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I've heard analysis that a significant proportion of middle east water and food supply - in the form of desalination plants, and cargo through the Strait of Hor

• OgsyedIE 7mo ago
  Iran is unlikely to target food and water without being further backed into a corner, since the escalation would mean reciprocal strikes (possibly independently by the KSA air force) on the Kharg and Bandar Abbas export terminals, which have so far avoided being targeted.
  • oraphalous 7mo ago
    What corner is there left to be backed into when the the US is trying to assassinate you?
    • OutOfHere 7mo ago
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      • CamperBob2 7mo ago
        They can't trust Trump. No one can.
        • OutOfHere 7mo ago
          Trump wants the things I listed -- he has expressed them time and again for anyone remotely willing to listen. If one is trying to negotiate while maintaining a theocracy, then Trump won't listen, but ending the theocracy is one of the listed points, so it's logically consistent.
          • guerrilla 7mo ago
            You're not making sense. There's no reason to strike a deal with the US as the US can't be trusted to uphold their deals as they have demonstrated directly to Iran previously and to their own "allies".
            • CamperBob2 7mo ago
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              • OutOfHere 7mo ago
                You should be banned for your personal attack which is in violation of site rules.
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          • CamperBob2 7mo ago
            LOL theocracy: https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-ir...
        • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
          > They can't trust Trump I mean, the Germans and Japanese and Iraqis probably couldn’t have trusted the U.S. either. They still surrendered because it was better than fighting a futile war. Same here. Iran’s security chief (and, I’m assuming, de facto leader) messaging he’s ready to concede on those points certainly doesn’t put him in a worse position than he is now.
          • CamperBob2 7mo ago
            See the link I posted in the other reply. The people we've elected to lead the US are snakes. Even some of the more fanatical Iranians look sane, intelligent, rational, and trustworthy in comparison.
            • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
              Hyperbole aside, that's irrelevant. Iran doesn't have the option of negotiating with someone else. Their options are to attempt diplomacy or face incremental anihilation as a modern state.
              • CamperBob2 7mo ago
                I don't consider it hyperbole. I grew up with those sorts of people. They are capable of beliefs you wouldn't believe. As for Iran, about all they could have done, in retrospect, was to actually develop nuclear weapons rather than just hemming and hawing and bluffing and stalling for 40+ years. It's amazing that the country that invented chess could blunder that badly.
                • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
                  > about all they could have done, in retrospect, was to actually develop nuclear weapons There were so many mis-steps. Iran could have rejected autarky. Constrained the IRGC’s corruption. Not funded proxies that pissed off every one of their neighbors (except for, maybe, Turkmenistan). Not supported Hamas when they decided to deputize a lobotomy ward. Not drip fed Hezbollah’s rockets into Israeli air defenses. Not fired at Israel in a symbolic move in 2024. Not half assed their retaliation in 2025. Not assumed, with full faith, Trump was bluffing and thus not (a) seriously negotiate in Geneva nor (b) bother scattering their navy and air force in anticipation of strikes. I’d actually argue an indigenous nuke was a strategic blunder for Iran. It cost them their economy and moral standing. Maybe pursuing Russia’s nuclear umbrella would have been a smarter move.
      • conception 7mo ago
        Oppressive theocracy say what? https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-ir...
        • OutOfHere 7mo ago
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          • orwin 7mo ago
            Historically, the opposite is true.
            • OutOfHere 7mo ago
              It's true in recent times.
              • orwin 7mo ago
                Since WW2 maybe, with a very, very small sample. But historically, if you have a minority religion/heresy, you better live under a Muslim caliphate than a Christian monarch not that it's great by any mean, but the moors are a great example, they got what, a generation after the reconquista? Two? Hussites and especially cathares are probably the first religious genocide, with public rape of one of their leader and her daughters, and the destruction of all Cathare littérature and religious text.
      • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        Idk why you’re getting downvoted, the U.S. is looking for a quick win if it can have it. One of the destructive streaks in the Iranian regime (and among its proxies) is their glorification of martyrdom over pragmatism. It’s cost them historically and it’s costing them now.
        • bluegatty 7mo ago
          "the U.S. is looking for a quick win if it can have it." ?? What is a 'quick win' ?? Serious question. - Ayatollah dead, next Ayatollah? - 10 years of civil war? - Installation of US-backed Shah, with no real power base, which will lead to ongoing insurrection, which is what led to ... Islamic Revolution ... because we already tried that? - Faux acquiescence at the negotiating table ... while they dig their HQs further under ground? What else? A quick win is possible, but one of the most narrow scenarios. It looks at the moment like everyone is losing, some worse than others.
          • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
            > What is a 'quick win' ? An Iranian Delcy Rodriguez. Someone who waives a white flag, accepts Trump's terms and then gets left alone for the most part. Even if it's a bluff to buy time to rebuild, I'm not seeing the strategic rationale for refusing to negotiate. (I do see Iran's leaders being internally constrained to keep fighting. We saw a similar dynamic in Japan during WWII.)
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            • CamperBob2 7mo ago
              I'm not seeing the strategic rationale for refusing to negotiate. My understanding is that they were actively negotiating, or at least they thought they were. In the middle of the dialogue the lights went out. Essentially, Trump was not authorized by Netanyahu to win that negotiation. The outcome was foreordained.
      • bluegatty 7mo ago
        "Until these reasonable conditions are met, the war will go on." :) :) You seem to have a much more imperative and concise view than either Trump or Hegseth, are you secretly the one in charge of everything? I loathe Iran regime, but not much of that is going to happen. The first response would be: "We stop threatening Israel when they stop taking Palestinian lands and killing them" "The US moves all troops out of the Middle East" "Stops trying to overthrow our government" "Stops sanctioning us" "Stops and interfering in our domestic affairs" "Returns $100B dollars stolen / frozen since 1979" And that would literally put that truly bad regime on almost the moral high ground. The impossible imperative that you've written I think helps us understand the 'Chock A Block' log-jam of the situation, and why this is so thorny. The most plausible outcome is nothing. The second most plausible outcome is descent into massive factional civil war. Maybe somewhere down the line, there is a 'Shah Installed by the US' and then I'm afraid to tell you that we 'Already Did That' and look how it turned out. There are no decisive answers and no decisive options on the table.
    • OgsyedIE 7mo ago
      Oh, certainly the surviving leadership are backed into corners, but they are individual people. The nation-state is not backed into a corner. For one thing, the west has refrained from using CBRN weapons on urban centres.
      • vintermann 7mo ago
        Israel will not tolerate an economically developed or at all democratic Iran. They want Iran to be where Gaza is and Libanon is heading. It's not just the leaders who have nothing to lose.
        • Jensson 7mo ago
          Israel doesn't have the power to choose here though, Israel is far from strong enough to invade Iran so it doesn't matter what they think.
        • applicative 7mo ago
          You would think the hebrew population is just exhausted and hardened and driven a little crazy by several generations of 'deathtoisrael' 'deathtoisrael' drilled into the brains of millions of schoolchildren every year - each /year/'s school intake of impressionable brains is larger than the total world Jewish population. In the end the hebrew-speakers' response will not be simply rational as they are as much mentally affected as the iran citizenry, which is orders of magnitude larger. It's typical the world community has put up with the naked genocidal intent of the Iran government - which is by now in a sense woven into its constitution and mystical-apocalyptic self-conception - as if it were a musical curious style -- as they build militias saying the same on every border, financing the bizarre suicide campaigns of early 2000s etc. to stop a 2 state solution and keep the party going. With 'deathtoamerica deathtoamerica' noblesse oblige requires us to pretend it is merely comical. But the 'uppity, arrogant' jewish state is microscopic by comparison with titanic Persian Empire. The disproportion (80x) is far more extreme than even USSR or USA v Afghanistan or USA v Vietnam (30x.
          • g8oz 7mo ago
    • tim-tday 7mo ago
      Nothing like impending death to make a man act like he has nothing to lose.
• JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > is within reach of Iran's capabilities Analysts have been playing fast and loose with this phrase. Within reach assuming no air defenses and able to be struck are separate. I believe Iran could hit this infrastructure if it were undefended. It’s not practically able to due to air defenses. (Iran already targeted the small Gulf states’ airports. Given how much food they import by air, that’s an attempted blockade strike.)
  • bluegatty 7mo ago
    Those nations do not have the ability to defend civilian infrastructure - it's the weak point we see in Ukraine. Nobody does. These are large regions, AA coverage is narrow, using F16s to shoot down Shaheds wears down fast. If Iran has stockpiles, and the wherewithal for mission planning, they can steer them around AA and hit the 'back office' at will. Those states also have no practice coordinating the in-between methods - they have only very expensive ways to stop Shaheds, and only jet fighters outside of AA coverage. Now - hitting a lot of things like civic buildings etc. doesn't have much effect, but it depends how the civilians react and cope. Some very specific things like energy desalinization are acute problems. These are authoritarian states that can keep information dispersal minimal and the civilians will just have to 'eat it' - but only for so long. The biggest damage will be to Straight of Hormuz - of those drones can be used to hit Oil Tankers ... if there are enough muntions, it will be bad All of that said, China and India would be super duper upset about that, and Iran may depend on China for parts. They would have 'no friends' at that point. So it's all plausible. But it requires Iran to have capabilities. The entire Middle East is lit up right now - and that puts US forces on a 'clock' - this is going to be an interesting form of attrition on all sides, not a good situation.
    • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > If Iran has stockpiles And launchers. > of those drones can be used to hit Oil Tankers ... if there are enough muntions, it will be bad Not really. During the Iran-Iraq war hundreds of tankers were sunk, including in the Strait [1]. Iran's supposed 'nuclear' option was mining the Strait. But for whatever reason, they weren't able to or chose not to do that. > this is going to be an interesting form of attrition on all sides I'm sceptical of this read. With missiles, the launchers are the weak link. With drones, the factories. In the meantime, the U.S. gets to refine the anti-drone kit it's been working on (based on lessons from Ukraine and the attacks on the Houthis). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanker_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanker_war