Is Iran Strong Enough to Go to War with the U.S.?

originally posted by: face23785
a reply to: F4guy

Why the need to mischaracterize the other side? Can't you just discuss the facts of the issue? No one here loves the idea of war. If anything, some of us recognize that war is sometimes an unpleasant necessity of the nature of this imperfect world we live in. It's not all full of rainbows and unicorns. And very few people are actually advocating for war with Iran. The most many of us would like to see are some limited strikes.

The facts of the issue are that war has cheerleaders who are usually the ones that won't go to fight it. I flew a lot of those "limited strikes". And another fact is that while the strike may be limited in scope, the defense thrown up is not. SA-2 missiles don't have a little placard saying "For limited use only" painted on the pointy end And 37mm AAA doesn't know it's a limited strike. So young men and women get sent thousands of miles only to be sent back thousands of miles in a steel box with handles. Then after the young man (or woman) makes a much shorter trip of 97 miles and the mother of the young man or woman gets a piece of cloth in trade for her child. I simply don't think it's a very good trade. And I care very little for those who cheer such trades.

a reply to: Strate8

To be fair, we send contractors to everyone that buys US aircraft. They train and assist with upkeep. But other than that, the Saudi military is a joke. I've never heard anything but horror stories from anyone that worked with them, and most finish their contract and you couldn't pay them enough to go back.

To those saying Iran would be easy to beat, read up on an exercise run around the early 2000s. A Marine general ran the Iranian forces. He used tactics that the Iranian forces would use, motorcycle couriers, physically passing messages, using calls to prayer as signals, etc. He danced around for two days before launching a massive attack on US forces in the Gulf. It took him about 20 minutes to hammer an entire CSG, with massive casualties.

The exercise was reset, he was majorly handicapped, and ended up walking out in disgust. The report was immediately classified and buried about as deep as they could bury it.

The word is stupid enough.

Those religious fanatics who rule Iran are just like most religious fanatics delusional that God gives a damn about them over others.

Everybody despises them. It's only the people of Iran we care about. I hope they could get rid of that government without a war.

Of course, the US as bad as those Iranian leaders are, have nothing over them when it comes to moral authority.

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: FredT

Fred.In a proper war you do not try to nation build after. Just leave.

Yeah, and as I pointed out that made things worse after WWI. Time to shake up the paradigm (Or in the case of the Marshall Plan, back to the future)

Case in point the Palestinian situation. Is Israel any safer? With every rubber bullet kill, every bulldozed house, every dead kid, they sow the seeds of the next generation of terrorists. People with little to lose and a willingness to die are tough to beat.

You have to rebuild and give hope.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Yeah just ask the ghost of Saddam. He thought that a post Shah / gutted military would be a push over and tried to invade with US support

All it did was unite the Iranian people around the Ayatollahs and they were willing to launch suicide waves of infantry to help stem the tide.

a reply to: Zaphod58

One would hope that even though this was buried and classified, something was learned form it. We have more experience with asymmetric warfare now, and more emphasis is being placed on small boat swarm attacks. 5 years from now, the Navy could deploy their new toys- surface and subsurface drones. Now, we have to hope that everyone is on their toes when this kicks off.

originally posted by: GD
a reply to: Zaphod58

One would hope that even though this was buried and classified, something was learned form it. We have more experience with asymmetric warfare now, and more emphasis is being placed on small boat swarm attacks. 5 years from now, the Navy could deploy their new toys- surface and subsurface drones. Now, we have to hope that everyone is on their toes when this kicks off.

Or hope the NAvy is smart enough t to operate outside the gulf until the defenses are thinned out. Iran loses advantage on open sea.

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: FredT

Fred.In a proper war you do not try to nation build after. Just leave.

Yeah, and as I pointed out that made things worse after WWI. Time to shake up the paradigm (Or in the case of the Marshall Plan, back to the future)

Case in point the Palestinian situation. Is Israel any safer? With every rubber bullet kill, every bulldozed house, every dead kid, they sow the seeds of the next generation of terrorists. People with little to lose and a willingness to die are tough to beat.

You have to rebuild and give hope.

The Palestinians are made up of refugees from surrounding nations though who were formed in Yasser arafatts words and PLO leadership with help from the KGB to Make Israels and the US lives a living hell because the arabs coudnt beat Israel in a military fight.

a reply to: Whodathunkdatcheese

As the OP, I asked a question. I didn't make a statement. If I knew the answer, I wouldn't have asked the question.

originally posted by: CanadianMason
a reply to: Whodathunkdatcheese

As the OP, I asked a question. I didn't make a statement. If I knew the answer, I wouldn't have asked the question.

Iran is strong enough to go to war with US and make things very difficult for Israel and SA in an asymmetric war, which all wars are fought that way now.

Head to head - plane to plane, ship to ship, missile to missile, tank to tank, rifle to rifle, Iran can't win a fight like that. That is why the fight won't be like that.

People thinking we can get away with "limited strikes" are fools on a fools errand. These people want to ignore reality and facts to satiate their bloodlust.

a reply to: Strate8

if you limit it to killing the leadership only,yeah it can be done.

a reply to: yuppa

And they promptly retaliate and make things interesting for our forces in the region, which leads to us retaliating, and so forth.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: yuppa

And they promptly retaliate and make things interesting for our forces in the region, which leads to us retaliating, and so forth.

Well you know ive wanted the US out of the middle east for a while,so this would be a good motivator to leave. Then the only ones to get hit will be SA and israel.

Is Iran strong enough to go to war with the US?

That depends on what kind of war you are talking about.

If its the kind of war we are actually allowed to win, they will last about two minutes. If its the kind of sissified brady bunch liberal don't be mean and hateful war many people would prefer, yes they are.

We could bomb the place to ground level in a week if we wanted to. Collateral damage would be high. But then you have to remember that in places like Iran there are no civilians in a time of war. There are people in uniforms who want to kill you and there are people not in uniforms that want to kill you. Unless you know for a fact who is on the friendly side you shoot first and ask questions never. Its easy to talk about fairness and civility on the sidelines. Screw that on the front lines. You shoot to kill and you don't feel bad if you get it right.

a reply to: yuppa

Good point, but even if the initial plan calls for them to stay out of the littorals, the reality is they may have to come tp the aid of others, or God only knows what else. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

a reply to: yuppa

There is some truth there, for sure. There has never been a separate Palestinian nation. It's always been a part of Israel, the Roman Empire or even the Ottoman Empire. BUT, as FredT stated. State on state violence leads to a slippery slope.

originally posted by: Vroomfondel
Is Iran strong enough to go to war with the US?

That depends on what kind of war you are talking about.

If its the kind of war we are actually allowed to win, they will last about two minutes. If its the kind of sissified brady bunch liberal don't be mean and hateful war many people would prefer, yes they are.

We could bomb the place to ground level in a week if we wanted to. Collateral damage would be high. But then you have to remember that in places like Iran there are no civilians in a time of war. There are people in uniforms who want to kill you and there are people not in uniforms that want to kill you. Unless you know for a fact who is on the friendly side you shoot first and ask questions never. Its easy to talk about fairness and civility on the sidelines. Screw that on the front lines. You shoot to kill and you don't feel bad if you get it right.

It is very obvious that you have never dropped a cluster bomb on a populated area and then looked at the after-action photos. You can "get it right" and still feel bad when you see body parts of what obviously were small children. The RF-4s and RB-57s we had took very good low level photos. You get your fragmented (frag) orders, blasted off across Laos, found the very accurately described target, toggled off whatever load was prescribed, turned around and beat feet back across the Mekong, landed, turned the aircraft over to people like Zaphod (who were the ones that really "owned" the bird - we just borrowed it from time to time.) After the debrief you would head to the O club for one or more rum and cokes (fifty cents each!), had your steak dinner, which, after looking at the photos, really didn't taste that good. Then, since Udorn had no housing for US personnel, you went downtown to wherever you were sleeping at the time to hit the sack knowing you'd get up before dawn the next morning to o it all over again. And again. And the never vocalized question was "Why?"

a reply to: F4guy

I get it. Killing children in the line of duty sucks. And that seems like conflicting terminology. How could it be in the line of duty? What kind of duty is that? It's keeping yourself and other soldiers alive. That child may not be so innocent. Or, at the very least, it may be a victim of an evil adult. Either way, that child could be wired. It happens.

And when your enemy intentionally hides among civilians to stop you from engaging, you engage anyway. If those are your orders, that is what you do. If we refused to engage every hostile that hides among civilians we would never fire a shot. And we would lose every war we entered because of it. When your enemy gives no quarter to civilians and actually prefers them as targets, you give no quarter in return.

It's not fun. It's not fair. It's war. Rule number one - people die. Rule number two - you can't change rule number one.

originally posted by: Vroomfondel
Is Iran strong enough to go to war with the US?

That depends on what kind of war you are talking about.

If its the kind of war we are actually allowed to win, they will last about two minutes. If its the kind of sissified brady bunch liberal don't be mean and hateful war many people would prefer, yes they are.

We could bomb the place to ground level in a week if we wanted to. Collateral damage would be high. But then you have to remember that in places like Iran there are no civilians in a time of war. There are people in uniforms who want to kill you and there are people not in uniforms that want to kill you. Unless you know for a fact who is on the friendly side you shoot first and ask questions never. Its easy to talk about fairness and civility on the sidelines. Screw that on the front lines. You shoot to kill and you don't feel bad if you get it right.

Too much Call of Duty for you.

There are civilians in war. Real soldiers have nightmares of their gruesome deaths. Those that don't commit suicide or drink themselves to death struggle with that the rest of their lives.

Germany had to be opposed. Japan had to be opposed. America was very reluctant to enter that war because there were people in charge that knew the cost it would incurr.

Is Iran a threat to America at that level?

I hope there are still people in power that have enough sense to be very reluctant to choose the path of war. It was not so with Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, Syria.

A whole lot of blood on our hands as a nation. Sad but true.