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Comment by roadbuster | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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

What are A-10s doing there? There isn't yet any ground operation, right?

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.

> ignoring the spicier broader debate of if the whole Iran campaign was the right call or not

How 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?

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.

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.

I lost trust in humanity when I saw how many people on HN fell for the CERN Mario Kart April fools article.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Several have (Deluzio, Slotkin, Kelly, Crow, Goodlander, and Houlahan), Nov 2025:

<https://deluzio.house.gov/media/press-releases/joint-stateme...>

Because a lot of the democrats are basically controlled opposition and need to please their MIC and Israeli donors

> I am shocked

You shouldn't be, especially considering that Schumer and Durbin both voted for the Hague Invasion Act.

He is simply doing israels bidding.

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.

Exactly. Support means saying "I accept the reduction in my social security and medicare and other govt services in exchange for this war."

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.

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...

>>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.

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.

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.

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.

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 here

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.

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.

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.

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.

> seems to fall some along common political lines though

While true, I think it's more correct to say that the determining factor is which television news media people most readily consume.

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.

What exactly are the problem and the solution?

Permanently disarming Iran, and creating conditions favorable to the fall of the Islamist terrorist regime that has been bullying the Mideast since 1979.

Any guesses on how long that will take, what it will cost, and the odds if it happening at all?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

> fanatical death cult

Why do you believe this? Their recent actions don't seem to back it up.

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)

> 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?

>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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

> it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of war

How 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?

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.

1: https://i.imgur.com/cDjIG2S.png

I agree that the quantity of tattoos on the SecWar is appalling.

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.

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.

So you're saying you want a solution, and you want it to be a final one?

  > How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?

Almost every single Iranian in the diaspora. And every person who heard Iran chant Death To America while building a nuclear program and a ballistic missile program.

Way to go proving Iran right. Who wouldn't want to eliminate a nation that bombs and kills your civilians?

So I see that you agree that Israel must destroy a significant portion of Gaza - at least those parts of Gaza educated by UNRWA.

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.

Manpads (man portable air defense) works just fine.

I'm not sure that I understand what you are implying.

That A-10’s can’t suppress manpads

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.

This high profile failure means the end of the brrrt meme.

I'm sure it doesn't.

"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.

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

Exactly, someone might be at risk of reading the thread with a 1930s RPG

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...

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.

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.

radar is not required for A2A missiles with infrared seekers, like the R60

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.

To my understanding blowing up drone boats designed to destroy shipping.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The US did it all the time in Vietnam.

…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.

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...

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.

Or a MiG-17 that could outrate your F-4/F-105 at every subsonic flight regime.

You're conflating the Viet Cong with North Vietnam.

And it did sometimes get way out of control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Bat_21_Bravo

Thanks for sharing, that's a crazy read.

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.

That's an example of things getting out of control.

Possibly the best example

Not sure if it was actually used, but a fun idea for pilot recovery..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_ROE_Rotorcycle

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...

>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

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.

Isn't that basically the plotline of the Blackhawk Down movie?

And, more importantly, the real-life events on which it's based?

Exactly what happens to me in Kerbel Space Program.

Rescue team for the rescue team.

Did you tactically forgot to put parachute on the landing pod? Or run out of fuel mid mission?

Slaps car, thsi baby can fit soo many rescue teams in it

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.

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...

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.

Your link and your quote does not say the A-10 was shot down though.

It's on NYT site now.

Their point is that the NYT says it crashed, the cause isn't clear.

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?

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.

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 down

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.

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.

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.

we have likely moved on from this to satellite as a stop gap.

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.

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...

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-radars-airstrikes/

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.

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.

Government could sanction Israel like they did to Iran.

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.

Fact check on this brand new account?

Are you asking someone to fact check publicly available information for you ? Even NYT reported this

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.

New account that only has politics-adjacent posts; worth being skeptical.

If you spend a moment to verify the info that is the fact check.

No one can do the thinking for you.

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.

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.

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?”

That’s what I was doing, because I don’t think assertions like “CENTCOM is blind” should just sit out there without evidence.

Then go get some! It adds nothing but spam when you to take time from your busy day to tell us what to do

Usually it’s on the person posting assertions to justify them, and looks like they’ve edited in a NYT link since then.

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.

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

I lit up at sorry (so rare), then, had to chuckle at "but..."

Haha the “but” wasn’t meant as an excuse for the terseness.

Am I wrong about the comment history? Might be biased.

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"

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.

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...

It seems like demoralization propaganda.

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.

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>

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.

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.

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?

"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.

Of course they’re paraphrases. And since when does 37 warrant constantly mentioning how old you are?

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.

Relax, I was mostly asking whether someone else who already knew about this stuff could comment on its veracity. There’s obviously no obligation.

Right (c.f. the thing I am replying to)

I read the source he listed and it doesn't say any of that

Ah thanks, I think that was added after I commented.

> Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questions

Some 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

> 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.

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.

> 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?

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

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.

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.

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...

One of those appears to be written by a sensible adult and the other one by a boastful teenager.

>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

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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.

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)

Sources: https://en.defence-ua.com/news/russia_likely_modified_irania...

https://www.csis.org/analysis/unpacking-irans-drone-campaign...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/iran-cluster-b...

>Israel/CENTCOM did not expect

that 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

Well, October 7 clearly was unexpected too, so these guys unexpect a lot

There is considerable evidence that it was not unexpected.

I believe that was the point being made.

It might be more of a selective listening issue

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_3

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

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.

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)

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.

> israel using ai to fine-tune alerts

ohh, 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 ??

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Iron Dome being unable to intercept ballistic missiles is factually incorrect as of at least March 2026.

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.

Bro just throw out your privileges or pick some solid ground instead of dragging us all into the mud.

> The Iron Dome has nothing to do with shooting down ballistic missiles

This 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.

Remind me in two weeks?

>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

not 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

And running out of Patriots

Looks like Iran is doing what i suggested Ukraine should have done to Russia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529638

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Running out of patriots as well.

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.

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?

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.

Our country is currently enforcing a blockade that is murdering children in Cuba. It is all so sickening.

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.

If the US is allowed to annex Cuba the PRC has a right to take back Taiwan.

Taiwan people have not been risking their lives trying to escape to join PRC.

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.

Iran was known to have such capabilities, it's baffling the US wasn't more prepared in its gulf bases.

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 ..

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.

This is a completely unrelated problem, the US MIC is heavily incentivized to invent new problems.

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...

These traitors will eventually be all prosecuted. They are all traitors with putin connections, every one of them.

nobody will prosecute them, unless there is regime change in the USA

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.

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.

Like how assiduously Obama went after Bush Jr. administration.

...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.

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.

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.

> 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.

Gp was referring to AN/TPY2 which is the THAAD radar.

Iron dome has nothing to do with that systems.

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.

> 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.

These very expensive toys are the reasons of the to be $1.5 trillion DoW budget. It’s insane and not sustainable.

$1.5 trillion is the budget the Pentagon is requesting for next year. It's highly unlikely Congress will give them that much money.

AFAIK, the one in Qatar was paid by Qatar and operated by US.

Cmon. At least it is all justified with good reasons!

Is this story even true ? There has been fake AI photo about destructed THAAD radars : https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.A2B239E

If you scroll to the bottom of that page, they discuss possible evidence of damage to the radar from satellite imagery.

I thought all the US ones existed in US states/territories? The ones in the middle east could be potentially destroyed true though.

> not available on Amazon for next day deliver either

Available on aliexpress - but has longer shipping times and of course those tariffs, that you don't have to pay, that you have to pay.

The problems with inventory of THAAD and similar missile systems is actually quite serious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504505

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.

> 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

yes, this part I find to be most interesting.. how many losses before the picture changes for the public?

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.

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.

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).

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 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.

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.

> Iran has been buying and building all of this military infrastructure at the expense of living conditions for its people

Iran 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...

Almost half of the economy is controlled by the IRGC: https://fortune.com/2026/03/02/iran-islamic-revolutionary-gu...

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.

Those countries, like Iran, are also quite poor because the army siphons off so much of their resources.

And it seems that they did in fact need that army.

If by "bend the knee" you mean that they don't regularly chant "death to America", sure.

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A lot more than 1/2 the world, a lot more...

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.

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 communicated

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)

I made no such assumptions, no

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.

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.

OK, so what? Obviously we shouldn't continue trading with enemies regardless of the economic impact.

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.

- Economic growth slows down under sanction.

- removing their leverage over you is also good.

Even if regime will not change, it will be weaker

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...

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?

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.

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.

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)

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.

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...

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.

“ 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-...

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.

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.

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?

I think sanctions against government officials, rather than the whole population, work better.

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.

> They should probably be closer to 0 or more in line with European countries

Expand 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?

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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 jets

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.

> 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?

> 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.

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.

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.ZS

Russia today probably.

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.

$1B per year for Hezbollah is like $1 a month per Iranian.I doubt it changes the Iranians living conditions much...

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...

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...

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

> 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.

> 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.

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".

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.

>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 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.

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.

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.

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" incident

Correct. Kuwaiti Hornet pilot who likely thought he was shooting down weapons or aircraft from Iran.

I don't know if any have completed runs yet, but supposedly we're using B-52s...

>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.

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.

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.

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.

That E-3 sentry was stationary on the ground.

I'm not sure that you read the comment that you replied to.

I'm talking about things being shot down.

Hitting ground targets is even less of a technical flex.

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.

> 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...

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.

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 ).

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.

> 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.

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/

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.

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

This one is also an F-15E it seems.

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Surely SAMs have improved since 1991? Have the F-15s improved significantly? (I know nothing about military stuff.)

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).

Turns out Iran is good at hiding stuff in caves and driving it out on a truck platform. Who would have known?

Next you're going to tell me that operating out of your own mountainous terrain has an advantage.

Would be news to the US military it seems. Mountains, jungles, who would have thought?

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.

Possibly true, but at least they don't have the ability to control some critical waterway or something to hold everyone at ransom.

The Serbs successfully used a similar tactic to down an F-117A, so yeah.

> F-117 Nighthawk

Recall 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...

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.

A lot of the planes are doing attack runs at altitudes where they are susceptible to man pads I imagine.

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.

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 happened

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.

Operation Desert Storm was only 43 days long. Epic Fury is most of the way there.

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...

The latest reporting is that only 50% of Iran's missile capacity has been destroyed

https://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.

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.

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.

Yep, all sounds right to me

Not sure how the US comes back from this.

Who will trust US treaties going forward?

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.

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.

What we've learned is that laws only matter if Congress chooses to enforce.

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.

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.

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...

> 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

Most 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.

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

[2] https://www.wpr.org/news/harris-iran-trump-dragged-america-w...

>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.

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.

> Who will trust US treaties going forward?

Who trusted them before?

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.

Oh, also China who benefits from US deterrence being relocated from APAC and buried into Iranian dirt

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.

... & sells drone parts to any and all participants. You need drones? You know who to call!

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.

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.

>"The post-1945 rules-based order" - it was always one rule for me another one for thee

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.

In other words, all the ingredients for WW3. Lets hope we can somehow avoid that.

> I suspect fascism is currently winning

I 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".

If Trump wasn't embarrassing for them before I doubt they're embarrassed now.

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.

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.

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.

I agree with most of this, but: The collapse of NATO is not yet in evidence.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> Iran no longer trusts the US as a good faith actor and negotiator

Iran ("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.

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.

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".

Second order consequences can be a real sonofabitch, and history has shown that to be doubly true in the Middle East

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...

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?

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...

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.

> Iran doesn't torture its citizens

Wow, 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...

It's easy to dunk when you just cut off half the statement!

Since you said "us", are you there right now? How was the oil rain in Tehran, no big deal for the greater good?

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.

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?

No, you wouldn't do anything. bush second's wars killed million, brought about isis, and caused millions of refugees. You doing nothing.

> 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.

Trying hard to maintain the facade that blowing Iran is for the good if their people..

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.

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.

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.

>> 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.

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.

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.

"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...

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.

To that add what Joe Kent and Tulsi Gabbard said about Iranian nuclear bombs -- no indications that they have one or are building one.

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...

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.

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.

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 '.

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.

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.

You're asking why wouldn't they pursue nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them? Why should they?

Turned on a TV lately?

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.

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).

> 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.

Yeah, valid point, I was out of line there. Apologies.

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...

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.

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."

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.

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_program

I 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.

People who are pro the Iranian regime claim that there was a religious order against building nuclear weapons

No one here is "pro the Iranian regime." Do better.

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.

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

> a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan

And 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.

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.

I would be more concerned if more countries did not help Iran, since in this conflict it's the victim.

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.

> victim of foreign aggression

Excuse 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.

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).

> getting our butts kicked.

We live in completely different realities.

>Where does this number come from?

The Iranian Ministry of Health lol

> logistics of killing 30,000 people?

Guns

> apartheid state

Arab citizens of Israel have full rights. Unless you deny Palestinian statehood.

> Chief Rabbinate decides who can get married.

Only if Jewish.

> Don't crack the top ten

"Currently there are four countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Iran, and Syria."

https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism

Syria and cuba should no longer count as they've collapsed

Nope all Sunni dislike them

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.

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".

You are correct, we don't know much. Could also have been a failure.

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.

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.

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?

I don't think manpads themselves are connected to the AWACS infrastructure.

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.

There have been no legitimate reports of NATO providing real time AWACs feeds to Ukraine.

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.

Interesting, thank you! I haven't see this.

> custom software

Are you referring to screen recordings they've released?

> 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?

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.

That doesn't address my question though.

It is an aging platform despite the E series upgrades. 1990 is nearly 3 decades ago and SAM has made progress in those 3 decades

That plus likely a miscalculation...pushing into territory that is more contested than believed

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 one

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?

an F-35 was hit but made it back to base.

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.

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.

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.

With the altitudes they've been flying at, shoulder mounted MANPADs are a viable option.

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.

Waiting to see the Shaheds with AA missiles like Russia was using (until their starlink was finally shut off late last year)

It has two fewer of them as of this afternoon

If you go over 3000m then manpads are not useful I think.

Sure, but there are videos of US war planes strafing, like that near hit clip.

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.

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.

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).

Drones and munitions depth seems to be the name of the game, logistics wins wars

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.

That was 35 years ago. That only shows that the plane is pretty old. I assume SAMs evolved since then.

"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

What if air defense technology improved a bit during the last 36 years?

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.

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...

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.

I mean, 1990 was 36 years ago and accompanied with a massive land invasion. At what point do these comparisons become meaningless?

"Only the best people..."

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.

Seriously. Makes me glad we attacked when we did. They could have bolstered their anti air defenses even more.

Are these bots or do americans really live in this whole other world?

Or maybe you didn't understand a clear sarcasm?

You're on HN in 2026 here, sarcasm must be clearly identified.

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