Iran-Israeli Conflict Thread

Wutang said:
Has Iran inflicted 10x as much damage on the US as the damage it received in Iraq AND Vietnam combined with their advanced drones and such?
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They have inflicted orders of magnitude more damage, in terms of damage to remote US bases, in just one week of combat than in the entire VN and Iraq wars.

The main discrepancy in the body count with VN is because the US has not launched a mass ground offensive in Iran. We could however see large US losses if such a decision was taken.

The VCs were also able to shoot down a lot of USAFUSN jets with their Soviet SAMs and even their air force, but they were never capable of threatening deep US bases with heavy bombing.

This is a good rundown of the air superiority aspect in this war:



Which of the articulated options best explains the absence on the battlefield, so far, of Iran's supposedly potent medium- and long-range air defense systems?

========Option A:========
Overwhelmingly superior American SEAD/DEAD operations (Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses) more or less annihilated Iran's IADS (Integrated Air Defense System) in the first 24 hours of the war.Iran's supposedly potent and competently operated IADS was a myth: batteries were few in number, with low build quality. They were operated by inferior technicians, and were rather easily defeated.The US holds air supremacy in Iranian skies and is even able to "carpet bomb" Iranian cities with large formations of B-52s.

========Option B:========
Iran has capable systems in very limited quantities. Therefore the Iranians made the calculated decision to expend little of their limited capacity attempting to intercept stand-off strikes mostly composed of subsonic GPS-guided cruise missiles.Rather, they calculated that American magazine depth of long-range stand-off munitions is extremely shallow. And they are convinced they can win a battle of attrition between the American stockpile of stand-off missiles and Iranian offensive strike capability.

The Iranians also calculated that the Americans, when their stand-off capability is exhausted, will eventually feel compelled to "come in much closer" in order to use their much more abundant stocks of JDAM glide bombs. (Aggregate stockpile of 500, 1000, and 2000 lb. JDAMs is about 500,000.)To deliver these bombs, manned aircraft must fly within just a few miles of the intended target — always from less than 50 miles away, and usually from less than 15 miles.That is when Iran's potent but limited air defenses will suddenly appear.

You see, the Iranians really have only one chance in this war to shoot down some marquee American bombers — B-52s, B-1Bs, and B-2s. An ambush of the kind I am describing can only be pulled off once.Because the Americans are so loss-averse that they will absolutely not risk an even worse disaster on the heels of getting a couple of those big bombers shot down.
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The Vietnamese or Iraqis didn't have their own homemade loitering drones capable of shooting down $30M Reaper drones by the dozen. This weapon might end up being the difference maker in terms of the US/Israel being able to track and hunt down Iranian missile launchers.


 
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Cooper said:
They have inflicted orders of magnitude more damage, in terms of damage to remote US bases.

The main discrepancy in the body count with VN is because the US has not launched a mass ground offensive in Iran. We could however see large US losses if such a decision was taken.
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In other words, more buildings and equipment destroyed but very little deaths = 10x more damage. That's a calculation I'm not going to go along with
Cooper said:
The VCs were also able to shoot down a lot of USAFUSN jets with their Soviet SAMs and even their air force, but they were never capable of threatening deep US bases with heavy bombing.

This is a good rundown of the air superiority aspect in this war:

Click to expand...

That's more of the "I could beat you up if I wanted to!" reasoning being used to argue for Iran's operational superiority which I don't buy into. There's always these constant references to these secret elite weapons that Iran was biding it's time to use but then never actually appear.

I do think Iran could eventually "win" (win as in the regime still survives) simply by inflicting economic damage by controlling oil flow but I haven't see anything during this war so far that their going to be able to turn things around operationally/military. This is basically the how they are going to "win" the operational fight:

 
Wutang said:
In other words, more buildings and equipment destroyed but very little deaths = 10x more damage. That's a calculation I'm not going to go along with

.....
I do think Iran could eventually "win" (win as in the regime still survives) simply by inflicting economic damage by controlling oil flow but I haven't see anything during this war so far that their going to be able to turn things around operationally/military. This is basically the how they are going to "win" the operational fight:

Click to expand...

Reposting this as it's applicable to your point.



By the time Iran starts having significant impact the US will target dual purpose infrastructure and facilities inside Iran (which we have not done significantly) that will ruin the country.

All oil refineries, all electrical infrastructure, all water plants.

That's how this will escalate and the Iranian people will suffer.
 
Cooper said:
They have inflicted orders of magnitude more damage, in terms of damage to remote US bases, in just one week of combat than in the entire VN and Iraq wars.

The main discrepancy in the body count with VN is because the US has not launched a mass ground offensive in Iran. We could however see large US losses if such a decision was taken.
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"We have not, but we could," so it's theoretical and not relevant to the claim of 10x and "orders of magnitude more damage."

The VCs were also able to shoot down a lot of USAFUSN jets with their Soviet SAMs and even their air force, but they were never capable of threatening deep US bases with heavy bombing.
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One Iraqi SCUD killed over 200 US soldiers in a direct hit on a barracks in Gulf War 1. Where is the 10x or "orders or magnitude greater" comparison to this in the missile hits Iran has on US bases? US says only 6 kills so far.

There were over 50K deaths of US soldiers in Vietnam, the unpopularity of that war ended LBJ and was a major catalyst for massive social unrest and leftist terrorism domestically, and the monetary cost to the USA ended our WW2 boom, the most prosperous period for any population in the history of the world, as well as decreasing our procreation, and ushered in the end of the gold standard and the end of financial solvency. Where is the 10x or "orders or magnitude greater" comparison to this?

The Vietnam War also brought hundreds of thousands of totally incompatible "refugees" from Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Where is the 10x or "orders of magnitude" comparison to this?
 
Wutang said:
In other words, more buildings and equipment destroyed but very little deaths = 10x more damage. That's a calculation I'm not going to go along with
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This is day 13 in this war, Vietnam lasted nearly 3,000 days. That is the glaring difference in your comparison here in terms of body count.


Wutang said:
I do think Iran could eventually "win" (win as in the regime still survives) simply by inflicting economic damage by controlling oil flow but I haven't see anything during this war so far that their going to be able to turn things around operationally/military. This is basically the how they are going to "win" the operational fight:
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Agreed.
 
Ember said:
Iran would do this in return. The Gulf states are just as vulnerable, even more so in some cases, especially with dependence on desalination. The crisis would be made many times worse.
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Iran has already done this in Bahrain.

From my understanding, Iran is at least in 6 years of draught and in 2025 had a water crisis where it was under 50 percent of it's dam reserves.

I think multiple partners targeting one country with US air superiority backing would dispatch with these first.

No one's done this yet because the goal isn't total war.... But eventually it will be if mission accomplishment isn't completed quickly.
 
Wutang said:
It would be a strawman argument if I was making a distorted version of your argument. Good thing we have a post linked to bearing your name where you said exactly that before you had to walk it back.
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No one in their reasonable mind thinks what has happened in two weeks compares to decades long war. No one should have to clarify this. If you have a personal problem with me, take it to the right thread. Otherwise, enough of this.
 
Cooper said:
This is day 13 in this war, Vietnam lasted nearly 3,000 days. That is the glaring difference in your comparison here in terms of body count.



Agreed.
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A win for Iran, is a weaker USA, the regime remaining in place, and sanctions loosened on them. This is the likely outcome of this battle, as it becomes too expensive for the USA to continue, and Iran realizes this is good enough for now.

A bigger win would be to keep the US bases out of the Middle East and a two-state solution. I don't think they hold out for these two pie in the sky ideas. But they might, and if they do, they have the potential to do this. And if they do, then that is the fall of the US empire, our strategic advantages will start to fall, one by one, after such a large defeat.
 
Get2choppaaa said:
Reposting this as it's applicable to your point.



By the time Iran starts having significant impact the US will target dual purpose infrastructure and facilities inside Iran (which we have not done significantly) that will ruin the country.

All oil refineries, all electrical infrastructure, all water plants.

That's how this will escalate and the Iranian people will suffer.
Click to expand...


Iran would destroy GCC oil and gas infrastructure and crush the world and US economies. The US would be better equipped than say Europe or Japan but the oil shock would still be quite severe and would severely damage the economies of US G7 allies, would be a disaster and a huge win for Russia and China. In the US you would have severe consequences like a significant proportion of farmers getting wiped out due much higher fuel and fertilizer costs.

You might be off in terms of air superiority over Iran, see option B in my post above.
 
Ember said:
But I did not suggest that was the goal of the strikes landing nearby, just that they were happening. I was talking about the 100 million anti-government civilians that you mention. It is clear that they are not taking action against the Iranian leadership that are casually mingling with the public. This suggests a high confidence that the vast majority of the public are now supportive of the Islamic Republic's war for survival against the West.

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The anti government Iranians might be in other regions? Or just silent? What are you guys thoughts on bringing woman (possibly children in the crowd) to a protest while the country is a war and bombs dropping nearby?

White western woman will do those anti ICE protests but it seems like bring woman and children to a war zone is an Islamic thing? Lots of woman voices heard in this video
 
Cooper said:
This is day 13 in this war, Vietnam lasted nearly 3,000 days. That is the glaring difference in your comparison here in terms of body count.
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It was originally yours and IIMT's comparison of things that had already happened, not future projections. If you had assumed or implied that the comparison of damage was parallel to a timeline, that would explain the discrepancy, but even such a timeline is not comparable in the current situation because the baseline assumption is that the USA did not intend to enter into a multi-year war with Iran.
 
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