HeavenlyPossumJun 24
War is politics by other means and sometimes those politics are “keep Benjamin Netanyahu out of prison for a few more weeks” or “keep President Grandpa distracted with a new video game he can watch on Fox News so Steven Miller can kidnap more children,” which is how we end up with a deadly farce like “The Twelve Days War.”
Show threadHeavenlyPossumJun 24

The next logical steps for the Iranian regime are to frantically rebuild their air defenses, rethink how they handle opsec, and frantically work towards a nuclear weapon.

Because unless the Israeli and US states are willing to militarily occupy Iran—they can’t and they’re not—then air power alone can’t prevent Iran from doing these things.

You would think that, like, every war ever since the invention of the plane would have convinced the US and Israel of this, but for some reason people really love the idea of quick, easy, and risk-free military victories through bombing.

Show threadDuncan Bayne

@HeavenlyPossum "The next logical steps for the Iranian regime are to frantically rebuild their air defenses, rethink how they handle opsec, and frantically work towards a nuclear weapon."

Orrrrr ... you know, they could start complying with IAEA inspections, stop enriching uranium far beyond levels necessary for civilian purposes, and stop building facilities to do that in *totally* not-suspicious underground Dr. Evil lairs.

Yes Trump acted illegally in bombing Iran. Yes, he was probably improperly influenced by Netenyahu, who is trying desperately to avoid jail time.

But none of that makes the Iranian Government the good guys, either.

Jun 25 at 2:09amWeb
Show threadHeavenlyPossumJun 25

@duncan_bayne

Nothing I said implies the Iranian regime is good.

The Iranian regime *was* complying with JCPOA, which Trump tore up in a fit of pique and then tried, poorly, to replace with a shittier version of JCPOA he could plaster his face all over.

The strategic lesson the US and Israel have taught the Iranian regime is that even if it signs formal non-nuclearization agreements with the US, it will still face attacks from the US and Israel against which it cannot conventionally defend. So, better to have a nuclear deterrent and face attack than to have no nuclear deterrent and face attack.

Show threadGary HoustonJun 25

@HeavenlyPossum @duncan_bayne a nuclear deterrent is useless, Iran could never "win" a nuclear war against Israel and the USA.

I think the best thing for them to do, even in a Machiavellian sense, would be to declare their country a nuclear-free zone, no nuclear weapons, no nuclear power, and no uranium mining.

It would remove the excuses for random bombings and economic sanctions and they could get back to the important businesses of repressing their own population etc.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumJun 25

@duncan_bayne @ghouston

If nuclear deterrents were useless, no one would have nuclear arsenals. Yet they exist.

A deterrent doesn’t have to produce *victory* so much as present sufficient costs to an aggressor to make any aggressive action too costly to be worth undertaking. See for example Singapore’s “poisoned shrimp” approach to national defense.

Since Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons, and was not close to a nuclear weapon, and had signed the JCPOA and agreed not to have nuclear weapons, it’s hard to imagine the Iranian regime concluding that a strict “no nuclear” policy would be sufficient to guarantee regime survival—it already did that and was attacked anyway in a manner it cannot deter or defend against conventionally.

Show threadGary HoustonJun 25
@HeavenlyPossum @duncan_bayne I think it's useless for Iran, since reaching any plausible level of deterrent, while being bombed all the while, doesn't seem likely. It would just waste resources that they could be allocating to conventional weapons.
Show threadGary HoustonJun 25

@HeavenlyPossum @duncan_bayne even if say, they acquired 5 nuclear warheads from North Korea, fitted them to missiles, and announced that Israel had better start conceding to its demands from now on, would it be likely to succeed?

The deterrence would be limited by the chances of getting past Israel's missile defences, the chances of the warhead actually working, and the chances that Iran would be willing to do that and take the reprisals.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumJun 25

@ghouston @duncan_bayne

Deterrence is not practically limited in this fashion.

Show threadHeavenlyPossumJun 25

@duncan_bayne @ghouston

Unless the US and Israel propose to physically occupy Iran, merely bombing it periodically is insufficient to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon. Air power alone does not win wars and can barely degrade an adversary’s means of waging war without a commensurate ground campaign. Recall that Nazi German war production peaked in 1944 after years of strategic bombing.

Show threadGary HoustonJun 25
@HeavenlyPossum @duncan_bayne I didn't know that about the Nazis. It doesn't look like Iran is taking the non-nuclear route, in any case, so stay tuned for more exciting developments.