch, I bet they also use AI agents and Claude Code to improve air defense...
then why all these radars were even needed in the first place? why did US taxpayers spent billions procuring installing and maintaining these radars, if simpel fine-tuning with Claude Code would work just as well ??
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 5:26:30 AM
Well, I see you've graduated from wishcasting the Iron Dome being "blinded" by a radar it doesn't use to being confused that shooting down missiles involves AI.by reissbaker
4/4/2026 at 2:15:29 PM
Depending on what you call AI, AI has been used for targeting for awhile. It's just usually called 'automated control' or something. This is more a re-categorizing of targeting algorithsm, and calling it AI.by FrustratedMonky
4/4/2026 at 10:13:27 AM
not sure you are aware that you pass for the ignorant who's stuck in denial of reality.you are arguing against official annoucements from the IDF explaning why the civilian alert system now only gives short notice and will do so from now on, and you argue on the basis of fallacious rhetoric.
by bigbugbag
4/4/2026 at 8:14:58 AM
"I am morally correct therefore I need not be factually correct".Stop doing this: it completely undermines the political argument because it makes it clear you are as uninterested in reality as the current administration.
It's rich to declare "they're lying" while happily being disinterested in the truth or clear communication.
Iron Dome is a specific interceptor system, and you can trivially look up what it is on Wikipedia.
by XorNot
4/4/2026 at 10:41:16 AM
Iron Dome being unable to intercept ballistic missiles is factually incorrect as of at least March 2026.by walletdrainer
4/4/2026 at 12:11:27 PM
Iron Dome is still not a catch-all term for the entire Israeli defense system, and all the other claims the poster has made are not supported by their links or evidence.As noted: Iron Dome intercepting ballistic missiles is an apparent new capability which it was not expected to be capable of: so it's kind of weird to turn up and say "Iron Dome can't intercept ballistic missiles anymore!" when no one except whoever developed the upgrades would've expected it to do that, and Israel has a number of other still unrelated to THAAD ballistic missile interceptor systems.
by XorNot
4/4/2026 at 2:45:10 PM
Bro just throw out your privileges or pick some solid ground instead of dragging us all into the mud.by positron26
4/4/2026 at 1:10:58 AM
>Israel/CENTCOM did not expectthat after 4 years of Ukraine war where those tactics have been widely used, in some cases by both sides, and where Russia has even been using the same Iranian drones
by trhway
4/4/2026 at 3:42:20 AM
Well, October 7 clearly was unexpected too, so these guys unexpect a lotby gmerc
4/4/2026 at 4:13:19 AM
There is considerable evidence that it was not unexpected.by testbjjl
4/4/2026 at 4:29:36 AM
I believe that was the point being made.by cthalupa
4/4/2026 at 5:55:18 AM
It might be more of a selective listening issueby verdverm
4/3/2026 at 10:59:52 PM
I've read that NATO radars in Turkey were equally important to provide early warning to Israel. It's not far-fetched to assume that US radars in the middle-east did too. US THAAD in Israel would definitely be networked into those.by thisislife2
4/3/2026 at 10:43:47 PM
I think that there is a problem here - you're talking about the firing of the defense system at targets, whereas knowing that that radar needs to be readied because missiles have been detected is what the other radar system provided.by awesome_dude
4/4/2026 at 4:09:08 AM
Remind me in two weeks?by testbjjl
4/3/2026 at 9:04:44 PM
> Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questionsSome analysts are sure drumming up the severity [0]. In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not. The proposal by the current US Admin to increase defence spending by 40% to $1.5t is not a welcome sign for those opposed to heavy spending, for any number of reasons.
[0] https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-last-molecule... / https://archive.vn/5H0L5
by ignoramous
4/3/2026 at 10:09:20 PM
> In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not.Honestly it's more than that. Propaganda and lies put out by ALL actors in this conflict. If you want to understand what's going on I think you have the expose yourself to as many competing sources as you can find. And still you're going to end up with a very shoddy picture. The term for this is epistemic collapse.
by grafmax
4/3/2026 at 10:50:16 PM
This.One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
I like to think that I live in a free/liberal democratic portion of the world, but seeing the "other side" being more honest really puts a dent in things.
by awesome_dude
4/3/2026 at 11:30:58 PM
> One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.Can you please expand on this with some examples?
by oa335
4/3/2026 at 11:44:23 PM
The most recent example - I have been seeing reels/tik toks fronted by young women, that push Iranian talking points, they were saying that Trump's announcements on the conflict were timed to manipulate markets, and to "watch tomorrow"They were referring to a Sunday before the Markets opened, and right on cue President Trump started making announcements that had a massive effect on market movements
Previously the USA government were downplaying (then retaliatory) Iranian drone attacks on bases in the middle east, claiming zero damage, and laughing at the attackers, the Iranians provided footage that showed real damage, and the US military released statement(s) that agreed with the Iranian claims.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that the Iranian regime is anything but a steaming pile of ew, but the lesson we were supposed to learn from the Vietnam war, and the Iraq war (II), was that hearts and minds are the key to "winning", and that's built on trust, which is built on transparency and honesty.
edit: and the Afghanistan invasion
by awesome_dude
4/4/2026 at 2:14:14 AM
not only that, one big fact is that the Trump administration attacked twice Iran during negotiations. That sort of backstabbing gives you a sense of what their word is worth.by lejalv
4/4/2026 at 1:25:52 AM
The easy example is that meta was full of influencers confirming the war was over, with the us having won, at a time Iran's own statements declared otherwise. That was a while back.by technion
4/4/2026 at 8:38:22 AM
The open letter to Americans from Iran:https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/full-text-of-...
Vs Trump's speech:
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-transcript-address-i...
by brobdingnagians
4/4/2026 at 12:38:31 PM
One of those appears to be written by a sensible adult and the other one by a boastful teenager.by ndsipa_pomu
4/4/2026 at 3:12:59 AM
>One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.Kek. Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble.
"Both are doing propaganda, but one side's propaganda is totally less propaganda" gave me a good laugh today, thank you
by s3r3nity
4/3/2026 at 11:43:09 PM
The multiple sources don't know either, the reason the picture is shoddy is it is necessarily composed of the primary information that is coming from ... people with the strongest incentive to lie. There aren't a lot of independent ways to assess the situation. And of course that is part of the fog of war - even the militairy struggles to put together a picture of what is going on. I'd imagine that defining where the front-line is presents a complex and uncertain exercise for the commanders involved.The only thing I think can be said reliably is that this has been going on for weeks, the Strait seems to be more closed than open, Trump is clearly out of his depth and the US is sending more units to the area. All of those point to a serious problem for the US military.
by roenxi
4/4/2026 at 8:49:38 AM
No the problem is that operational security necessarily biases what you see.Drones, unlike many other systems produce a lot of kill footage and due to the specific users a lot of that is getting uploaded right now.
Successful sorties get uploaded, unsuccessful ones do not (if only because it's boring media).
No other system does this: artillery and missiles don't, manned systems worry about opsec, etc.
by XorNot
4/4/2026 at 12:48:27 AM
Iran was known to have such capabilities, it's baffling the US wasn't more prepared in its gulf bases.by 3abiton
4/4/2026 at 1:10:49 PM
> it's baffling the US wasn't more prepared in its gulf bases.Probably want to drop the assumptions about it having anything much to do with US interests. Better to start looking at who has had the alliance that contained them damaged and their oil sanctions lifted.
by lonelyasacloud
4/4/2026 at 1:33:20 AM
If only there was a 4 year long war where thousands of drones are flown every day both on offense and defense that we could have learned from ..by mgfist
4/4/2026 at 2:29:06 AM
Problem is that there was too much propaganda in that war, that parsing propaganda is too difficult even for military watchers, let alone general public. Only when american weapons are being destroyed that, US MIC is willing to acknowledge that may be million+ usd missiles are not solution to cheap drones.by mayama
4/8/2026 at 2:33:18 PM
The US and Ukraine have a direct relationship. They don't need to parse anything. Have people on the ground to watch how they conduct war. And bring people to the US to teach their learnings.It's not that hard, the US just didn't want to do it for whatever dumb reason.
by mgfist
4/4/2026 at 2:57:35 AM
Problem is also that your “Secretary of War” has fired two dozen of your most experienced military leaders since coming into office.When the history of the American demise as a global superpower gets written, this war and the government behind it, will merit a beefy chapter.
https://www.bostonpoliticalreview.org/post/pete-hegseth-fire...
by phs318u
4/4/2026 at 4:01:13 AM
These traitors will eventually be all prosecuted. They are all traitors with putin connections, every one of them.by sheeshkebab
4/4/2026 at 7:16:02 AM
There will be no prosecutions. Even if there's a situation where Dems regain power, they don't have the political capital or efficacy to prosecute.by root_axis
4/4/2026 at 9:54:49 AM
Like how assiduously Obama went after Bush Jr. administration.by srean
4/4/2026 at 10:35:15 AM
...and how decisively Trump was prosecuted for the 6/1/21 attempted ~coup~ tourism, and for how thoroughly the Epstein child abuse ring was dismantled, and...Yes, the only chance the US has going forward is to primary all current incumbents and hold both party leadership accountable for complicity in treason.
by tremon
4/4/2026 at 5:30:01 PM
Even that won't matter. The problem isn't the elected officials, the problem is that most of the county doesn't care either way.by root_axis
4/4/2026 at 4:43:30 AM
nobody will prosecute them, unless there is regime change in the USAby bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 5:44:49 AM
Haha, by whom? There are zero higher-ups who are actually getting institutional backing and are in favor of this.Look at how Mamdani didn't even get any backing. Quite the opposite, he was obstructed. And he's 100x more palatable to them than the idea of prosecuting the traitors.
by deaux
4/4/2026 at 2:51:27 AM
This is a completely unrelated problem, the US MIC is heavily incentivized to invent new problems.by ohhman11
4/4/2026 at 12:08:19 PM
Gp was referring to AN/TPY2 which is the THAAD radar.Iron dome has nothing to do with that systems.
by amirhirsch
4/3/2026 at 9:00:31 PM
Fact check on this brand new account?by ericd
4/3/2026 at 9:48:08 PM
I read the source he listed and it doesn't say any of thatby fsckboy
4/3/2026 at 9:53:27 PM
Ah thanks, I think that was added after I commented.by ericd
4/3/2026 at 9:20:41 PM
This is the second time in 2 weeks I’ve seen a comment like this on HN. 37 years old. Been on here 16 years. Incredibly odd to me. Just announce “can someone else tell me if this is true?”by refulgentis
4/3/2026 at 9:39:17 PM
That’s what I was doing, because I don’t think assertions like “CENTCOM is blind” should just sit out there without evidence.by ericd
4/4/2026 at 8:21:24 AM
I watched an interview with a retired British military guy who said that the radar destruction does complicate things, but the US still has the other AWACs, so there is still early warning and visibility, just complicates things and reduced range/more risk.by brobdingnagians
4/4/2026 at 11:43:36 AM
The E3 fleet is aging and difficult to keep airworthy. Of the 32 or so planes the US has, it sounds as though they struggle to keep the operational number above 16, and moving more to the gulf means they have to pull them from other theaters. In short, they simply don't have enough to provide coverage of all the areas they want them.This was completely foreseeable and is a situation that appears to have arisen entirely due to vest interests stifling procurement of a suitable replacement in order to spruik up business for their own competing, but unfinished offering. Prior to the war in Iran, total cancellation of the procurement of E7's had been announced.
https://theaviationist.com/2026/04/01/e-3-awacs-loss-saudi-a...
by peebee67
4/4/2026 at 9:54:00 PM
It seems like demoralization propaganda.by TrnsltLife
4/3/2026 at 9:55:18 PM
Then go get some! It adds nothing but spam when you to take time from your busy day to tell us what to doby refulgentis
4/3/2026 at 10:34:24 PM
Usually it’s on the person posting assertions to justify them, and looks like they’ve edited in a NYT link since then.by ericd
4/4/2026 at 2:06:14 AM
that's true about assertions, but blindly saying "Fact check!" is still an attempt to offload a wished-for effort onto other people while simultaneously sowing seeds of discernment and distrust into the topic.What happens when someone yells "Fact check!" at absolutely true things constantly? It erodes confidence. That's why "Person yelling fact check" isn't a typical or generalized role in normal discourse.
Yes, it's good to correct the incorrect. How does one do that typically? A rebuttal.
A supposed 'deferment to experts' on the internet is worth next to nothing, just a way to paint yourself a bit more altruistically while producing FUD.
by serf
4/4/2026 at 2:20:53 AM
I asked if anyone could rebut it. Normally I'd do the work myself, but I'm not very up to speed on this stuff and I wasn't in a good place to do a bunch of research, and someone who's been following it more closely could probably do a better job pretty quickly. The comment smelled like a possible propaganda account to me, making what I thought were some pretty wild claims, and the commenters that were there were piling on because tribalism, so I was trying to act like an antibody in HN's immune system against nonsense, and flag it. Sorry if it sounded like a demand, it was probably too terse.But look at the account's comment history since registration a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bijowo1676
by ericd
4/4/2026 at 1:53:35 PM
I lit up at sorry (so rare), then, had to chuckle at "but..."by refulgentis
4/4/2026 at 8:21:24 PM
Haha the “but” wasn’t meant as an excuse for the terseness.Am I wrong about the comment history? Might be biased.
by ericd
4/3/2026 at 10:48:21 PM
And it's worse than spam when someone is posting incorrect things and people are downvoting people questioning it. As another user has already posted, the Iron Dome does not use the same radar they are talking about and is not "blind"by squeaky-clean
4/3/2026 at 10:16:52 PM
IMHO, people making claims should provide the evidence for them. One link is behind a paywall and the other clearly states that it is making informed speculations.I could make all sorts of claims on the spot here. It doesn't create a duty for people reading this thread to go investigate them.
by sethev
4/3/2026 at 10:28:34 PM
You're so close, just one more step, and it's easy, just have to step away from keeping it hypothetical.<SPOILER> Then it certainly does not create a duty for people to go investigate, when the only difference is "someone replied telling someone to fact check" </SPOILER>
by refulgentis
4/3/2026 at 10:41:46 PM
You're the one in this thread claiming people are responsible for "going and finding the evidence" of other people's unsourced claims. You could have just not replied since you didn't have something to contribute.by sethev
4/4/2026 at 1:19:25 AM
None of the words you have in quotes are in this thread. :/ Not a single one. Nor did I advance this position.I'd wait for your apology, but I'm old enough to know I won't get one.
by refulgentis
4/4/2026 at 1:28:41 AM
I apologize for not quoting you directly “Then go get some!”. That’s what you said in response to there being no evidence. Would you like a link to your comment?by sethev
4/4/2026 at 1:41:15 AM
"People are responsible for going and finding the evidence" and "Then go get some!" are not paraphrases of each other. They don't share a single word, or advance a similar idea. I am uncertain linking comments can change that.by refulgentis
4/4/2026 at 1:52:01 AM
Of course they’re paraphrases. And since when does 37 warrant constantly mentioning how old you are?by sethev
4/4/2026 at 1:56:53 AM
I'm not sure what's going on: "People are responsible for going and finding the evidence" and "Then go get some!" are not paraphrases.Best steelman I can come up with is you're seeing deep red, so it's hard to see "Then go get some!" is suggesting he could fact-check his own question instead of asking the room to do it for him.
Which is the opposite of your characterization that I think people are responsible for investigating strangers' unsourced claims. We violently agree, not disagree.
Making this exchange all the curiouser.
Are you inebriated? I only ask because it's unusual to see someone on HN choosing to say obviously incorrect things, aggressively, on purpose, just to talk down to someone. Much less making bullying attempts based on comment history.
by refulgentis
4/3/2026 at 10:42:20 PM
Relax, I was mostly asking whether someone else who already knew about this stuff could comment on its veracity. There’s obviously no obligation.by ericd
4/4/2026 at 12:36:18 AM
Right (c.f. the thing I am replying to)by refulgentis
4/3/2026 at 9:12:34 PM
If you spend a moment to verify the info that is the fact check.No one can do the thinking for you.
by Ms-J
4/3/2026 at 9:37:03 PM
Did a quick search, didn’t see confirmation that they’re blind/that all radars had been knocked out. Was asking whether others who know more about this topic than me would confirm.by ericd
4/3/2026 at 10:47:59 PM
You did a reasonable check in my opinion. Perhaps if you had said that you already did search I wouldn't have written the last part.Also if I had an answer to your question I would say it. Hope you are able to find the answer.
by Ms-J
4/3/2026 at 9:09:01 PM
Are you asking someone to fact check publicly available information for you ? Even NYT reported thisby nujabe
4/3/2026 at 9:20:14 PM
Traveling with kids on spring break, I don’t have time to read all war related news, and it tends to set off my propaganda account alarm when someone registers a new account to drop a bunch of assertions on such a politically divisive topic. So I was asking whether someone could confirm things like “The whole CENTCOM is blind basically, as well as Iron Dome which relied on these radars - all blind now, in addition to long-range early nuke detection to protect CONUS is also blind.”There’s a good reason new accounts are colored green.
by ericd
4/3/2026 at 9:27:15 PM
New account that only has politics-adjacent posts; worth being skeptical.by the__alchemist
4/3/2026 at 11:58:19 PM
a war end up being a war about information.hence the first department that goes into full throttle mode in any war - is the department of propaganda | press corps (as modernly called).
so we gonna see lies on both sides - Iranians | US / Israel. with the truth in between.
by dzonga
4/3/2026 at 11:21:57 PM
No problem - Trump is asking for an FY 2027 1.5 TRILLION dollar military budget, and just said that Medicare and Medicare may need to be cut to afford it.by HarHarVeryFunny
4/3/2026 at 11:33:19 PM
A reminder that these losses will mean we all each lose something. And Israel gains a whole lot more.What’s the next country we move to?
by nashashmi
4/3/2026 at 11:53:21 PM
Cuba.In a "rational" world the quagmire of Iran would make such a move unlikely, but with this administration the prospect of an "easy win" could have them just go for it.
After all, nobody's stopping them. The Constitution only remains so that the 2A fanatics can LARP at being patriots.
by pstuart
4/4/2026 at 12:58:31 AM
Our country is currently enforcing a blockade that is murdering children in Cuba. It is all so sickening.by mukmuk
4/4/2026 at 2:34:55 PM
As well as aiding and abetting Israel actively murder children, starve them, and sequester the land of Palestine and Lebanon.So much for the moral high ground.
by 4gotunameagain
4/4/2026 at 12:58:58 AM
If the US is allowed to annex Cuba the PRC has a right to take back Taiwan.by PearlRiver
4/4/2026 at 8:33:52 AM
Taiwan people have not been risking their lives trying to escape to join PRC.by zorobo
4/4/2026 at 2:13:06 PM
Iran fired at 17. Do we know how many radars are actually offline? I thought it was only 2.So maybe not blind? but also, hard to verify.
by FrustratedMonky
4/4/2026 at 4:15:39 PM
These very expensive toys are the reasons of the to be $1.5 trillion DoW budget. It’s insane and not sustainable.by quantum_state
4/6/2026 at 5:05:39 PM
$1.5 trillion is the budget the Pentagon is requesting for next year. It's highly unlikely Congress will give them that much money.by laughing_man
4/4/2026 at 2:43:11 PM
> Rare Earth Minerals... ...unable to repair the damage any time soon (probably for decades)Look bro, if we can make SR-71s out of pizza ovens, I'm pretty sure somewhere in the CIA can scrounge up a few ounces of gadoluminium. Tankie dreams are placation for those who wait for somebody else to make the birdseed fall from the sky.
by positron26
4/3/2026 at 10:14:28 PM
And running out of Patriotsby outside2344
4/3/2026 at 11:46:51 PM
Looks like Iran is doing what i suggested Ukraine should have done to Russia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529638by trhway
4/4/2026 at 12:46:31 AM
Absolutely. A big part of the western Ukrainian defense was solely to drain the Russian military apparatus and drain they have. It will take Russia decades to rebuild their fighting force. Now Russia and China are doing it right back to us and the intelligence gained from this conflict is extremely valuable. Come to find out the US has been sitting on ego in its military more than actual might. The previously untouchable machines of war in the sky are now very much touchable. All that's left is for them to sink a battle ship. If Iran can shoot them down, you can bet China can inflict exponentially more harm. Drain our intercept missiles, destroy radars, corrode relationships, etc. At this point, China has the world on a silver platter if they want it.by Rotdhizon
4/4/2026 at 4:08:18 AM
Russia has rebuilt their military, which was neglected at the beginning of the war. The Russian and Ukrainian armies have adopted to drone warfare, which the rest of the world lags behind.by freefrog1234aa
4/5/2026 at 3:37:26 AM
They haven't rebuilt the manpower. They've lost no less than a few hundred thousand fighting age men over the course of the war. It will take them 20-30 years minimum just for those births to occur and those newborns to make it to military age.by Rotdhizon
4/4/2026 at 6:53:01 AM
In case you haven't been following Ukraine, that's what it's doing. It has multiple cheap long range drones (FP-1, FP-2, etc) plus more expensive ones (FP-5), and it's making them in the millions a year, I think.They just took out 40% of Russian oil export capacity.
by oblio
4/4/2026 at 7:12:20 AM
no, the million or two is small battlefield drones, mostly quadcopters carrying an RPG warhead or similarly sized payload. The long range drones - and they carry only relatively small, like 20-50kg payloads - are well under 100 thousands. FP-5 was declared 1 per day half a year ago. By now i think we've seen may be 10-20 such missiles used - they use real turbo jet engine, there isn't much of them available, and they are expensive.>They just took out 40% of Russian oil export capacity.
Yes, Ust-Luga and Primorsk. Very successful hits. Painful for Putin. Yet it isn't a knock-down. Russia is like a big drunk guy in a street fight - just delivering painful blows to him doesn't help, you have to deliver a knock-out blow, and unfortunately Ukraine still seems far from it.
by trhway
4/4/2026 at 8:36:26 AM
There will be no knockout punch here, instead it will be death by exhaustion.North Vietnam didn't die of exhaustion, nor did Afghanistan (2x), Iraq.
For reference, it's likely Ukraine is making more medium cheap drones per year than Iran, the current boogeyman.
This war will end the same way, probably around 2030.
by oblio
4/4/2026 at 8:55:32 AM
Countries aren't human. You don't deliver a "knock out punch".WW2 wasn't ended by capturing Berlin, it was ended because the German military was destroyed or surrendered as they were forced back towards Berlin.
By the time it fell, there wasn't an effective German military left.
by XorNot
4/4/2026 at 1:46:16 AM
That works for Iran because US air-defense is still comprised mainly of advanced and expensive systems (like the Patriot). It doesn't work as well in Ukraine or Russia because both have figured out drone interceptors quite well. Both countries do the type of attack drone clustering you suggest. I read somewhere that a strike like from Russia that might include 60-70 drones + ballistic missiles in the hopes that one or 2 get through.by mgfist
4/4/2026 at 1:59:46 AM
you miss that i was talking about 650km/h "drones" (because, yes, it was already 3rd year of war, and 200km/h drone like Shahed became much easier target - this is why Russia has started to also use the 600km/h modification of Shahed with RC jet engine). There is related discussion under that comment addressing your point about interception.>Both countries do the type of attack drone clustering you suggest
Ukraine still isn't completely there. They do attack Russia with up to 200 drones/day. They seem to never cluster more than a few, and the drones they are using are comparably small - 50kg warhead - and slow, 100+ km/h, almost always less than 200km/h. So they are easy to intercept/shoot down, almost never penetrate Moscow air defense, and do noticeable damage only when hitting flammable targets like oil/gas industry related.
by trhway
4/4/2026 at 1:20:31 PM
Running out of patriots as well.by gessha
4/3/2026 at 8:20:09 PM
[dead]by jckrichabdkejdb
4/3/2026 at 8:28:35 PM
This is good news. Actually not for those whom chose to start the 2nd Epstein war.I really hope that Israeli and Iranian governments both go to hell. May both destroy each other.
by juliusceasar
4/3/2026 at 9:10:58 PM
For the United States, the government doesn't have the capability to extricate Israel from its political system, but the feds can create blowback for Israel which makes them less capable to influence the US in the future while achieving other strategic aims in the region. US war planners know plenty about blow back and I think this is being done on purpose. I am terrified for innocent Israelis, Iranians and Gulf state residents that have been led into this. Most of the states and peoples in the Middle East who have been destroyed used to be allies with the US. That isn't on accident.by iwontberude
4/3/2026 at 9:38:34 PM
Government could sanction Israel like they did to Iran.by readitalready
4/4/2026 at 1:41:51 AM
Nope, that would take congressional approval and congressional leaders are all bought by the people that paid for the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. At this point only DoD and CIA can make it happen, thus why I mention any of this.by iwontberude
4/4/2026 at 4:17:37 PM
The problems with inventory of THAAD and similar missile systems is actually quite serious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504505by Betelbuddy
4/3/2026 at 9:05:07 PM
Is this story even true ? There has been fake AI photo about destructed THAAD radars : https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.A2B239Eby hokkos
4/3/2026 at 9:11:22 PM
If you scroll to the bottom of that page, they discuss possible evidence of damage to the radar from satellite imagery.by daemonologist
4/3/2026 at 8:23:04 PM
AFAIK, the one in Qatar was paid by Qatar and operated by US.by reliabilityguy
4/3/2026 at 11:00:12 PM
I thought all the US ones existed in US states/territories? The ones in the middle east could be potentially destroyed true though.by HaloZero
4/3/2026 at 8:13:28 PM
we have likely moved on from this to satellite as a stop gap.by FlyingBears
4/3/2026 at 9:26:23 PM
Moved on how? Satellites are useful for launch detection and cueing but as far as we know there isn't a satellite constellation capable of tracking airborne targets with enough precision for targeting. And the military couldn't really keep such satellites secret: the emissions would be impossible to hide.by nradov
4/3/2026 at 8:42:46 PM
Cmon. At least it is all justified with good reasons!by motbus3
4/4/2026 at 12:24:30 AM
> not available on Amazon for next day deliver eitherAvailable on aliexpress - but has longer shipping times and of course those tariffs, that you don't have to pay, that you have to pay.
by blitzar
4/4/2026 at 4:07:10 PM
yes, this part I find to be most interesting.. how many losses before the picture changes for the public?by functional_dev
4/3/2026 at 9:55:02 PM
The problem is that the losses indicate something worse. A breakdown of doctrinal disciplin- mostly created by chronic underestimation of advesaries in the region. If Israel can pulp the proxxies that easy, iran would be easy. Thus it was not necessary to do what ukraine does- mostly keeping planes in the air so they are not bombed on the runway, rotating them among bases - etc.Which is specified as a strategy in the doctrine of the airforce.
by picsao
4/3/2026 at 11:33:53 PM
> breakdown of doctrinal disciplin- mostly created by chronic underestimation of advesaries in the region"Keep in mind that the greatest entities, whether they are cities or nations, are the ones most susceptible to the pride that comes before a fall."
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
by oa335
4/4/2026 at 8:58:34 AM
[dead]by picsao
4/3/2026 at 7:14:47 PM
This is exactly the situation I think of when I hear news of rescue missions. Running a rescue in a place with functional air defense is a recursive rescue problem that could quickly get out of control.by kackerlacker
4/3/2026 at 8:07:55 PM
Isn't that basically the plotline of the Blackhawk Down movie?And, more importantly, the real-life events on which it's based?
by MikeTheGreat
4/3/2026 at 8:16:02 PM
Exactly what happens to me in Kerbel Space Program.Rescue team for the rescue team.
by 0cf8612b2e1e
4/3/2026 at 9:42:05 PM
The first time I ever attempted a rescue mission in KSP, I ended up stranding 5 different kerbals in various orbita nearby trying to get the first one, and of course every one was a bigger and more complicated craft trying to save as many kerbals as possible. Eventually I just gave up and put a giant cross memorial in orbit, part as a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and part as a memorial to the like 6 kerbals I left stranded in space.by markovs_gun
4/4/2026 at 7:07:39 AM
Kerbals don't need food or water and can live forever on a limited air supply. I once rescued a kerbal who got stuck around their equivalent of Venus for multiple years. So it's all fine, they'll patiently wait...by verzali
4/3/2026 at 8:38:04 PM
Did you tactically forgot to put parachute on the landing pod? Or run out of fuel mid mission?by wafflemaker
4/3/2026 at 9:35:00 PM
Slaps car, thsi baby can fit soo many rescue teams in itby downrightmike
4/3/2026 at 7:27:05 PM
The US did it all the time in Vietnam.by zabzonk
4/3/2026 at 7:37:03 PM
And it did sometimes get way out of control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Bat_21_Bravoby ranger207
4/4/2026 at 1:13:29 AM
My neighbor was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, the one mentioned in this article who came back with over 100 bullet holes in his helicopter after the rescue operation: https://historynet.com/rescue-in-death-valley-with-hhm-163-t... That rescue wasn't to retrieve a pilot, but nearly 200 surviving soldiers being overrun.It's difficult to squeeze stories out of him, mostly because it was so long ago and ancient history to him. Just to put his timeline in perspective, after the war he befriended a captain of the White Russian Navy who had to flee after losing the Russian Revolution. Alot of White Russians ended up in San Francisco, which is where my neighbor settled down in the '60s. He was also a military escort for Nelson Rockefeller, I think during one Rockefeller's campaigns. Once a staunch Republican, needless to say he's not a fan of where the Republican Party has ended up since then. Still a gung-ho Marine, though, who keeps insisting on climbing over our 10-foot fence whenever he locks himself out of his house, which means I have to jump the fence. Were it anyone else I'd just call and pay for a locksmith myself, or badger him to finally give me copies of his keys.
by wahern
4/4/2026 at 12:25:51 AM
Thanks for sharing, that's a crazy read.by rkagerer
4/3/2026 at 7:37:03 PM
That's an example of things getting out of control.by onion2k
4/3/2026 at 7:48:13 PM
Possibly the best exampleby i_love_retros
4/3/2026 at 8:47:24 PM
Not sure if it was actually used, but a fun idea for pilot recovery..by harambae
4/3/2026 at 10:08:42 PM
The Fulton recovery system[1] using a self-inflating balloon was used in production.Though if Iranian air defenses are capable of shooting down an F-15, mounting a rescue operation with a C-130 may not be the brightest idea.
Anyone know the minimum speed of a B-2?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery...
by jasomill
4/3/2026 at 11:49:43 PM
>Lifted off the ground, the pig began to spin as it flew through the air at 125 miles per hour (200 km/h). It arrived on board uninjured, but in a disoriented state. When it recovered, it attacked the crew.Understandable
by orbital-decay
4/4/2026 at 8:59:09 AM
Iranian Air defense getting lucky is different to it being impenetrable.This is not a binary situation, and a lucky F-15 kill would not make it a good idea to concentrate more assets in an area where the US will now focus more resources.
by XorNot
4/3/2026 at 7:36:46 PM
…against the viet cong, where the biggest risk was the pilot getting pierced from small arms fire (in addition to the helo going down from pilot error). Quite different from the anti-air weapons modern day Iran possesses.by jwilber
4/3/2026 at 7:44:33 PM
Are you aware that hundreds of American fixed wing aircraft were lost to surface to air missiles in North Vietnam? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._aircraft_losses_t...by Edman274
4/3/2026 at 8:43:23 PM
Ah yeah, well I didn’t know it was that high!But I’m responding to the rescue mission comment, which, since Vietnam, have overwhelmingly employed helicopters (Huey’s then, Black Hawks today). But machinery aside, the larger point is that air operations will likely go worse here than they did in Vietnam, unfortunately for both sides.
by jwilber
4/3/2026 at 7:52:20 PM
Or a MiG-17 that could outrate your F-4/F-105 at every subsonic flight regime.by bigyabai
4/3/2026 at 10:12:57 PM
You're conflating the Viet Cong with North Vietnam.by greedo
4/3/2026 at 11:22:56 PM
I imagine Trump would threaten to nuke a major city if it didnt stop and pilots werent returned safe. Not that I agree, but I think that's what he would emotionally do.by alonethrowaway
4/3/2026 at 7:14:16 PM
What are A-10s doing there? There isn't yet any ground operation, right?by gpderetta
4/3/2026 at 7:22:44 PM
They were largely being used for maritime patrol against fast boats. I saw a newsblurb a couple days ago that more were being sent to the region.by thinkcontext
4/3/2026 at 9:16:04 PM
Cheaper to operate than any fighter, longer endurance, good for patrolling over the Strait. Filling the gap between helicopters and fighters with a big, but cheap cannon.by AdrianB1
4/3/2026 at 11:00:05 PM
[dead]by benjiro3000
4/3/2026 at 7:19:46 PM
The A-10 carries AGM 88 anti-radiation missiles, and while it's a slow aircraft it can still passably perform SEAD with the AGM 88.by stackghost
4/3/2026 at 8:20:21 PM
Geran-2 (which is Russian licenced Shahed drone) also carries air-to-air missile, so sending slow archaic manned airframe is just suicide mission (aka shaheed)https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russia-used-shahed-drone-arme...
by bijowo1676
4/3/2026 at 9:13:00 PM
That is not a Shahed drone, that is a Geran-2 drone. Which is similar from the outside but not the same. Also Iran doesn't have stock of R-60s I think.by chithanh
4/3/2026 at 11:10:15 PM
There's also no possibility that a Geran would be able to engage an A-10. It doesn't have a RADAR, it is much slower and less manoeuvrable.by angry_octet
4/3/2026 at 11:34:33 PM
radar is not required for A2A missiles with infrared seekers, like the R60by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 7:22:12 AM
Well, bijowo1676, you need a RADAR to find the target before you shoot at it. An IRST can be used, or an off board track, but that is a an expensive and limited capability technique, and usually used to augment a RADAR, not replace it. The missile IR seeker has a narrow FOV.by angry_octet
4/3/2026 at 7:23:01 PM
Manpads (man portable air defense) works just fine.by elictronic
4/3/2026 at 7:39:53 PM
"Just fine" for what? AGM88 is air-to-ground and manpads are surface-to-air. If you're implying that manpads work just fine instead of A-10s, you're wrong.by pc86
4/3/2026 at 11:09:06 PM
Well, the A-10 is down no matter how correct you feel you are.Shoulder launched missiles are absolutely capable of taking down large slow aircrafts in 2026.
This is not a rpg from 1930
by fooker
4/4/2026 at 5:47:34 PM
Exactly, someone might be at risk of reading the thread with a 1930s RPGby misnome
4/3/2026 at 7:35:39 PM
I'm not sure that I understand what you are implying.by stackghost
4/3/2026 at 7:57:45 PM
That A-10’s can’t suppress manpadsby beedeebeedee
4/3/2026 at 10:25:24 PM
Well, they absolutely can with a BRRRRT, but if you mean "AGM 88 HARMs are a poor weaponeering choice against a Misagh-3", then sure, no argument here. But a dude on a hilltop with a shoulder tube is not the only type of air defense.I'm not sure why any of this is relevant. The question I was responding to was about why A-10s are even in-theatre, given there's no boots on the ground yet.
The answer to that question is "they're probably doing SEAD". They might also be there to hit Iranian naval drones, though I doubt it'd be effective in that role.
by stackghost
4/4/2026 at 12:16:40 PM
This high profile failure means the end of the brrrt meme.by diydsp
4/6/2026 at 2:20:07 PM
I'm sure it doesn't.by pc86
4/3/2026 at 7:18:24 PM
Well, A-10s are well suited for strafing runs, etc. Presumably they'd be sent in if the area they're entering is presumed safe. That clearly didn't pan out.The reality is avoiding a ground operation was probably the wrong move at this point (ignoring the spicier broader debate of if the whole Iran campaign was the right call or not)
It's really hard to truly guarantee surface to air capabilities are gone when you're relying purely on sat images + aerial surveillance (and obviously this carries risk). Iran has fairly portable SAM systems that are public knowledge.
by alfalfasprout
4/3/2026 at 7:34:38 PM
> ignoring the spicier broader debate of if the whole Iran campaign was the right call or notHow spicy of a debate is that really? How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?
by ifyoubuildit
4/3/2026 at 8:11:21 PM
Apparently 37.7% of Americans, so roughly 116 million people, support the war. I'm not sure "this was a good idea" was a the exact question though.https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54454-most-americans-oppos...
https://www.natesilver.net/p/iran-war-polls-popularity-appro...
Clearly this war isn't popular but that's a far cry from saying there's no debate. Like many other topics/questions we're seeing people following their tribe and bubbles rather than actual debating.
by YZF
4/3/2026 at 8:39:50 PM
I would question to what extent repeating propaganda, qualifies as debate.Even if you do say that it qualifies, it doesn't qualify as productive debate.
There is really no productive debate to be had here. Even if you think that Iran needed to be bombed, it took absurd incompetence to start doing so before planning how to handle asymmetric warfare against drones in an affordable way.
by btilly
4/4/2026 at 9:02:09 PM
Repeating propaganda does not generally qualify as debate.Why isn't there a productive debate to be had here?
Your arguing that the incompetence has to do with handling drones. To me that statement feels close to "repeating propaganda" because the Shaed drones are generally handled in an affordable way which is by shooting them with bullets from helicopters: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uZ07pcDGE70
This is a method that has been used for a long time in Ukraine as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/Planes/comments/1qzj19h/an_f16_of_t...
https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/us-apache-pilots-dro...
There are endless videos and news stories about how drones are shot down effectively by the UAE (with AH-64 cannons), by Israel (where Iran doesn't even bother sending drones over because none of them make it), and by Ukraine (including with newer counter-drone tech they have).
The propaganda says "we fire a 2 million dollar THAAD missile on a 50k dollar drone". Many can be shot down cheaply. Some are shot down with $500k AA missiles. We also need to account for anything destroyed on the ground and not launched. So it seems like your opening argument can certainly at the very least be debated.
OTOH it is true that some drones got through and inflicted significant damage. But maybe that's unavoidable to some degree.
Even beyond the base statement. If you think Iran needed to be bombed, e.g. because they were manufacturing 100 long range ballistic missiles per month and because they had enough nuclear material to make 12 bombs and were working on all the technology pieces to be able to put them on ballistic missiles and launch them, then what would be the alternative universe where we somehow magically came up with solutions to the asymmetric nature of this war? Would waiting for them to have a lot more missiles and drones and bury them deeper be a good thing or a bad thing. What would be the odds of the regime either compromising and giving up their abilities or collapsing without external intervention.
by YZF
4/4/2026 at 12:18:43 PM
Exactly. Support means saying "I accept the reduction in my social security and medicare and other govt services in exchange for this war."by diydsp
4/3/2026 at 8:33:13 PM
I also think there was an initial “euphoria” (I guess) during the initial days of the campaign.People I know (even Iranian expats) were excited to see the regime get hammered and there was hope for possibility of change (and also a little bloodlust)… but I think as the war drags on and the US is exposed to be in an un-winnable mess, sentiment will continue to sour.
This has already started to happen in Nate Silver’s post you linked.
by Esophagus4
4/3/2026 at 11:35:29 PM
Trump has been talking about destroying Iranian desalination plants, and "bombing the country back to the stone age". This is no surgical decapitation strike, nor one just targetting Iran's military capabilities. This is a vicious senile old man living out his dictator "I can do anything I like" fantasies, who could care less about helping the Iranian people, or those in America for that matter.by HarHarVeryFunny
4/4/2026 at 2:16:47 AM
I am shocked that the Democrats are not making clear to the military that engaging in crimes against humanity may have consequences for them -- not to speak, of course, of politicians higher up in the chain of command.by lejalv
4/4/2026 at 3:03:46 AM
Several have (Deluzio, Slotkin, Kelly, Crow, Goodlander, and Houlahan), Nov 2025:<https://deluzio.house.gov/media/press-releases/joint-stateme...>
by dredmorbius
4/4/2026 at 6:55:59 AM
Because a lot of the democrats are basically controlled opposition and need to please their MIC and Israeli donorsby 7sigma
4/4/2026 at 3:02:22 PM
> I am shockedYou shouldn't be, especially considering that Schumer and Durbin both voted for the Hague Invasion Act.
by BigTTYGothGF
4/4/2026 at 7:17:33 AM
He is simply doing israels bidding.by aaa_aaa
4/3/2026 at 8:41:12 PM
75 million using the YouGov number and just under 100 million using the Nate Silver average. (I think you must have used the more Trump-favorable number AND included children in your computation, which is not reasonable.)Also worth noting that Nate Silver's measure has been declining for almost 3 weeks, the majority of the duration of the invasion.
Before the invasion, a University of Mariland poll says 55 million and a YouTov poll says 71 million support. These are useful numbers because we know there's a rally around the flag effect that distorts thinking during a conflict.
https://criticalissues.umd.edu/feature/do-americans-favor-at... https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54158-few-americans-suppor...
by asadotzler
4/3/2026 at 9:43:47 PM
20-25% of Americans would support Trump pulling his pants down and taking a shit on the floor in the oval office on live TV. These people's opinions shouldn't be taken into account or respected in these discussions.by markovs_gun
4/4/2026 at 2:20:40 AM
That is an interesting take. Seen from elsewhere in the world, we cannot afford not taking into account a big chunk of the American electoral body, which is effectively at war with us (by various means).Essentially, a MESA movement, “Make the Earth Shit Again”.
The obvious implication is that the rest of the world is at war with the US (by various means), and should act accordingly, starting with a wide-ranging consumer boycott of all US products.
by lejalv
4/4/2026 at 9:09:29 AM
Which is right in line with the "crazification factor": https://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-...The relevant quote:
> Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
by XorNot
4/4/2026 at 3:01:32 PM
Herschel Walker got 48.6% of the Georgia vote against Warnock. Slightly different in that Walker was a popular football hero in Georgia but he was also clearly mentally incompetent.by tootie
4/4/2026 at 1:57:40 PM
You can see that factor in a large number of polls on all kinds of subjects. It doesn't matter what the question is, a fifth to a quarter of the population will make the dumbest, least consistent, most self defeating choice every time. I think if you can get ~70% of the population on board with something that's all that should matter because the bottom 25% of the intelligence curve are literally incapable of making good decisions and worrying about them or their opinions will only lead to disaster. I also think that this is a major flaw of a lot of democratic systems because if a movement can effectively mobilize that group to vote as a bloc then it can easily sway policy. Add in messed up systems like in the US where you can amplify the power of that bloc beyond their population and it easily explains how we got hereby markovs_gun
4/4/2026 at 9:09:51 PM
The problem with this line of argument is that people will put you in that camp as well and paint you as the "dumbest". Let's take it as truth that 25% of a population are morons. You say those morons are all in the camp that opposes your policy/opinions. The other side says those morons are all in your camp (including you). And that's how we shut discussion down and get more polarization.I think the reality is a lot of people aren't that smart. And sometimes even smart people can make bad choices. The average IQ is 100.
Here's an interesting random paper for you: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
"• Individuals who identify as Republican have greater probability knowledge
• Individuals who identify as Republican have higher verbal reasoning ability
• Individuals who identify as Republican have better question comprehension
• Cognitive ability’s effect on party identity works through socio-economic position"
At least this does not seem to support the common opinion here of presumably a democrat leaning crowd (based on the comments) who seem to think that their opponents are all morons.
Bottom line of sorts for me is that we need to be able to debate issues from first principles and based on facts. We often go to appeal to emotion and herd mentality instead. Very much so on these sorts of partisan button pushing threads.
by YZF
4/3/2026 at 9:20:33 PM
>>How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?> Apparently 37.7% of Americans,
These are the same thing. The MAGA base is fracturing and the polls are showing that with the very number you are using as a retort.
by dylan604
4/3/2026 at 8:25:52 PM
Your first link says 28% support it, so somewhere between 28 and 37%. I do wonder how many of those people could find Iran on a map, though I suppose you could ask the same about the people who are against it.by ifyoubuildit
4/4/2026 at 1:18:34 AM
The first link (YouGov) in fact is even less enthusiastic than GP quoted: 28% of Americans strongly or somewhat support the war with Iran.(setting aside that it's illegal under international law, and unauthorized by Congress)
by smcin
4/3/2026 at 8:28:33 PM
I lost trust in humanity when I saw how many people on HN fell for the CERN Mario Kart April fools article.by YZF
4/3/2026 at 8:59:03 PM
[dead]by kitsune1
4/4/2026 at 7:17:54 PM
The number for boots on the ground is more like 12% though. And the people opposed to the war span various bubbles or tribes, including some right-wing influencers. You can easily find critiques of the conflict from various former military and intelligence officials across many podcasts, news media and Youtube channels.by goatlover
4/3/2026 at 8:20:28 PM
Surprisingly so, I would say. Without going into any identifying details, my buddy, who is otherwise fairly reasonable, thinks it was. I disagree. Reported country split ( US ) seems to fall some along common political lines though, so maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.Then again.. I can no longer can rely on those surveys in any meaningful way.
by iugtmkbdfil834
4/3/2026 at 8:56:35 PM
> seems to fall some along common political lines thoughWhile true, I think it's more correct to say that the determining factor is which television news media people most readily consume.
by markdown
4/4/2026 at 3:52:56 AM
> How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?
by dotancohen
4/4/2026 at 7:16:10 AM
Way to go proving Iran right. Who wouldn't want to eliminate a nation that bombs and kills your civilians?by verzali
4/4/2026 at 8:42:00 AM
So I see that you agree that Israel must destroy a significant portion of Gaza - at least those parts of Gaza educated by UNRWA.by dotancohen
4/3/2026 at 7:43:00 PM
[flagged]by IncreasePosts
4/3/2026 at 7:55:58 PM
This is what bringing democracy looks like?! The regime is more entrenched than ever and our commander in chief keeps threatening to commit war crimes on a massive scale. If he follows through on what he says he will do and obliterates all the civilian infrastructure in the country it will kill mass numbers of innocent people and turn millions of survivors into impoverished refugees.As bad as the regime is, and it's very bad, what we're doing is even worse for most Iranians and the odds a democratic government arises from the ashes of our bombing campaign is incredibly unlikely.
by rurp
4/3/2026 at 7:50:48 PM
As a person who believes in democracy, don't you think it should be the US Congress the one declaring war?by inigoalonso
4/3/2026 at 8:13:14 PM
Supporting an illegal war would be a funny way to support democracy. Or maybe they believe in democracies that ignore their constitution.by deeg
4/4/2026 at 2:12:17 AM
Sure, but that ship sailed about 75 years ago with the Korean "police action".In any case a slightly dysfunctional democracy is in a totally different realm than a theocratic quasi hereditary dictatorship
by IncreasePosts
4/3/2026 at 8:42:05 PM
Yes, bombing schools, universities and dessalination plants is a sure way to have more democracy in a country. Especially double taps where you kill the rescuers.The US have so many examples where they did so and worked!
by Saline9515
4/3/2026 at 9:00:31 PM
Oh, didn't you hear, we actually _triple tapped_ the school, so after the first wave of rescuers was also hit, anyone who came to help was also attacked.Totally not a war crime.
by FireBeyond
4/3/2026 at 11:00:06 PM
Where do you even find this?Even if true, it's legally incorrect, btw. There are 2 kinds of warcrimes: Rome treaty (the only legal definition) and Geneva convention. The Rome treaty allows countries to opt-out of the treaty, and then nothing on their territory qualifies as a war crime. Iran has opted out of the Rome treaty, and so when it comes to international law, nothing that happens on Iranian soil is a war crime.
And we all know WHY islamists want it that way. But of course they will confuse matters as propaganda ...
Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations. And ignoring that EVERY attack Iran executed in the 2 days was a warcrime in that definition. Every last one. They didn't even try to go after military targets for days. But ignoring that.
What warcrimes do, in the sense of the Geneva convention, is that they are justifications for the UNSC to intervene, should it want to. Well, Russia, China and France have just declared that the UNSC does not follow the reasoning that these are warcrimes. Not because they don't believe Geneva convention violations aren't heinous crimes (of course Iran has violated it constantly for 50+ years with constant heinous crimes), but that these states don't see any reason to act.
by spwa4
4/3/2026 at 11:49:56 PM
> Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations.The other "colloquial" definition of a war crime is "things we prosecuted the Nazis for at Nuremberg".
One side here is playing "world's police", so this "but those people (that we've painted as fundamentalist extremist terrorists) are committing war crimes so why shouldn't we get to, too?" isn't exactly the fine upstanding argument that you seem to think it is, just as it's not when the IDF responds to children throwing rocks at main battle tanks with live ammunition and turning off the power to a country for three days.
by FireBeyond
4/4/2026 at 9:51:07 AM
I find it absolutely incredible anyone would choose to use such arguments to defend Iran's islamist regime. Why?Unfortunately every conflict has 2 sides. This is what the side you're defending does:(man it's difficult to get a list of links into hacker news) (also: stolen from a reddit summary)
Recently, Iran has lowered the entry age into the Iranian military to 12, and they have a long and storied history of using child soldiers in the Iran/Iraq war as suicide bombers - and sending them into minefields tied together with rope to prevent escape, so they could be human minesweepers for tanks and adult soldiers [1].
550,000+ child soldiers were used in the Iran/Iraq war, with over 36,000 as young as NINE years old being killed. Martyrdom is taught in Iranian schools to this day [2].
UNICEF reports 1/5 of ALL marriages in Iran are child marriages. They can legally marry 13 year old girls, and can marry any age with the father’s permission; it’s likely higher than 1/5 as in rural regions it’s common for marriages to not be reported [3].
They just slaughtered 30,000+ civilian protestors in January who were demonstrating against a literal terrorist puppet state who has committed some of the worst human rights atrocities in the world in the span of their 50 year history [4].
Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran’s Supreme Leader) stated virgin women are to be raped prior to their executions (largely for minor acts) so they don’t die a virgin, and justified it through his interpretation of his religion [5].
Here’s Iranian Parliament chanting “Death to America”, which they do constantly [6].
They are directly funding and arming internationally recognized terror groups [7]. Based on Intelligence estimates, Iran-funded terrorist groups have been responsible for thousands of deaths, including hundreds of American personnel, since the 1979 revolution. Major casualties are attributed to Iran-backed proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, and various Shiite militias in Iraq [8].
And are visibly, via satellite, enriching uranium past 60% which is only used for acquiring nuclear weapons [9].
This is far from a complete list. We're not even discussing that iranian clergy are literally pimping underage girls for sex, which sharia is perfectly fine with (and also happens in other muslim states, including sunni ones) as long as what we'd call the pimp is an imam.
[1] https://www.jns.org/opinion/yoram-ettinger/irans-sickening-u... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/04/iran-recruitm... [3] https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/learning-resources/child-marr... [4] https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-... [5] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmin... [6] https://youtu.be/GUDLkKmzpeU?si=QiPMeyj8y8gWQfzr [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro... [9] https://www.csis.org/analysis/csis-satellite-imagery-analysi...
by spwa4
4/4/2026 at 11:10:58 PM
> I find it absolutely incredible anyone would choose to use such arguments to defend Iran's islamist regime. Why?Unfortunately every conflict has 2 sides. This is what the side you're defendingPump the brakes and do not put words into my mouth.
There is not one statement in anything I've said here that defends Iran's islamist regime.
Because I don't.
Stop getting yourself all bent out of shape that side professing a moral/ethical superiority might be held to standards that befit that supposed superiority.
by FireBeyond
4/4/2026 at 11:02:39 AM
So now Wikipedia is a valid source? Interesting!by Saline9515
4/3/2026 at 11:04:59 PM
It's in the wikipedia notice, if you ever tried to search it:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack
"According to witness accounts verified by satellite-based analyses, the school was triple tapped by three distinct strikes."
War crime isn't just a legal definition, just like the world was genocide-free before WW2. And by your reasoning it's totally fine to genocide people as long as no treaty/law prevents it. Of course it isn't.
Most people would agree to say that bombing a school or a dessalination plant is a war crime, whatever the convention was signed before. Schoolchildren are not responsible for the IRGC's actions.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 8:37:31 AM
If you trust wikipedia without checking the talk page, and frankly in anything remotely involving Israel, you've lost the plot. Sorry but it just isn't remotely neutral on more and more subjects.And this is the old trick: judging one side by absolutist morals, and then claiming SOME portion of the other side was innocent. Obviously, this is a fallacy and not a reasonable way to judge the morals of an action.
In reality, of course, nearly everyone the Iranian government attacks is totally innocent, and that's 100% intentional on their part. From toddlers in Argentina to Metro goers in Brussels. In Brussels, in an Iranian organized terror attack the guy put 5 bullets in a baby in a child carriage, waiting to shoot the mother (she survived, by the way) until she collapsed to the ground. THAT is who is being targeted here. That was not an accident.
That's one side, and the other side ... makes mistakes.
Clearly, the moral problem here is a mistake by the other side. Clearly THAT's the problem that needs to be solved.
Removing an evil actor requires, frankly, evil actions. Any real moral system will allow for that. Have you ever been to Dresden? What happened there is far worse than even Hiroshima. There's a shelter you can visit there, with a book like in Lord of the rings. It is open to a partially burnt page with the text that people were panicking when the wind drew fire into the shelter during the bombing. People caught on fire, put it out in panic, and it would immediately catch on fire again. Then those people collapsed. The text ... ends there, with spilled ink. There are 2 child carriages in that basement.
This action is considered morally justified, even by the survivors at the time, despite the fact that it didn't even achieve it's military objectives (the factories it targeted weren't destroyed, the city center was, and the aircraft factories, the main target, had stopped producing for lack of inputs months before the attack started)
Both historically and in moral source texts you will find people give enormous moral leeway to actions meant to save others. To remove an evil actor. That is even the case when they cause incredible damage.
by spwa4
4/4/2026 at 8:56:36 AM
Wikipedia provides sources that you can check yourself. In this case, it's the BBC, a well known IRGC-aligned and extremist media hostile to the USA.https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yqqyly9n0o
And you whataboutism is childish, on top of the basic fact that the school bombing happened in the first days of the war, after a stupid and sadistic decapitation strike that destroyed any chance of negotiated settlement.
It's not the US' job to punish the IRGC for their crimes, and now that they started this idiotic war, the situation in Iran is even worse than when it started, including for the population. Which is yet another complete, objective failure and a proof that bombing populations don't lead to regime change.
> That's one side, and the other side ... makes mistakes.
This is a widely biased interpretation absolving an army whose chief has declared "no quarters" (=war crime) and conducts double-tap strikes on civilian infrastructure. And who bombed Dresden, Gaza, Vietnam or Cambodia? Why was it wrong then, but now it's cool?
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 10:42:02 AM
The BBC article in no shape, way, or form supports your statement that the school was "triple tapped".The article was written by an Iranian, but let's just for a moment assume that they're not monumentally biased and instead let's look at the pictures and the text.
The picture in the BBC article clearly shows one impact point in the middle of the school building, and also one each in the surrounding IRGC buildings.
What "eyewitnesses" would have observed from some distance away would have been a series of explosions. Six to eight bombs, all dropped in rapid succession, likely from two to four planes.
Double-tapping (or triple tapping) involves a long delay between the initial hit and the follow-up hit. The idea being to also kill the emergency services personel that turn up... half an hour later.
The article carefully misquotes the locals who witnessed a series of explosions to suggest that this was a series of attacks on the school itself, but fails to scrape together the evidence to sell this narrative:
"suggesting it was hit more than once" -- but not proving. Actually, not showing that at all, since the picture clearly shows one hit on the building!
"around the Shajareh Tayebeh primary school" -- but not in the school.
"the area was "struck by multiple" -- the area around the school is an IRGC base, not "more school".
"Two damaged buildings" -- and then they admit one is the IRGC building leaving... one school building that was hit, once.
"difficult to independently verify" -- here the BBC admits to repeating IRGC propaganda without even bother to check the picture they put in their own article that obviously contradicts their biased narrative.
"speculation about what the intended target" -- what speculation? It was the IRGC base! It was a former IRGC building! Nobody in their right mind would "speculate" about this. This is a brazen lie.
"may have been used"
"who may have been operating"
etc...
I could keep on going, but why bother? This BBC article is total garbage, packed with deceptive language, weasel words, and "just asking questions".
The real, factually true heinous act here is the sloppiness of the US administration in keeping up with the changing status of IRGC targets. They got lazy, killed a 168 students and teachers, which is horrific.
We can blame them for their hubris. We can blame them for starting the war in the first place. We can lay the blame at their feet for any number of things.
But please don't repeat a made-up story of unbelievable, cartoonish evil. It's obvious that the US administration didn't set out to on-purpose kill school children! It's obvious that they didn't "double tap" the school building! It's obvious that they thought that they were hitting an IRGC building and it turned out not to be so. They made a mistake, but a mistake surrounded by deliberate war. Be angry at them starting this unnecessary war, which they did on purpose.
by jiggawatts
4/4/2026 at 2:29:02 PM
Middle East Eye provides alternative testimonies by the Red Crescent medics:https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-iranian-girls-k...
Why is it so hard to accept? Israelis commonly do this already.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 7:30:38 PM
Why is it so hard to accept the basic fact that Iran - and Palestine (and China, and Russia, and Cuba, and ...) do not allow free press or free communication? That means with rare exceptions (unless someone is willing to risk their life for it) you ONLY have access to propaganda.In any society that doesn't allow free press:
ANY television broadcast = government propaganda
Red Cross/Crescent = disguised government propaganda (Hamas/Iran's islamist regime)
ANY internet message = disguised government propaganda
ANY story published in the BBC with sources from that country = disguised government propaganda
ANY information delivered by anyone who wasn't risking their lives = disguised government propaganda
ANY information delivered by a foreign journalist "invited" into the country (ie. CNN in this conflict) = government propaganda (like "embedded journalists" in US army)
You do not have ANY information from within Iran except propaganda and very rare, very incomplete viewpoints (slowly) anonymously smuggled out. That's it. Yes, this means you generally just do not know. Not even if "the Red Cross/Crescent" says so, because they cannot risk saying anything but the government's viewpoint.
I get that this is very hard to understand for someone living in the US or Europe but that's how it is.
This was the case in the cold war with all the communist regimes. This is currently the case with Russia. With Cuba. With China. And, of course, with Iran. There is no information BUT propaganda from both sides. Nothing but that.
And sorry to point out the obvious, but given the choice between the US army and Iran's mullahs ... even Trump beats the islamist mullahs in reliability and credibility. Yes this is choosing the best option between Syfilis and Gonorrhea. But Trump wins that contest. Easily. Hands down.
by spwa4
4/4/2026 at 9:30:48 AM
> Wikipedia provides sources that you can check yourselfAre you somehow confused about how to lie with sources? The earth is flat. Proof: https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/library/books/Is%20the%2... (read it, it's fun. Not the usual rants you find everywhere)
Finding websites, or even 100-year old books that obviously lie about Israel is not exactly hard. Here's one you might not know about (look at the author, yes, it's really him): https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/48... (now this one is a rant, still far above average though)
And the BBC. Ahh the BBC. They used to actually have journalists, and ... well, clearly, they've decided that actually having journalists around the world is not that relevant to producing news anymore. The quality of their work is dropping like a stone year over year. Also, when it comes to reporting about the UK, they've obviously switched to just being a propaganda outlet. Even the historical articles about the poverty in Manchester, which is certainly not improving, can hardly be found on the BBC anymore. And there are no new articles made about it. And reporting on Scottish independence movements or Northern Ireland ... they've started just outright denying anything like that exists. BBC was great, up to about 20 years ago. Now it's barely more authoritative than any other news outlet. You know, the ones that almost exclusively just repeat press releases. You want to know what a government has to say about an event? BBC is your friend. You want to know the sentiment on the ground in an event? BBC doesn't even try to collect that anymore, and when it is presented to them, they refuse to report it. And they've "become political", on a great many different subjects.
There's other things on wikipedia where what we'd consider evil is winning more and more over time. The Armenian genocide, for example, where ever more attention is going to denying it ever happened. And the many genocides that happened at the end of the Ottoman empire at muslim hands, of which the Armenian genocide is merely the biggest example, have already lost the fight on wikipedia. Or the whitewashing of the extremely bloody and, frankly, disgusting early muslim history. Muslim slavery is getting erased, especially what young female slaves ... islam's involvement in the holocaust (ie. the involvement of muslim clergy in creating Nazi SS extermination squads in the balkan. It's still there ... you just won't find it linked anywhere). Or the downplaying of aspects of communism (such as the fact that socialist theory is rabidly, even violently, even murderously, anti-immigrant). Or ... every year the list extends further and further.
> This is a widely biased interpretation ...
What do you hope to achieve by doubling down on the totally one sided view of the situation? Iran's government is evil, massacres everyone it can, brutally tortures and executes children, sells underage girls for sex (perfectly legal in sharia as long as the pimp claims to be an imam) and deserves everything that's happening to it 100x over.
Let's discuss that first.
by spwa4
4/4/2026 at 9:47:58 AM
> WikipediaThe link provided comes from the BBC. Wikipedia simply acts as an aggregator on certain topics, which is convenient to share in such debates.
Your ad hominem against the BBC is laughable, please provide a list of correct media sources then. And don't try to debate the content of course!
> Iran evil
The US and Israel have no goal to change that, so the population will in the end have a destroyed infrastructure, and a hardliner regime even more brutal than ever. Mission accomplished!
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 10:20:54 AM
> > Iran evil> The US and Israel have no goal to change that
Even if you believe in the most absurd conspiracy theories you could still accurately classify US efforts as "trying to change Iran's behavior to the world for the better". So this is entirely, 100%, false.
And, yes, we all hope for more, which may or may not happen.
by spwa4
4/4/2026 at 10:56:34 AM
Ah yes, US efforts along with their actions against Venezuela, Lybia, Cambodia, Syria, Vietnam, Irak or North Korea. It totally worked, and those countries were much better than before the bombing!When you think about it, every country between Pakistan and the mediterranean sea was bombed by the US in the last 30 years. How did it end up?
At some point the people in power very well know what's happening. Bombing schools, bridges, universities and hospitals don't create better regimes.
They just prove that hardliners of the IRGC were right from the start. Moderates have nothing to show, since the Trump admin never wanted to negociate. Yet another massive US self-own.
And I don't see why it is a conspiracy theory. Trump showed with Venezuela that he didn't care at all about democracy. And Israelis don't either. You are the one absorbing the blatant propaganda lies of the Trump administration.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 1:37:13 PM
... and then, of course, we switch moral fallacies. The supposed superiority of doing nothing. Hope you never need an ambulance, because of course, clearly, according to your reasoning the moral action would be to let you die.And btw: your motivation, obviously that you want Iran hardliners to win inside Iran, is showing. Carefully placing the blame for the actions of the hardliners with the US. Needless to say, that is not a moral position at all.
There's many problems. First: every agent with agency is of course responsible for their own actions. Which means Iran's regime, islamists and islamic clergy are despicable monsters because of what they did.
That there is a reason they did what they did does not explain their actions in any moral sense. It makes it worse, of course. It means that they're indeed fully responsible for their actions, that they're not insane, made a choice, and their choice shows them to be truly despicable, immoral and disgusting human beings.
by spwa4
4/4/2026 at 2:17:56 PM
You are conflating "doing something" with "doing something useful".The US could have chosen not to kill the supreme leader (who was the only one able to drive a change), a large part of the moderates in the government and negociators.
It could have chosen to send other people than crooked incompetent real estate managers to negotiate with Iranians about complex nuclear issues.
It could have chosen to propose an acceptable plan to Iranians that allowed room for negotiation, not just a blanket capitulation and surrender.
Your view of foreign policy is immature, similar to a child trying to wash the dishes and breaking them as he does. When the parents arrive, he cries and says "but I'm trying to help!".
And I don't like the IRGC but I also would prefer to avoid the humanitarian and refugee crisis and civil war in a 90M pop country. Which will happen after the US "liberates" them by bombing civilian infrastructure such as water treatment or electricity plants. Did they ever say "thank you"?
Because I know that others will pick up the pieces after the US and Israeli meatheads in power will come back home. Just like it happened in Irak, Syria, and Lybia.
by Saline9515
4/5/2026 at 4:17:19 PM
All of those are choices the US government DID make, and Iran threw into their face before we switched to this. Which of course changes whose view of foreign policy is immature, but who cares? This is just a discussion forum.by spwa4
4/6/2026 at 7:17:29 PM
Iran, the US and many other countries had a perfectly working deal under the JCPOA, until Trump, pressed by the Israelis, exited it. Which led to the current situations as Iranians weren't forced to limit their uranium enrichment.Once again, a massive self-own by the US.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 12:56:55 PM
Found the Nazi! Found the Nazi! Please ban this asshole if you have any morality.by the_overseer
4/3/2026 at 9:01:01 PM
Aren't those war crimes? Will anything be done about that I wonder. And if your goal is bringing democracy and liberating a people from a oppressive regime, then hurting the people by making their air unbreakable or bombing the water plants is NOT how you go about.I understand that war is not pretty and regime change is brutal to all parties involved, but this is done in the worst way possible.
by kitsune1
4/3/2026 at 10:48:08 PM
> Will anything be done about that I wonderMost probably nothing. If things get really bad and there is a revolution or something of that magnitude in the US there may be a Nuremberg moment. Don’t count on it. Whatever government will come next will do everything they can to shield American generals and officials because otherwise they would be afraid the same thing would happen to them once they leave office. The only thing that could keep these people accountable is the American people through Congress. So yeah, probably nothing. Which is bad, because these war crimes are up there with what supposedly evil regimes did in the past.
by kergonath
4/3/2026 at 11:38:26 PM
[dead]by Saline9515
4/3/2026 at 8:23:08 PM
> As a person who believes in democracy, I'm pretty on board with it.As others have stated. This war will not bring democracy. Bombing Iranians have united them with the regime.
Also, US and Israel do not want a democracy in Iran. Israel would prefer a non-functioning place like Palestine or a mostly non-functional place like Lebanon that they can easily control.
by cheema33
4/3/2026 at 11:35:51 PM
It might bring some democracy to the US, though. There is hope for the midterms.by vkou
4/3/2026 at 8:07:02 PM
Would you say you fall into the hardcore trump base category?by ifyoubuildit
4/3/2026 at 8:15:21 PM
No, I disagree with trump on most things, including possibly why he started the war.by IncreasePosts
4/3/2026 at 9:01:25 PM
Why do you think he actually started the war?As opposed to the myriad of reasons he and the administration have given, differing sometimes on an hourly basis, as to why he started it?
by FireBeyond
4/3/2026 at 8:57:48 PM
Why did he start the war?by bdbdbdb
4/3/2026 at 9:20:09 PM
Well, I have no idea. I'm just guessing it's not the reason I like the war.I generally only attempt to scrutinize government action, and not government reason for action. Random citizens are at such an information disadvantage that I think it would be impossible to have an informed opinion as an outsider on the reasoning.
It could be as simple as "Iran kept trying to assassinate me so I'm going to assassinate them". Maybe he was pressured by Israel, I really have no idea.
by IncreasePosts
4/4/2026 at 12:56:29 AM
> I generally only attempt to scrutinize government action, and not government reason for actionThis might be the wildest opinion I've read.
You're onboard with the US bombing another country ("I like the war"), but you don't know, or care WHY. You just think it was a good idea.
"Random citizens are at such an information disadvantage that I think it would be impossible to have an informed opinion as an outsider on the reasoning."
I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but if you re-read your own words, you've just said a random citizen like yourself can't possibly know enough to have an informed opinion, yet you gave us your opinion, which is that you think they should have bombed Iran.
by arkensaw
4/4/2026 at 3:46:53 PM
> This might be the wildest opinion I've read.> You're onboard with the US bombing another country
They are totally fine with it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
One could argue what this is somehow related to the fact it's always on the other side of the planet and never on the border, but who knows.
by justsomehnguy
4/4/2026 at 9:34:29 PM
You need to reread my words. I never said I can't possibly know enough to have an informed opinion generally. Nor did I say it's impossible to have an informed opinion in what I gave my opinion on.by IncreasePosts
4/5/2026 at 4:03:12 PM
> Random citizens are at such an information disadvantage that I think it would be impossible to have an informed opinion as an outsider on the reasoning.Are you an insider then?
by bdbdbdb
4/3/2026 at 10:53:38 PM
Denazify… oops, wrong country, sorry. "Changing the regime". But it cannot possibly be true because regime change, just like foreign wars are bad according to Trump. So, in reality, who knows?My guess is that some nutcases at the pentagon got an adrenaline rush during the little adventure in Venezuela and looked for another country to mess with. It’s obvious that no real thought was put into what exactly is the point of all of this or how to actually get to that point. I mean, they were surprised that Turkey was upset and that Iran closed the Gulf. Or that none of the allies Trump has been shitting on for decades showed up. This does not point to any serious thought process.
by kergonath
4/3/2026 at 10:34:50 PM
You just would have rather have been lied to that this war was to "spread democracy"?by platevoltage
4/3/2026 at 8:50:30 PM
If this is a troll it is masterful. If it's an honest opinion I would invite you to check your skull for unexpected holes where your brain may have fallen out.by idiotsecant
4/3/2026 at 9:08:45 PM
>"As a person who believes in democracy"Is this a new spelling of fuck whatever semblance of international laws we have and big dicks do as they please?
by FpUser
4/3/2026 at 10:17:29 PM
You say this like a system of international law has ever existed that effectively restrains the most powerful nations in the world, democracies or otherwise.by jasomill
4/3/2026 at 10:19:12 PM
I said "semblance of international law"by FpUser
4/3/2026 at 7:52:34 PM
What do you think the odds are that this war results in more democracy?by wat10000
4/3/2026 at 9:23:50 PM
Like my math teacher was oft heard saying, "approaches zero".by dylan604
4/3/2026 at 10:54:37 PM
"Vanishingly small" is a polite way of saying it.by kergonath
4/3/2026 at 11:05:48 PM
The math teacher was more along the lines of as x approaches zero or was it f(x). It was a really really long time ago since I've had a math teacher, but the approaches zero was something said frequentlyby dylan604
4/3/2026 at 7:50:24 PM
Bringing democracy and freedom to the world by bombing school children. God bless America!by i_love_retros
4/3/2026 at 8:58:06 PM
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of school children.by orthoxerox
4/3/2026 at 9:26:59 PM
In line with that logic, how is Ukraine protecting its freedom by bombing an ice rink in belgorod?by IncreasePosts
4/3/2026 at 9:31:18 PM
Attacking your attacker defends your freedom. Spontaneously attacking another country does not protect their freedom.by wat10000
4/3/2026 at 9:54:20 PM
Those children who were at the ice skating rink were also attacking Ukraine? Quite precocious!by oh_sigh
4/4/2026 at 2:35:49 AM
An unfortunate and unintended consequence of counterattacking the invader. Very different from bombing a school due to bad intelligence in an unprovoked attack.by wat10000
4/4/2026 at 6:36:10 AM
[flagged]by senderista
4/4/2026 at 12:05:26 PM
Why would Ukraine mine their own cities? Unlike Russia, Ukraine signed the Ottawa Treaty that bans anti-personnel mines in 2006.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
A more likely explanation is that butterfly mines were dropped by Russian armed forces; see Human Rights Watch:
Russian forces have used at least seven types of antipersonnel mines in at least four regions of Ukraine: Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Sumy.
There is no credible information that Ukrainian government forces have used antipersonnel mines in violation of the Mine Ban Treaty since 2014 and into 2022.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/15/background-briefing-land...
https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/ukraine-conflict-likely-...
Of course this is all tradition to bring rebellious minorities back into Russkiy Mir, just look at how Grozny looked in 2000. That was Putin's first war, started when he was prime minister.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999%E2%80%9... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_war_crimes
by the_why_of_y
4/5/2026 at 10:50:41 PM
Oh look, I can link to HRW reports too: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/31/ukraine-banned-landmines...by senderista
4/3/2026 at 8:01:29 PM
Literally none of the fighting countries want Iran to be democratic. Neither USA nor Israel nor Iran. Israel dont want the country functional and would prevent democracy. USA idea of regime change is to keep regime, change head for someone who pays extortion money. And if Iranian leadership wanted democracy they would have one. Not sure if you noticed, but American admin loves dictators and insults democraciesSo ,WTF are you talking about here.
Also, bombing city with that double tap tactic during protests ensures you kill protesters.
by watwut
4/3/2026 at 9:27:56 PM
Having Iran be "non functional" would just be asking for even more hardliners take over, like what happened in syria. I don't take this to be actually indicative of their viewpoints.by IncreasePosts
4/3/2026 at 11:00:38 PM
Or in Gaza, and it is not an accident. As far as they are concerned it’s working great. Israel is in a state of permanent warfare, which completely silences any kind of debate about what country it wants to be, enables racist nationalists who can freely go about burning villages, and it keeps Bibi out of prison. None of what has happened in the last 20 years or so in the region strikes me as particularly well thought out with a long term strategy besides keeping all their neighbours in the Middle Ages.by kergonath
4/4/2026 at 6:38:16 AM
There is a reason that Israel is arming criminal gangs in Gaza (which Bibi even publicly admitted).by senderista
4/4/2026 at 12:46:12 AM
I think that you will find that many people think that we ought to solve the 50 year old problem in the Mideast once and for all. Now that the Russians are busy, that Venezuela is down, that Syria has fallen, and that the Chinese are minding their own business is a good time to decapitate Iran. Also Cuba is next.by drnick1
4/4/2026 at 12:59:28 AM
What exactly are the problem and the solution?by ifyoubuildit
4/4/2026 at 1:02:45 AM
Permanently disarming Iran, and creating conditions favorable to the fall of the Islamist terrorist regime that has been bullying the Mideast since 1979.by drnick1
4/4/2026 at 6:50:14 AM
Maybe read up on the history before 1979. Maybe toppling a democratic regime in 1952 in order to get their oil was not the best move.If you're worried about a state that terrorises the region, best to focus on Israel
by 7sigma
4/4/2026 at 3:15:59 AM
Who's going to deal with the Zionist terrorist regime that has been bullying the Middle East since 1948?Or the Wahabi regime that sponsored the sort of fanaticism that led to the rise of Al Qaeda?
Let's not put a moral spin on America's realpolitik.
by g8oz
4/4/2026 at 2:00:03 AM
Any guesses on how long that will take, what it will cost, and the odds if it happening at all?by ifyoubuildit
4/4/2026 at 3:01:12 AM
No idea, but it's safe to say that Iran has lost most of their navy and air force already. It's harder to tell how many launchers, missiles, and drones Iran has left however, as it is deliberately hiding and conserving munitions for what they expect will be a protracted conflict.The other unknown is how far the U.S., Isreal, and potentially other countries are willing to go. Turning the lights off and literally sending Iran back to the stone age wouldn't be so difficult at this stage, but would probably rule out the possibility of a deal that sees Iran disarm and hand over the enriched uranium.
by drnick1
4/4/2026 at 6:53:39 AM
You're basically advocating for war crimes which the US has already started to do.Iran had already offered to give up the enriched uranium bit that is off the table now. Iran should and will pursue a nuclear weapon in order to protect themselves from American and Israeli imperialism.
by 7sigma
4/4/2026 at 7:14:05 AM
I don't see the difference between the US and Iran given what you are suggesting. How would you treat an Iranian attack on the Golden Gate Bridge? Would you call that a cowardly terror attack?by verzali
4/4/2026 at 12:42:07 PM
Yeah, does sending them back to the stone age buy us anything good? 90 million starving migrants with an understandable axe to grind with the US? Or are we just going to kill them all and become the monsters we claim to hate?by ifyoubuildit
4/4/2026 at 7:27:52 PM
You realize that Iran will retaliate by attacking their neighbors' power and desalinization plants? Do you want most of the ME to go dark and lacking water?Even Netenyahu has said you can't do regime change without some sort of boots on the ground. Iran is much bigger and more mountainous than Iraq. The IRGC has a couple hundred thousand active personell.
by goatlover
4/4/2026 at 1:36:09 AM
North Korea was able to get nuclear weapons because we didn't want the carnage of artillery bombardment to Seoul that would have been the retaliation, had we stopped them.Iran was close to achieving that same thing with ballistic missile bombardment of Europe.
The problem is that Iran, unlike NK, is run by a fanatical death cult with stated goal of attacking United States and history of running proxy militias in every nearby failed state, in a neighborhood that has no shortage of failed states.
by QuarterReptile
4/4/2026 at 3:04:32 AM
The US defense secretary (excuse me, War secretary) is almost covered with tattoos and mottoes celebrating the Crusades [1]. I wouldn't go around accusing other countries of being run by "death cults" if I were you. We have a nuclear-armed death cult called Christian Dominionism here at home.
by CamperBob2
4/4/2026 at 10:22:34 AM
I agree that the quantity of tattoos on the SecWar is appalling.by QuarterReptile
4/4/2026 at 7:38:53 PM
What makes you think the Iranian regime wants a destroyed country as opposed to setting up strong opposition to the West in the region? "Fanatical Death Cult" just sounds like propaganda for justifying war with them as opposed to diplomatic solutions. North Korea and Russia saber-rattle plenty. It's a tactic.by goatlover
4/4/2026 at 2:01:23 AM
> fanatical death cultWhy do you believe this? Their recent actions don't seem to back it up.
by ifyoubuildit
4/4/2026 at 10:28:51 AM
Their idea of "martyrdom" is killing people who disagree with them. Not, "it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of war," but, "these people's forebears didn't listen to our god, so we must always hunt them, and also the jews."IF(highest sacrifice in your cult is dying while trying to kill those who disagree with you because of same) THEN (you are in a death cult)
by QuarterReptile
4/4/2026 at 12:45:27 PM
> it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of warHow does this work out when we are the ones that decided to start the war? Does saying the word "war" suddenly absolve us of the crimes we commit in that war?
by ifyoubuildit
4/4/2026 at 12:18:52 PM
> Their idea of "martyrdom" is killing people who disagree with them. Not, "it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of war," but, "these people's forebears didn't listen to our god, so we must always hunt them, and also the jews."You know the one about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?
by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE
4/4/2026 at 5:09:54 PM
>You know the one about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?I will give you the benefit of the doubt on asking for these claims, but you should consider what burden of proof you are asking for: constant political slogans advocating attacks? Or do you need the leader to explicitly state that that's not just a slogan? Forthright statements in their religious texts advocating the same?
And would you expect that level of specificity and forthrightness of other comparable claims?
by QuarterReptile
4/4/2026 at 8:18:23 PM
No need for any benefits of the doubt, let me make myself perfectly clear. I think that you're throwing wild claims, relying on the general ignorance and media conditioning of the average American (largely the audience on this forum) in order to provide "familiar vibes" as the foundations of your claims in the minds of that audience.Now, specifically, you said that: "Their idea of "martyrdom" is killing people who disagree with them". Are "they" Iranians? Shia? Muslims in general? People of the middle east in general? After having settled the question of who "they" are, you are then claiming that if they kill those who merely disagree with them, they consider those doing the killing to be martyrs? That would disagree with the common understanding of what a martyr is worldwide, and hence my comment about your claim being quite extraordinary.
I challenge you to not try to steer the topic away from my questions, or make additional claims without being specific and providing evidence for those either. I am not interested in widening the scope of the conversation into endless arguing.
by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE
4/5/2026 at 1:56:22 AM
Ok, I'll be clear too. I think your questions are meant not to seek answers, but as aspersions, and I am skeptical that any evidence, overwhelming though it might be in other cases, would satisfy you in this instance. Iran is exceptional in providing so much evidence of the leadership's ill intentions, and by your generalizations I doubt you are aware of them.by QuarterReptile
4/5/2026 at 2:55:35 AM
More playing to vibes. For the passive reader, given that no evidence whatsoever was provided (let alone of the extraordinary kind) despite having been given ample opportunity to do so, please consider the extraordinary claims to be effectively retracted.Have a good night.
by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE
4/5/2026 at 11:50:50 AM
You're more than 5 layers down in a day-old thread; there's no one else here. Just me talking to you and you, as I now understand, talking to no one.by QuarterReptile
4/4/2026 at 3:04:14 PM
So you're saying you want a solution, and you want it to be a final one?by BigTTYGothGF
4/4/2026 at 4:22:23 AM
The military advantage of colonial powers, and the political weakness of the pawn countries is reduced making the great game harder. Venezuela and Syria fell because internally they were divided and the US could find traitors willing to sell out. That didn't happen in Iran, and Cuba will defend themselves if they are united.by freefrog1234aa
4/3/2026 at 7:21:15 PM
To my understanding blowing up drone boats designed to destroy shipping.by elictronic
4/3/2026 at 9:02:18 PM
The A-10 is a horrible friendly-fire as a service. Might as well use the thing as a bomb truck while you are still forced to keep it in service because certain brain cell lacking individuals think brr is good.by jabwd
4/3/2026 at 9:44:32 PM
I always wondered why China doesn't flood foreign war zones with weapons to field test their fancy new gear against the USAF. Seems like a no-brainer.by PearlRiver
4/4/2026 at 1:41:58 AM
They do. India-Pakistan was basically a field trial of Chinese AD. It failed miserably but the Chinese blame operator error (which is still valuable info; there is no reason to assume a PLA ground operator would be more competent than a Pakistani one).by roncesvalles
4/3/2026 at 10:16:19 PM
They sell them. Military gear (at least aircraft and missiles) aren't cheap like an AK47. They have enjoyed watching India and Pakistan in their latest air battles. Lots of operational intel gleaned from that.by greedo
4/3/2026 at 7:24:05 PM
Your link and your quote does not say the A-10 was shot down though.by YZF
4/3/2026 at 7:35:20 PM
It's on NYT site now.by Qem
4/3/2026 at 7:38:50 PM
Their point is that the NYT says it crashed, the cause isn't clear.by edaemon
4/3/2026 at 8:02:47 PM
Do A-10's normally crash? Or is there reason to believe that an A-10 flying in hostile territory was downed because it was shot?by malfist
4/3/2026 at 9:26:56 PM
It's an airplane. It is as susceptible to doors not being bolted on as much as a civilian flight. Maybe actually a higher chance of some benign mechanical issue as it is well known that air crews are often overworked with little to no sleep with the high tempo of sorties in these types of missions. Lots of historical examples of US military aircraft crashing from mechanical issues and not being shot downby dylan604
4/3/2026 at 11:03:19 PM
122 A-10s have been lost outside of combat over the years. 8 have been lost in combat.Lots of flights, maintenance resources stretched thin, old aircraft - this is when you'd expect to see crashes.
by jjk166
4/3/2026 at 8:19:10 PM
My comment was re: stating it as fact which is misleading. Beliefs or guesses are not facts.Military airplanes do crash, there are lots of crashes every year: https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/11/military-aircraft...
At war there's a lot more pressure on ground and air crews that can lead to more mistakes. Also the mission would be flown closer to the limits vs. training.
So... We don't know? If your question is whether that's a good guess/greater than zero probability then sure. Is it a certainty? No. The Iranians will claim they shot it down. The Americans may or may not admit and if they deny then people will say they're lying.
by YZF
4/3/2026 at 6:10:50 PM
In the first Iraq war, the KARI system in Iraq, which was built by Thompson-CSF, had its specifications leaked and the US obtained access to back doors and codes that allowed it to bypass and/or disable much of that system. You need to remember that the US and much of the West had friendly relations with Iraq and provided some infrastructure assistance and military support because Iraq invaded Iran.No such analogous advantage exists in Iran, which is a much larger country, with better air defenses, and no western contractors ready to provide back doors into systems.
by carefree-bob
4/3/2026 at 7:06:13 PM
By that same logic that fact that we only lost 1 F-15 in, what, almost 3 weeks of bombing is actually a pretty good sign. Especially when you factor in that the Russians (proven) and Chinese (yet to be proven) are assisting Iran and Iran has been buying and building all of this military infrastructure at the expense of living conditions for its people just for this very attack, only to have almost everything obliterated.And 3 weeks in to the war and the US is flying refueling tankers to refuel Blackhawks in the very area the F-15 was shot down to recover the pilots (1 so far has been received) should be much more informative than it seems to be.
But sure... the KARI system in Iraq.
by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 7:35:31 PM
> Iran has been buying and building all of this military infrastructure at the expense of living conditions for its peopleIran spends about 2.5% of its GDP on defense, compared to USA at around 3.5%. How much should they be spending?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...
by oa335
4/3/2026 at 7:46:53 PM
Is that reliable? The IRGC basically runs the economy and takes a significant cut. The IGRC is also separate from the military. The nuclear program, quite obviously for military use, may also not be included. What about support for proxy groups? Hezbollah alone gets support above $1B per year.by 01100011
4/3/2026 at 11:44:52 PM
I was aware of the IRGC graft.I tried to check the amounts normalized for % of GDP.
Conservative estimates put them at half of the 2% GDP military spend. However, the IRGC's tentacles are also estimated to siphon off something like +50% of the GDP.[0]
Not all of that money's going to military hardware, but they have a substantial slush fund and use the Iranian resource base as a military piggy bank.
[0]https://fortune.com/2026/03/02/iran-islamic-revolutionary-gu...
by caminante
4/4/2026 at 5:14:16 AM
Not just that, but the IRGC cronies have massive overseas investments bought with stolen money: https://www.transparency.org.uk/news/londons-role-irans-fina...by 01100011
4/3/2026 at 9:51:58 PM
$1B per year for Hezbollah is like $1 a month per Iranian.I doubt it changes the Iranians living conditions much...by brohee
4/3/2026 at 7:39:21 PM
Almost half of the economy is controlled by the IRGC: https://fortune.com/2026/03/02/iran-islamic-revolutionary-gu...by logicchains
4/3/2026 at 8:54:23 PM
Which is a logical result of decades of sanctions, allowing only the insiders to profit from the country's ressources while the common man is bared from providing an alternative. Sanctions do not work and only entrench regimes, as we see in Russia, Cuba, North Korea and now Iran.by Saline9515
4/3/2026 at 9:40:25 PM
I've just been at a conference where some high-up guy from germany was talking about the effect of sanctions... russia used to sell wood pulp to germany, german factories would produce paper products and then sell a lot of them back to russia.Then sanctions came, no more very cheap wood pulp for the german industry, and after a year of sanctions, the russians built (i think) 4 large paper factories, so even after the sanctions end, that business is not coming back to germany.
by ajsnigrutin
4/3/2026 at 11:59:27 PM
OK, so what? Obviously we shouldn't continue trading with enemies regardless of the economic impact.by nradov
4/4/2026 at 12:50:55 AM
Why? If the objective is to weaken a regime, and the sanctions strengthen it, why should you help your “enemy”?The classic mistake here is to consider that dictatorships are like democracies—they aren't, and their power structure is different and more resilient to economic shocks. Even Bachar Al-Assad, who was much weaker, took 13 years to leave power.
At some point, one should question if wide sanctions targeted at increasing the suffering of the civilian population are really worth it.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 9:02:16 AM
Your assumption here is that, since sanctions strengthen the regime, not having sanctions weakens the regime, which is not logical.Not having sanctions potentially strengthens a regime more than sanctions do, embeds them in the global geopolitical/cultural/economic stage, normalises their behaviour, and goes against a lot of people's deontology.
Look at Israel: no sanctions, strong Zio regime, majority of US/German pop supported the "self-defense" argument for decades, complete normalisation of Palestinian genocide until the horror reached an unbearable threshold. Etc., etc.
Yes, sanctions are far from perfect, but I strongly believe that a world with Israel santioned would have been a much better place for everyone, including the Israelis (from having to contend with their ideology).
Edit: I'm also aware that my argument is not perfect either. For example, I wouldn't qualify what Cuba has or what Iraq had as sanctions in the sense that I'm talking about: these are to my eyes an economic war of aggression by the US/West. What I'm defending is sanctions on fascist and ethonationalist global/regional superpowers that are engaging in large-scale horror. But I'm aware how leaky my definition is.
by constantius
4/4/2026 at 10:32:17 AM
You can do sanctions on items that allow the regime wage wars (weapons and dual-use products), yes, that can work. Or wide sanctions on small countries such as Israel can be a credible deterrent, since it lacks economic depth to find substitutes.However, wide sanctions on large countries such as Russia or Iran are now proven to be quite ineffective in the long run. Even worse, by preventing the creation of a middle-class, you won't have the conditions to start a democracy later, after a possible regime change.
I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's what data shows.
And sanctions don't prevent countries from committing atrocities either. What about the deaths and suffering induced by sanctions? 500k Iraqi children were estimated to have died due to the US sanctions. The architect of the policy told that it was "worth it". Was it?
https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 7:45:12 AM
- Economic growth slows down under sanction.- removing their leverage over you is also good.
Even if regime will not change, it will be weaker
by lucketone
4/4/2026 at 8:52:52 AM
Sanctions also affect population and create indirect deaths and suffering in the civilian population.I guess that, just like Madeleine Albright, you believe that 500k Iraqi children death caused by US sanctions were "worth it"? (US still wanted to invade after, proof that sanctions worked!)
https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madeleine-albright-saying-ira...
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 9:24:18 PM
Quite a loaded question (a-tier).Counter-question/game:
Hypothetically, imagine that you become president of US today, inheriting current situation. What would you do regarding Iran situation?
What is the correct action now in current situation?
Spoiler: I think there is no “correct” solution, somebody will be hurt in the end despite best wishes.
Note: Lower supply of oil and fertiliser affects poorer countries more than the rich ones (possibility of famine in Africa). Current Iran government just killed their own civilians a month ago in thousands to end protests; and repressions will likely repeat as protests are likely to repeat. (Irans populace seem to be quite educated and want some reforms) Ground invasion of Iran would cost a lot of lives - civilian casualties always exist.
But honestly, what would you choose to do?
by lucketone
4/6/2026 at 7:11:43 PM
No it's a great question. As always when someone makes a point about something, one should ask "up to which point do you believe this to be true". It's the same in science.The US president is not in charge of the application of human rights in Iran. It's amazing that Americans are so concerned about human rights in oil-rich countries, only. Right?
The US generally don't understand other countries' internal dynamics and only leave a mess after dropping bombs to "liberate" those ungrateful civilians.
Obama's JCPOA was a good framework, I'd work to reinstall it.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 8:55:21 AM
But they just became more independent.Germany stills needs and wants russian energy, because they're overpaying a lot currently, but russians don't need the german paper industry anymore.
by ajsnigrutin
4/4/2026 at 8:32:46 PM
Paper is definitely not the only thing Russia was importing. Check statistics of Russian aviation accidents (not sure if Germany was in supply chain for aviation, but this is visible thing that clearly was affected by sanctions)by lucketone
4/4/2026 at 2:09:05 PM
Is there evidence sanctions strengthen a regime? With Russia at war right now, sanctions do indeed seem to be helping Ukraine with Russia having a budget crisis.by zip1234
4/4/2026 at 2:55:39 PM
“ sanctions strengthen authoritarian rule if the regime manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy.”https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-...
by oa335
4/4/2026 at 2:57:05 PM
Sanction strengthen the political grip of a regime on society, which can use them as a justification for its repression. They also hollow-out the middle class, which prevents a democratic societal change, which requires it.In the case of a war, it is of course useful, but it won't solve the long-term issue of the nature of the Russian regime, which has gotten only more entrenched since 2014.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 2:30:06 PM
Russia is actively and directly at war with Ukraine. Russian tax dollars fund that war with Ukraine.Sanctions on Russia are us not funding the war on Ukraine.
by XorNot
4/4/2026 at 11:53:27 AM
Do you count enemies as the one we try to invade, or only as the one that invade others and more generally don't respect international laws?by cnd78A
4/4/2026 at 4:04:00 PM
I think sanctions against government officials, rather than the whole population, work better.by kelvinjps10
4/3/2026 at 8:22:36 PM
Extensive domestic economic control by security forces is also a feature of Egypt and Pakistan. America does not complain about those examples of course, because those countries bend the knee.by g8oz
4/3/2026 at 8:52:14 PM
Those countries, like Iran, are also quite poor because the army siphons off so much of their resources.by logicchains
4/4/2026 at 8:12:31 AM
And it seems that they did in fact need that army.by LtWorf
4/3/2026 at 10:36:33 PM
[flagged]by platevoltage
4/3/2026 at 8:52:33 PM
If by "bend the knee" you mean that they don't regularly chant "death to America", sure.by AnimalMuppet
4/3/2026 at 9:45:39 PM
[flagged]by ajsnigrutin
4/3/2026 at 9:47:51 PM
A lot more than 1/2 the world, a lot more...by bdangubic
4/4/2026 at 7:47:59 AM
Currently lot if people dislike/distrust america. Which is understandable and rational thing to do. Chanting “deato xyz” is very irrational and unproductive and just bad.by lucketone
4/4/2026 at 10:21:00 AM
if I was disliked and distrusted by a lot of people I’d think long and hard about why that is vs. complaining about how that dislike/distrust is communicatedby bdangubic
4/4/2026 at 8:36:53 PM
Do you assume that I am American and that I was complaining about people chanting?I am not; yet I prefer that my side stays rational without such chant’s (somebody has to be the responsible adult)
by lucketone
4/4/2026 at 10:54:55 PM
I made no such assumptions, noby bdangubic
4/3/2026 at 7:39:22 PM
They should probably be closer to 0 or more in line with European countries but these numbers aren’t accurate and don’t tell the full story. They don’t, for example, include money paid to and missiles transferred to Houthis to launch from Yemen. Nevermind Hamas and Hezbollah, rebels in Iraq and so forth.by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 8:43:19 PM
EU countries spend about 2% of GDP on their militaries. It's not at the high US levels, but it's closer to Iran's number than it is to zero.by azernik
4/3/2026 at 8:57:11 PM
Europe is just under 2% of their GDP spent on military. Where are you getting this "0" figure? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZSby craftkiller
4/3/2026 at 10:20:18 PM
Russia today probably.by rvba
4/3/2026 at 7:48:14 PM
> They should probably be closer to 0 or more in line with European countriesExpand on this logic please.
European countries are protected by NATO and a nuclear umbrella.
Why would you expect a nation state to not invest in its military?
by oa335
4/3/2026 at 8:14:29 PM
> European countries are protected by NATO and a nuclear umbrella.Well, protected by the United States primarily. They've mostly divested from military spending and capabilities over time, which is the ideal thing, but it seems like maybe we can't live in that ideal world, anyway...
I'm not suggesting that Iran shouldn't have a military, but instead questioning the purposes for which it would have one. Today its military is used for sending missiles at Gulf States, funding Hezbollah, and oppressing its people. So for it to have little to no military practically speaking would be a good thing.
Second at 2.5% GDP (again these figures are highly questionable) that's plenty to have defensive capabilities versus neighbors. There's nobody there to really worry about because who outside of the United States is going to invade Iran? And even then the US is only doing it because they won't stop doing crazy shit and launching missiles at everyone.
by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 8:20:27 PM
> I'm not suggesting that Iran shouldn't have a military, but instead questioning the purposes for which it would have one.Well, they're currently being attacked. "Defending against attackers" is a pretty important purpose for a military.
by Peritract
4/3/2026 at 8:24:51 PM
[flagged]by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 9:02:42 PM
> Notice how it's just Iran that's being attackedby craftkiller
4/3/2026 at 9:54:54 PM
Yes, Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy who has, in violation of UN actions and against Lebanese government wishes seized and held territory in Lebanon from which to launch rockets into Israel lol.If you're going to use that as such a loose category than the list of countries that have been attacked expands quite a bit. Israel has attacked Iran, while Iran has attacked Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA, and maybe one or two others that I'm not thinking of.
by ericmay
4/4/2026 at 5:38:44 PM
Iran hasn't attacked USA or Israel. USA and Israel are the invaders that attacked Iran.by donkeybeer
4/4/2026 at 5:38:07 PM
Do we now start listing American proxies and their terrorism? CONTRA alone should make the USA deserving of several nukes dropped on its lands by that measure.by donkeybeer
4/4/2026 at 1:14:34 AM
Like, this very second?It’s been ones of months since USA attacked Venzuela. We are openly musing about invading Greenland. We are actively embargoing and threatening to invade Cuba. We are the unhinged aggressor in all of this.
by newAccount2025
4/3/2026 at 8:45:18 PM
There is no civilization on the planet that would accept full disarmament under the logic that they should just trust that you won’t attack them if they weren’t armed.by lovich
4/3/2026 at 9:37:46 PM
Let's be fair, if someone bombed trump right now, most of the world would be happy, including a lot of americans.Does that mean that someone should bomb US because of your regime? I mean... you have more homeless people living in tents than most cities post some natural disaster, your people can't afford education, healthcare nor (as above) homes, and you guys are spending money to bomb a place half a planet away that is in no way endangering you... and that after you've bombed it once before and "completely destroyed the nuclear program"... and before that and before that.
I mean... i understand americans are well... americans, but you guys can't even imprison pedos running your country, why should you decide who to bomb?
I mean.. what's next? Iranian special forces will eventually start destroying stuff in US, and you guys will claim "terrorism" or something again... well, it's not terrorism if you're in a war.
by ajsnigrutin
4/3/2026 at 8:47:02 PM
> Well, protected by the United States primarily. They've mostly divested from military spending and capabilities over time,UK and France have nukes, european nato part isn't going to be invaded without nuclear exchanges.
Apart from that, each country is specialized on various things and combined military is quite capable.
Sure, it's not US level of spending... which is probably a good thing given the US basically cut education and healthcare for a few generations for that.
by mittensc
4/3/2026 at 10:01:13 PM
> UK and France have nukes, european nato part isn't going to be invaded without nuclear exchanges.I like to think this is true, but how many French soldiers coming home in body bags defending Lithuania will it take before they say enough? Are they going to just resort to nuclear weapons against Russia immediately? I don't think the nuclear umbrella is the trump card that it you might be portraying it to be. It's really difficult to say who would use those and when. There are some obvious cases, but there are also some not so obvious ones.
But nukes aren't enough. You're not winning the Ukraine war with your nuclear umbrella for example - that's being won on the ground with Ukrainian blood.
> Apart from that, each country is specialized on various things and combined military is quite capable.
Combined command of a military like this is incredibly difficult, and while I'd certainly agree that some specific militaries are quite capable of [1], I think the political and organizational system in Europe really poses a challenge. But even so those militaries lack power projection capabilities and lack in some other key areas.
[1] In order probably Ukraine -> UK -> France -> Poland and then nobody else registers. Ignoring Russia because they're not really European IMO.
> Sure, it's not US level of spending... which is probably a good thing given the US basically cut education and healthcare for a few generations for that.
Nah, we actually have money to easily afford both we just have a bunch of morons in charge (Democrats and Republicans) who, particular to healthcare, have gotten us the worst of both worlds. Education we're #1 there's no question about that.
by ericmay
4/4/2026 at 1:16:56 AM
France trained the most efficient recon crews, and the most efficient Ukrainian sniper units (some of them led by ex french soldiers. At least with a french passport, or on the verge of getting one). Caesar MK1 are the most efficient howitzer by a large margin in Ukrainian conflict, and Ukraine have half the French number, and first MK1 units, when France is starting to get Caesar MK2. Our MBTs is so much better than Ukrainian tanks it isn't a comparison, and French rafales are not a joke, unlike su57s. When it come to boots on the ground and artillery support, nobody can beat Italy in Europe, though Finland probably can give it a run, and both countries would have defended Russia aggression easily. Special units are not even a consideration tbh, both French and Italian winter units are incredibly better trained than Spetnaz it appears (and they have the advantage of like, not being dead), and even they are less well trained and equipped than those in Finland/Sweden/Norway/Denmark or UK.If you're talking about global capabilities, including power projection, then the ranking have to start with France, and have Italy very, very close to the UK if not ahead (if we don't take into account nukes), and then Spain should be slightly above Poland and Ukraine, maybe with Finland and Sweden in the mix (gripe3 and CV90?). German have the Gepard which seems to be the best response to drones, but their army is too new. The only thing Europe truly lacks is a strong IFV with reactive armor like the Bradley, maybe the Lynx would qualify but the quantity is clearly not enough.
And here I didn't talk about military doctrine and how well both French, Italian and German equipment fit their own, which to me is a huge advantage right after the early days of a conflict, because even when no one really know what to do and improvise, at least the whole army group improvise in the same direction.
by orwin
4/4/2026 at 7:55:13 AM
Nice write up, I'd also add up Turkey, has a massive military on its own, is part of NATO and had no worry shooting down russian jetsby mittensc
4/4/2026 at 10:58:55 PM
True, Turkey is a bit harder to rank. Or was hard to rank before February. They showed during NATO joint exercise projection capability i didn't know they were capable of, and imho they should be ranked around UK/Italy on projection capacity (though special forces seems to be a weak point, so probably below them tbh). If the fight is local though (in first sphere of influence), yeah, they probably are the first fighting force in europe (including Russia), with their army size, drone, artillery and AA capacity.by orwin
4/4/2026 at 2:41:17 AM
> Education we're #1 there's no question about that.I am wondering what you mean. Top-tier universities full of foreign nationals doing excellent research and funded by exorbitant fees? Sure.
But what about pre-college education?
Reading this thread, with people variously claiming things about Israel as if the country had sprung up from nothing with divine rights on the 7th october, or about Iran, as if the regime had suddenly appeared in 1979, without any US involvement in its suffering before (1953) or after (1984), makes me willing to question that education in the US is promoting critical thinking. Maybe the time spent singing the anthem would be better used actually reading history?
by lejalv
4/4/2026 at 4:50:55 AM
> Education we're #1 there's no question about that.Education is about social mobility, a chance for anyone to participate depending on their intelligence/grit/motivation.
You guys only have education for the rich/elite.
If you have to pay for it, or be lucky to have parents next to good schools then you've failed.
> But nukes aren't enough.
Lookup french nuclear doctrine to see discouragement effect.
Also, european NATO is capable of bombing conventionally moscow/other russian cities in case of war with some losses.
Eliminating Putin/Leadership would probably stop any war.
That would probably be the first counter to any invasion with threat of using nukes as a threat to keep russia from going for nukes. (losing moscow/sankt petersburg might be too much for russia same as paris/berlin would be for other countries)
The other counter is some rapid deployment of troops to hold off any russian troops and make it very deadly for them until leadership decides to retreat.
Ucraine can't do that.
by mittensc
4/3/2026 at 10:01:58 PM
> By that same logic that fact that we only lost 1 F-15 in, what, almost 3 weeks of bombing is actually a pretty good sign."Good sign" of what, though? Air superiority? I guess, sure. But we've constructed a strategic situation for ourselves where mere air superiority is losing.
The straight remains closed. Because let's be blunt: if we can't reliably fly a F-15E or A-10 in the region, there's no way an oil company is going to bet its crew and cargo.
Honestly the best situation here is that Iran merely decides to toll the straight. That's "losing" too, but at least one with a merely "large financial overhead" on international energy traffic instead of a disastrous 15% off the top cut in capacity.
Iran is winning. This is the difference between tactics and strategy.
by ajross
4/4/2026 at 1:25:47 AM
The toll is cheap I think, between one and two dollar a barrel, so less than 2 million per boat. Honestly a good price to end the war.by orwin
4/4/2026 at 2:35:43 AM
In a practical sense, from the perspective of the world as a whole, sure. It's also true that it leaves Iran in a much more powerful position than they held before the war[1]. So it's a "loss", strategically.It's uncomfortable to admit given the context, but the truth is that the Islamic Republic of Iran really is a terrible state, both to its own people and its neighbors, and a much wealthier Iran represents a genuine threat to world peace on its own.
[1] To wit: "This is Our Water now. Pay us what we want. Don't like it? Come bomb us again and see how your oil markets like that. We can take it. You soft infidels can't, and we proved that already. Now it's $4/barrel, btw." Imagine that delivered on Truth Social for more ironic impact. It's Trump bluster, but with actual teeth.
by ajross
4/3/2026 at 8:06:15 PM
The US has lost mutiple KC-125 tankers and an E3 as well, although those were destroyed ont he ground rather than shot down.building all of this military infrastructure at the expense of living conditions for its people
Just yesterday, Trump was talking about another $1.5 trillion for defense in the coming fiscal year, and saying the US can't afford things like daycare, medicare etc.
Iran's military budget as a % of GDP has historically been inthe low single digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_Iran
by anigbrowl
4/3/2026 at 8:24:10 PM
[flagged]by bijowo1676
4/3/2026 at 8:42:39 PM
Did you completely miss the disaster of DOGE in the first year of this administration?by riffraff
4/3/2026 at 8:54:52 PM
US welfare system seems to contain a lot of fraud, waste, abuse and grift across the board, so this will be a good chance to cleanse the system of fraud.Taking money from social programs and piling into the military which contains "a lot of fraud, waste, abuse and grift across the board", certainly is a choice. Sort of the opposite of a smart choice, but definitely a choice for sure.
by Goronmon
4/3/2026 at 8:57:12 PM
[flagged]by bijowo1676
4/3/2026 at 9:13:29 PM
>" taking money from fraud waste and abuse"Congrats. Finally somebody who wants to dismantle US government.
by FpUser
4/3/2026 at 8:56:56 PM
Uh huh. Do you have any confidence that this administration will do a competent job of that inspection? I don't. I mean, they could surprise me...by AnimalMuppet
4/3/2026 at 8:21:14 PM
> The US has lost mutiple KC-125 tankers and an E3 as well, although those were destroyed ont he ground rather than shot down.Which makes them irrelevant here in this discussion but sure yea. Russia (those sneaky guys who invaded Ukraine and are being supplied by Iran) provide targeting information to Iran, Iran has missiles, we can't shoot them all down, and here we are. It's unfortunate but that's what happens in a war. Frankly, these are very good lessons learned by the United States and they're going to come in handy if we end up in another war.
> Just yesterday, Trump was talking about another $1.5 trillion for defense in the coming fiscal year, and saying the US can't afford things like daycare, medicare etc.
We can easily afford both, but we choose not to because our political system is full of morons and corruption, but instead of Iran being more like the US and being dysfunctional in this regard, it should be more like Norway (excluding population differences) and pump and sell the oil and do so for the benefit of their citizens instead of this authoritarian rah rah death to America and death to Israel nonsense.
> Iran's military budget as a % of GDP has historically been inthe low single digits:
Figures provided here are inaccurate and don't account for spending on proxy groups, for example.
by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 8:59:07 PM
> Frankly, these are very good lessons learned by the United States and they're going to come in handy if we end up in another war.This is an interesting take given that the US seems to have ignored many of the most important lessons from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
As for "end up in another war", the language you chose is very revealing. You don't just "end up in...war". Wars don't start themselves. Someone starts them and in the case of the US, it's almost always the US.
by ElProlactin
4/3/2026 at 10:08:36 PM
[flagged]by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 11:40:35 PM
> we don't care what militarily irrelevant countries think about our activities because, well, we don't and they don't matter and we don't really care what they think.Why is the US pleading and whining for help then?
by lostlogin
4/4/2026 at 7:36:02 AM
America has its own oil. Europe is buying it, which increases the price.To lower prices, America can help Europe get their oil back from the strait or it can ban sales to Europe both of which could make American oil cheap for Americans.
By not helping, Europe is screwing Americans. And, pretty soon, screwing Europeans too because Americans will be fed up with high prices. They will move to stop exports.
Where does that leave Europe?
by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 8:57:57 AM
The USofA is refinery challenged, most of its sweet light goes direct to export ports, not to home soil light refineries.This is a challenge, not a simple switch that can be flicked overnight.
See: https://www.fuelstreamservices.com/why-the-u-s-cant-use-the-... for surface scratch intro to the issue.
by defrost
4/4/2026 at 2:26:03 PM
But the US already buys only 8% of it's oil from the Middle East. How long do you think they will care to help people that don't want to help themselves? It's more likely they will stop selling to Europe.If I had to guess, I think American oil companies that operate in the strait selling oil to Europe are the only reason the US is still working so hard to control the strait. It's a lot of money on the table. But it's certainly not for Americans, just for a few rich American oil companies and their European customers.
by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 3:00:32 PM
1. Oil is a global market. Global supply and demand affects prices everywhere.2. Oil isn't the only commodity that is at stake here. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the global helium supply, for instance, and helium is used in critical products Americans need.
3. Asia relies heavily on oil and other commodities that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Asia is the factory of the world and manufactures tons of the goods that are exported to the US, from clothing to electronics. Obviously, an energy crisis in Asia has the potential to disrupt American supply chains.
4. The petrodollar system creates artificial demand for US dollars. This is a massive financial and soft power benefit to the US. If Atlas shrugs and the petrodollar system starts going away, the rebalancing/recalibration that takes place is not going to be very pleasant for Americans.
by ElProlactin
4/4/2026 at 3:10:49 PM
1. So the US is responsible for reclaiming a global market by itself? Or is the US required to be terrorized for 4 decades as a sacrifice for the global market?2. And Europe doesn't need any?
3. But not European supply chains?
4. That's probably true. So the US is required to serve the EU with its military because the EU is their customer? I can think of several ways that the US can keep this position without the strait. But it's much more expensive for Europeans.
by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 4:53:21 PM
1. "Reclaiming" what? The president of the US, without Congressional approval, decided to launch a war against Iran. He broke it and now, like a petulant child, he wants everyone else to help him fix it. There was no credible evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat to the US. Virtually all of Iran's actions against the US in the past 40 years involved targets in the Mideast and once again, the history explains why Iran and the US aren't friends. In addition to the fact that the US was instrumental in the 1953 coup and supporting the Shah's brutal dictatorship that terrorized millions of Iranians, let's not forget that the US provided significant aid to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War and it's pretty much accepted as fact in the Arab world that the Iran-Iraq War was a US design. Bottom line: the US needs to accept responsibility for creating the very environment that it says threatens it.2. Europe didn't launch a war against Iran. They are obviously going to suffer (like everyone else in the world) but that doesn't mean they have an obligation to allow the president of the US to effectively commandeer their resources to clean up the mess he made.
3. Of course it affects European supply chains. It's going to affect everyone on the planet basically. But again, Europe didn't launch this war. Why do you seem to think they have a moral obligation to get involved in what virtually everyone in the world sees for what it is (a foolish war started by the US and Israel)?
4. The US isn't required to do anything. Your perspective seems to be that the US is God's gift to the world and everyone else is just freeloading. Another perspective is that alliances like NATO, the petrodollar system, etc. have been the sources of America's outsize economic, political and military power post-WW2. In my opinion, Americans have no idea what is coming as Pax Americana dies. It's not going to be pretty and I believe it is an existential threat to the way of life Americans have come to expect.
by ElProlactin
4/4/2026 at 5:45:16 PM
[flagged]by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 1:28:07 PM
Europe is screwing Americans? That is rich. You started this fucking war you....by the_overseer
4/4/2026 at 2:30:01 PM
[flagged]by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 2:52:35 PM
It's funny your link starts in 1979. Perhaps you should read about what the US did in Iran before that.Here's a teaser: in 1953, the US and UK instigated a coup that overthrew the Prime Minister of Iran. The goal: keep Iran from nationalizing British oil interests.
The coup put the country in the hands of the Shah, who was basically a pro-Western dictator.
In 1957, the Shah set up SAVAK, which was basically secret police. Per Wikipedia:
> According to a declassified CIA memo citing a classified U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, the CIA played a significant role in establishing SAVAK, providing both funding and training. The organization became notorious for its extensive surveillance, repression, and torture of political dissidents. The Shah used SAVAK to arrest, imprison, exile, and torture his opponents, leading to widespread public resentment. This discontent was leveraged by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile, to build popular support for his Islamic philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK
Two wrongs don't make a right but the US is by no stretch an innocent victim of post-revolution Iran.
And now it appears the US is looking for a second bite of a poison apple.
by ElProlactin
4/4/2026 at 2:57:32 PM
[flagged]by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 4:54:11 PM
> But America has tried to make peace with Iran for 40 years.It's insane that you probably actually believe this.
Go read up about the Iran-Iraq War. The US has had no interest in making peace with Iran.
by ElProlactin
4/4/2026 at 5:54:21 PM
[flagged]by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 6:16:30 PM
Someone is drinking the cool aid.>Where does that leave Europe?
Where does it leave US without allies?
by fastasucan
4/4/2026 at 6:20:44 PM
Allies? Doesn't look like it.by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 8:19:04 AM
And who created the problem in the first place?Also EU can be reached and bombed by Iran so we have more to loose than some army bases in the desert like you guys. I assure you that Europeans wouldn't support getting bombed because we had to help Trump make more money.
by LtWorf
4/4/2026 at 2:22:17 PM
[flagged]by trimethylpurine
4/4/2026 at 3:13:48 PM
> The US shouldn't be expected to continue being victim to terrorism just so that Europe can have cheap oil.Uh?
by LtWorf
4/4/2026 at 5:54:32 PM
[flagged]by trimethylpurine
4/3/2026 at 10:38:32 PM
Also, let's not forget that most of the people responsible for murdering ten thousand protesters a few weeks ago are now dead. No matter what else happens in this war, that is an excellent precedent.by stickfigure
4/3/2026 at 11:44:50 PM
Thank you, it's always interesting hearing a USofAian PoV on the stupid things the country has done.by defrost
4/4/2026 at 1:29:35 PM
They are shockingly dumb, aren't they?by the_overseer
4/3/2026 at 10:29:00 PM
[flagged]by greedo
4/3/2026 at 11:53:00 PM
Strong comment, good response save for the opening snipe which gives reason for some to flag.Still time to take that out: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.by defrost
4/3/2026 at 11:37:08 PM
> Vietnam - actually has great relations with the US and we won the peace.Ironically, I used to teach English in Vietnam and my wife is Vietnamese.
The US didn't win anything. What Americans call the "Vietnam War" was and is called the American War in Vietnam. The country was absolutely decimated and left with scars that are still healing today (see for instance Agent Orange). After the US fled the country, it continued to wage what amounted to an economic war against Vietnam, excluding it from the global economy. Into the 90s, Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world. My wife's parents had relatives who survived the war only to starve to death after the war.
Vietnam, largely because of its geography, is a very smart and pragmatic country. It's the only country in the world that has comprehensive strategic relationships with the US, China and Russia.
Relations between the US and Vietnam are good because Vietnam's "bamboo diplomacy" policy allows it to leverage its unique position to extract benefit from all of the superpowers. Relations are not good because of US exceptionalism.
> The US usually starts the war because the US is the only country in the world actually trying to do anything about nefarious actors.
The good old, "I had to beat my wife because she wasn't acting right!"
> Iraq - well they had Saddam and now they have a functioning parliament and things seem to be going a lot better for them.
An estimated 300,000 to 1 million Iraqis died as a result of the war. But yeah, they have a parliament and "things seem to be going a lot better for them."
> Afghanistan - We wanted to provide schooling for little girls and stuff like that and, well, the population didn't want it. So at some point you cut your losses.
Do you actually believe anything you write? The US went into Afghanistan to get bin Laden and attempt to eliminate Afghanistan's role as a safe haven for Al Qaeda. Ironically, through Operation Cyclone, the US directly supported militant Islamic groups during the Soviet war, and where do you think the Taliban came from?
> Iran - We're not going to like invade and occupy Iran, though we could. We're just going to have to keep blowing up their military capabilities until they have a more reasonable government.
Iran has about 4 times the land area and double the population of Iraq. Given the amount of debt the US has and Trump's ecstatic destruction of Pax Americana by defecating on all of America's most important alliances, I think the most optimistic scenario is that the cost of making the Persian Empire again would be the collapse the American Empire.
by ElProlactin
4/3/2026 at 11:01:59 PM
> Vietnam - actually has great relations with the US and we won the peace.They won the peace (and the war). You didn't win shit. You lost, badly. The wound in the American psyche by this defeat will never heal, to the point we have to witness claims such as yours.
> Afghanistan - We wanted to provide schooling for little girls and stuff like that and, well, the population didn't want it. So at some point you cut your losses.
So you lost. Mainly because you went on a military adventure, with unclear goals, with a population you didn't understand. Much like in Vietnam!
And here you are, in Iran.
I think the one lesson you did learn is to heavily control the media and the narrative. Body bags and mission failures are bad press. Lesson learned.
by the_af
4/4/2026 at 8:14:23 AM
> We wanted to provide schooling for little girls and stuff like thatAfter arming the very terrorists that prevented the soviets from doing just that? How generous of you!
by LtWorf
4/3/2026 at 9:49:26 PM
US is providing targeting information, weapons and money for ukraine... it seems totally fair that russia is providing the same info for iranians, hopefully they (and china) will send them some weapons too.> instead of this authoritarian rah rah death to America and death to Israel nonsense.
After US and israel bombing them.... again... what do you think, will there be more or less "death to US" chants? Also, considering the number of dead people in iran, lebanon, palestine and other countries, the next step is probably special force work in US... the ones you guys call "terrorists".
by ajsnigrutin
4/3/2026 at 10:20:49 PM
Good lessons. Like ignoring previous military plans that showed how tough a nut Iran would be to crack.Lessons like the value of AWACs. Now we're down to 15 and the availability rate is like 50%. So 8 or so WORLDWIDE. Yeah, that's a good lesson. And we've cancelled its replacement after someone (probably Elon) whispered BS into Trump's ear about space based sensors.
I'm sure China is watching with a notepad out about all these lessons. Thucydides is rolling in his grave.
by greedo
4/4/2026 at 5:10:17 PM
>if we end up in another war.If you end up in another war.. the coming month? Do you think Trump has had enough? Ans that the coming presidents wont start one?
by fastasucan
4/3/2026 at 11:11:49 PM
[dead]by benjiro3000
4/3/2026 at 10:35:04 PM
Well there were also the 3 F-15's that were shot down in one day in Kuwait. CENTCOM said it was a "friendly fire" incidentby culi
4/3/2026 at 10:44:11 PM
Correct. Kuwaiti Hornet pilot who likely thought he was shooting down weapons or aircraft from Iran.by the__alchemist
4/3/2026 at 7:17:23 PM
I’m reading one of those Blackhawks was shot down. An A-10, F-16, and a refueling plane, in addition to the F-15 so far today. Which, if true, is not a good sign.by cjbgkagh
4/3/2026 at 7:20:13 PM
[flagged]by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 9:00:50 PM
> Yet we've wiped out quite a bit of their military infrastructure and have complete control over the skies.How can you believe that the US has "complete control over the skies" given today's events?
by ElProlactin
4/3/2026 at 7:42:50 PM
Oh yeah, its going great, so much achieved for only 30B and untold human lives, the winning!by voganmother42
4/4/2026 at 12:04:22 AM
Well we’re talking about Iran instead of the President’s “dealings” with a bevy of children so mission accomplished!by conception
4/3/2026 at 7:26:42 PM
We must be using different definitions for ‘complete’. I think Iran is using loitering anti-air missiles with IR seeking which seems to be effective. Maybe this sudden spike is reflective of receiving new equipment from China.by cjbgkagh
4/3/2026 at 7:34:58 PM
[flagged]by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 9:06:28 PM
> I guess my definition is “US can do whatever it wants without contest” and that seems to be the case here.Whatever it wants, as long as that doesn't include flying aircraft or going through the strait.
by pavel_lishin
4/3/2026 at 11:44:24 PM
Maybe ericmay is arguing that the US wants its planes shot down?by lostlogin
4/3/2026 at 7:48:16 PM
I would term it; the US has air dominance but the airspace is still contested as evident by the recent losses.Also, I think the US is still predominantly using standoff munitions instead of switching to dumb munitions because the airspace is still contested.
by cjbgkagh
4/3/2026 at 8:17:30 PM
[flagged]by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 9:01:46 PM
> Yes the US probably is still using precision weapons because, well, unlike the Iranian government we don't want to use so-called dumb munitions and indiscriminately bomb civilians or civilian targets.Are you referring to the "precision" weapons that hit the girls' school?
by ElProlactin
4/3/2026 at 9:01:11 PM
The us has air dominance but not air supremacy, which is why missiles are mostly used rather than bombs with gps kits, requiring to get much closer.And the US has been very keen to bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure, along with Israelis, since the start of the war [0]. The US-Israelis are guilty of war crimes.
The recent bombing of an unfinished bridge is another example of the US-Israeli actions, especially since they did a double-tap to kill rescuers. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Qeshm_Island_desalination...
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/firestorm-for-hegseth-a...
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 1:23:47 AM
US did murder 170 girls in Minab school, and hit many civilian targets, including a water desalination plant.Yes US is using precision weapons, but not because they want to avoid indiscriminate bombing.
It's because US wants to precisely bomb specific civilian targets
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 3:09:13 AM
One could argue that the IRGC, much like Hamas, purposely builds military headquarters and other facilities near hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure precisely to use civilians as human shields.by drnick1
4/4/2026 at 6:29:35 AM
Even if that's true, it doesn't justify killing a bunch of girls. I honestly can't understand how anyone gets to this point.by sapphicsnail
4/4/2026 at 3:50:17 AM
nobody can argue that, unless you are a war criminal trying to justify your war crimesby bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 3:11:34 PM
There's a day care center across I-95 from the Pentagon.by BigTTYGothGF
4/3/2026 at 9:05:46 PM
> have complete control over the skies.If we had complete control over the skies, we wouldn't be losing aircraft, would we?
by pavel_lishin
4/3/2026 at 7:31:09 PM
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. It is completely expected to lose aircraft in an operation of this scale, against an opponent with this level of sophistication. People put way too much stock in all of these modern stealth systems and whatnot. Stealth, for example, is a buzzword. It will give a slight edge, but it's not going to make your aircraft completely invisible and unshootable.by seanw444
4/4/2026 at 1:30:04 AM
Stealth really should be qualified as radar-stealth, not optical stealth and not infrared stealth.Iran is using infrared seekers to shut down planes and US pilots never get a warning of incoming missile due to Iran's passive IR seekers
by bijowo1676
4/3/2026 at 11:47:09 PM
The Iran war is going exactly to plan and this isn’t a bad day for the US administration?by lostlogin
4/4/2026 at 12:04:00 AM
I don't know if any have completed runs yet, but supposedly we're using B-52s...by mathgradthrow
4/4/2026 at 5:06:16 PM
>Iran has been buying and building all of this military infrastructure at the expense of living conditions for its people just for this very attack,And how much is US spending?
>just for this very attack, only to have almost everything obliterated.
The spending was apparently justified.
by fastasucan
4/3/2026 at 10:10:04 PM
I have a friend who flew in Desert Storm, and he talked about how incompetent the Iraqis were. Like- De facto language of aviation (i.e. manuals) is English, and the regime had just purged most of the English speakers before the thing started
- They had these advanced ground defense systems and...didn't use the targeting, they were just spraying in the air
I don't know how well the Iranians can use their tools but I bet they're better than that.
by Brendinooo
4/3/2026 at 6:58:01 PM
[flagged]by butlike
4/3/2026 at 7:14:54 PM
It'll probably come in the form of permanent $5+/gal gas.by nutjob2
4/3/2026 at 7:17:58 PM
We got through it in 2022. We can get through it again.Though unfortunately Americans will learn the wrong lesson from this which should be to reduce dependency on oil for every day life. We should be aiming to have fewer cars and abandon car-only transportation as policy, and more sidewalks, trams, bike lanes, and better medium density mixed-use development. But if folks want to have Ford F-250s and drive 15 miles for a loaf of bread, you have to care about the Straight of Hormuz which Iran could threaten to shut down anytime and as they continued to strengthen their military capabilities increasingly likely to shut down in the future.
-edit-
Also to be clear EVs aren't the answer either. Can't be dependent on China for rare earth mineral processing, still doesn't solve c02 emissions, still have traffic and all the negative externalities.
by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 7:45:45 PM
The rare earth dependency on China is very much overblown. The U.S. has very significant natural reserves of rare earth minerals. The problem is the same with all mining - it's uneconomic to mine minerals in the U.S. because the job of "miner" is unattractive to Americans (both the laborers and the governments that sign environmental permits) when there are cleaner, safer, and more highly paid jobs available.They're also just as much of a CO2 solution as electric trains are, i.e. it depends on the fuel source for the local electric grid (which today is overwhelmingly solar in most of the places where EVs are popular).
by nostrademons
4/3/2026 at 8:09:22 PM
We're dependent on processing and refining, not the minerals themselves. Takes, from what I understand, 10-15 years to stand up that capability.Overall EVs are great and all and that's what I have, but they're not addressing the underlying concerns and sticking with car-only or car-based infrastructure whether that's ICE or EV is a losing proposition.
> They're also just as much of a CO2 solution as electric trains are,
No, you need fewer electric trains to move much more people plus you don't replace the trains as often, &c, and then add in all the miles and miles of paved roads you need, parking lots, you name it. There's no way around this, if you care about the environment or care about human wellbeing you have to move away from car-only infrastructure like the US has and move toward more European models. And no, the geography isn't a challenge, most people live in urban areas in the United States, China is big too, and so forth.
by ericmay
4/4/2026 at 1:27:51 AM
10-15 years to stand up legacy refining capability, which is heavy in pollution.China invested decades into research and has made significant progress in extra refined, four nines purity rare earth minerals, required for advanced industries.
They may be two decades+ ahead of US at least, plus the talent pipeline
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 6:28:14 PM
Sure no disagreement there - I think that just strengthens my point. Though I don’t think they are really 2 decades ahead because we can just start stealing their research and reverse engineering products as we see fit.by ericmay
4/3/2026 at 7:31:25 PM
Another good lesson could potentially be that going to war as a sideshow to distract from a news cycle that threatened people in power is not the best choice for the world at large.by Arubis
4/3/2026 at 8:05:54 PM
The people who are benefiting from that distraction are not the same who are being harmed by the distraction. The leaders seem to be quite okay with these turn of events.by fhdkweig
4/3/2026 at 9:52:01 PM
I agree that we should abandon car-only transportation and instead move cars much further down the transit hierarchy. Ideally we would be relying on trains, bikes, and buses for most daily movement, using cars as needed instead of by default. But,> still doesn't solve c02 [sic] emissions
This is incorrect. It doesn't magically make the entire grid carbon neutral but it does let us use much more efficient forms of power generation to make the electricity, and electric cars themselves do not emit CO2 (Carbon with 2 Oxygen). Effectively, switching to electric cars would remove cars themselves as a source of CO2 and make decarbonization much much easier.
by solid_fuel
4/3/2026 at 7:48:22 PM
I remember 4 dollar gas in 2011.... So that was nearly 6 dollars in modern money.by slackfan
4/4/2026 at 4:02:05 AM
> aiming to have fewer cars and abandon car-only transportation as policy,impossible in the US due to (sub)urban sprawl. The only way to get rid of car-only mode is to get rid of suburban sprawl and put people back into dense Eastern European style commieblocks.
Also it is impossible in the US due to market economy. People will inevitable have to commute long distance to reach job sites or customers. Eastern commieblocks could solve that because people worked in large industrial factories, and there were only a handful of factories per town, and one downtown, and all routes were predetermined and planned.
car-only mode is the expression of the American Dream (tm), that you can live in your SFH in a burb, and hop into your personal car any second and go anywhere you want. It is the Ultimate Freedom (tm) and anything else is a significant downgrade in a lifestyle
by bijowo1676
4/4/2026 at 6:34:20 PM
We certainly face headwinds and challenges and we will never be totally free of suburbs or anything - even Europe has those, but we can make great progress in specific areas and to your point leverage market efficiency to drive the progress we need to make as a country. When I think about my hometown of Columbus I think about the hundreds of acres of surface parking lots, those can be converted to economically useful land with shops, small-scale workshops, housing of various types, offices, and more. And by doing so we can build up appropriate density without too much of a challenge. Younger folks than me are clamoring for better living conditions - we should make it happen. That doesn’t mean we abandon cars or anything - I like mine, but with better building patterns we can reduce the burden on everyone to have to buy all this stuff just to get a loaf of bread, go to school, or any other normal daily activities. Then we can make more use of our existing infrastructure instead of building more and then not being able to afford to maintain it (state DOTs are big jobs programs and they build even if they don’t need to so that they don’t have to lay people off - biggest scam in the USA and maybe the world).There’s a really well known photo of Amsterdam before and after their car-first infrastructure. I can try to find it later but if you search for it, you could find it pretty easily I think. You’ll know it when you see it and it’ll blow your mind.
by ericmay
4/6/2026 at 2:54:48 PM
Does Western Europe have "Commie blocks?" Because I see them being public transit-forward, with less of a reliance on cars than the U.S.by butlike
4/3/2026 at 7:19:46 PM
Oil is still underpriced wrt to its environmental cost. It is good to see at least the political cost being accounted for.by praptak
4/3/2026 at 7:25:56 PM
From my point of view, this incredibly stupid war has only positive externalities. The costs of oil are legion and unaccounted.by nutjob2
4/3/2026 at 7:28:29 PM
> Oil is still underpriced wrt to its environmental cost.This may well be true, but we still haven't found a better fuel. Sure, we have electric cars, but they are still too expensive for the masses, or impractical, e.g. for apartment dwellers. Besides, oil has countless other uses besides as fuel for vehicles.
by drnick1
4/3/2026 at 7:46:25 PM
Yes, and, the world would be better off if the price of oil were higher. We would produce less plastic crap and take fewer frivolous airplane trips and take more public transit. Our petroleum consumption is based on underpriced oil.by saulpw
4/3/2026 at 7:46:52 PM
There's no incentive to find a better fuel as long as the price of oil doesn't have the externalities priced in.by praptak
4/3/2026 at 10:01:10 PM
This could be an argument for investing in more reliable/higher capacity public transit systems though. Which would also likely result in a fair increase in public health from moving a bit more and possibly less polluted air going in an out of the lungs of the populace.by happysadpanda2
4/4/2026 at 12:53:20 AM
> This could be an argument for investing in more reliable/higher capacity public transit systems though.Public transit is impractical outside of big urban centers. And even there, it's nearly always a nasty experience. This is why people who can afford it still drive or use taxis in cities.
by drnick1
4/6/2026 at 2:48:29 AM
I take it you haven't lived in a country that invests significantly in its public transportation infrastructure, like Switzerland or Japan?by mitthrowaway2
4/3/2026 at 8:10:22 PM
> but we still haven't found a better fuelWe have. It's electric.
by malfist
4/6/2026 at 2:57:58 PM
What runs the power plants? Steam?by butlike
4/3/2026 at 8:22:12 PM
China makes them cheaply enough.by mitthrowaway2
4/4/2026 at 2:46:27 AM
Software-on-wheels under the control of a foreign nation, what could go wrong?by drnick1
4/3/2026 at 7:51:55 PM
That's a good start, but maybe toss a "1" in front of the "5".by BigTTYGothGF
4/3/2026 at 10:45:40 PM
You can't compare time, you need to compare sorties. There were only 5900 F15 sorties during the gulf war. It's not clear how many of the 8000 combat sorties sorties flown so far in the Iran war are with F15s, but it's almost certainly several thousand. Overall during the gulf war coalition forces suffered 52 fixed wing aircraft lost in combat over approximately 116,000 combat sorties.Given Iran ought to have far better SAM systems than Iraq 35 years ago, this comparison doesn't seem in any way alarming.
For a more direct comparison, in the first 5 weeks of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia flew approximately 7000 combat sorties and 22 fixed wing aircraft were shot down.
by jjk166
4/4/2026 at 12:43:47 AM
Look at the super-precise strike on the E-3 sentry that we have pictures of. We know at least one other was hit.If Iran can do this with AWACS, they can do even more with the hundreds of fighter jets in Israeli and US bases (it's much easier to cover up the destruction of an F-15 or F-35). Once this war ends, I think we'll see that most of the aircraft kills are going to be on the ground.
by hajile
4/4/2026 at 9:20:50 PM
I'm talking about things being shot down.Hitting ground targets is even less of a technical flex.
by jjk166
4/4/2026 at 7:22:33 AM
That E-3 sentry was stationary on the ground.by TiredOfLife
4/4/2026 at 2:59:23 PM
I'm not sure that you read the comment that you replied to.by mlyle
4/3/2026 at 7:06:36 PM
It seems like the Iraqis were relatively poor operators of their systems. A few days ago I was reading about the Nato bombing of yugoslavia on wikipedia and it had the following entry:"Yugoslav air defences were much fewer than what Iraq had deployed during the Gulf War – an estimated 16 SA-3 and 25 SA-6 surface-to-air missile systems, plus numerous anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) – but unlike the Iraqis they took steps to preserve their assets. Prior to the conflict's start Yugoslav SAMs were preemptively dispersed away from their garrisons and practiced emission control to decrease NATO's ability to locate them."
So their SAMs likely just got stealth bombed / bombed from a distance.
by caribou1914
4/3/2026 at 7:20:19 PM
> An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign.Why? We don't know exactly what happened but its easy to imagine that Iran held some anti-air systems in reserve for this phase of the war. They aren't trying to defend a target, their goal was likely to stay hidden and wait for an opportunity. They could keep the radar off and use a passive sensor network to notify them when it was in range, then turn the radar on to get a lock for the shot. Or even just IR. Recall, the Houthis gave stealth F35s some near misses over Yemen, no doubt supplied and trained by the Iranians.
https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses...
by thinkcontext
4/3/2026 at 8:22:59 PM
It was pretty much a given that over time some of these airplanes would be shot down. There's no way to get every single MANPAD or even some of the larger anti-aircraft setups. A jet can even be brought down by a canon or a bullet given enough luck. We've had quite a few near misses, there's a video of an Israeli F-16 evading a surface to air missile, there have been the F-35 that was hit but managed to continue and land, there were countless drones shot down.This was inevitable and just a question of time. Out of >10k sorties something is going to get hit. I've no idea what range the military planners expected and how we're doing vs. that.
by YZF
4/4/2026 at 8:59:57 AM
Why would that not be a bad sign? The US declared victory several times, but clearly Iran still has plenty of firepower to shoot down planes, and probably also ships in the Strait. If the US is incapable of preventing Iran from shooting ships and planes, how do they intend to win this?It's absolutely a bad sign. One among many.
by mcv
4/3/2026 at 8:25:19 PM
OP left a little to interpretation, but, I think, top of the list starts with 'mission accomplished 2.0' meme followed by increased US casualties ( though I suppose the exact order likely depends on your current disposition ).by iugtmkbdfil834
4/3/2026 at 7:26:57 PM
> During the entire gulf war (Iraq, 1990-91), only two F-15s were shot down via surface-to-air engagement.was it because F-15 was used as superiority fighter at that time and now they use it as heavy bomber? I assume plenty of bombers likely was shot down in Iraq.
by andriy_koval
4/3/2026 at 7:40:19 PM
Both F-15s lost in the 1st Gulf War were the air-to-ground focused F-15E Strike Eagles. https://rjlee.org/air/ds-aaloss/by ranger207
4/3/2026 at 7:55:38 PM
per wiki, f-15e was first produced in 1987, so there were very few in service at that time, and most of ground strikes were carried by other aircrafts.by andriy_koval
4/3/2026 at 8:25:21 PM
Yes, most ground strikes were by other aircraft types, but the F-15E did have a lot of sorties, almost as many as the F-111 or F-4G (although the F-16 had many, many more sorties, but not all of them were air-to-ground)Source is the Gulf War Airpower Survey, page 184 (PDF page 205): https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA273996.pdf
by ranger207
4/3/2026 at 8:01:28 PM
This one is also an F-15E it seems.by YZF
4/3/2026 at 7:51:24 PM
[flagged]by jari_mustonen
4/3/2026 at 10:32:55 PM
[flagged]by drstewart
4/3/2026 at 10:56:27 PM
[flagged]by swat535
4/3/2026 at 8:51:33 PM
[flagged]by mrits
4/3/2026 at 9:11:13 PM
Have you considered not providing intel to Irak to allow them to use sarin gas against the Iranians? Or overthrowing their democratic regime that wanted an audit to understand how much of its oil was stolen by US companies? Or designating it as the "Axis of Evil" and sanctioning it after that it helped you invade Afghanistan? Or assassinating their religious leader during negociations?Iran didn't become skeptic about the US overnight. I would advise to do some reading on wikipedia on the topic to make up your mind.
by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 2:17:13 AM
Did the other 10 countries Iran bomb do the same thing or are you poor guys just misunderstood?by mrits
4/4/2026 at 7:14:09 AM
Iran sent missiles to countries hosting US military assets. I think that it's quite clear why they do it, unlike the US. They had also warned before hand that it would happen in the case of a US unprovoked aggression.by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 1:49:16 PM
I'm glad warning before hand is all you need to do. Sounds like you full support the US then. Welcome aboard!by mrits
4/6/2026 at 7:07:12 PM
Iran didn't start the war. The countries bring struck are US allies that provide the infrastructure for the strikes against Iran.by Saline9515
4/7/2026 at 11:01:30 AM
"provide the infrastructure for the strikes" -- Put your hate for the Jews aside for a few minutes to realize how hypocritical that statement isby mrits
4/3/2026 at 10:43:27 PM
Khamenei explains what that is intended to mean:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/irans-ayatollah-ali-khame...
by pauldelany
4/3/2026 at 9:19:37 PM
[flagged]by waffleiron
4/3/2026 at 10:31:18 PM
Don't know, ask Iran. But you can't since they've silenced everyone by turning off the Internet for all their citizensby drstewart
4/3/2026 at 10:38:10 PM
[flagged]by platevoltage
4/3/2026 at 9:02:10 PM
[flagged]by mdni007
4/3/2026 at 9:57:04 PM
[flagged]by drstewart
4/3/2026 at 10:57:59 PM
The Iranian government can suck and it can still be a net negative for the Iranian people to bomb the shit out of their civilian infrastructure and kill and bunch of schoolgirls.The Iranian government sucks. There is zero chance that Trump is capable of leaving this conflict with a stable liberal democracy that protects the rights of the Iranian people in place.
by UncleMeat
4/5/2026 at 12:22:36 AM
That’s not what Iranians expect or are asking for. Every Iranian I’ve spoken to is thankful that Khamenei is now dead and there is at least a chance of change. They don’t expect Trump to fix their country for them. They want someone to help so their own government isn’t shooting them dead by the thousands in the streets.by RiverStone
4/3/2026 at 10:37:31 PM
[flagged]by platevoltage
4/3/2026 at 4:49:03 PM
Surely SAMs have improved since 1991? Have the F-15s improved significantly? (I know nothing about military stuff.)by flowerthoughts
4/3/2026 at 5:54:51 PM
They certainly have, but the general idea is to first use stealth jets to bomb defensive systems (including radar observability) to conquer the skies, and then you can fly around somewhat freely. While SAM technology has improved, so have America's observability and stealth bombing capabilities. It will be interesting to learn the context and sequence of events which led to an F-15 being shot down by enemy fire.(In 1991, the United States relied on the F-117 Nighthawk to penetrate Baghdad and launch salvos against radar and SAM sites. Simultaneously, Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired against similar communication and defense sites. In this war with Iran, the F-35 and B-2 have been used for stealth missions).
by roadbuster
4/3/2026 at 7:40:41 PM
> F-117 NighthawkRecall that the Serbs shot down a Nighthawk when they were in a similar situation to Iran. They kept some good AA missiles in reserve and used a system of spotters and just waited for an opportunity. Its likely that similar tactics were used by Iran.
Also recall that the Houthis, armed and trained by Iran, gave F35s some close calls over Yemen.
https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses...
by thinkcontext
4/3/2026 at 8:18:57 PM
The story is actually quite interesting. The Serbs observed that a nighthawk would routinely fly the same route but their radar couldn’t lock on it unless the missile hatch were open, which they managed to elicit.In short, it took 2 rare events to occur for it to happen.
by ninja3925
4/3/2026 at 6:01:25 PM
Turns out Iran is good at hiding stuff in caves and driving it out on a truck platform. Who would have known?by asdff
4/3/2026 at 6:52:54 PM
Next you're going to tell me that operating out of your own mountainous terrain has an advantage.by gherkinnn
4/3/2026 at 6:58:20 PM
Would be news to the US military it seems. Mountains, jungles, who would have thought?by asdff
4/4/2026 at 12:25:00 PM
This isn’t unexpected for anyone in the actual military: they’ve planned for this for decades. A couple of friends served in the previous war and they mentioned that this is what their training exercises were like: same enemy, same difficulty.by acdha
4/3/2026 at 7:22:01 PM
Possibly true, but at least they don't have the ability to control some critical waterway or something to hold everyone at ransom.by nutjob2
4/3/2026 at 7:28:42 PM
The Serbs successfully used a similar tactic to down an F-117A, so yeah.by praptak
4/3/2026 at 7:35:20 PM
Most of the F15 upgrades have been against other aircraft. The F15 is primarily an air superiority fighter, it isn’t designed for attacks or defence against ground forces. The F15E is modified to attack ground targets, but ideally they would be targets without any air defences.by mr_toad
4/3/2026 at 7:42:23 PM
The F-15E Strike Eagle variant is definitely designed for attacks and defense against ground forces, but overall air defense is a probability game so it's not too surprising that it eventually happenedby ranger207
4/3/2026 at 7:47:37 PM
Yes, although it’s designed for interdiction, rather than primarily a ground attack aircraft, the difference being that it’s intended to be used against defenceless ground targets (like supply lines), not on the front lines.by mr_toad
4/3/2026 at 7:21:52 PM
A lot of the planes are doing attack runs at altitudes where they are susceptible to man pads I imagine.by christkv
4/4/2026 at 2:04:20 PM
We have attacked their “legacy” air defense systems. We cannot really degrade their ability to use their anti-aircraft loitering missiles which don’t rely on radar.https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/missiles/358-missile-S...
by nycdatasci
4/3/2026 at 7:44:23 PM
Operation Desert Storm was only 43 days long. Epic Fury is most of the way there.by nwah1
4/3/2026 at 6:43:36 PM
The latest reporting is that only 50% of Iran's missile capacity has been destroyedhttps://www.cnn.com/2026/04/02/politics/iran-missiles-us-mil...
Doesn't break out anti-air, but Iran absolutely has a lot of teeth left.
by fooey
4/3/2026 at 7:38:23 PM
What's the reliability of this reporting?What we can tell though is that Iran is still firing missiles (including cluster munitions) at Israel's civilians and at gulf states. So the ground facts are that it can still do that.
We also have to remember that Iran has a large number of different missile systems for different ranges. It's mostly not the same missiles they are firing at the nearby gulf states as they are firing into Israel. Some of the longer range missile systems they have need to be fired from western Iran to make it to Israel. There's a lot of other nuance, solid fuel vs. liquid fuel, mobile vs. fixed launchers etc.
by YZF
4/3/2026 at 8:01:21 PM
I don't think we'll see anything close to reliable reporting any time soon.The story of whether Iran had a nuclear program has been reported every which way but loose for the past 6 months.
By the time Trump started pushing that they were close to a nuke again, those that claimed he was wrong 6 months ago and the nuclear program was intact. Had started claiming it was in fact destroyed.
Gosh that sentence is hard enough to write, but the story is so contolvuted I don't think I can improve it.
by rustyhancock
4/3/2026 at 9:33:55 PM
"Iran will have a nuclear weapon real soon!" is a claim that has been pushed, particularly by Benjamin Netanyahu for thirty years.https://www.news18.com/world/weeks-away-by-next-spring-video...
by GolfPopper
4/3/2026 at 11:53:47 PM
>The story of whether Iran had a nuclear program has been reported every which way but loose for the past 6 months.6 months?
Try like 35+ years. Bibi has been pushing the "Iran is 2 weeks away from a nuke" narrative since the late 80s.
by NickC25
4/3/2026 at 10:11:36 PM
That Iran had a nuclear program was not in dispute. It was regulated under international supervision based on the terms of Obama's agreement with Iran, which Trump promptly tore up because he has the mental capacity of a fourth-grader.That Iran was on the verge of building bombs was far from clear. Khameini had previously issued a fatwa against doing so, on the grounds that it would be haram, or un-Islamic. All signs suggest that the IRGC was operating in full compliance with that fatwa.
I'm sure the remnants of his administration regret that now.
by CamperBob2
4/4/2026 at 10:41:48 PM
But the JCPOA had some big issues with it. It was time bound- that is it only delayed Iran's program ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal ) and Iran got sanctions relief in return that allowed it to fund its proxies and pursue other activities not constrained by the agreement (such as its ballistic missile program, drones etc.).Iran also restricted IAEA access to military sites while the agreement was in effect.
https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/revealed-emptying-of-th...
by YZF
4/4/2026 at 10:50:28 PM
That's a fascinating insight into what friends of Bibi can do with photoshopped text on long range photos.Doesn't include any 256 channel multi spectral radiometric data from ground level crystal packs though ... I guess they didn't show much of interest in the gamma spectrum.
by defrost
4/5/2026 at 1:49:18 AM
We have two competing theories. One is that Israel is making everything up. The other is that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. At least the second one seems to have some evidence backing it up like secret underground facilities with centrifuges, enriched material, and yes, that warehouse in Tehran. The theory that Israel is making everything up doesn't seem that well supported.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50382219 "The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found uranium particles at a site in Iran that had not been declared by the Iranian authorities.
A confidential report, seen by the BBC, did not say exactly where the site was. But inspectors are believed to have taken samples from a location in Tehran's Turquzabad district.
That is the area where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has alleged Iran had a "secret atomic warehouse". "
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-iaea-found-u...
"VIENNA (Reuters) - Samples taken by the U.N. nuclear watchdog at what Israel's prime minister called a "secret atomic warehouse" in Tehran showed traces of uranium that Iran has yet to explain, two diplomats who follow the agency's inspections work closely say."
...
"Those traces were, however, of uranium, the diplomats said - the same element Iran is enriching and one of only two fissile elements with which one can make the core of a nuclear bomb. One diplomat said the uranium was not highly enriched, meaning it was not purified to a level anywhere close to that needed for weapons. "There are lots of possible explanations," that diplomat said. But since Iran has not yet given any to the IAEA it is hard to verify the particles' origin, and it is also not clear whether the traces are remnants of material or activities that predate the landmark 2015 deal or more recent, diplomats say."
by YZF
4/5/2026 at 2:59:50 AM
Iran has been pursuing nuclear deterrence by enriching for decades, the entire time I've been in and out of the country. That's a given.Bibi and his tales that Iran is just a week away from an actual working bomb has been going on almost as long. Bibi - the guy with a secret / not secret collection of bombs.
The question of whether or not Iran was playing along sufficiently with inspectors when there was an inspection deal in place is what we are talking about here.
IMHO they weren't getting away with much, at that time Israel was making up claims that they were and media blasting.
That is all times past, of course.
It's also clear that once Trump tore up the deal they went (sensibly in light of everything it seems) back to unchecked enrichment, and now that they've been attacked during negotiations there's zero trust and it would seem certain that there is a real risk that reinvigorated hard core fanatics will set a bomb off in either Israel and / or the US.
Smooth move clowns.
by defrost
4/5/2026 at 1:52:56 AM
Isn’t this just weapons of mass destruction again circa Iraq 25 years ago? We had evidence back then also, it turned out to be fabricated. Are you sure Netanyahu didn't just need a big distraction to prevent from being impeached and sent to jail? And Trump didn't need a huge distraction from the whole Epstein thing? Because this war come out of nowhere and was way too convenient for them.by seanmcdirmid
4/5/2026 at 2:13:20 AM
It's true that no stockpiles of WMDs were found in Iraq. But we also know Iraq has used chemical weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_programI lived in Israel during that war and everyone had gas masks and people were truly worried about chemical weapons being used. They weren't.
But in Iran there really are/were centrifuges and enriched Uranium. Remember: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet ?
Iran admits having this Uranium: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/iran-suggests-it-cou...
So which part is fabricated?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran
"By the early 2000s, two key clandestine facilities were nearing completion: a uranium enrichment center at Natanz (in central Iran), built to house thousands of centrifuges, and a heavy water production plant alongside a 40 MW heavy-water reactor (IR-40) near Arak. These facilities, which had been kept secret from the IAEA, were intended for ostensibly civilian purposes but had clear weapons potential. Enrichment at Natanz could yield high-enriched uranium for bombs, while the Arak reactor (once operational) could produce plutonium in its spent fuel, and the heavy water plant would supply the reactor's coolant.[41] In August 2002, an exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), exposed the existence of Natanz and Arak.[41] Satellite imagery soon confirmed construction at these sites. The revelation that Iran had built major nuclear facilities in secret, without required disclosure to the IAEA, ignited an international crisis and raised questions about the program's true aim.[41]"
People who are pro the Iranian regime claim that there was a religious order against building nuclear weapons. But at the same time there is no other explanation as to why Iran would enrich Uranium to 60% as that has virtually no other use. It also seems they were working on other components related to weaponiztion (though admittedly we have less confirmation/visibility into that). Ofcourse the precise timing of when they would chose to build those weapons and their intent is not that easy to guess but it's also not unreasonable to assume they would do so when they felt it would be to their advantage.
by YZF
4/5/2026 at 6:17:55 PM
People who are pro the Iranian regime claim that there was a religious order against building nuclear weaponsNo one here is "pro the Iranian regime." Do better.
by CamperBob2
4/4/2026 at 10:19:55 AM
To that add what Joe Kent and Tulsi Gabbard said about Iranian nuclear bombs -- no indications that they have one or are building one.by srean
4/4/2026 at 10:00:25 PM
But everyone agrees that they have enriched >400kg of Uranium to a level that has no other purpose than nuclear weapons and that the remaining steps of enrichment are measured in days/weeks.So something doesn't add up in what your references are saying. What is your explanation of the discrepancy?
https://www.sipri.org/commentary/essay/2021/why-iran-produci...
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...
by YZF
4/4/2026 at 10:53:40 PM
Why in the world would Iran be expected to remain in compliance with the JCPOA after 2018, when Trump tore it up?As I recall, they did remain in compliance for another year after that, given that it was originally supposed to be a multilateral agreement. But IMHO they should have put everything they had into refinement and weapons production as soon as Trump unilaterally ripped up the agreement. Instead they held back, and they are now seeing the result of that mistake.
None of this would be happening if Iran had actually done what Israel assured us they were doing.
by CamperBob2
4/5/2026 at 2:00:28 AM
You're asking why wouldn't they pursue nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them? Why should they? Don't you think as a country they should have some other priorities? Like ensuring Tehran has water? So because Trump tore up the agreement (and the US was sanctioning them anyways for their ballistic missile program and other reasons) that's somehow justification? Trump tore up the agreement because it would enable them to get there anyways and Iran refused to sign an agreement that would prevent them from getting there.The JCPOA would have expired in 2025 anyways assuming that they even meant to observe it in the first place.
Your last statement isn't as solid as you think it is. Iran hasn't gotten to a point where they have nuclear weapons mounted on ballistic missiles not because they didn't want to but because they were unable to get to that or were concerned that getting closer would invite the same attack we're seeing today.
by YZF
4/5/2026 at 2:15:21 AM
You're asking why wouldn't they pursue nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them? Why should they?Turned on a TV lately?
by CamperBob2
4/5/2026 at 2:34:26 AM
Which came first. The chicken or the egg?Maybe Israel and the US wouldn't be attacking a country where stepping on US and Israeli flags, chants of death to America and death to Israel, calling Israel little Satan and the US big Satan. Building an arsenal of ballistic missiles and trying to get to a nuclear bomb? (and I mean the list goes on and on).
They need nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles so they can murder with impunity without risk of retribution. A regime that conducts public executions in stadiums, or mows down 10's of thousand of their own citizens who dare to protest, or give people plastic keys to heaven to walk into minefields: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_key_to_paradise or beat up woman on the streets to death for not wearing a hijab: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mahsa_Amini (and this list also goes on and on) can't be allowed to act with impunity.
by YZF
4/5/2026 at 10:46:05 AM
Maybe had the US not upended their parliamentary democracy with a coup to grab their oil, they would have continued to maintain their earlier friendly relations with Israel.Burning US flags and calling for death to blacks has been a KKK thing. We did not bomb them collectively, or break their infra, when they got their guns because their expressions were considered free speech. Individual transgressions of law were pursued (once in a while).
by srean
4/4/2026 at 10:42:30 PM
Oh shucks! military intelligence and 19 different intelligence gathering agencies are such nincompoops that they completely missed what an expert HN commenter of sparkling genius pointed out.I don't have the expertise to know what use its for, but I suspect the agencies assesment was informed bybthe knowledge of 60% enriched uranium.
It's used for subs btw and maybe they felt they needed a nuclear one to secure Hormuz.
by srean
4/5/2026 at 1:54:25 AM
I get it. So according to you Iran is building nuclear subs. JFYI it takes 4-5Kg of material for a nuclear sub reactor. So according to you they're building 100 nuclear submarines.Got it genius. But hey, by the trust you put in Joe Kent and Tulsi Gabbard we already knew you were a genius. Didn't need the additional observation about Iran building 100 nuclear submarines to secure Hormuz.
by YZF
4/5/2026 at 10:22:21 AM
I have no F'ing clue what Iran wants to do. But I know that the intelligence agencies are well equipped and experienced to guess that, especially more than 'that guy on the internet '.by srean
4/4/2026 at 5:29:56 PM
> which Trump promptly tore up because he has the mental capacity of a fourth-grader.That would be an insult to fourth graders IMO, my son happens to be one.
by scns
4/4/2026 at 6:12:03 PM
Yeah, valid point, I was out of line there. Apologies.by CamperBob2
4/4/2026 at 12:00:01 AM
I do a mild bit of environmental geophysical radiometrics, that took me to Iran decades ago - it's not a new thing, they've been edging having nuclear deterrance for a good while.Trump ripped up the monitoring agreement - that was unquestionably stupid.
He attacked Iran during talks to get that back on track .. that was unbelievably stupid (see: current world state).
Had he agreed to have in country monitoring again and had the USofA simply waited it was probable the old hard line core would have withered in time.
That's certainly not on the table now, the fanatics are dug in and feel fully justified. On both sides.
Incapable of The Deal.
by defrost
4/3/2026 at 6:48:02 PM
Seems to me their strategy is to shut down the Strait as cheaply as possible, force ground operations on known strategic points of interest, then just missile and drone strike Americans in Iranian territory where they have ~no air defense.by estearum
4/3/2026 at 7:18:18 PM
There are 4 players in this war and they all have very different goals and "victory" conditions.1. Israel wants to ruin Iran permanently, to turn it into Somalia 2.0, meaning a quasi-state with no organized, central government. Were they to succeed in this it would be a humantarian disaster the likes of which we haven't seen since probably WW2. Tens of millions of refugees that will probably collapse surrounding countries;
2. The US (IMHO) wanted to placate Israel with a cheap decapitation strike that would force regime change and bring in a US-friendly regime, similar to Venezuela. This was completely unrealistic and they completely underestimated Iran's ability to maintain an offensive capability. We don't even know how much Iran's missile and drone capability has been degraded (to the GP's point). I don't even believe it's been degraded 50% (as GP claimed) abut we have no way of knowing. The entire Iranian military is built to resist a strategic bombing campaign;
3. Iran no longer trusts the US as a good faith actor and negotiator after multiple incidents of acting in bad faith, killing their negotiators and bombing an embassy so their goal is to make the price of this war so high economically that the US never thinks about doing this ever again. And that's a cheap thing to do, as you note. Drones can close the Strait and ne devastating to the economies of the Gulf states; and
4. The Gulf States just want to maintain the pre-war status quo. Saudi Arabia in particular just wanted to contain Iran. They're less vulnerable to the Strait being closed but it's still a problem politically as the US and Israel are bombing other Muslims. The Gulf states are learning the the US security guarantee ain't worth shit but they can't break away from being US client states with their own unpopular regimes probably collapsing without US arms. But in a prolonged conflict some of them may collapse anyway, particularly Bahrain and even Iraq.
So Iran just fires a dozen ballistic missiles a day to remind Israel of the war Israel started. An estimated ~50% of missiles get through missile defences now. Otherwise threats and the occasional drone are sufficient to close the Strait and massively disrupt the ME3 airlines. Militarily, Iran can probably keep that up forever. Mobile missile launchers are cheap and drones can be launched from basically any truck. They're also produced and stored in underground basis that are essentially impervious to bombing short of nuclear weapons.
Many believed prior to Trump's speech this week that he would either escalate or pull out. Instead he found a secret third, worse option, which is to tell Europe and Asia "you're on your own" (with the Strait closure) after the US launched a war nobody but Israel wanted or supported. That's an interesting strategy because it's going to cause some serious soul-searching in all of these countries about the wisdom of US allegiance.
by jmyeet
4/3/2026 at 7:31:00 PM
You forgot the 5th actor - Russia - which is benefiting hugely from the collapse of NATO, the loosening of oil sanctions, the huge hike in oil prices, and the way the US was persuaded to expend a ridiculous percentage of its conventional missile stockpiles on a pointless project.Ukraine is doing its best to minimise Russian oil exports, and that's certainly having an effect.
But strategically, Russia is a huge beneficiary of this mess.
by TheOtherHobbes
4/3/2026 at 7:42:35 PM
It depends where you draw the line. The extended players include:1. Russia (as you say): I think this war of choice virtually guarantees a settlement of the Ukraine war along the current borders. At some point Europe will need to ease their energy crisis with Russian oil and gas. Well done, everybody, the system works;
2. Europe: like the GCC they are finding US security guarantees and the NATO protection racket aren't what they were sold. Pax Americana was an illusion. I've elsewhere predicted this is going to lead to arms and tech nationalism within Europe. It's actually a race between fascism taking over Europe and Europe divorcing itself from the US and I suspect fascism is currently winning; and
3. China: the biggest wineer of all this. China is still receiving Iranian oil exports. In fact, the US "punished" Iran by lifting oil sanctions, allowing Iran to sell oil to China at market rates instead of below market (because of the sanctions). Again, well done, everybody; and
4. Asia: this has exposed their weakness of imported oil, particularly Thailand, Vietnam and the Phillipines. I would not be surprised if this war of choice is the turning point that leads to a China-cenetered Asian security compact.
In one year, the US has essentially torn up the entire post-1945 rules-based international order, which it designed for its own benefit.
by jmyeet
4/4/2026 at 12:20:10 PM
China's bigger win is the future demand for solar, batteries, EVs, induction stoves (replace LPG/LNG), all things electric and energy storage. There were plans to shut down the oversupply of solar, but now there must be a huge demand.by thelastgallon
4/3/2026 at 8:32:27 PM
In other words, all the ingredients for WW3. Lets hope we can somehow avoid that.by iugtmkbdfil834
4/3/2026 at 8:55:17 PM
> I suspect fascism is currently winningI think this war is actually pushing many away from fascism. Trump was the reference for a lot of the European right and this is showing people he was terrible and, by extension, embarrassing them all.
Heck, Orbán is currently running an electoral campaign as "the candidate of peace".
by riffraff
4/3/2026 at 11:39:27 PM
If Trump wasn't embarrassing for them before I doubt they're embarrassed now.by maplethorpe
4/4/2026 at 7:03:26 AM
With the price of petrol skyrocketing, what I see in France are people complaining about taxes, not the war started by Trump.And they still don't see the point of EVs.
Those short-sighted people are the ones cheering for fascism, so the current events have no impact on their vote.
by wiether
4/4/2026 at 3:20:20 AM
My impression is that the fascists in Europe are trying to break up with the US too. So it's not "either or".But I know one thing: we re going to see a rush into implementing renewables after this that will look like a post-war policy. What is also bad news for he GCC.
by marcosdumay
4/3/2026 at 8:08:54 PM
The post-1945 rules-based order was already a slow motion train crash that most of the West remained in denial about until Putin wiped his behind with it in the 2014 invasion of Crimea. To pretend that Trump is somehow breaking an otherwise intact system at this point is fanciful.by speakfreely
4/3/2026 at 9:27:53 PM
The post-1945 order was dead after the NATO's war in Yugoslavia in 1999, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovo. At the very latest.One coulld argue that it happened earlier, for example after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, or after the annexation of East Germany.
by machomaster
4/3/2026 at 9:19:31 PM
>"The post-1945 rules-based order" - it was always one rule for me another one for theeby FpUser
4/3/2026 at 7:38:54 PM
Oh, also China who benefits from US deterrence being relocated from APAC and buried into Iranian dirtby estearum
4/3/2026 at 9:12:54 PM
Really, any rival state-level actor benefits from seeing America squander its currently limited supply of high-end munitions and put months of stress on its airframes, warships, and people.by GolfPopper
4/3/2026 at 9:19:57 PM
... & sells drone parts to any and all participants. You need drones? You know who to call!by onlypassingthru
4/4/2026 at 11:45:44 AM
Russia needs its energy sources for its own war, too. Energy getting more expensive globally, while UA reducing the supply by targeting RU production, is a double edged sword. RU is now putting bans on export of some fuels, etc. Whether EU turning into a defense alliance with sole focus on RU, while taking in all lessons from UA war (without having to deal with US pressure to buy its expensive state of the art military HW which may not be all that effective in the potential drone war) is great for russia is also questionable.by megous
4/3/2026 at 9:12:03 PM
I agree with most of this, but: The collapse of NATO is not yet in evidence.by AnimalMuppet
4/3/2026 at 7:43:06 PM
> The Gulf States just want to maintain the pre-war status quo. Saudi Arabia in particular just wanted to contain Iran. They're less vulnerable to the Strait being closed but it's still a problem politically as the US and Israel are bombing other Muslims. The Gulf states are learning the the US security guarantee ain't worth shit but they can't break away from being US client states with their own unpopular regimes probably collapsing without US arms. But in a prolonged conflict some of them may collapse anyway, particularly Bahrain and even Iraq.Saudi and the UAE don't want the pre-war status quo, they want America to bomb Iran back to the stone age so it can't continue missile or launcher production.
by logicchains
4/4/2026 at 5:01:09 AM
UAE wants that because their leaders are highly Israel aligned. Saudi Arabia is a lot more pragmatic, they take their role as the "leader" of the Islamic world pretty seriously.by nerfbatplz
4/4/2026 at 3:40:46 AM
Pre-war views were very much the status-quo was better than starting a war.Now that a war is started it has to be finished or the GCC is left far worse off with Iran in a much stronger strategic position in the region despite a decimated military.
by jpgvm
4/3/2026 at 10:47:00 PM
> Iran no longer trusts the US as a good faith actor and negotiatorIran ("the regime") was never a good faith actor or negotiator. Their position was something like "we won't develop nuclear weapons as long as we have free reign to torture our own citizens and fund violent groups that destabilize regional governments". And still marched on enriching uranium anyway.
There's nothing to trust on either side. This war was eventually going to happen, I'm just disappointed that it happened under such incompetent leadership in the US.
by stickfigure
4/4/2026 at 1:19:04 AM
> Their position was something like "we won't develop nuclear weapons as long as we have free reign to torture our own citizens and fund violent groups that destabilize regional governments"This is unfortunately the best possible outcome. Nuclear weapons have been around for 80 years now. They are quite achievable by modern states, and they are obviously the only path to sovereignty. Ukraine, North Korea, and Iran have affirmed it.
Bombing a country in pursuit only reaffirms this logic, especially after agreements have already been made or negotiations are under way.
The only path forward, for Iran and everyone else, has been established and stable since ~1945: give people major concessions in exchange for the major concession that they will not try to achieve true sovereignty via nuclear weapons.
Every attempt to bomb or coerce someone off of the nuclear trajectory just increases the motivation (globally) to pursue it with more vigor and more secrecy.
We're on this tightrope until we fall off it, no other options.
by estearum
4/4/2026 at 7:04:58 AM
The war absolutely did not need to happen. Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon and was fully complying with the jcpoa. It's mostly the US and Israel that have acted I'm bad faith.Most countries in the region torture their citizens, even Israel except it's Palestinians, because it's a racist apartheid state.
Let's not pretend we care about funding terrorists when it's the US that has the biggest supporter of terrorism in the last 70 years.
by 7sigma
4/4/2026 at 12:06:11 AM
Iran doesn't torture its citizens. At least, no more, than, let's say, Arabia Saudi. You don't say it explicitly, but the implication is clear that the US is doing this because 'human rights'. A week ago was to save the poor Iranians, and now is to bring the country to the stone age. The fact is that US is 7000 miles from Iran and have not business being there.The one country 'destabilizing the region' is not Iran.
by RobertoG
4/4/2026 at 2:24:23 AM
> Iran doesn't torture its citizensWow, I can't believe someone would say this. In January, they basically killed tens of thousands of us with machine guns. After the war, the first thing they did was cut off the internet to prevent an internal uprising. They deployed many Basij checkpoints with machine guns just to warn Iranians. This is a sample scene, don't you consider it torture?
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/video/2026/01/12/ira...
by h8hawk
4/4/2026 at 10:48:33 AM
It's easy to dunk when you just cut off half the statement!by estearum
4/4/2026 at 5:02:55 PM
Since you said "us", are you there right now? How was the oil rain in Tehran, no big deal for the greater good?by nixon_why69
4/4/2026 at 12:26:58 AM
I don't care why the incompetent leaders of the US are doing what they're doing. A bunch of unelected murderers just got dead. I consider that a positive improvement in the world, and I wish it happened more often.The world is pretty small these days. Mass murderers are everyone's business. It's morally offensive to just say "well that's a long ways away, not my problem".
by stickfigure
4/4/2026 at 2:13:03 AM
But at the same time, this war may have allowed IRGC to dig in. They've replaced a few people but the system may be stronger. Never mind that it doesn't even seem to be the administration's communicated goal to destroy IRGC in the first place.On top of all that, they've threatened to reduce the entire country to the "stone age", and have started to target civilian industries.[0] If this campaign continues, how is this anything less than mass murder?
They're not doing this war for the reason you seem to want. They're not doing this to save Iranians.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-shifts-to-hitting-irans...
by crustaceansoup
4/4/2026 at 11:57:58 AM
Now do putin and bibi next, and maybe Xi will realize taking other people's land by murdering is unacceptable and won't invade Taiwan.by happosai
4/4/2026 at 1:19:45 AM
Second order consequences can be a real sonofabitch, and history has shown that to be doubly true in the Middle Eastby estearum
4/4/2026 at 4:42:56 AM
How many civilian deaths as the direct result of US/Israel action do you consider acceptable to achieve killing the unelected murderers? 150 school children? Wikipedia cites hundreds more civilian deaths, but I don't know what sources to believe. How many layers of the regime's onion do we have to peel before we know we got all the murderers? How many children are we going to radicalize into future unelected murderers by murdering their family members and plunging their region into worse chaos? Should we kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out? Hegseth has crusader tattoos. Is he just another unelected theocratic murderer of a different stripe? Are we the baddies?by zzrrt
4/4/2026 at 8:42:38 AM
HRANA says thousands civilians dead. At least ~250 children. They are a reliable Iranian opposition source.https://www.en-hrana.org/day-35-of-u-s-and-israeli-attacks-o...
by tovej
4/4/2026 at 12:13:37 AM
We had a deal and we tore it up. More than once, if you include the inciting incident of undermining a democratically-elected leader who was bringing the central player in the Middle East into the mainstream economic and political global order that America had set for everyone. "Not like that!"Frankly, it's hubris all the way down. Kalief Browder.
by frmersdog
4/4/2026 at 12:22:21 AM
A deal that allows the regime to murder thousands of their own citizens and export violence to the whole region really isn't worth it. Yeah not having overt conflict in that region makes our gas cheaper. But it doesn't make me sleep better.Maybe I agree with you that the US, in 1953, planted the seeds for this situation. If I could punish the people responsible I would, but they're all dead now. Also, doesn't our historic involvement give us some moral obligation to fix it?
by stickfigure
4/4/2026 at 4:15:09 AM
No, you wouldn't do anything. bush second's wars killed million, brought about isis, and caused millions of refugees. You doing nothing.by geaibleu
4/4/2026 at 3:22:15 AM
Trying hard to maintain the facade that blowing Iran is for the good if their people..by marcosdumay
4/4/2026 at 4:40:51 AM
In this context good faith means not saying you're here to negotiate only to stall for time while you're secretly planning to invade the other country in the background, which is exactly what the US did. So Iran has no reason to take US "negotiations" seriously ever again.by frankzinger
4/3/2026 at 7:29:31 PM
Not sure how the US comes back from this.Who will trust US treaties going forward?
by CharlieDigital
4/3/2026 at 8:25:43 PM
I don't think we do. I think this is our Teutoburg Forest moment [1].Part of the issue is there's no real opposition in the US to what's going on. The Democrats being the controlled opposition party aren't in opposition to the war (eg [2][3][4]). They just oppose the way it was initiated. In other words, they have a process objection not a policy objection.
I've seen lamenting over Harris losing the elction (as well as more than a few doing "stolen election") about how the world could be different. But US foreign policy is uniparty
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
[2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/8/kamala-harris-says-...
[3]: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/lea...
[4]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/hakeem-jeffries-wo...
by jmyeet
4/4/2026 at 3:46:09 PM
> Part of the issue is there's no real opposition in the US to what's going on. The Democrats being the controlled opposition party aren't in opposition to the warMost emphatically yes. We've seen occasional bursts of spirited dissent but that's about it. As far as sustained opposition, it still seems that they're hoping to just wait out the clock for things to go back to "normal".
> But US foreign policy is uniparty
No, I'd say even with this senseless "war" the "uniparty" model has still become invalid with Trump. While the US fear industry ("news media") has been beating the drums against Iran for quite some time, the US military/intelligence community has resisted attacking. If we had a President Harris, I would bet that we would not be attacking Iran, especially in this manner - not because of Harris herself, but rather because she wouldn't have gutted the domain experts who come up with reality-based plans, and who have presumably been saying "If we overtly attack Iran they close the Strait and actually end up stronger".
I like to refer to that system as bureaucratic authoritarianism - no meaningful checks on government power itself, but there are checks on how it's exercised. The critical difference is that Trumpism is autocratic authoritarianism (especially the second round after he broke so many laws the first time without consequence) - the experts and other group-project stakeholders (eg Inspectors General) were all fired (or at the very least sidelined), and replaced with glaringly incompetent yes-men who execute any simplistic "plan" regardless how bad it is.
by mindslight
4/4/2026 at 7:12:17 PM
Your “sources” are just mindless whataboutism that do not in any way provide evidence Harris/Democrats would have started this same idiotic war with Iran.Democrats in Congress are currently almost universally opposed to the War in Iran. As the minority party they are unable to stop it unilaterally. Budget obstructions are the single lever available to them and given other issues like ICE, healthcare cuts, federal layoffs, can’t be used for every issue, every time without diffusing that very limited power into irrelevance.
Talk about “controlled opposition” given the blatantly obvious differences between the last two administrations is a signal of either being uninformed or a deliberate demotivational strategy.
Here are recent quotes from Schumer/Jefferies/Harris that for some reason you selectively chose not to include:
"Trump’s actions in Iran will be considered one of the greatest policy blunders in the history of our country," - Chuck Schumer
“The American people are sick and tired of the chaos, high costs and extreme Republican agenda. Donald Trump must end his reckless war of choice in the Middle East. Now.” - Hakeem Jefferies
“In the last 48 hours Donald Trump has dragged America into a war that we don’t want” - Kamala Harris
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/chuck-schumer-hakeem-jeffries-more-024256513.html?guccounter=1
by toraway
4/3/2026 at 8:09:32 PM
It'll partly depend on what internal housecleaning—or perhaps fumigation—and reform happens in the US.While it is unlikely to occur, imagine the international effect if the US resoundingly impeached and removed of a lawless president, and Congress formalized a lot of international agreements into statute rather than delegating too much to the executive branch.
by Terr_
4/3/2026 at 8:27:59 PM
Nah, this problem is systemic, and much older than the current administration. Or has everyone forgotten the "anthrax" in a test tube? The invisible WMDs? The fake news about soldiers tossing babies out of incubators? Setting up a web of lies and attacking is a foundational value of the United States.by temp8830
4/4/2026 at 10:50:07 AM
[dead]by estearum
4/4/2026 at 4:59:33 AM
I think this was the nail in the coffin. Not only has the US exsanguinated their military capability at the behest of Israel, everyone with half a brain watched closely as they took AD out of the gulf states and moved them into Israel. Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are not morons, they will see the writing on the wall and they will move to make diplomatic peace with their neighbours (China) now that the US has keeled over with self-inflicted wounds.It doesn't really matter what happens internally in the US now, everyone realizes that every four years the world will roll the dice.
by nerfbatplz
4/4/2026 at 9:05:16 AM
That is not going to happen. Even if MAGA doesn't rig the midterms and the Democrats actually win something, they will just "reach across the aisle" and "work on healing our divided nation". Nobody will see any consequences for the suffering they caused.by pepperoni_pizza
4/4/2026 at 2:29:58 AM
What we've learned is that laws only matter if Congress chooses to enforce.by CharlieDigital
4/3/2026 at 9:29:36 PM
>Not sure how the US comes back from this.It shouldn't. The responsible course going forward is a constitutional convention and the dissolution of the United States.
by GolfPopper
4/4/2026 at 10:50:38 AM
A Constitutional Convention, by definition, would almost certainly not cause or require dissolution of the US. You could only effectively call a convention of people who explicitly do not want dissolution.by estearum
4/4/2026 at 3:07:25 PM
> Who will trust US treaties going forward?Who trusted them before?
by BigTTYGothGF
4/4/2026 at 12:10:14 PM
You forgot one huge players: popular revolutions. All muslims nations that are currently managed by western puppets dictors, every single one. The puppets know their population don't like what Israels and globally most western nations are doing in the middle east and thus tried hard to pretend they support the muslim world. But this war show clearly to their population who these puppets really serve. I bet few revolutions will shake the middle east soon, and those will be powerfull (I don't believe they will create mature democraties, as those things require centuries of progress but, they won't as easy to control). And those revolution won't be easely stolen like the previous one, also because Israel don't seem to realize it lost its support from western nations, it's just a matter a time it ends up on its own.by cnd78A
4/3/2026 at 7:20:34 PM
Yep, all sounds right to meby estearum
4/3/2026 at 7:11:58 PM
>> Doesn't break out anti-air, but Iran absolutely has a lot of teeth left.With the price of oil having skyrocketed, and the new revenue that will be coming from the Hormuz tolls, they will also be rebuilding their previous capacity in no time.
by enraged_camel
4/4/2026 at 12:27:01 PM
The entire Gulf War was only six weeks long.It's difficult to compare; but Iran today is not Iraq then. F-15s are now based on a design that's 30 years older. Shoulder launched SAMs have moved on.
I'm not sure what happened here, but in the Gulf War, there was a move to medium altitudes after a dodgy first night and I've seen some footage that, if accurate and if I'm not getting it wrong, suggests there are different tactics going on here.
by cs02rm0
4/3/2026 at 9:47:06 PM
1) The US has run 13,000 missions over Iran in the last month. Thats a lot of targets.2) The initial US degradation of Iraqi capabilities was much much greater in gulf war 1.
3) F15s are not stealth fighters.
4) This is 35 years later.
5) "strategic bombing" of air defenses is mostly accomplished with our cruise missiles. We'll take out any air defenses we find, but you don't fly non-stealth planes over SAM batteries intentionally.
We haven't even started a ground campaign. If one plane is downed per 13000 missions, I think we're doing ok.
by mathgradthrow
4/4/2026 at 4:18:10 AM
It’s very likely their initial shock now wore off, and they got resupplied by putin and xi. We might start seeing much more damage going forward. US hasn’t fought a proxy war of this kind in many decades.by sheeshkebab
4/4/2026 at 4:10:51 PM
Putin can barely fight his own war, and how are you proposing that China supply Iran? You can't rebuild capability in a day.Do you want to give odds to your proposition that this is going to turn around in the IRGC's favor?
by mathgradthrow
4/3/2026 at 8:47:31 PM
Iraq is pretty flat on the routes between the US-allied countries and the major strongholds (Basra, Baghdad). You can't easily conceal rocket launchers there.Tehran is protected by mountain ranges that can provide plenty of cover. And Russia is probably feeding it the real-time radar data from its military bases in Armenia.
by cyberax
4/4/2026 at 4:42:46 AM
I don't think it's that surprising. Look at Ukraine with Western military aid/sig-int.The US has decided to step into Russia's shoes in Iran for reasons and I would be shocked if Russia/China aren't also providing similar aid for Iran.
by omgwtfbyobbq
4/3/2026 at 6:45:50 PM
My concern is that other countries can aid Iran with weapons in a direct and indirect way. There is no guarantee to block the railroads from East and the shipments from North.by markus_zhang
4/3/2026 at 6:56:57 PM
That's not a concern it's a reality. Iran is not shut-off or blockaded to any meaningful degree. It has tons of unmolested border crossings and Caspian sea access, and maintains full control within it's own borders (minus the parts that have been blown up).by standardUser
4/3/2026 at 7:33:07 PM
Also ships are still transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from Iranian ports taking goods in from China, with who knows what on board. They are also exporting more oil now than they were before the war.I mean special military operation, not war. Only congress can declare war.
by simonh
4/3/2026 at 7:37:05 PM
Even the Philippines, a US ally, has struck a deal with Iran for safe passage. Meanwhile, Oman is working with Iran on a toll scheme. There's an emerging chance that no US-flagged vessel crosses the Straight of Hormuz again in our lifetimes (except maybe for a retreating 5th fleet).by standardUser
4/3/2026 at 8:39:48 PM
The Philippines may be a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan, but they need to deal with Iran to keep the lights on. The rationing situation is quite bad in a lot of east Asian countries.by pjc50
4/3/2026 at 9:42:23 PM
> a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from JapanAnd a US colony/territory for the 43 years before Japan invaded. They were ruled by a US puppet state in a supposed "transition to independence" at the time Japan invaded, however it's unclear how much actual independence they would have had in practice.
I mention this because:
1. The way you state it makes it sound like they were somehow independent before the war.
2. It explains why MacArthur was there with the US army to resist the Japanese invasion from the first day it happened (Dec 7, 1941)
3. Its history worth looking into to contextualize just how bad the US has always been at taking over places. Acting as if this is post WW2 (as the media does) is counter-productive to truly understanding the number of really botched invasions the US has done.
by sophacles
4/5/2026 at 8:49:54 AM
It’s done some pretty decent ones as well. Western Europe including West Germany, Japan, arguably South Korea although they went through a period of dictatorship, but all are staunch US allies. There have been failures too for sure. Over all of I was going to be invaded by somebody, with America at least there’s a chance it might be a least worst option.by simonh
4/3/2026 at 9:02:56 PM
I would be more concerned if more countries did not help Iran, since in this conflict it's the victim.by epolanski
4/4/2026 at 3:33:41 PM
Why are you concerned that the clear victim of foreign aggression get help?They don't need it though. Our top brass knew this war is stupid twenty years ago.
Without nukes we'll lose this war and badly.
by nmbrskeptix
4/4/2026 at 4:23:28 PM
> victim of foreign aggressionExcuse us of being unsympathetic to the greatest state sponser of terrorism in history.
The Muslim country all other Muslim countries love to hate.
The only real theocracy left in the world.
Wannabe North Korea.
The country that killed 30,000 progressive protestors in a few days.
by diordiderot
4/4/2026 at 5:17:57 PM
Nothing of what you said (all wrong, btw) is relevant to the fact we attacked first and getting our butts kicked."The country that killed 30,000 progressive protestors in a few days."
Ya, if you believe this you're poorly informed. Where does this number come from? Who sourced it? What is their relationship to Western powers? How are they able to count so many Iranians dying in dungeons so well? How about the logistics of killing 30 000 people?
BS American propaganda. Kuwaiti babies redux.
Iranian progressives have one thing that unites them: they remember that the CIA deposed the only democratically elected, progressive, president and installed a brutally repressive "Shah". [1]
"The only real theocracy left in the world."
That would have to include Israel, an apartheid state along religious lines where the Chief Rabbinate decides who can get married.
"the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in history."
Not according to the State Department; Iran and proxies don't crack the top 10. Sunnis (ISIS, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, etc) loath Shia and are not coordinated by Iran.
"The Muslim country all other Muslim countries love to hate."
Nope, only Sunni Gulf states hate Iran. Mostly because their rulers are colonial mandarins; the best example is Bahrain, a majority Shia population ruled by foreign Sunni elite installed by the UK 100 years ago. The native Bahrainis loath their rulers.
"Wannabe North Korea."
Say what you will about N. Korea, it isn't getting attacked though.
[1] Shah in quotes because, as a monarchist myself, the deposed, CIA installed, Pahvali was the son of a deposed peasant and the father of a traitor (something, to be fair, the other two Pahlavis weren't).
by nmbrskeptix
4/4/2026 at 2:06:25 PM
46 airplanes were shot down during the second Iraqi war, and there has been over 150 total aviation losses (mechanical failure).So far we have lost seven airplanes. There's no deep meaning behind one F-15e being shot down (if that's what happened): it's not a stealth aircraft and it's not heavily armored.
by shin_lao
4/4/2026 at 2:10:40 PM
I'm not up on news, do we know what shot it down?Everyone loves missiles, but could it have been guns? Was it flying low?
Remember when some helicopters were being shot down by RPG's and everyone was like 'whooo, no way, that can't be, they aren't accurate enough".
by FrustratedMonky
4/4/2026 at 2:15:20 PM
You are correct, we don't know much. Could also have been a failure.by shin_lao
4/3/2026 at 7:32:18 PM
You can't really take out "the whole" air defense system because there will always be folks out with MANPAD-type things, those will score hits on occasion. That's probably what we saw here. I doubt MANPADs were nearly as common in the early 90s as they are today.by timcobb
4/3/2026 at 10:08:34 PM
The videos we've seen match up with what we've seen on the ground. They are all running a custom software we haven't seen elsewhere and don't seem to be traditional MANPADS in any way.We know Iran is driving around bongo trucks with small SAM systems on the back that use passive IRST rather than radar. The missiles themselves have the capability to cruise in the air for some period of time searching for a target before kicking in the engine for a last, fast sprint to the target. Because they are electro-optical (and piloted by a human), even early-warning and flare deployments won't do very much against a skilled operator.
by hajile
4/4/2026 at 12:41:01 AM
Interesting, thank you! I haven't see this.> custom software
Are you referring to screen recordings they've released?
by timcobb
4/3/2026 at 7:57:33 PM
True but without radar they have a relatively difficult task of being out there setup and waiting for a fast moving jet to pass within range.Compare that to Ukraine defending it's skies with NATO (well mostly French IIRC) AWACS feeding early data which is what made MANPADS in Ukraine so effective against Russian attacks.
by rustyhancock
4/3/2026 at 8:39:21 PM
Yeah my guess was they were coming in along predictable routes at this point and that's what got them? I saw that the search and rescue mission was in an area close to water. I believe many Stinger hits in Ukraine can be attributed to predictability.And maybe they do have some kind of radars?
by timcobb
4/3/2026 at 11:18:05 PM
There have been no legitimate reports of NATO providing real time AWACs feeds to Ukraine.by greedo
4/3/2026 at 9:07:16 PM
I don't think manpads themselves are connected to the AWACS infrastructure.by RealityVoid
4/3/2026 at 10:21:38 PM
It's more that high altitude planes get picked up by the AWACS while low flight is at risk of being shot at by a MANPAD.by Saline9515
4/4/2026 at 3:37:09 PM
[dead]by nmbrskeptix
4/3/2026 at 8:07:56 PM
> An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign.Not to dispute that but what about the comparison makes it not a good sign? Iran has much more capable radar and missiles now than Iraq did 35 years ago, doesn't it?
by stinkbeetle
4/3/2026 at 8:50:57 PM
The success of the war depends on the approval ratings of the US president which will almost certainly take hits when US military takes hits so the US citizens seeing the US military taking hits at a higher rate than relatively recent wars in the area is a bad sign for "winning" whatever "winning" means here.by asadotzler
4/4/2026 at 4:55:32 AM
That doesn't address my question though.by stinkbeetle
4/3/2026 at 11:13:35 PM
It is an aging platform despite the E series upgrades. 1990 is nearly 3 decades ago and SAM has made progress in those 3 decadesThat plus likely a miscalculation...pushing into territory that is more contested than believed
by Havoc
4/4/2026 at 8:23:38 AM
They've been flying straight into sites that would normally be heavily defended with 4th gen airframes, it's not that surprising that Iran finally managed to get oneby ifwinterco
4/3/2026 at 8:31:24 PM
I also saw some news saying an F-35 was possibly hit--but I can't find any reasonable-seeming sources to confirm that. Maybe someone here knows more?by nielsbot
4/3/2026 at 10:41:45 PM
Iran's semi-official news agency (Tasnim) made the claim. Then a bit later they posted photos of the wreckage. OSINT community pieced together that it was actually wreckage of the F-15E that is the topic of this post.A few minutes ago Tasnim posted photos of a separate wreckage that seems to be of an F-16 that was also downed today.
These events should not be confused with the F-35 that CNN reported was hit a few days ago.
by culi
4/3/2026 at 8:53:08 PM
an F-35 was hit but made it back to base.by dnautics
4/4/2026 at 12:58:54 AM
CENTCOM claimed the F-35 made it made it back to base, but right after the hit happened, they sent out a Chinook to run search patterns in the area. Additionally, the pilot was treated for shrapnel wounds. As he's at the front of the plane, it wasn't some "near miss" like that really cool F-18 evasion (where it timed the break exactly and the shrapnel all blew past it).CENTCOM has turned out to be about as honest as the Russian or Ukrainian MoD. They flat-out lied about this shootdown all while sending out search teams. There is some circumstantial evidence that two Blackhawks were damaged trying to run search and rescue operations. There are also stories coming out that they are using bureaucracy to hide massive numbers of casualties.
by hajile
4/3/2026 at 6:00:02 PM
Iran has systems they can pull out of a cave and deploy in a couple hours or less. We will never get all their anti air out.by asdff
4/3/2026 at 6:35:39 PM
With the altitudes they've been flying at, shoulder mounted MANPADs are a viable option.by verdverm
4/3/2026 at 6:46:17 PM
US also has A-10s doing gun runs in Iraq too. It makes sense the US is more willing to take risks 1-month into the war given how effective they've been and for Iran to also adapt their manpad teams after they probably failed a ton of times previously.You saw the same pattern where Ukraine and Russia both constantly adapted on the battlefield and the war changed rapidly over the first year.
by dmix
4/4/2026 at 5:18:14 AM
It has two fewer of them as of this afternoonby anigbrowl
4/3/2026 at 6:54:05 PM
Waiting to see the Shaheds with AA missiles like Russia was using (until their starlink was finally shut off late last year)by verdverm
4/3/2026 at 10:51:55 PM
MANPADS have a range of around 4 miles. Most soldiers aren't carrying around armed MANPADS. They have to fetch the MANPADS, arm it, aim, and fire all before the jet dumps its load and flares before bailing out. Because of this, MANPADS are a much greater threat to helicopters or CAS like the Warthog than they are to jets dumping ordinance. This has been proven pretty decisively in Ukraine.Radar is line-of-sight. A non-stealth fighter flying just above the treetops can only be detected if it gets within a few miles of a SAM radar. This is true to the point that the radar lock range for something like an F-35 is about the same as a non-stealth jet flying super-low (though the hit probability is lower for the F-35 if it's flying at high altitude as it has more room to detect the launch and maneuver).
The problem is that CENTCOM is actively lying to us. After this shootdown, they denied it happened while launching search and rescue operations only admitting to the facts after Iran released the evidence. The same thing happened with the F-35. CENTCOM said it landed safely, but were simultaneously sending an Chinook to run search patterns in the area. This could also mean that the alleged Kuwaiti pilot that supposedly took out 3 of our F-15 was also a lie.
Finally, with so many non-stealth planes getting shot down and stealth allegedly working great, why are we using so many stand-off munitions still and why aren't we using F-35 more?
All the shootdowns have been shown with a custom software showing an IR view and the successful missiles seem to be using electro-optical tracking. The IRST is passive and doesn't trigger sensors plus isn't stopped by our radar stealth. At the same time, a human operator means stuff like flares don't work anywhere near as well. Even more scary, these human-guided runs are premium training material for China to train AI-guided missiles.
My conclusion is that stealth is no longer the game-changer it was once though to be (if it ever was).
by hajile
4/4/2026 at 12:43:26 AM
After the bombardment by Israel last year Russia sent a ton of Manpads, so they are certainly available. We've seen a very close call by an fa18 from a manpads. It's likely that Iran has passive sensor networks that they can use to spot patterns and provide forewarning to manpads teams.I think you're right about stealth not being quite the game changer that it was. The Houthis were able to give f35s some close calls over Yemen last year. They're of course armed and trained by Iran, so we would expect to see some hits.
by thinkcontext
4/3/2026 at 11:44:04 PM
Drones and munitions depth seems to be the name of the game, logistics wins warsby verdverm
4/3/2026 at 6:49:18 PM
If you go over 3000m then manpads are not useful I think.by markus_zhang
4/3/2026 at 6:52:37 PM
Sure, but there are videos of US war planes strafing, like that near hit clip.by verdverm
4/3/2026 at 8:54:10 PM
Yeah I have seen the clip with Iran polices firing at the UH-60s, which is very concerning. Sure SIGINT makes sure there is no serious AD but there is no way to guarantee that there is no MANPADs somewhere close.by markus_zhang
4/3/2026 at 10:01:12 PM
Which is why any "adventures" that involve boots on the ground will come with a significant rise in US casualties. Few Americans have likely seen the videos from the Russian Invasion, of what modern war with $1000 quadcopters dropping grenades on terrified soldiers looks like.by verdverm
4/3/2026 at 7:35:10 PM
That was 35 years ago. That only shows that the plane is pretty old. I assume SAMs evolved since then.by fifilura
4/4/2026 at 10:29:45 AM
It's especially bad considering the US had already taken out 100 % of Iran's military capabilities, according to the official statements.What a clown show...
by NorwegianDude
4/3/2026 at 11:20:54 PM
"Let me say, we’ve won"- DJT, 11 March
“I think we’ve won"
- DJT, 20 March
“We’ve won this war. The war has been won"
- DJT, 24 March
“We are winning so big"
- DJT, 25 March
by helterskelter
4/3/2026 at 10:53:11 PM
What if air defense technology improved a bit during the last 36 years?by nurumaik
4/3/2026 at 11:23:35 PM
Not sure, but I'd wager it was shot down using their 358 missile (aka SA-67). The missile can be fired from a rail on a truck and will patrol an airspace for a time until finding a target using an infrared seeker. Since it uses an infrared seeker (combined with it being fairly small), makes it incredibly difficult be detected by radar, while stealth tech is a fairly useless counter measure.by Rury
4/4/2026 at 5:54:07 AM
That's because they primarily sent stealth aircraft and Tomahawks over Baghdad. They also used decoys to draw out SAM missiles, and then F-4s would strike the SAM sites directly, which over time meant that the surviving SAM launchers did not fire when targets made themselves known. However, they did do some non-stealth missions. The most well know was Package Q, which involved dozens of aircraft, and two F-16s were shot down.The thing about the First Gulf War was that it was four months of buildup, 45 days achieving air superiority, and about 100 hours of a ground war. It was well planned, and involved a collation of of forces that shared a common purpose and common goal. The allied coalition made sure to get their intelligence correct and worked hard to disassemble the Iraqi defenses before sending the armed forces into real danger.
The current conflict involved Donald Trump thinking that Iran, a nation of 93 million people with a relatively healthy economy (at least at the national and regime level, which can sell a lot of petroleum), was going to put up the same kind of fight that Iraq did, then a nation of 18 million with old tech, or like Venezuela did, a nation of perhaps 30 million today, that has faced extended total economic collapse, hyper inflation, and a mass exodus of something like a quarter of the population over the past 6-10 years. There was virtually no planning, with initial action going off of intelligence of where Khomeini would be and just jumping at that.
We've got an administration run by a narcissist that has surrounded himself with sycophants and bottom feeders. He's pissed off every ally we have, acted prematurely as the aggressor with an assassination strike, and now doesn't have the resources to protect the strategic assets in the region let alone convince Iran that the conflict needs to end in our favor. Just a ridiculous number of unforced errors. A complete embarrassment.
by da_chicken
4/4/2026 at 11:39:22 AM
I mean, 1990 was 36 years ago and accompanied with a massive land invasion. At what point do these comparisons become meaningless?by Cacti
4/4/2026 at 5:07:35 AM
"Only the best people..."by ugh123
4/3/2026 at 11:24:37 PM
[dead]by george916a
4/3/2026 at 7:46:08 PM
[dead]by mugivarra69
4/4/2026 at 12:20:38 PM
[flagged]by cringleyrobert
4/4/2026 at 1:39:15 AM
Ridiculous to suggest any equivalence between 1990 Iraq and 2026 Iran, or even the F-15 in 1990 and the one in 2026.Military technology moves faster than most people think.
by roncesvalles
4/3/2026 at 7:31:14 PM
Seriously. Makes me glad we attacked when we did. They could have bolstered their anti air defenses even more.by buzzerbetrayed
4/3/2026 at 9:20:31 PM
Are these bots or do americans really live in this whole other world?by hdgvhicv
4/3/2026 at 9:35:12 PM
Or maybe you didn't understand a clear sarcasm?by machomaster
4/3/2026 at 10:34:04 PM
You're on HN in 2026 here, sarcasm must be clearly identified.by whynotmaybe
4/4/2026 at 5:38:29 AM
[flagged]by spiderice
