No. of Recommendations: 2
That's why it's foolhardy. That's extremely unlikely to be sufficient for us to shape events in Iran.
Yeah, whacking their entire command structure is unlikely to do anything.
We're just throwing the dice on this as to what happens going forward - whether the existing regime survives, whether the country devolves into chaos, or what. Right now, the future of Iran going forward is likely to be left entirely to chance and forces outside of our control.
You missed the point.
The point for both Iran and Venezuela isn't Iran and Venezuela. The point is to isolate China and make life tougher for them. Which we've done, bigly.
One, two well placed bombs on Iran's oil terminals and *poof* goes 15% of China's oil imports.
Trump seems perfectly content to ignore the "You break it, you bought it" rule, and just wash his hands of everything in a month or so regardless of how it turns out.
We don't necessarily care who is running either country so long as they're not causing trouble in the region. THAT's the point.
Oh, I think China is going to come out of this smelling like a rose.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Sure.
They also know that the U.S. isn't going to let Hormuz stay closed for more than a short time, even if Iran manages to pull that off. They don't need a back-up.
Sure, okay. They'll just watch as portions of the economy suffer. LOL!
We're likely to just be replacing a very problematic partner for China with a far better one for them, on our own dime.
Erm, okay.
For one, the current regime is plenty friendly to the Chinese. For two, the Chinese in your scenario get to spend a ton of money rebuilding a bunch of stuff that we've shown we can blow away any time we feel like it.
And for the biggest sigh of all:
but I think it's phenomenally foolish for us to have hoped that this would work without some sort of plan for making it happen.
You have zero idea of what planning went on. You'd think you guys would pick up on the fact pattern emerging here on what Trump is doing but allow me to spell it out: They're fighting little wars now to prevent (or at least delay) the bigger war later.
It really is that simple. If we followed the Obama/Biden policy of allowing Iran to keep developing nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and drone capability we would have let a vital Chinese ally keep destabilizing that part of the world and threaten to slice oil supplies to everyone else (not us, since Thank God we quit listening to the democrats and are doing way more domestic production).
What we're doing instead is knocking legs off of China's stool one at a time. Their main squeeze in South America? Gone. Their little squeezes in South America? Only Brazil and Columbia are left. They can kiss goodbye their space observation platforms in Argentina and Peru (yes, they have them). Pretty soon their sidepiece Cuba won't be there either. Their cartel allies (yes, they work with China)? Are also being degraded now. Finally.
So long to their ability to base and raise hell in the Western Hemisphere easily.
Now we're cutting their leg of the stool in the Middle East. No more drones to Putin for his Ukrainian war. No more rockets to Yemen or Lebanon for the Houthis and Hezbollah. So on and so forth.
I get you guys hate Trump. But the world is complex place and the sophomoric assumptions this board runs on aren't cutting it. The links between China and various bad actors around the globe are being cut one by one. And this is a GOOD thing for the US.
