he killed 20,000 imaginary troops with motorcycles and speedboats ag
he killed 20,000 imaginary troops with motorcycles and speedboats ag
jk lol can you imagine, but people have been running with the Millennium Challenge 2002 as proof of Iran's potency to an annoying extent. it was undoubtedly an example of hubris by the U.S. armed forces when they reset the simulation and forced Van Riper (in charge of red forces) to follow a predetermined outline rather than the asymmetrical tactics which proved so effective for him, but the simulation was so janky during his victory one almost has sympathy that they tried to model real-world conditions with heavier scripting.
here's where you're stupid and i hate you
- red force was not designated as Iran, recall this was in 2002 and while the Axis was very evil we didn't yet know whom we were to invade. the model attempted to simulate an enemy that could have been either Iraq or Iran, which, you know, given they're not the same thing is not a great model. and given what Iraq was actually capable of this alone casts grave doubts on the exercise's accuracy.
-the model placed the entirety of our naval forces on the shore side of 'the channel's' (obvious stand-in for the Strait of Hormuz) shipping lanes when the invasion commenced without simulating the approach, essentially teleportating them into close-range contact with the enemy's ground defenses which is A) not possible by the laws of physics and B) against every conceivable doctrine of carrier-based naval warfare where the idea is to place the vulnerable ships at the utmost stand-off range where their defensive systems can actually be employed, and from there launch sorties to establish air supremacy and degrade the enemy's capacity to resist.
-the model was solely a sea-to-shore invasion force with no supporting ground movements or aerial support separate from the carriers when, spoiler alert, Iran's entire eastern border buttresses our dear allies/occupied territory in Pakistan and Afghanistan and their entire southern coastal border faces Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and one of the largest U.S. military bases in the world in Bahrain.
i need lunch but in sum the exercise was more an example of the military's incompetent wargaming abilities than the military's incompetent warfighting abilities.
Look that drone had a family
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I think drones have attended enough weddings thank you very much.
Always a bridesmaid never the bride.
A drone attended my wedding. It got drunk and knocked over the cake. Never again.
Iran has announced that they already enriched beyond the 2015 agreement with Obama.
None of our business anymore tbh
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nuclear proliferation for all
The greatest tool of peace
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until the world ends anyways
you don't actually believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program
Reuters Top News @Reuters
JUST IN: Iran will reverse exceeding limits of enriched uranium stockpile once European signatories to nuclear deal meet their obligation, foreign minister says. Read more: https://reut.rs/2J3ra6U
Tbf US sanctions relief did fuckall for them anyway. The Europeans were the ones who really started trading with them.
Until we start leaning on Europe to play our stupid games and win our stupid prizes, this deal might pull through.
What's your take on the strategic value of propping up the Saudi led alliance as a counter-weight to Iran versus the humanitarian catastrophe they are causing, all within the context that Iran is an independent driving factor for the Yemeni war with their support of the rebels?
Is there a good solution to the problem, including solutions that would come at massive cost to the US, or are we still playing a game of every option sucks?
sorry i was taken aback by a nuanced query not partitioning all thought into dichotomous morality.
but, the Sunni Arab-Shia Persian struggle for Middle Eastern supremacy is a conflict dating back centuries and will continue apace regardless of American involvement. the Yemeni Civil War will continue apace and function as a proxy conflict between the two regardless of American involvement. indeed when one maps the current territory held by Houthi v Hadi one sees it tracts almost perfectly with the South and North Yemen division of the post-Ottoman post-British Empire era and it becomes apparent the present disintegration of centralization is a return to rather than a descent away from Yemen's status quo.
and this must be ingrained in the American mind. the limits of our power must be ingrained in the American mind. much of the world exists outside our sphere of influence, factors and events occur over which we have limited or no control, and we have neither the public will nor the material capacity to remake this dark corner of the globe in our image. in the Middle East containment is the order of the day, of Jihadism, of Iran's geopolitical aspirations, of violence itself. we are correctly reorienting ourselves towards the Pacific Rim, to where the world's geopolitical locus continues to shift, and the Middle East is regressing back towards irrelevancy as their ability to impact the world's energy security diminishes.
as such, for the time being the best way to see to our strategic interests is to maintain our alliance with Saudi Arabia while using said influence to constrain their behavior. for them, the carrot, for Iran, the stick, but it ought be pellucid neither polity is invariably serving American interests and the Saudi capacity to do harm is rapidly approaching the capacity extant in their Shia counterparts, and that they will require as much handling going forward. but they did not prop up the Assad regime enabling the slaughter of hundreds of thousands and a societal vacuum wherein ISIS's reconstitution began, they did not provide the Houthis the material support that enabled them to go from a low-grade insurgency in the hinterlands to an organization capable of destroying the state, they do not fund the substate violence of Hamas and Hezbollah. they do, however, represent the branch of Islam to which 90% of the world's Muslims adhere making any kind of roommate switch unthinkable. the choice between the two is clear, and while total disengagement is tempting to many i can only see that resulting in the intensification of the proxy wars, and the establishment of further vacuums in which Jihadism may gestate.
tldr engagement is unfortunate but necessary, as such, team House of Saud, but use all available tools bribes and threats to ensure they do what is in our interests and the interests of humanity id est not blockading Yemen, not alienating Qatar, not chainsawing journalists.
bonesawing*
it's possible without the Qatar blockade they wouldn't have bought Neymar and an already inflated transfer market wouldn't have exploded so spectacularly, leading to an absurd Coutinho sale funding acquisitions of VVD and Alisson
basically Liverpool and LeBron were did a solid by Saudi Arabia