US Army Makes Playing Cards with Iran's weapons on them

Iran has seen America operate close, having watched its military fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, watched American weapons in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, in the Syrian civil war, in the Saudi and their coalition's campaign against the Houthis and elsewhere. We know what America has to bring to bear in a fight with Iran. (The one thing we may not know enough about is America's newest generation aircraft, specifically the F-22 Raptor and the F-35). The other things, from the propaganda and television show sold to the American public as "shock and awe", to the real fights and battles in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, we have seen. From it all, the following conclusions are very clear to us, even if they aren't at all clear to the American public:

1- Air power is mostly effective as a weapon of terror and vandalism. It can do great damage to a country's civilian infrastructure, but has otherwise dubious effectiveness in taking out protected assets and little effect on the kind of military assets Iran relies on. The actual evidence from the 1991 war against Iraq, the 2003 war against Iraq, the war against Afghanistan, the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, and the genocidal campaign by the Saudis against the Houthis, proves as much.

2- The US nuclear arsenal, even if just in the background, limits the ability to act preemptively against it. And limits any massive retaliation as well. Basically, any adversary that has to fight the US, will be reminded that the fight needs to be conducted in a way that is not too harmful to the US. Otherwise, there will be serious consequences. And the threat of such consequences is basically backed up by America's nuclear arsenal.

3- The US has considerable capabilities to set the playing field in a way that favors its forces. And this is very hard to control, even for dictatorial and closed societies like Iraq much less far more open/democratic ones like Iran. Those capabilities include recruitment by its intelligence agencies of significant assets in the military, government and other sectors of an adversary to basically thwart its ability to wage an effective war. (Most of Saddam's army, already diminished by 12+ years of disarmament and sanctions following the first Iraq war, was further weakened by the fact that many of Saddam's generals were basically in the CIA payroll and left their positions at critical junctures in that war). It also includes the whole panoply of powers the US brings to bear to make sure its adversaries are weakened considerably before any war starts, include by isolating them, imposing sanctions against them, and limiting their room to maneuver.

4- Be wary of 3rd parties who try to act as intermediaries. Wittingly or unwittingly, their main interest is to limit the costs to themselves and that usually means pushing you in a direction that weakens your ability to withstand US actions. The most glaring example was Russia's intervention to persuade Saddam to evacuate Kuwait before the start of the ground offensive in 1991. The Russians told Saddam that he could evacuate from Kuwait, declare himself victory because he had withstood the US (plus several dozen other states) onslaught without much in terms of real losses to his military, and strengthen his standing in the Arab world by doing so instead of fighting and risk losing the war. Saddam was persuaded; before the ground offensive began, he announced he was withdrawing from Kuwait and had his army line up to be taken out by the US in the so-called "highway of death". Once his army was largely decapitated and taken out, with other forces trapped, Saddam had no choice but to accept a cease-fire on totally ignominious terms. Terms that ensured that his military capabilities were finished. He had to destroy his arsenal of Scud missiles, his WMD stockpiles, while he had already flown much of his air force into Iran for "safekeeping" (we kept them safe alright.

While Americans like to talk endlessly about their "air power", it is the other capabilities I listed that are actually more worrisome.

 

Both of the vessels mentioned in this report are on the playing deck I had posted earlier for the Iranian navy vessels. The mission of these vessels finds added significance because of vague threats to commercial shipping from Iran by certain powers, in particular the United States.
https://www.rt.com/news/467311-iran-escort-commercial-vessels/
Iran sends 2 warships to Gulf of Aden to escort commercial vessels

 

At first they will destroy AA systems with missiles, then airfields, than army supply lines, command centers, naval bases, rocket sites what will paralyze army activities. Hutiets and Hesbolah do not have field army, naval bases and airfields, Iran have and will take damage to this bases.

 

In your dreams. The reality behind the propaganda does not show what you claim. Hezbollah may not have had airbases, and AA systems (which means Israel had complete air superiority, something you won't), but it have command centers and rocket sites. The damage to those were minimal. And even when are talking about air bases, how come Saddam was able to organize a mass flight of his air force to Iran several days into Desert Storm, from airfields and bases which were supposedly taken out and airplanes and pilots that had been destroyed? And how about Saddam's Scuds? Or his generals, command and control etc? What did you really think was taken out?

In any case, whatever the US can throw in Iran's direction, Iran can throw back at the US. We don't need to deliver all of our bombs by aircraft; missiles will carry a similar tonnage and do even more damage. In fact, from which base the US would be hitting Iran with such attacks? Those bases will probably be busy fending off attacks by Iran! More long range missions would have to go over a country almost the size of western Europe, avoid Iran's very sophisticated air defenses, and then somehow not repeat all the mistakes and limitations which were shown during all of the air wars which have been conducted.

p.s.
Some studies that should interest you if you are interested to learn more than just the hype. Both are from sympathetic sources and both operate under constraints that don't let you get the full picture. But at least, you can begin to understand why air power isn't all that it is made out to be if you read these studies carefully. I intentionally include one from Desert Storm which is regarded as a huge success for air power, never mind Saddam's Scuds were still being fired without interruption despite being launched from a narrow area one 1/20th the size of Iran due to their limited range, using liquid fuel (making their detection easy).

https://www.cfr.org/blog/five-years-after-israel-hezbollah-war

Or even from the conclusions of the report to Congress about air power during Desert Storm:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96-10/pdf/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96-10.pdf

 

Unlike some of the pro Israel neocons and those who doing their bidding in the media, and those who only care about the pocket books of defense contractors and the military industrial lobbyists who pay them, the American military leadership itself is not at all "gun ho" about any war with Iran. That has been the case for a long time.

https://news.yahoo.com/us-defense-chief-urges-iran-hold-talks-us-205923005.html

 

Since when have you become supportive of a war on Iran? Has Trump's idiocy turned you as well?

 

It doesn't sound like that at all.

 

Every talking point you just spewed is false and absurd and hypocritical beyond belief.

 

The only propaganda I see around here are the stupid and thoughtless comments made by Americans who think a war with Iran would be winnable or worthwhile. Anyone who is even contemplating a war with Iran should be placed under observation inside a psychiatric ward.

 

Yeah, and American troops were supposed to be greeted as liberators in Iraq... right after they found the "weapons of mass destruction" that didn't actually exist.

Seriously, how much does the US government have to lie to your face before you will stop believing its imperialist propaganda? And how many failed and disastrous wars must the US wage before you stop advocating for more of the same?

 

The "slow death" policy is a form of collective punishment and indiscriminate mass murder. And, no, it is not "working" at all, despite what the propagandists at Fox News would like you to believe.

 

The biggest reason the Iranian government still has support in Iran is because Iran faces an existential threat from outside interference. If there is one thing most Iranians agree on, it's that the US empire is a noxious and dangerous enemy above and beyond all others. As for those Iranians who would rather work for the CIA than Iranian intelligence, they should know that the CIA views them as nothing more than disposable pawns on an imperial chessboard. CIA officers wouldn't lose a moment's sleep sacrificing naive Iranians on the alter of US imperialism. The US government exists for one reason and one reason only: To enrich and empower western elites. It has no other purpose.

 

If they' re not working why does the Iranian leader want the sanctions ended and, as well, what 'indiscriminate mass murder'?

 

If all this is true then the Iranian people, not surprising in a theocracy, are very poorly informed.

 

Your question makes no sense.

The strangulation of the Iranian economy which causes death and misery among the most vulnerable members of Iranian society.

 

Not nearly as poorly informed as some Americans are.

 

It would if you remembered your own post,

So are the sanctions effective or aren't they?

Then it's a pity the Ayatollahs care more for nuclear bombs than they do their own people. But it was always this way with islam.

 

Then this is your opportunity to set things straight.

 

Has Iran made a single concession since the sanctions began? No. Clearly, then, the sanctions are not working.

The Ayatollahs aren't strangling the Iranian economy with "crippling" sanctions, the US government is.

 

Here is the truth: The US government is totally corrupt and under the control of greedy profiteers who instigate wars for purposes of personal enrichment and empowerment.

 

So proof that the sanctions are working is that Iran insists they be lifted before Iran agrees to talk to the US?

Practically any other nation facing sanctions Iran faces would have been crippled. Most would have experienced not just a complete melt-down of their economy, but a humanitarian catastrophe as well. In the case of Iran, these sanctions have had 3 discernible effects:

First, they initially caused a significant drop in the value of Iran's currency. This meant that Iranians on fixed incomes and those whose savings were mostly in Iranian Rials saw their savings and income basically halved in value. Those Iranians who held real estate, or had foreign currency or gold or other non-currency form of assets as savings, did not suffer the same fate but sometimes even the reverse. Since most of the latter were Iran's more affluent classes, you could say that the brunt of the sanctions was faced by Iran's lower middle class and working class people, while the middle class in Iran on balance also suffered but to a lesser extent. The affluent classes might have even ended up gaining in the process -- and the biggest winners of all were those Iranians who had substantial loans (in Iran, where most ordinary transactions are in cash, that means Iran's richest individuals and many of its business interests) since those loans were to be repaid in a currency that was now worth much less than before (and much less than the interest on the loans). As one example, a lot of real estate developers who were facing tough times, suddenly found themselves in excellent shape: the value of their real estate jumped in this period by almost 100%, while the loans which might have represented up to 90% of the value of the real estate they held previously, now representing 20% of its value.

Second, the sanctions caused problems for a certain class of individuals in Iran who were suffering from illnesses which required treatment using pharmaceutical products which were either imported or required material that was imported. These drugs became very hard to find, and much more expensive, making many of these people (including certain people undergoing cancer therapy) face a terrible plight. While certain actions have been taken to help them, ultimately they have certainly suffered. And there maybe individuals among them who have died who would not have died if the same affordable treatment available to them before the sanctions was still available.

Third, these sanctions following America's withdrawal from the JCPOA, undercut the support base for the Rouhani administration. Many of his most ardent followers who had hoped his election would bring Iran closer to the West are now cursing his administration as much as those who never voted for him in the first place. Iran negotiated the JCPOA, and gave up the huge investments it had made to build up the nuclear material and infrastructure practically overnight, on the basis of promises by the West which went unfulfilled. Since many of Rouhani's critics and opponents, despite being told not to attack him on the JCPOA as much because Iran's Supreme Leader had ultimately endorsed the deal despite his own 'reservations', had not been as vocal against the deal as they would have preferred, everyone knew that their basic position was that the deal was a "fraud", the US cannot be trusted to keep its promises, and that Iran was trading its sovereign rights for what will amount to "peanuts". Most people in Iran now see this as having been true.

 

You are certainly right in many of your points. But since I am not here to give people a propaganda picture of things but to educate them on the realities regarding Iran, I think it would be fair to say that in the short-run, America's actions have typically hurt those who have wanted to see closer ties between Iran and the West but in the long run, they have also (but in not the way America necessarily intended or imagined) helped create or exacerbate some of the problems Iran faces from within -- problems, which in turn, also in the long run have lowered the support base for the regime as well.

It is a very a ironic thing how these policies by the US have actually worked in opposite of pretty much everything the US claims or in many cases intends, but nonetheless cause other problems that do undercut support for the regime. For instance, in the long-run, America's sanctions have helped Iran have a far more self-sufficient and productive industrial base domestically. That is a good thing for Iran and not what America has wanted to see from its sanctions. But, at the same time, these sanctions have driven a lot of business activity in Iran underground, 'off the books', and encouraged and exacerbated corrupt practices, while creating a society were honest, hardworking people suffer in comparison to dishonest, corrupt people -- or those who are simply lucky when it comes to the sudden economic dislocations that affect the Iranian economy and turned it into a huge lottery because of America's actions. In the process, many (most) Iranians gripe incessantly, even when their economic position in absolute terms is not all that bad. But they gripe mainly because they see those who advance in their society not the type they believe deserve it.

Save some entrepreneurs, today represented in the booming start-up market in Iran, and certain professionals, Iran has become a society were folks people don't think deserve to climb the ladder, climb that ladder much faster than those who deserve it more. Previous "village bumpkins" with little or no education have suddenly become millionaires (in US dollars even) because they owned property (rural Iranians own more property in acreage terms than urban Iranians); real estate developers who thrive on speculation and make their money each time the Iranian currency takes a hit while real estate becomes the 'safe haven' for people's savings, have become excessively rich from these speculative practices; bottom feeders in each 'graduating class' from our universities who are far more interested in making a quick buck through corruption and graft (and getting involved in unsavory transactions), are now the bosses of the best and brightest Iranian kids who had tried to go up the ladder the way society teaches them -- by hard work and education, not through corruption.

This is, in a nutshell, the true picture of what ails Iran for most Iranians. Not the ridiculous attempts to paint Iran as a 7th century theocracy nor what you end up imagining visiting Iran and seeing that it is not at all what you have been told. In this process, Iranians aren't happy with a regime that sits on top of a pile of corruption, but they don't find any "opposition group" that speaks to the true things that genuinely are hurting their society. Most of these opposition groups parrot nonsense about Iran that is either hopeless out of touch with the reality or simply focuses on the things that America cares about the most (but doesn't have a clue on how to get to either).

 

Then I suppose they'll continue.

The Ayatollahs can have them stopped at any time.

 

But they clearly aren't working.

The Ayatollahs are not responsible for the sanctions, the US government is.

 

Here is NPR's report on how Iran is doing and coping with sanctions. I will excerpt those parts of the article that are based on a reality that is clearly visible and don't rely on finding an individual here or there to tell a story you want to tell yourself. That reality, and not the hopes and wishes of those who even write for NPR, divorced from propaganda, tell you that these US sanctions are continuing to do what similar sanctions have done in the past. Make Iran more self-sufficient, not much less affluent, but a lot more corrupt.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/27/7542...-iran-is-functioning-in-the-face-of-sanctions
Reporter's Notebook: Here's How Iran Is Functioning In The Face Of Sanctions
August 27, 2019