Since your column is called "Bet on It," perhaps you'd like to offer odds of a specific outcome. Your analysis of military operations ("if we fight, we win") is questionable, and your forecast of disaster("there will be no victory") may be premature.
Mr. Joe can put a perfect circular hole in the wall but he has problem patching it up. The solution is not to put holes in the wall, perfect or not. Can't blame Mr. Joe for "he ain't putting those holes in the wall anymore".
USA turning its ships from Persian gulf back home would be an excellent outcome for Americans, people of Iran and everyone else in the region. They should not have gone there in first place. Calling this "we can't even win wars anymore" is not correct, as the desire to not escalate the war might be coming from the fact that USA might have learned its lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.
May be the current admin miscalculated and hoped a lot will be achieved with very little. But miscalculations are part of the war. They are not falling for the sunk cost fallacy here an escalating further.
It is best for everyone to pretend this war is a huge success and give the current admin the golden bridge to retreat.
That or a full scale invasion comes after midterms.
The US hasn't had a well planned peace since the end of WWII. Though it would be difficult to see a modern day MacArthur running any mideast country. One problem is both Liberals and Conservatives in this country think everyone wants to be an American and have an American style government. They don't. The genius of the Marshall Plan was that it was like to like. From a Western Style Democracy to other countries that were also Western and had at least a nodding acquaintance with Democracy in their histories. Before Hitler there was the Weimar Republic. We send people to the mideast that want to lecture them on how many sexes there are or Duchamp's Fountain. They want better education for their girls as well as the boys, electricity, clean water and not being ruled by fanatics.
Do you want the US to put ground troops in Iran? To genocide the Iranian people? Cause those are your options for forcing a peace on them right now.
What do you dislike about the peace in 1991?
Personally I don’t think we should have sanctioned Saddam afterwards but I think I’m in lonely company.
The 2003 Iraq war was “finishing the job”. I wish it went unfinished.
Similarly while I don’t think the Iran war should have been started, I’m quite glad it’s not escalating. I’d rather “lose” than win by blowing the entire region up and/or doing another Iraq.
Reading comprehension is hard apparently. The post you are replying to did not state "the US is in the process of attempting to genocide Iran." The post in question stated "the US government's stated end goals: an Iran that is not hostile to the US or its allies, which also renounces pursuit of a nuclear weapon, are unlikely to be achieved without marching into Iran and occupying Tehran, or genociding the Iranian people. Neither is on the table for very good reasons, ergo, the end goal 'force Iran to not be hostile to the US or its allies and also renounce seeking nuclear weapons' is very unlikely to be achieved via current means under current circumstances."
This is why it's important to argue based on logically analyzing factual claims ("is it true or false that to destroy a large industrial project like a nuclear program requires a ground occupation? Is it true or false that airpower is insufficient to make a narrow waterway safely traversable? If so on either count, is a ground occupation within America's capabilities or not? Or is one in America's interests, or not?") and not primitive word association (the post uses the word genocide, genocide is a bad word, ergo the post makes bad arguments) if you want people to take you seriously.
Do you think we can change Irans government by bombing them even more? How much? Why would that work when it hasn’t so far?
We have caused regime change precisely one war from the air in our entire history. Japan in ww2. This did leave some japanese alive, so it wasn’t a total genocide, but we sure killed a lot of civilians!
And the japanese in that scenario had no way to attack our civilians (which Iran can do in the gulf). Once you start going down the “firebomb and starve them till they surrender” route Iran can devastate the civilians of our gulf allies, something Japan could never do in ww2. So if you want to prevent that you would need to escalate so hard and so quick that your completely eliminated all retaliatory capability at once. Given the failure to do that with six months of bombing, it stands to reason that such an escalation would require essentially indiscriminate use of WMD.
So if you want to “win” the Iran war and you don’t want ground troops, the best case you’re looking at is doing what we did to Japan in ww2. Worst case you have to go even harder, because there is nobody over there that is willing and able to enforce a surrender. If they don’t surrender you literally have to kill them to the last man.
If that’s not “genocide” it’s sure in the same ballpark.
I am not arguing with you one whit that it would require (someone’s) boots on the ground to take out the regime.
But it turns out Chartertopia was correct and I was wrong: you were indeed being hyperbolic with your claim of “genociding the Iranian people”.
But even if we are playing your game of ‘what would it take to get the Iranians to surrender’, you are just 100% wrong with this claim of “If they don’t surrender you literally have to kill them to the last man.”
You would have to kill the government leadership, the military and the police “to the last man”. You would *not* have to kill the entire Iranian populace. Period. That’s just wrong.
1) Do you believe I'm claiming that we are CURRENTLY genociding the Iranian people? I didn't. I clarified it several times, and Zmflavius spelled it out for you too. Are you still confused?
2) "You would have to kill the government leadership, the military and the police"
How are you going to do this using only AirPower? Haven't you been attempting to do this for six months? It hasn't worked, despite several successful decapitation strikes.
Without troops on the ground I don't see how you could kill enough of the Iranian regime to cause its collapse without killing huge numbers of civilians in the process.
The very act of killing so many civilians would itself cause many of them to support the regime in revenge, creating even more enemies.
As you killed more and more civilians, why would the Iranian regime stop holding back on attacking the critical civilian infrastructure of our gulf allies?
Pretty much this, yeah. It's weird that people are lasering in on "genocide" - yes, this much is true, "stopping the nuclear program and stopping the ship attacks" would be as much accomplished by invading Iran and occupying the country than by "genociding the Iranian people" and more effectively and less immorally besides. But *if ground invasion is off the table*, then this is likely impossible without means at least as ugly as the firebombing of Japan. Probably a lot more ugly, in truth. We tend to underestimate, relative to how bad things had actually gotten in Japan by August 1945, how close a thing the surrender was, and how bad things were likely to get even absent any American invasion but with continued conventional bombing.
The nuclear bombs were specifically convenient because they offered the peace faction a Schelling point to rally around to justify unconditional surrender. The actual facts on the ground had been obvious for months, really since at least March 1945. And yet, in the 24 hours before the surrender, desperate hardline troops, with actually a good deal of not so tacit General Staff backing, stormed the Imperial Palace to arrest the Emperor and find and destroy the surrender order tapes to prevent the surrender order from going out (unsuccessfully, thankfully). This, even though Japan had effectively been turned into a wasteland of ash and bone over the prior 6 or so months, since to many it was still preferable to "一億玉砕" ("100 million (ie the entire population of Japan) will die gloriously for the Emperor" - yes they really spent pretty much all of the last year of the war painting this slogan on walls and screaming it near continuously over the radio and in rallies. Former Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe recorded in his diaries how deeply unnerved he was by how often he heard it, and how matter of fact the people saying it were). Point being, fanaticism can lead to some genuinely unhinged behavior, on even a national scale. Whether in the service of the Emperor, or in pursuit of 70 virgins in the afterlife.
And TBC, I am not arguing that the firebombing of Japan was a "genocide" (since it was not), nor that an equivalent act in Iran itself would be a "genocide". But OTOH, had Japan delayed the surrender by even a few months, the civilian death toll, not only in Japan's occupied territories, but also in Japan itself, would have almost certainly skyrocketed. Historically, a bit under half of Japan's autumn 1945 harvest was destroyed by the combination of war damage, Typhoons Ida and Louise, and the coldest summer in Japan (or Earth, for that matter) since the 1816 Year Without a Summer. It didn't matter as much then because just before surrender, the Japanese military released its hoarded food supply (to the local yakuza, so the civilian population didn't get to eat for free, but they did get to actually eat it), while the flood of American GIs brought another source of black market food that kept per capita daily calorie levels just above 1000. Things would actually get worse in 1946 once the Japanese ate through the released military hoard, with official daily rations dropping to about 750 calories per capita in Tokyo and about 1000 calories per capita in rural areas, though usually there were about 500-600 black market calories available depending on time and region. It wasn't until late 1946 when a flood of surplus American wheat, corn, milk, lard, and beans, averaging around 1.5-2 million tons a year, pushed Japanese diets back to prewar levels (though this wouldn't fully occur until 1951). Obviously, absent any surrender, there was going to be no flood of released military food stores or diverted GI food or American food aid, but there would still be the collapsed harvest, in which case 750-1250 calories per capita per day is going to start looking more like an aspirational goal. If you try to keep a population going through heavy labor or soldiering on a daily average of 750-1250 actual calories for a year, you'll be lucky if you only have a 30% death toll.
That's what it all comes down to in the end. The level of desperation we'd would probably have to actually inflict from the air to convince the eschaton immanentizers in Tehran to fully give in would likely have to rival that Japan was coasting towards in late 1945 before getting them to reconsider the idea. Especially if we aren't just walking in and physically heaving them out from the government buildings in Tehran with ground troops and having an American occupation commander issue the orders to dismantle the nuclear program and the IRGC instead. Or offering major concessions an Iranian right to partially control the Strait, or not dismantling the nuclear program. If they don't agree to that, we'll do...what? Bomb them some more?
“It's weird that people are lasering in on ‘genocide’"
Given how leftists are Orwellianly throwing around the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions, when the reality is that it is Hamas and many Palestinians who seek the genocide of Jewish Israelis “from the river to the sea”, it is not weird at all that people are “lasering in on ‘genocide’”
Stop throwing around words used for political purposes that are simply wrong - or at very best politically charged *and* bigly bigly bigly misleading - and then maybe folks will take the rest of your argument seriously.
And Japan actually had a leadership structure that could surrender and get the military and to comply (putting down the coup aside).
It's not clear to me Iran has this. The side effect of decapitation striking them is it's not clear to me that "Iran" could surrender to us even if it wanted too. It's just way to easy for a faction to launch another missile or drone or lay another naval mine without "permission" (from who I don't even know).
It seems obvious to me Trump thought this would be another Chavez thing, but Iranian regime is just more resilient. By trying to destroy it you actually may have made it impossible to find someone to negotiate with.
I would add there was an episode during the war where Trump threatened to destroy Irans power and water facilities (something about ending a great civilization). He was no doubt I formed that Iran could easily retaliate by destroying the power and water facilities of our gulf allies (and perhaps our military bases as well, which I’m told have proven vulnerable).
He backed down. This shows that if we really wanted to escalate the air campaign to the point where Iran could not retaliate, we would need to go even further (then an attack designed to slowly kill many civilians indirectly) and basically remove their retaliatory capability completely. I can’t see how this is done with Iranians still alive.
In 1991 perhaps air dominance was great enough that America could impose its will that way (though people in that era didn’t try to bomb Iran). But in 2026 the tech stack doesn’t seem to favor air dominance. Furthermore, due to our unprovoked attack and the fact we are providing weapons and targeting data to Ukraine, Russia and China seem to have no problem doing the same for Iran. This places satellites and industrial production completely outside our escalation capabilities without starting a world war.
So again, I don’t see a way to win from the air without literally reducing Iran to a smoking crater.
He tossed off genocide as if it were a possible way to end the Iran war, other than just quitting.
I tossed of several ways of committing genocide, such as nuclear war, poison gas, burning the entire country.
He said he was suggesting ways to win the war and he would rather lose, and he did not understand.
I said I was playing his hyperbole game.
He said he did not understand.
I said apparently his genocide hyperbole was meaningless then.
He again said he literally didn’t understand.
And you jump in as if you’re the wise elder whose patronizing lecture will bring lightness to my darkness? You’re claiming his hyperbole about genocide was factual?
I think not. Best stick with your day job instead of applying to be a mediator.
I literally said I think we should quit the war, because the alternative are a ground invasion or genocide.
Bryan is complaining that the US isn't "winning" the Iran War. But the only way to "win" the Iran war is to do something horrible.
In 1991 it "won" the Iraq war by leaving Saddam in power and sanctioning his people for 12 years, causing untold death and suffering.
In 2003 is "won" the Iraq war by sending in a ground army, which promptly turned into a quagmire.
So I'm not sure what Bryan is complaining about in his post. The current Iran war is basically 1991 Iraq, but Iran has better geographical advantages and the tech stack is different enough from 1991 that we are even less capable of imposing our will from the air. Why is he even making this post then? What does he want the USA to do so that it can "win"?
Yes, and that’s stupid and shows the same casual misunderstanding of genocide as do the yahoos claiming Israel is genociding Gaza.
That’s why I added my own hyperbolic casualness about genocide by nukes, nerve gas, burning everyone alive, and you claimed to be baffled, mystified, utterly uncomprehending (see the hyperbole there?) and you claimed more bafflement.
Ok, what’s “stupid”? Do you think we can change Irans government by bombing then even more? How much? Why would that work when it hasn’t so far?
We have caused regime change precisely one war from the air in our entire history. Japan in ww2. This did leave some japanese alive, so it wasn’t a total genocide, but we sure killed a lot of civilians!
And the japanese in that scenario had no way to attack our civilians (which Iran can do in the gulf).
So if you want to “win” the Iran war and you don’t want ground troops, the best case you’re looking at is doing what we did to Japan in ww2. Worst case you have to go even harder, because there is nobody over there that is willing and able to enforce a surrender.
If that’s not “genocide” it’s sure in the same ballpark.
This may have to do with a blind spot that contemporary Americans, and especially contemporary American statesmen and stateswomen, have for ideological allies, neutrals, and enemies, in particular but without limitation religious enemies, especially Muslim enemies.
We--I should say parenthetically that by "we" I of course mean "they," as in any political essay. Especially contemporary American stateswomen and statesmen, and this goes more for the author of "The Art of the Deal" than for any man alive. We always believe that we can always make a deal (absent the few very bad men that we can clear away by force).
We cannot wrap our heads around the idea that there are lots of people who believe in what they consider higher things and absolutely will not settle for money or anything money can buy, either for their alliances, their nations, their parties, their cronies, or themselves.
They forget that as Americans we ought to be ideological ourselves. I refer the interested reader to the authoritative explanation in our official papers: the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
I'm curious regarding the reason you seem to posit 'return to status quo' as the best (best achievable?) end state. Maybe I've misunderstood. There is already obviously no returning to the prior status quo, for one thing. (The threat to close Hormuz was latent and unclear but now has been triggered, defined, and governments and private actors are investing in alternatives; the powers that be in Iran are redefined and resources reallocated if not depleted; the blockade functions & serves US purposes in important ways; gas prices are only moderately higher in the US and most of that owes to previous self-inflicted limitations on refinery capacity; etc. etc.).
Besides that closed door to a prior status quo, more positive outcomes are imminently achievable with unknown but certainly nonzero likelihood: a new equilibrium where Iran's oil is less accessible (extractable) per technical requirements to reduce output in the meanwhile; oil profits are reduced further thru ongoing blockades and inability of its engineers to implement more sophisticated technologies to extract it; reallocation of Iranian resources to economic survival through other means; new regional & global energy routes permanently defang the threat or reality of Iran's ability to inflict damage within Hormuz; global strategy continues to shift away from Iran-Hamas-jihad avenues of influence in effectively anti-communist Western nations, and so forth.
The US won't rebuild Iran because it is not in the US's interest to have a rebuilt Iran. It's within the realm of possibility although not possible for me to imagine that Iranian leaders could choose a Venezuelan path to managed nonaggression in some form that does not threaten or contributes to US interests. Otherwise, seems to me the Iranians are working hard to ensure Saudis/Israelis et al. mop up the rest of their proxies while they decay over time into something like North Korea, only less dangerous. That's a very different plan from unpeace by fractious committee (Iraq) or chaotic withdrawal (Afghanistan) but it is not self-evidently a bad plan.
Since your column is called "Bet on It," perhaps you'd like to offer odds of a specific outcome. Your analysis of military operations ("if we fight, we win") is questionable, and your forecast of disaster("there will be no victory") may be premature.
There's already a market for that: https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-iranian-regime-fall-by-the-end-of-2026
Sure, but I am asking for Bryan's odds, not Polymarket's
Mr. Joe can put a perfect circular hole in the wall but he has problem patching it up. The solution is not to put holes in the wall, perfect or not. Can't blame Mr. Joe for "he ain't putting those holes in the wall anymore".
USA turning its ships from Persian gulf back home would be an excellent outcome for Americans, people of Iran and everyone else in the region. They should not have gone there in first place. Calling this "we can't even win wars anymore" is not correct, as the desire to not escalate the war might be coming from the fact that USA might have learned its lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan.
May be the current admin miscalculated and hoped a lot will be achieved with very little. But miscalculations are part of the war. They are not falling for the sunk cost fallacy here an escalating further.
It is best for everyone to pretend this war is a huge success and give the current admin the golden bridge to retreat.
That or a full scale invasion comes after midterms.
The US hasn't had a well planned peace since the end of WWII. Though it would be difficult to see a modern day MacArthur running any mideast country. One problem is both Liberals and Conservatives in this country think everyone wants to be an American and have an American style government. They don't. The genius of the Marshall Plan was that it was like to like. From a Western Style Democracy to other countries that were also Western and had at least a nodding acquaintance with Democracy in their histories. Before Hitler there was the Weimar Republic. We send people to the mideast that want to lecture them on how many sexes there are or Duchamp's Fountain. They want better education for their girls as well as the boys, electricity, clean water and not being ruled by fanatics.
Do you want the US to put ground troops in Iran? To genocide the Iranian people? Cause those are your options for forcing a peace on them right now.
What do you dislike about the peace in 1991?
Personally I don’t think we should have sanctioned Saddam afterwards but I think I’m in lonely company.
The 2003 Iraq war was “finishing the job”. I wish it went unfinished.
Similarly while I don’t think the Iran war should have been started, I’m quite glad it’s not escalating. I’d rather “lose” than win by blowing the entire region up and/or doing another Iraq.
Genocide, really? You lost the argument right there, as dumb as claiming Israel is genociding Gaza.
Reading comprehension is hard apparently. The post you are replying to did not state "the US is in the process of attempting to genocide Iran." The post in question stated "the US government's stated end goals: an Iran that is not hostile to the US or its allies, which also renounces pursuit of a nuclear weapon, are unlikely to be achieved without marching into Iran and occupying Tehran, or genociding the Iranian people. Neither is on the table for very good reasons, ergo, the end goal 'force Iran to not be hostile to the US or its allies and also renounce seeking nuclear weapons' is very unlikely to be achieved via current means under current circumstances."
This is why it's important to argue based on logically analyzing factual claims ("is it true or false that to destroy a large industrial project like a nuclear program requires a ground occupation? Is it true or false that airpower is insufficient to make a narrow waterway safely traversable? If so on either count, is a ground occupation within America's capabilities or not? Or is one in America's interests, or not?") and not primitive word association (the post uses the word genocide, genocide is a bad word, ergo the post makes bad arguments) if you want people to take you seriously.
Anyhow, everything I have to say about Iran was said here (https://substack.com/@zmflavius/note/c-305687187), and my opinion has not much changed since.
Dude your comment was pretty sensible, until you repeated “genociding the Iranian people”.
Your claim is unlikely to be true, mostly because doing so would be both unnecessary and unhelpful to the aim of regime change.
Yes, many Iranians likely would die if the U.S. attempted regime change.
But that does not make it genocide!!!!!!!
The word genocide does not merely mean “many people die”. 🙄
Do you think we can change Irans government by bombing them even more? How much? Why would that work when it hasn’t so far?
We have caused regime change precisely one war from the air in our entire history. Japan in ww2. This did leave some japanese alive, so it wasn’t a total genocide, but we sure killed a lot of civilians!
And the japanese in that scenario had no way to attack our civilians (which Iran can do in the gulf). Once you start going down the “firebomb and starve them till they surrender” route Iran can devastate the civilians of our gulf allies, something Japan could never do in ww2. So if you want to prevent that you would need to escalate so hard and so quick that your completely eliminated all retaliatory capability at once. Given the failure to do that with six months of bombing, it stands to reason that such an escalation would require essentially indiscriminate use of WMD.
So if you want to “win” the Iran war and you don’t want ground troops, the best case you’re looking at is doing what we did to Japan in ww2. Worst case you have to go even harder, because there is nobody over there that is willing and able to enforce a surrender. If they don’t surrender you literally have to kill them to the last man.
If that’s not “genocide” it’s sure in the same ballpark.
I am not arguing with you one whit that it would require (someone’s) boots on the ground to take out the regime.
But it turns out Chartertopia was correct and I was wrong: you were indeed being hyperbolic with your claim of “genociding the Iranian people”.
But even if we are playing your game of ‘what would it take to get the Iranians to surrender’, you are just 100% wrong with this claim of “If they don’t surrender you literally have to kill them to the last man.”
You would have to kill the government leadership, the military and the police “to the last man”. You would *not* have to kill the entire Iranian populace. Period. That’s just wrong.
So it would *not* be genocide.
Words mean things.
1) Do you believe I'm claiming that we are CURRENTLY genociding the Iranian people? I didn't. I clarified it several times, and Zmflavius spelled it out for you too. Are you still confused?
2) "You would have to kill the government leadership, the military and the police"
How are you going to do this using only AirPower? Haven't you been attempting to do this for six months? It hasn't worked, despite several successful decapitation strikes.
Without troops on the ground I don't see how you could kill enough of the Iranian regime to cause its collapse without killing huge numbers of civilians in the process.
The very act of killing so many civilians would itself cause many of them to support the regime in revenge, creating even more enemies.
As you killed more and more civilians, why would the Iranian regime stop holding back on attacking the critical civilian infrastructure of our gulf allies?
Pretty much this, yeah. It's weird that people are lasering in on "genocide" - yes, this much is true, "stopping the nuclear program and stopping the ship attacks" would be as much accomplished by invading Iran and occupying the country than by "genociding the Iranian people" and more effectively and less immorally besides. But *if ground invasion is off the table*, then this is likely impossible without means at least as ugly as the firebombing of Japan. Probably a lot more ugly, in truth. We tend to underestimate, relative to how bad things had actually gotten in Japan by August 1945, how close a thing the surrender was, and how bad things were likely to get even absent any American invasion but with continued conventional bombing.
The nuclear bombs were specifically convenient because they offered the peace faction a Schelling point to rally around to justify unconditional surrender. The actual facts on the ground had been obvious for months, really since at least March 1945. And yet, in the 24 hours before the surrender, desperate hardline troops, with actually a good deal of not so tacit General Staff backing, stormed the Imperial Palace to arrest the Emperor and find and destroy the surrender order tapes to prevent the surrender order from going out (unsuccessfully, thankfully). This, even though Japan had effectively been turned into a wasteland of ash and bone over the prior 6 or so months, since to many it was still preferable to "一億玉砕" ("100 million (ie the entire population of Japan) will die gloriously for the Emperor" - yes they really spent pretty much all of the last year of the war painting this slogan on walls and screaming it near continuously over the radio and in rallies. Former Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe recorded in his diaries how deeply unnerved he was by how often he heard it, and how matter of fact the people saying it were). Point being, fanaticism can lead to some genuinely unhinged behavior, on even a national scale. Whether in the service of the Emperor, or in pursuit of 70 virgins in the afterlife.
And TBC, I am not arguing that the firebombing of Japan was a "genocide" (since it was not), nor that an equivalent act in Iran itself would be a "genocide". But OTOH, had Japan delayed the surrender by even a few months, the civilian death toll, not only in Japan's occupied territories, but also in Japan itself, would have almost certainly skyrocketed. Historically, a bit under half of Japan's autumn 1945 harvest was destroyed by the combination of war damage, Typhoons Ida and Louise, and the coldest summer in Japan (or Earth, for that matter) since the 1816 Year Without a Summer. It didn't matter as much then because just before surrender, the Japanese military released its hoarded food supply (to the local yakuza, so the civilian population didn't get to eat for free, but they did get to actually eat it), while the flood of American GIs brought another source of black market food that kept per capita daily calorie levels just above 1000. Things would actually get worse in 1946 once the Japanese ate through the released military hoard, with official daily rations dropping to about 750 calories per capita in Tokyo and about 1000 calories per capita in rural areas, though usually there were about 500-600 black market calories available depending on time and region. It wasn't until late 1946 when a flood of surplus American wheat, corn, milk, lard, and beans, averaging around 1.5-2 million tons a year, pushed Japanese diets back to prewar levels (though this wouldn't fully occur until 1951). Obviously, absent any surrender, there was going to be no flood of released military food stores or diverted GI food or American food aid, but there would still be the collapsed harvest, in which case 750-1250 calories per capita per day is going to start looking more like an aspirational goal. If you try to keep a population going through heavy labor or soldiering on a daily average of 750-1250 actual calories for a year, you'll be lucky if you only have a 30% death toll.
That's what it all comes down to in the end. The level of desperation we'd would probably have to actually inflict from the air to convince the eschaton immanentizers in Tehran to fully give in would likely have to rival that Japan was coasting towards in late 1945 before getting them to reconsider the idea. Especially if we aren't just walking in and physically heaving them out from the government buildings in Tehran with ground troops and having an American occupation commander issue the orders to dismantle the nuclear program and the IRGC instead. Or offering major concessions an Iranian right to partially control the Strait, or not dismantling the nuclear program. If they don't agree to that, we'll do...what? Bomb them some more?
“It's weird that people are lasering in on ‘genocide’"
Given how leftists are Orwellianly throwing around the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions, when the reality is that it is Hamas and many Palestinians who seek the genocide of Jewish Israelis “from the river to the sea”, it is not weird at all that people are “lasering in on ‘genocide’”
Stop throwing around words used for political purposes that are simply wrong - or at very best politically charged *and* bigly bigly bigly misleading - and then maybe folks will take the rest of your argument seriously.
And Japan actually had a leadership structure that could surrender and get the military and to comply (putting down the coup aside).
It's not clear to me Iran has this. The side effect of decapitation striking them is it's not clear to me that "Iran" could surrender to us even if it wanted too. It's just way to easy for a faction to launch another missile or drone or lay another naval mine without "permission" (from who I don't even know).
It seems obvious to me Trump thought this would be another Chavez thing, but Iranian regime is just more resilient. By trying to destroy it you actually may have made it impossible to find someone to negotiate with.
Thank you!
I would add there was an episode during the war where Trump threatened to destroy Irans power and water facilities (something about ending a great civilization). He was no doubt I formed that Iran could easily retaliate by destroying the power and water facilities of our gulf allies (and perhaps our military bases as well, which I’m told have proven vulnerable).
He backed down. This shows that if we really wanted to escalate the air campaign to the point where Iran could not retaliate, we would need to go even further (then an attack designed to slowly kill many civilians indirectly) and basically remove their retaliatory capability completely. I can’t see how this is done with Iranians still alive.
In 1991 perhaps air dominance was great enough that America could impose its will that way (though people in that era didn’t try to bomb Iran). But in 2026 the tech stack doesn’t seem to favor air dominance. Furthermore, due to our unprovoked attack and the fact we are providing weapons and targeting data to Ukraine, Russia and China seem to have no problem doing the same for Iran. This places satellites and industrial production completely outside our escalation capabilities without starting a world war.
So again, I don’t see a way to win from the air without literally reducing Iran to a smoking crater.
You’re telling me?
He tossed off genocide as if it were a possible way to end the Iran war, other than just quitting.
I tossed of several ways of committing genocide, such as nuclear war, poison gas, burning the entire country.
He said he was suggesting ways to win the war and he would rather lose, and he did not understand.
I said I was playing his hyperbole game.
He said he did not understand.
I said apparently his genocide hyperbole was meaningless then.
He again said he literally didn’t understand.
And you jump in as if you’re the wise elder whose patronizing lecture will bring lightness to my darkness? You’re claiming his hyperbole about genocide was factual?
I think not. Best stick with your day job instead of applying to be a mediator.
I literally said I think we should quit the war, because the alternative are a ground invasion or genocide.
Bryan is complaining that the US isn't "winning" the Iran War. But the only way to "win" the Iran war is to do something horrible.
In 1991 it "won" the Iraq war by leaving Saddam in power and sanctioning his people for 12 years, causing untold death and suffering.
In 2003 is "won" the Iraq war by sending in a ground army, which promptly turned into a quagmire.
So I'm not sure what Bryan is complaining about in his post. The current Iran war is basically 1991 Iraq, but Iran has better geographical advantages and the tech stack is different enough from 1991 that we are even less capable of imposing our will from the air. Why is he even making this post then? What does he want the USA to do so that it can "win"?
Yes, and that’s stupid and shows the same casual misunderstanding of genocide as do the yahoos claiming Israel is genociding Gaza.
That’s why I added my own hyperbolic casualness about genocide by nukes, nerve gas, burning everyone alive, and you claimed to be baffled, mystified, utterly uncomprehending (see the hyperbole there?) and you claimed more bafflement.
Ok, what’s “stupid”? Do you think we can change Irans government by bombing then even more? How much? Why would that work when it hasn’t so far?
We have caused regime change precisely one war from the air in our entire history. Japan in ww2. This did leave some japanese alive, so it wasn’t a total genocide, but we sure killed a lot of civilians!
And the japanese in that scenario had no way to attack our civilians (which Iran can do in the gulf).
So if you want to “win” the Iran war and you don’t want ground troops, the best case you’re looking at is doing what we did to Japan in ww2. Worst case you have to go even harder, because there is nobody over there that is willing and able to enforce a surrender.
If that’s not “genocide” it’s sure in the same ballpark.
Apparently my reply is hidden by Bryan.
It’s not by Bryan. it’s by Substack, despite what Substack claims about it being because of Bryan.
I do concede of all the awful “hide” decisions by Substack’s algorithm, this one is the most absurd of all.
It’s got to be based on the phrase “could eliminate the Iranîan population”.
Completely idiotic.
This may have to do with a blind spot that contemporary Americans, and especially contemporary American statesmen and stateswomen, have for ideological allies, neutrals, and enemies, in particular but without limitation religious enemies, especially Muslim enemies.
We--I should say parenthetically that by "we" I of course mean "they," as in any political essay. Especially contemporary American stateswomen and statesmen, and this goes more for the author of "The Art of the Deal" than for any man alive. We always believe that we can always make a deal (absent the few very bad men that we can clear away by force).
We cannot wrap our heads around the idea that there are lots of people who believe in what they consider higher things and absolutely will not settle for money or anything money can buy, either for their alliances, their nations, their parties, their cronies, or themselves.
They forget that as Americans we ought to be ideological ourselves. I refer the interested reader to the authoritative explanation in our official papers: the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
I'm curious regarding the reason you seem to posit 'return to status quo' as the best (best achievable?) end state. Maybe I've misunderstood. There is already obviously no returning to the prior status quo, for one thing. (The threat to close Hormuz was latent and unclear but now has been triggered, defined, and governments and private actors are investing in alternatives; the powers that be in Iran are redefined and resources reallocated if not depleted; the blockade functions & serves US purposes in important ways; gas prices are only moderately higher in the US and most of that owes to previous self-inflicted limitations on refinery capacity; etc. etc.).
Besides that closed door to a prior status quo, more positive outcomes are imminently achievable with unknown but certainly nonzero likelihood: a new equilibrium where Iran's oil is less accessible (extractable) per technical requirements to reduce output in the meanwhile; oil profits are reduced further thru ongoing blockades and inability of its engineers to implement more sophisticated technologies to extract it; reallocation of Iranian resources to economic survival through other means; new regional & global energy routes permanently defang the threat or reality of Iran's ability to inflict damage within Hormuz; global strategy continues to shift away from Iran-Hamas-jihad avenues of influence in effectively anti-communist Western nations, and so forth.
The US won't rebuild Iran because it is not in the US's interest to have a rebuilt Iran. It's within the realm of possibility although not possible for me to imagine that Iranian leaders could choose a Venezuelan path to managed nonaggression in some form that does not threaten or contributes to US interests. Otherwise, seems to me the Iranians are working hard to ensure Saudis/Israelis et al. mop up the rest of their proxies while they decay over time into something like North Korea, only less dangerous. That's a very different plan from unpeace by fractious committee (Iraq) or chaotic withdrawal (Afghanistan) but it is not self-evidently a bad plan.