The Trump admin is squeezing Iran's nuts from both sides. Withdrawing from the nuclear deal, then reimposing sanctions is devastating their economy. You cut off the lights and strangle the air supply and something's gotta give. They can't negotiate with Trump. Would you? The Ayatollah never trusted the U.S. He was dragged into the nuclear deal by the more progressive elements in his gov't. Trump claims he wants to talk, but is doing everything to prove the Mullah was right. The US goal in Iran is regime change. The hardliners know it and they're not about to give up power. Israel and Saudi Arabia would love to see Iran slapped. Iran meddles in their part of the world in support of the Shia. We've learned nothing from the past. The hardliners are now Ascending.They, or their proxies were probably involved in the tanker attacks, to show the US that there is a cost to their policies. Iran knows if it goes to war with the US it would be suicide, but the US knows Iran is not Iraq, and has sophisticated Russian weapons and defense systems. It would be nuts to go to war. The best the US could due would be to escort the tankers through the strait. This could be a flashpoint, but the US doesn't have to overreact. It could target just the perpetrators and not all of Iran. Look at the bright side. If the straits become a blocked graveyard where some 20% of the world supplies passes, it could be an incentive and an accelerent to sustainable energy. The pessimist says "it can't get any worse.' The optimist says, cheerily, 'yes it can!'

They reach a point of conviction where they don't make distinctions like you think, and frequently are involved in profit making through third parties which they don't believe create any ethical conflict, because they are so heavily vested in killing people, it all just appears normal to them.

Perhaps only if Iran does not do what they want. Like Bush's "Mission Accomplished" they may believe that all that is needed is a show of power. — Fooloso4

But what do they want exactly? That the religious leaders leave their places to people chosen by US? How should Iran regime be changed? What should they do to avoid war?

What should they do to avoid war? — Mephist

They don't want to avoid war. They do everything they can to start one. They don't have ethical beliefs like you or me. They think themselves naturally superior to other people and have a right to kill them for their personal benefit, like slaughtering animals. They manipulate other people with ideals, but they don't believe in them themselves except perhaps for patriotism, and even then, if they thought the USA could lose they'd probably switch sides.

They are vested in the profit yielded from selling the means to kill people. — ernestm

They are arms dealers. They just sold 32 F35s to Poland. — ernestm

Are you claiming that they personally profit from arms deals? How?

Ever seen Eisenhower's parting speech?

They are so heavily vested in their own power to kill, they don't make distinctions like you or me. They are the result of a natural selection process for ruthlessness. You can't apply normal motives to them. They don't think that way and are incapable of thinking any other way. If they had any normal ideas of morality and ethics like other people, they would have committed suicide a long time ago in horror of their own deeds. This goes way back before the torture at abu'graib. Its ingrained. They aren't really human beings like the rest of us. They are the kids who pulled legs off insects to see what they'd do, and laughed when their friends stuck nerd's heads in toilet bowls, they took up killing wild animals for sport, and now they are grown up, they've proven to be the ideal candidates to run war machines. They are groomed for it, they exalt in it, and that's what they live for.

But what do they want exactly? That the religious leaders leave their places to people chosen by US? How should Iran regime be changed? What should they do to avoid war? — Mephist

I think they want to eliminate any threat to the United States from anywhere in the world.

One way to try and avoid war is by negotiating and compromising, but for Bolton that is off the table.

Here is a link: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript

Prescient. The "military-industrial complex".

One difference is that Eisenhower witnessed war first hand, they did not.

I think they want to eliminate any threat to the United States from anywhere in the world. — Fooloso4

I think what their policy has exactly the opposite effect: the threat to the United States is increased from Russia and China as a result of keeping their nuclear arms constantly in state of alarm. Exiting from ICBM missiles treaty the time of reaction when a missile launch is detected is reduced to minutes now, and there are increasingly more nations that have ICBM missiles pointed to the US and ready to launch. So the risk of a nuclear war is surely much bigger now.

Surely US military is perfectly able to estimate the risk caused by politicians' choices, so I don't believe they care too much about the increased threat to the United States

I think what their policy has exactly the opposite effect — Mephist

I agree.

All I'm saying is, Eisenhower outlined the motives for the current problems - be they warmongering or faulty science.

Here is a link: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript — Fooloso4

Really very interesting. Thanks for the link!

All I'm saying is, Eisenhower outlined the motives for the current problems - be they warmongering or faulty science. — Shamshir

Hence my comment "prescient".

The problem with these threads is that there is always one dominant narrative used:

"Neocons are trying everything, including false flag operations to get the US to war because the military-industrial complex wants a war."

And.... that's basically it. Nothing else. And nothing else than what is decided in Washington is important. No other actors seem even to exist on the scene. Every other country is just either an innocent target of US aggression, an innocent bystander or a lackey of the US without any own agenda. And here it would be extremely important to discuss the agenda of Israel and Saudi Arabia. People might know philosophy in this forum, but their knowledge of Clausewitz might not be on such level. Above all, the idea seems to be that it's either peace or the all out war and nothing else in between. Yet there is a multitude of options not only the US can do, but also a multitude of other players that can have different responses also. It's basically international politics.

So is war imminent? Look at the following photo:


It is a picture of AMERICAN SAILORS surrendering to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 10 sailors were detained and later released by Iran. This happened in 2016 and... no war happened. What the incident did was that it got some US Navy officers fired, but no cruise missiles were fired against Iran. The debate about if the US will attack Iran, which is just a lousy option by any standards, typically doesn't really take at all into account how actually the US has handled Iran for a long time.

And this should be noticed when discussing these issues just by "are we going to war or not". The US has had incidents with Iran, yet typically the US will launch attacks only at far weaker countries. With stronger opponents the issue is about the scale of the response where the only response isn't to attack Iran.

So I'm not convinced that there is a major conflict imminent. There's a lot can happen, a small military incident is more imminent that a major conflict, but typically the "nearly WW3"-option is that people get excited about.

Besides, the US never, ever has any kind of desire to have strategic surprise on it's side. It will declare it's intentions publicly because the most it's worried is how the US voters take the issue. And they have to be put into a warmode. Israel, on the contrary, seeks to gain strategic surprise. Hence if Netanyahu is aggressively vocal, it likely means that at least Israel won't attack any of it's neighbours.

And this should be noticed when discussing these issues just by "are we going to war or not". The US has had incidents with Iran, yet typically the US will launch attacks only at far weaker countries. With stronger opponents the issue is about the scale of the response where the only response isn't to attack Iran. — ssu

I'd say generally you are right, but the USA does not have a monolithic opinion, even in its government. There are war hawks who are looking for war, and they jump on these opportunities for justification of their opinions.

Notably not even the Japanese or the ship's own crew agree with the USA narrative on this story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japanese-ship-owner-contradicts-us-account-of-how-tanker-was-attacked/2019/06/14/7ea347d0-8eba-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html

That has not stopped 'America' from declaring it Iran's fault.

If John Bolton gets his way, yes. It's sad that Trump spoke so insightfully in 2016 against the endless, mindless semi-covert wars, and has now put neocon maniacs Bolton and Pompeo in charge of foreign policy.
— fishfry
What's so sad about?

Trump doesn't care a shit about anything else but himself.

For Trump to talk about endless wars was as hollow as his talk about fighting corruption, draining the swamp, was exactly just 'campaign talk', just something you say to get votes. Or do you really think someone wanting to build an even better military would really think about the endless wars? Heck, the guy was for attacking Libya. You had to be a idiot to believe this guy. So that makes a lot of people umm... well, you know. — ssu

If one doesn't regard an increased probability of a disastrous war with Iran as sad; one might be putting their politics ahead of their humanity.

Was I stupid to hope that perhaps Trump meant what he said about ending the ruinous wars? Certainly his militarism was a warning and a concern. But what was the alternative at the time? Hillary was a known warmonger. She was allegedly behind Janet Reno's disastrous attack on the Branch Davidians at Waco. She was behind Bill Clinton's war on Kosovo. Her vote for the Iraq war, along with her impassioned speech in favor of the war on the floor of the Senate, gave centrist liberals cover for supporting that war. Hillary could have stopped Bush, she chose to enable him. As Secretary of State she was behind the destruction of Libya, and got started on the destruction of Syria, which was completed by her successor John Kerry.

So if one was for peace, the choice was between Trump who at least talked the talk even if there were doubts he'd walk the walk; and Hillary, with a long track record supporting the neocon maniacs.

If you call hoping against hope for peace stupid, and you don't think the latest neocon attempts to start a major war in Iran are sad, I'd ask you to try to step outside your visceral feelings about Trump and try to figure out what you actually stand for. If it's peace, you better be sad at these latest developments.

If you'd rather see a war to prove you're right about Trump; than see peace and perhaps admit he was in the end less a warmonger than Hillary; you better check your partisanship. It's getting in the way of your humanity.

ps -- You may recall that Trump knocked out Jeb! by calling Jeb! out on Bush's invasion of Iraq. I didn't hear Hillary speaking out against any war, anytime, anywhere, in her entire career. If you want to make the case that Hillary is a great pacifist, I'll take the other side of that debate. Nor do I think Trump was lying. He has a crazy negotiating style. So far he's avoided getting us in any major new wars. So yes I'm hopeful in that regard. And note that it's the left's Russia hysteria that's endlessly ratcheting up tension in that direction. Just look at the NYT story yesterday about how the US is waging cyber warfare on Russia's power grid. Trump denies the story. Who's the warmonger here?

It's looking like war is edging closer. The word war though is poorly used, as it infers two nations in a military struggle. The military power of the u s would see target practice, with the struggle only from Iranians seeking to keep soul intact. Why war.... removal of dissent towards Israeli, Saudi and American alliance. This "war' will be just an extension of empire. Power and money gained through killing.

Those tankers were obviously attacked by torpedo boats from the Gulf of Tonkin.

It's looking like war is edging closer. The word war though is poorly used, as it infers two nations in a military struggle. The military power of the u s would see target practice, with the struggle only from Iranians seeking to keep soul intact. — Willyfaust

This is a naive assumption.

Iran is very different compared to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, which are the "successful" wars. These countries were isolated diplomatically and weren't preparing for decades for war with the USA.

Iran has friends and has prepared since decades for war with the USA. Iran has also been able to observe these other wars and plan accordingly.

Iran has very favourable mountainous terrain and has "global force projection" in the form of being next to the straight of Hormuz. The above mentioned countries could do nothing that would affect the global economy. So, if you just bomb Iran without taking the coast, then no ships (would get insurance) to travel the straight of Hormuz. This makes a "bombing into submission, internal chaos or significant weakening (to invade later)" campaign a lot harder as it would affect the global economy and create reasons for nearly every other country to apply pressure to stop the war.

Iran also has for certain the Russian made S-300 air defense system with "unknown" upgrades that may make it the S-400 with a S-300 label to please the West. There's never been a test of either S-300 or S-400 against American planes. Maybe it's a total fail, but I haven't seen any compelling arguments to believe that would be the case. Iran doesn't share a border with Russia, but does share the Caspian Sea, which as far as I know, there's no way for American ships to enter the Caspian and no way for other neighboring countries to effectively blockade the Caspian, assuming any of them would want to (which is doubtful). So, it's easy for Russia to resupply Iran with anti-air equipment and missiles. A pure bombing campaign could easily turn into a war of attrition of anti-air vs air assets; the only way this wouldn't be the case is if the S-300/400 system simply doesn't work or there's both a physical and diplomatically viable way to blockage Russian re-supply (or the even more remote possibility Russia abandons supporting Iran). You keep bomb the Russian ships in the Caspian ... but you'd only need to do that if the S-300/400 system is effective, in which case you now have to deal with many more such missiles ... and de facto declaration of war on Russia (one of the key points of a blockade is that it makes it ambiguous who is attacking who first).

Keep in mind also, that effectiveness of stealth against the S-300/400 system is unknown. Stealth is visible to long wave radar, although accuracy decreases as wave length gets longer, it may nevertheless be accurate enough to send missiles in the general direction of the plane which have a reasonable chance to find the plane with shorter wave radar, infrared, signal processing and maybe some algorithmic guesswork, it then becomes a question of sending enough missiles. A quick web search tells me that a S-400 battery is 300 million USD and comes with 120 missiles, so the upper bound of cost / missile is about 2.5 million with these figures. The S-300/400 system is also modular, with the various radar, signal processing equipment, missiles and launch platforms installed in different locations, and each part can have a off-line backup, so a single hit may not take the system out or then leave it easily repaired. An F-22 is 150 million and F-35 is 85 million USD, but the cost of training the pilot must also be included, in addition to the enormous PR cost of the loss of any of these stealth planes in addition to the traditional PR cost of potentially captured pilots.

The F-35 and F-22 planes took a lot of money to develop and are supposed to last decades, so even a below even attrition rate between these planes and the S-300/400 system would be a pretty big PR victory for Russia and Iran, no one would really care if Iran paid more / owes more to Russia to shoot down these planes than they are worth (i.e. one battery firing all it's missiles on average downs 2 or less planes).

What's more, an air-war-of-attrition favours the defender if they can be resupplied with missiles and equipment, as it's much easier to test different algorithms and gather data to improve the missiles and radar systems than it is to improve fighter jets (an iterative process against a largely fixed design), and Russia would be certainly extremely keen to make every effort to improve their system.

Now, if one or two F-35's are lost to temporarily disable S-300/400 systems in support of a ground invasion, then that would be completely fine from a PR perspective and doesn't result in an iterative attrition process as described above.

But a ground invasion of Iran, again, cannot be described as target practice. Sure, the world's super power would probably prevail, but it would be a massive undertaking and result in casualties. There's also no easy root to Tehran, which is far from the coast and the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan (which may not be practical to invade from these "conquered" countries anyways as it would super-charge domestic insurgency elements and Iran foreign insurgency tactics against the supply chain).

Also critical, Trump is unlikely to be able to "sell the war" to allies or the home audience, both due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seen as costly failures and due to Trump himself having zero credibility, at the same time Iran has been building up diplomatic credibility as the US is losing it.

For all these reasons, to answer the OP, I'd bet a conventional war between the US and Iran as unlikely as well as just a "bomb a bunch of stuff to make a point" being unlikely as well.

Whoever is behind the attacks on the tankers, I would argue it's to either just increase the cost of oil and make bank as a oil supplier or futures trader (2-D chess), create a crisis to create diplomatic pressure (3-D chess), or it is the staging events to more dramatic events to shutdown the straight of Hormuz to create a global crisis (4-D chess).

The problem with these threads is that there is always one dominant narrative used:

"Neocons are trying everything, including false flag operations to get the US to war because the military-industrial complex wants a war." — ssu

More important than whatever is said in these threads is what the dominant narrative will be that shapes what happens going forward. It has become standard practice for presidents to declare war without the consent of congress. So it may be that whatever narrative is playing in Trump's head at any given moment could be the determining factor.

With the downing of a 120 million dollar US drone, whoever attacked the tankers, Iran seems to be calling the US' bluff.

The Trump admin maybe now finding out why Obama cut the Iran deal: that it is by far the best option and all military options don't go anywhere without a full scale invasion that would cost thousands, possibly tens of thousands of US soldiers and mercenary lives, which no American wants.

That it of course played great to the Republican base to criticize Obama striking a deal with Iran (so Republicans harped on about it as much as they could, and it was just "bold common sense" for Trump to withdraw from the deal and increase sanctions) ... but that same base isn't actually going to support American lives being lost.

What is their thought process? That the US military is essentially magic and that there must be some way to deal militarily with Iran without losing any lives.

If a bombing campaign isn't feasible, as I described in my post above, my guess is the war room meetings keep spinning around from "we could invade this way or that way ... but we'll lose soldiers ... and it maybe slow going resulting in months of closure of the straight" and "we could just send cruise missiles to blow something up ... but what are we accomplishing? they'll be testing nukes sooner or later".

Also, keep in mind that the reason the US could escort ships through the straight during the Iraq-Iran war was because Iran was not at war with the US, so would not wantonly fire on US warships. Obviously that changes in a US-Iran conflict, and Iran can keep firing missiles at anything in the straight as long as they can access the coast; Iran has been stock piling anti-ship missiles for this purpose and tankers are possibly the easiest target in the sea other than islands.

More important than whatever is said in these threads is what the dominant narrative will be that shapes what happens going forward. — Fooloso4

This was certainly true in the previous wars, but Iraq and company were easy targets that could be bombed or invaded with ease. And so, as you say, all that mattered was a "plausible narrative" for talking heads in the media and politicians to prattle on about, even if no one believes it (which a lot of people did).

What is different with Iran is that there are real obstacles and real geopolitical consequences to any significant bombing campaign and even more obstacles and geopolitical consequences for a land invasion.

Even at this stage in the escalation, the US may have no good options and is already losing even more credibility. Obviously diplomatic credibility has been jettisoned already, but revealing that idiotic decisions lead immediately to unmanageable consequences.

However, now that Iran has downed a 120 million US asset and US already claims the Tanker attacks were Iran and that sufficient reason for a military response in itself, the logical response if stealth technology works is to go and stealthily bomb a whole bunch of Iran military assets. If stealth technology doesn't work then the logical response would be to do nothing or to maybe send a bunch of cruise missiles.

The situation is quite severe in terms of the US military industrial complex massive investment in stealth technology for both the US military and export. Already there's a lot of doubts about stealth technology; a bunch of European nations see no need for it -- now, there's certainly niche applications where it's important to be invisible to civilian or out-dated radar, but that would only justify needing a few such planes ... not all the planes, as is the premise of the F-35 program -- but as long as it's never really tested, it doesn't really matter.

However, to reveal in a dramatic fashion the technology isn't useful against anti-air that exists on the market today, not to speak of years from now, is a big problem even for the massive budget levels of the US military. Of course, all else being equal, it's better to have stealth, but things aren't equal as stealth requires major sacrifices in terms of both cost and ordinance capacity. If a stealth plane costs twice as much to buy and maintain, has less range, and delivers half the ordinance, then it's really a 4 times more expensive plane or worse.

Of course, US arms industry doesn't claim stealth is magic, just a significant advantage, but the situation emerging with Iran is the opportunity to demonstrate this significant advantage. Already it can be claimed by a reasonable observer that not doing it is admitting the advantage is not so great. A very large amount of stealth sales will be lost if both the US military and other buyers of the F-35 lose faith in stealth, and the entire military posture of the US air force, navy and marine corp placed into serious doubt.

Why this whole stealth thing is crucial to understanding the situation, is that there's potential this could be a situation where US arms manufacturers lose money from military conflict, due to decrease in stealth technology purchases and increase in Russia exporting the S-300/400 system, leading to even less desire for stealth (if people start to believe it can easily deal with stealth, due to US stealth inaction in this situation in Iran). Keep in mind, US arms manufactures can't export anti-stealth systems without abandoning stealth technology themselves ... so, unless stealth works, then they've created an entire multi-billion, multi-decade market for systems that can shoot down their stealth planes that they can't participate in for obvious reasons, and on-top of this fewer and fewer people will want their missiles specifically designed not to shoot down stealth aircraft, and on-top of this placed the US military in a position of needing to never use these stealth systems in a way that might demonstrate they are not cost effective.

It's bad for business. One of many reasons Obama struck a deal with Iran precisely to avoid this kind of situation.

Informed proponents of stealth, that accept they can be shot down, claim that stealth will shine against modern anti-air systems using coordinated attacks of many aircraft. However, such a dramatic attack that fails (sending dozens of planes that get shot down) would just amplify all of the problems listed above in the loudest possible manner. It would be a big gamble.

We will see in the coming days. What is for sure is if the US has been bluffing with their stealth technology, Iran is calling that bluff. Of course, US command themselves may have no idea how effective sending lot's of stealth planes would be. The entire stealth program was likely premised on only ever needing to bomb mercilessly failed states ... which makes sense if the goal was to have a more or less stable world where there's no reason to attack functioning states like Iran. But then who do you bomb? It seems the US has run out of weak isolated states to mercilessly bomb. Again, terrible for business.

Well, literally a couple hours after my comment, it seems I was right what the high level discussion involve the high cost of war ... or then obviously not dealing with Iran developing nuclear weapons.

According to CNN, citing a military staffer, describing the chairman of the joint chief's position:

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, continued to point out in internal discussions that what to do about Iran is a policy question, the official said. If the policy is a military response, then Dunford is prepared to explain in detail the cost of doing that in every discussion.

The official said the military view is this:

If you want to really stop Iran’s nuclear program, that immediately gets you to regime change, which is an enormous undertaking.

If you want to respond with a single strike to any particular Iranian provocation, you cannot predict how Iran might react and it still risks leading you to war. — cnn

This may also explain why Trump is de-escalating his own rhetoric, claiming the drone incident maybe just a mistake by a missile operator, captain, general, what-have-you, rather than threatening to turn Iran into a lake of fire.

I wouldn't be surprised if Trump later throws Pompeo and Bolton under the bus, ridiculing and firing them for not being able to deal with Iran: "I brought them in to deal with Iran, couldn't even do it, military said cost would be high. Sad. You know I said it, I said those trillion dollar planes was too much for a plane. I know planes, I know those guys, they're great guys. The best. They make great planes, but we need to accept the planes couldn't take out the missile sites in Iran, just couldn't do it. I said: well go blow them up! Military said they couldn't do it, just couldn't. We need new planes ... or a lot of drones; I'm talking so many drones, drones like you wouldn't believe it. I hardly believe it, and I've seen these drones and all the plans to make a lot of them, so many, so many they'll be so many drones like you wouldn't even believe. Beautiful." Which would be the coherent part of the speech, followed by the incoherent part explaining why pulling out the Obama deal was still a great move, the best move, had to do it.

Edit: it's obviously a joke the lake of fire thing being an escalation. So far there's a 1:1 correspondence between threatening turn a country into a lake of fire and the next day expressing a deep love for the supreme leader of said country and the entire issue disappearing from the news.

Keep in mind also, that effectiveness of stealth against the S-300/400 system is unknown. — boethius

Actually, the US has already tested the S-300 system, not to the S-400 Triumph and many allies and friendly countries to the US have the system, like Greece, Ukraine and Egypt. The US even bought some missile systems from Belarus in 1994, not with everything but still.

Yet the truth is that Russia has actually been ahead of the US in SAM missile technology. This of course is actually totally understandable as the US relies on total air supremacy (the last time US forces were attacked by enemy aircraft was in the Korean War) while Russia has understood the importance of Air Defence. Yet typically the top-of-the-notch systems haven't been sold or simply haven't been effectively used by the armies that the US (or Israel) have attacked.

But I agree with your observations. The US military knows quite well it's own limitations. This has been more of response-with-increase of troops. It happens some time with Iran. These scares with a strike on Iran happen all the again once the average person has forgotten the past crisis. But of course if tensions rise even from this, I would start to be worried.

And let's not forget that Trump's hardcore loyalists aren't actually neocons, so he has to really walk this carefully.

Yet the worrying thing is that there are not many adults in the room with Trump. All the generals in the White House have either left or been fired, which was one of the few good moves Trump did (because obviously Mattis, Kelly and McMaster were recommended to him and weren't eyeing for any political positions, yet one earlier general was a different case, who didn't last for long).

This may also explain why Trump is de-escalating his own rhetoric, claiming the drone incident maybe just a mistake by a missile operator, captain, general, what-have-you — boethius

Here we find Trump's habit of dissembling saying two different things at once:

"They made a bad mistake". "They made a very big mistake" "A general or somebody made a mistake."

A deliberate act of aggression by Iran ("they") against the United States might be called a mistake, underestimating the response. But "somebody" making a mistake might be based on incorrect information about the locations of the drone or somebody acted without authorization. What the appropriate response might be in the first case is not the same as what the appropriate response might be in the second case, but all Trump will say is "you'll find out". Since Iran acknowledges it shot down the drone the somebody possibility that Trump "imagines" stretches the credibility of somebody who has little or none to begin with. Will the evidence that Trump says is "documented scientifically" be released to the public or to congress or the United Nations?

Actually, the US has already tested the S-300 system, not to the S-400 Triumph and many allies and friendly countries to the US have the system, like Greece, Ukraine and Egypt. The US even bought some missile systems from Belarus in 1994, not with everything but still. — ssu

By S-300/400 I mean to reference the S-300 "with upgrades" the Russians have sold Iranians.

What matters is not so much "having" an S-300 or 400 or some mixture, as taking out 1 battery the US could certainly do with overwhelming force.

What matters is that the Russians can resupply Iran with replacement parts and missiles and they'd be motivated to show their equipment works and highly motivated to tweak, optimize, and resupply.

This is the key difference with Iraq, Afghanistan and Lybia, which were isolated countries that didn't require much to topple over into a failed state.

But I agree with your observations. The US military knows quite well it's own limitations. This has been more of response-with-increase of troops. It happens some time with Iran. These scares with a strike on Iran happen all the again once the average person has forgotten the past crisis. But of course if tensions rise even from this, I would start to be worried. — ssu

For the past I agree.

The problem this time is that Trump not only pulled out the deal but slapped sanctions not just on Iran but anyone trading with Iran, so trying to force the other signatories of the deal to break it too.

Trump supporters love to mention that "the Senate didn't ratify Obama's deal". Ok, US doesn't care about diplomatic credibility. Other countries, however, do care, and see it as important to fulfill their part of a deal they signed (why Europe is working on a legal framework for companies to trade with Iran and avoid US sanctions).

And so, for the rest of the world that cares about diplomacy, Iran has a legitimate grievance. So unlike in the past, Iran now has a credible position to develop nuclear weapons if the deal isn't upheld. It's going to be difficult to get parties that signed a deal to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons to pull any resources into accomplishing the same goal with money and lives. Only Trump thought that was a good idea.

And, only Trump supporters think it's common sense that the "deal was crap". Europe, Russia, China Iran and the US (with advice from their military and intelligence agencies) all signed the deal because it made sense.

Whereas before the deal was signed, there was a real risk to Iran that Nato countries would invade to prevent nuclear development (and without credibility, Russia could not be counted on to help; selling the Iranians anti-air was in parallel to the credible deal of not developing nukes, which Russia doesn't want either).

Post-deal, post-Tump tearing up the deal, now it's going to extremely hard to not only bring any other country into the war but very hard to pressure other countries to pressure Russia to not resupply Iran air-defense. Before the deal, war was a lot easier, but still extremely costly and destabilizing; hence the deal.

I imagine you support the Iran deal; however, it's not obvious all the diplomatic implications, which now put the US, as the joint chief says, in the position of going to war and a costly regime change ... or some sort of escalating tit-for-tat leading to war anyways ... or Iran develops nuclear weapons.

“Is a major conflict imminent in the Middle East?”

A major conflict is ongoing in the Middle East, and for many years now.

Since Iran acknowledges it shot down the drone the somebody possibility that Trump "imagines" stretches the credibility of somebody who has little or none to begin with. Will the evidence that Trump says is "documented scientifically" be released to the public or to congress or the United Nations? — Fooloso4

Well, I believe that's how science works.

Trump also mentioned they didn't put no man or woman in the drone, and Iran's lucky about that, which I think is also documented scientifically.

But I agree that Trump is just hedging his bets in every possible direction, but I only see him doing this because he's decided a war with a lot of American soldier and mercenary deaths wouldn't be good for re-election. Americans like their army and war, except for the American's dying for no good reason part.

If a "bombing the shit out of them" is also not practical due to Russian re-supplying air-defense, then there's simply no good violent option.

However, unlike North Korean and Venezuela, the situation can't just be walked away from at this point. US would need to back-off the sanctions either explicitly or signal to Europe to get the work-around up and running.

If Trump was already aware they had no good options after tearing up the deal, he may have brought Pompeo and Bolton in just to be able to blame some neocons for the failure. It seems reasonable somebody told him at some point how things would play out (only way to stop Iran nuclear program would be War) ... but I wouldn't be surprised if he just avoided such talk until it became unavoidable with recent tensions.

Yet the worrying thing is that there are not many adults in the room with Trump. All the generals in the White House have either left or been fired, which was one of the few good moves Trump did (because obviously Mattis, Kelly and McMaster were recommended to him and weren't eyeing for any political positions, yet one earlier general was a different case, who didn't last for long). — ssu

My guess is Trump liked having generals because he thought they would follow orders ... but discovered generals aren't good at brazen lying, so they became a liability and Trump got rid of them.

Neocons, which I agree Trump doesn't care about their grand full-spectrum dominance vision, at least know facts and integrity doesn't matter if you have the power ... and even if you don't have the power, facts and integrity still don't matter.

This would be my guess of the switch from military men to neocons; they're good propagandists and Trump needs that, not bureaucratic competence.

However, Trump's experience as a bully maybe why he doesn't attack Iran. A bully instinctively knows you only prey on those who can't fight back; Iran can offer a fight, so it just doesn't make any sense to attack them, why risk it? (Shooting down the drone, whether it was in or outside the border, is Iran calling it that this is the case.)

By S-300/400 I mean to reference the S-300 "with upgrades" the Russians have sold Iranians.

What matters is not so much "having" an S-300 or 400 or some mixture, as taking out 1 battery the US could certainly do with overwhelming force.

What matters is that the Russians can resupply Iran with replacement parts and missiles and they'd be motivated to show their equipment works and highly motivated to tweak, optimize, and resupply. — boethius

Let's discuss this in detail, if you are interested.

First the S-300/S-400 systems are technically very challenging to operate. You have to have able technicians to even keep the system operable and get the performance of the system. You might have the money, but do you have the qualified and well educated crews?After poor performance of it's own personnel, Egypt solved this problem simply with having a huge number of Russian advisors simply manning the whole AD network. Hence we would have learned by now if Russia would have sent the operators too with the missile systems. Now Iranians aren't bad in tech: they have kept flying the F-14's even after a long war with Iraq and have had the ability to add to their fleet the Iraqi aircraft that defected to Iran (during operation Desert Storm).

The second issue is that the system has low combat survivability in the modern battlefield. It cannot move easily, a missile battery is a big observable target (especially when it puts it's radars on). In fact the S-300 (and the S-400 too) have to have their own air defence as we have seen from the Russian deployment of the systems to Syria.

Two Russian S-400 launchers in Syria with a Pantsir S2 system on the right:


Just to show how complicated these weapon systems are (here the S-400 Triumf):