https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48718959 Definitely worth a read when you consider everything seems to happen in order to influence our elections. Fast forward to 2024 and here we are again. Having said that, conventional thinking is that Iran feels all it has to do is damage a few US ships and the veil of invincibility has been pierced. China will watch with great interest. Iran's goal is to create a caliphate putting all of Islam under one ruler presumed to be a living successor to Mohammed himself. That means war in the Middle East and a world fuel catastrophe.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. or as Joey Biden said: we can fight a two front war and defend our country as well, we can afford it, we're America for G sakes.
That is true, and also very wrong. As nations have been learning for around 100 years. That was the thinking of Germany in trying to coax Mexico to attacking the US, and was the thinking of Japan in WWII. China thought that as well as North Korea during the Korean War, and many nations in the Middle East and Med including Iraq, Iran, and Libya have thought the same thing. One would think they would eventually learn that the US does not play that way. Really about the only hope any nation has when it comes to fighting the US is to get a win diplomatically. If they can manage to tie the nation up against itself diplomatically therefore not reacting due to internal decisions. For two examples in regards to Iran, when they took the US Embassy over and held the diplomatic staff that was largely diplomatic, and the top levels of government decided to handle it diplomatically. However, in things like the Gulf of Sidra, Operation Preying Mantis, Gulf War I and II, and others those were military operations and the US responded militarily. But they should know better than that, as that happened about 35 years ago. We had one ship heavily damaged, and had an almost complete wipe of Iranian forces in the area. And that kind of thinking is not unique, as Vietnam had the same hubris after they took over South Vietnam. They like many made the mistake of thinking they won that war militarily, and not diplomatically. They tried pulling on the tail of the tiger that is China one time too many, and got a literal smackdown. Where China stormed in, destroyed any force Vietnam sent against them, and did their best to make them understand they only won that war because the US let them. They were in no way capable of actually fighting against a nation like the US, USSR or China if they really had the determination to actually invade them. And after a month of destroying all that was sent against them and tearing up a lot of infrastructure, after a month China simply turned around and went home. Having made their point that Vietnam was not as powerful as they thought they were.
