9 ms·

When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Am

When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.

mcphage 3mo ago
> Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?
- jandrese 3mo ago
  They'll be getting the Hormuz toll money.
- xp84 3mo ago
  It’s an odd declaration and maybe based on Rus/Ukraine. But Ukraine is doing better now than in the first week of the “Special Military Operation” due to having a lot of rich allies who have (in fits and starts) given them a lot of money and gear, and due to a Russia which has stretched its military and economy to the breaking point. By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving. Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)
  - pjc50 3mo ago
    I believe the assessment is based on the desire of the US to offer concessions (such as sanctions withdrawal) in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Which will be painful in the medium term, but less so in the long run as oil is diverted around it.
  - general1465 3mo ago
    > Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. I disagree. The huge problem here is that USAF is showing how they are doing things over and over again. For China it is a treasure trove of data and ideal place for testing of their gear to detect and later shoot down US stealth aircraft which USA is constantly threating to use against China.
    - xp84 3mo ago
      I actually agree with you on this completely, it's definitely the worst downside of the war. Same reason we don't want S400s being operated by Turkiye, we'd like China and Russia to have as little data as possible on our warplanes.
  - stevenwoo 3mo ago
    It's sarcasm, a bit, because the last published deal revealed the USA was going to pay Iran 300 billion to end the shooting war that Israel and the USA started. https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5866577/iran-trump-deal-300-billion-obama https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5866577/iran-trump-deal...
  - Someone 3mo ago
    > Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Can they? https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitions-iran-war-ceasefire https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio... says “In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory” According to that article, they expended ballpark a third of their inventory of expensive weapons systems such as Patriots or Tomahawk missiles, each with a production lead time of at least 3 years. If so, they would run out of those expensive weapons in three more months.
    - xp84 3mo ago
      Perhaps. If we need more, we can make more though, and at a faster rate than Iran can. I really doubt Iran has the capability to significantly threaten the factories where we make those munitions. The same can't be said the other way around. I also suspect the US military is actively pursuing more cost-effective ways to blow things up, as Ukraine (and indeed Iran) has been doing. We don't have to use Patriots and Tomahawks all the time, unless we're shooting down something fast and dangerous with it. And again, Iran has a limited ability to pay for that type of thing, so I'm not that worried.
      - light_hue_1 3mo ago
        > Perhaps. If we need more, we can make more though, and at a faster rate than Iran can. We can't. We built a system that creates a very small number of very expensive munitions and that can't be scaled up. We've been trying to scale up munitions production for years now with the Ukraine war. And it just isn't possible. Not only does it take years to make any missile now. Our total capacity to make missiles is incredibly low. Like, we can make 600 Patriot missiles per year. We've expended twice that so far with Iran alone. We can make 100 THADD per year. We've expended 300 so far. The US will run out of missiles way before Iran does. Iran could easily produce 2000 missiles per year and if it pushed it could make closer to 8000. Iran will recover its missile stocks from the current war in a year. It will take the US until 2031 to do the same.
  - O3marchnative 3mo ago
    Have you taken a look at Iran's targeting capabilities and the assets they were able to destroy? More importantly, have you considered who facilitated those targeting capabilities? https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/war-above-war-how-chinese-satellites-support-iran-mena-defense-can-kasapoglu https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/war-above-w...
    - xp84 3mo ago
      Thank you - didn't see that yet, not surprising but very disappointing. Still, unless China is gonna start giving kinetic support to Iran, Iran's ability to be "doing great" in the war is still limited by its crippled, single-commodity-based economy and the US and allies' ability to blow a lot of their shit up.
malfist 3mo ago
> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state. What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.
- mcphage 3mo ago
  > What's the goal of the US/Iran war? What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.
  - anjel 3mo ago
    As with Ukraine, it's a David and Goliath kind of conflict and in both conflicts, the temptation for Goliath to escalate by leveraging scale is predictable, tempting and frought.
    - malcolmgreaves 3mo ago
      Iran is not David in this case. They’ve shown that their drone warfare is just a little bit under what the US military can provide. Remember that they destroyed a quarter of a trillion dollars radar installation. And the US has spent billions on munitions. The US can’t actually keep going in this war.
      - Terr_ 3mo ago
        I once compared the historic GDP values, and IIRC if Iraq-vs-US in 2003 is 1x baseline, then Iran-vs-US today is 7x. Plus Iran (today) has 2x the population and 3x times the land area than Iraq (today).
      - WillPostForFood 3mo ago
        Without diminishing the huge cost Iran has been able to inflict on US radar, quarter of a trillion is off by more than two orders of magnitude, maybe three. There are 1-2 confirmed radar system confirmed hit, a couple more suspected hit or damaged. But that is going to be hundreds of millions in damage, nowhere close to 250 billion,
kcatskcolbdi 3mo ago
It's hard to imagine them in a better place; they seem to have us by the balls already.
stronglikedan 3mo ago
lol, no. no comparison between those wars
anjel 3mo ago
History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.
- cliglot 3mo ago
  > History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021) You’d be pretty hard pressed to refer the victor of any of these wars as having “superior industrial capacity” compared to their opponents.
- tclancy 3mo ago
  Is this some kind of subtle gag?
- mythrwy 3mo ago
  The Mongol army was much less industrialized than the people they conquered though so I'd say it's factor but not decisive.
asdff 3mo ago
People assumed Russia would press with their full might and that has just yet to ever happen. Why don't they carpet bomb all of the ukraine? Why not fire off a littany of missiles? Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest? Everyone assumed the war would be over in two weeks, because it really could have ended in two weeks if russia went full throttle early on. But there must be some factors at play that prevent total war from seeming like an attractive option. Maybe fear of equal reprisal. And in the end you get this slog of a war, with an unchanging front line and various headlines every few weeks of some one off piece of infrastructure or industry being destroyed, and little coming after that. I'm not sure what these factors are exactly, but clearly they exist to quiet the beast and have this slow drip war be the optimal outcome compared to alternatives. Maybe the threat of NATO taking control of the war is what keeps it at its current slow pace.
- KittenInABox 3mo ago
  My understanding is that Russia's "full throttle" isn't actually as strong as they had posed...
  - asdff 3mo ago
    It has to be stronger than Israel just from scale, and that seems plenty strong enough to level a modern city in a few days or weeks.
    - greedo 3mo ago
      Scale doesn't really matter with an air force. The IAF is much, much stronger and more competent than the Russian Air Force. Plus, the Israelis are bombing defenseless cities (in Lebanon), and getting a lot of help from the US (in Iran).
      - lostlogin 3mo ago
        > the Israelis are bombing defenseless cities (in Lebanon), and getting a lot of help from the US (in Iran). No need for the brackets. The Israelis also bombed defenceless Gaza and had a lot of help from the US with that.
paxys 3mo ago
Big difference between the two - America has elections.
- croes 3mo ago
  Iran and Russia have elections too
jmyeet 3mo ago
So if the Iran war is still going on in 5 years the global economy has collapsed. I'm not sure people realize just how quickly this situation is going to be dire. 2-3 months more of this and certain countries are going to have rolling blackouts. We will be having shortages of avgas and huge price spikes in avgas, gas and diesel. Diesel in particular is going to have a massive impact on inflation. Oil futures don't currently reflect this because a lot of players have exited the market because they're sick of being fleeced by Donald Trump who has bet big and then announced yet another fake ceasefire, at least a dozen times. We actually have a bunch of short positions, such that we risk a Gamestop like short squeeze. Ukraine is harder to figure out because it's really difficult to get good information. We have people on one side saying Russia is on the verge of collapse (and has been for 3 years) while it's also clear that Russia still has a manpower advantage and Ukraine's army is facing desertion and a lack of soldiers to draft. It's also unclear what the real impact of strikes on oil infrastructure deep in Russia are really changing the battle lines and overall position. If anything it might just exacerbate the energy crisis brought on by the Iran war.
jojobas 3mo ago
Russian goals are vastly different from US'. US has no intent to incorporate Iran or fight out for each and every mountain village. US goals might not be easily achievable either but for completely different reasons. Iran is also unlikely to get 10% of the logistical support Ukraine has.
- nerdyadventurer 3mo ago
  US may not take Iran under them, but they will grip the Iran's economy by controlling their oil and gas resources. It is what US doing in Irque, all oil sales going through bank of New York, they not only take cuts from sales but also make threats like we would not send dollars if you did not do this and that. US involvement in the Middle East has ruined those countries. It is not a just middle east where ever they involve they ruin others ex: Trump's Congo deal which locked in their mineral for decade without any benefit to poor Congos
  - jojobas 3mo ago
    Ruined countries: UAE Oman Bahrein Iraq (post 2003) Not ruined countries: Iraq (pre-2003) Yemen lol

mcphage 3mo ago

> Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?

jandrese 3mo ago
They'll be getting the Hormuz toll money.
xp84 3mo ago
It’s an odd declaration and maybe based on Rus/Ukraine. But Ukraine is doing better now than in the first week of the “Special Military Operation” due to having a lot of rich allies who have (in fits and starts) given them a lot of money and gear, and due to a Russia which has stretched its military and economy to the breaking point. By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving. Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)
- pjc50 3mo ago
  I believe the assessment is based on the desire of the US to offer concessions (such as sanctions withdrawal) in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Which will be painful in the medium term, but less so in the long run as oil is diverted around it.
- general1465 3mo ago
  > Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. I disagree. The huge problem here is that USAF is showing how they are doing things over and over again. For China it is a treasure trove of data and ideal place for testing of their gear to detect and later shoot down US stealth aircraft which USA is constantly threating to use against China.
  - xp84 3mo ago
    I actually agree with you on this completely, it's definitely the worst downside of the war. Same reason we don't want S400s being operated by Turkiye, we'd like China and Russia to have as little data as possible on our warplanes.
- stevenwoo 3mo ago
  It's sarcasm, a bit, because the last published deal revealed the USA was going to pay Iran 300 billion to end the shooting war that Israel and the USA started. https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5866577/iran-trump-deal-300-billion-obama https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5866577/iran-trump-deal...
- Someone 3mo ago
  > Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Can they? https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitions-iran-war-ceasefire https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio... says “In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory” According to that article, they expended ballpark a third of their inventory of expensive weapons systems such as Patriots or Tomahawk missiles, each with a production lead time of at least 3 years. If so, they would run out of those expensive weapons in three more months.
  - xp84 3mo ago
    Perhaps. If we need more, we can make more though, and at a faster rate than Iran can. I really doubt Iran has the capability to significantly threaten the factories where we make those munitions. The same can't be said the other way around. I also suspect the US military is actively pursuing more cost-effective ways to blow things up, as Ukraine (and indeed Iran) has been doing. We don't have to use Patriots and Tomahawks all the time, unless we're shooting down something fast and dangerous with it. And again, Iran has a limited ability to pay for that type of thing, so I'm not that worried.
    - light_hue_1 3mo ago
      > Perhaps. If we need more, we can make more though, and at a faster rate than Iran can. We can't. We built a system that creates a very small number of very expensive munitions and that can't be scaled up. We've been trying to scale up munitions production for years now with the Ukraine war. And it just isn't possible. Not only does it take years to make any missile now. Our total capacity to make missiles is incredibly low. Like, we can make 600 Patriot missiles per year. We've expended twice that so far with Iran alone. We can make 100 THADD per year. We've expended 300 so far. The US will run out of missiles way before Iran does. Iran could easily produce 2000 missiles per year and if it pushed it could make closer to 8000. Iran will recover its missile stocks from the current war in a year. It will take the US until 2031 to do the same.
- O3marchnative 3mo ago
  Have you taken a look at Iran's targeting capabilities and the assets they were able to destroy? More importantly, have you considered who facilitated those targeting capabilities? https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/war-above-war-how-chinese-satellites-support-iran-mena-defense-can-kasapoglu https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/war-above-w...
  - xp84 3mo ago
    Thank you - didn't see that yet, not surprising but very disappointing. Still, unless China is gonna start giving kinetic support to Iran, Iran's ability to be "doing great" in the war is still limited by its crippled, single-commodity-based economy and the US and allies' ability to blow a lot of their shit up.

malfist 3mo ago

> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state. What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.

mcphage 3mo ago
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war? What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.
- anjel 3mo ago
  As with Ukraine, it's a David and Goliath kind of conflict and in both conflicts, the temptation for Goliath to escalate by leveraging scale is predictable, tempting and frought.
  - malcolmgreaves 3mo ago
    Iran is not David in this case. They’ve shown that their drone warfare is just a little bit under what the US military can provide. Remember that they destroyed a quarter of a trillion dollars radar installation. And the US has spent billions on munitions. The US can’t actually keep going in this war.
    - Terr_ 3mo ago
      I once compared the historic GDP values, and IIRC if Iraq-vs-US in 2003 is 1x baseline, then Iran-vs-US today is 7x. Plus Iran (today) has 2x the population and 3x times the land area than Iraq (today).
    - WillPostForFood 3mo ago
      Without diminishing the huge cost Iran has been able to inflict on US radar, quarter of a trillion is off by more than two orders of magnitude, maybe three. There are 1-2 confirmed radar system confirmed hit, a couple more suspected hit or damaged. But that is going to be hundreds of millions in damage, nowhere close to 250 billion,

kcatskcolbdi 3mo ago

It's hard to imagine them in a better place; they seem to have us by the balls already.

stronglikedan 3mo ago

lol, no. no comparison between those wars

anjel 3mo ago

History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.

cliglot 3mo ago
> History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021) You’d be pretty hard pressed to refer the victor of any of these wars as having “superior industrial capacity” compared to their opponents.
tclancy 3mo ago
Is this some kind of subtle gag?
mythrwy 3mo ago
The Mongol army was much less industrialized than the people they conquered though so I'd say it's factor but not decisive.

asdff 3mo ago

People assumed Russia would press with their full might and that has just yet to ever happen. Why don't they carpet bomb all of the ukraine? Why not fire off a littany of missiles? Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest? Everyone assumed the war would be over in two weeks, because it really could have ended in two weeks if russia went full throttle early on. But there must be some factors at play that prevent total war from seeming like an attractive option. Maybe fear of equal reprisal. And in the end you get this slog of a war, with an unchanging front line and various headlines every few weeks of some one off piece of infrastructure or industry being destroyed, and little coming after that. I'm not sure what these factors are exactly, but clearly they exist to quiet the beast and have this slow drip war be the optimal outcome compared to alternatives. Maybe the threat of NATO taking control of the war is what keeps it at its current slow pace.

KittenInABox 3mo ago
My understanding is that Russia's "full throttle" isn't actually as strong as they had posed...
- asdff 3mo ago
  It has to be stronger than Israel just from scale, and that seems plenty strong enough to level a modern city in a few days or weeks.
  - greedo 3mo ago
    Scale doesn't really matter with an air force. The IAF is much, much stronger and more competent than the Russian Air Force. Plus, the Israelis are bombing defenseless cities (in Lebanon), and getting a lot of help from the US (in Iran).
    - lostlogin 3mo ago
      > the Israelis are bombing defenseless cities (in Lebanon), and getting a lot of help from the US (in Iran). No need for the brackets. The Israelis also bombed defenceless Gaza and had a lot of help from the US with that.

paxys 3mo ago

Big difference between the two - America has elections.

croes 3mo ago
Iran and Russia have elections too

jmyeet 3mo ago

So if the Iran war is still going on in 5 years the global economy has collapsed. I'm not sure people realize just how quickly this situation is going to be dire. 2-3 months more of this and certain countries are going to have rolling blackouts. We will be having shortages of avgas and huge price spikes in avgas, gas and diesel. Diesel in particular is going to have a massive impact on inflation. Oil futures don't currently reflect this because a lot of players have exited the market because they're sick of being fleeced by Donald Trump who has bet big and then announced yet another fake ceasefire, at least a dozen times. We actually have a bunch of short positions, such that we risk a Gamestop like short squeeze. Ukraine is harder to figure out because it's really difficult to get good information. We have people on one side saying Russia is on the verge of collapse (and has been for 3 years) while it's also clear that Russia still has a manpower advantage and Ukraine's army is facing desertion and a lack of soldiers to draft. It's also unclear what the real impact of strikes on oil infrastructure deep in Russia are really changing the battle lines and overall position. If anything it might just exacerbate the energy crisis brought on by the Iran war.

jojobas 3mo ago

Russian goals are vastly different from US'. US has no intent to incorporate Iran or fight out for each and every mountain village. US goals might not be easily achievable either but for completely different reasons. Iran is also unlikely to get 10% of the logistical support Ukraine has.

nerdyadventurer 3mo ago
US may not take Iran under them, but they will grip the Iran's economy by controlling their oil and gas resources. It is what US doing in Irque, all oil sales going through bank of New York, they not only take cuts from sales but also make threats like we would not send dollars if you did not do this and that. US involvement in the Middle East has ruined those countries. It is not a just middle east where ever they involve they ruin others ex: Trump's Congo deal which locked in their mineral for decade without any benefit to poor Congos
- jojobas 3mo ago
  Ruined countries: UAE Oman Bahrein Iraq (post 2003) Not ruined countries: Iraq (pre-2003) Yemen lol