2026 Iran War Strategy and Analysis

[taxiya]

By this logic, nuclear fusion is also feasible today because 'nuclear fusion can be done', just it doesn't last very long. Science project vs feasibility at scale are completely different things.

You are trying to equate a regular service with an laboratory experiment. That makes you world champian of mental gymnastic.

Just so you know, China has been transporting coal on railroad cross the country for decades AT SCALE. China had used railroad to transport domestic crude cross the country for decades before importing cheaper oil via sea. When circumstance demands, everything works, and works as long as it needs to be. And you will have to pay the increased cost unless you can live without anything from China.

 

[abenomics12345]

And you will have to pay the increased cost unless you can live without anything from China.

My guy, if oil is 250, people will die from starvation because fertilizers are too expensive to use in India/Bangladesh/Africa. I.e if a customer dies they don't exactly buy things anymore.

People will stop driving in the US, and yes people will stop buying things that they can't afford, including from China; even while the refiners keep gouging profit. Feature, not bug, of the US system. I'm all for fleshing out the gory details of how the US society continue crumble as a result of this, but that is a 5-10 year process that's already underway.

The rest of the world operates on capitalism where yes, the poor will suffer from not being able to afford shit. Affordable childcare and healthcare is already a luxury in the US - is it difficult to imagine that a steak will become a luxury? What about cheap TVs from China?

If oil is at 250, a big portion of oil demand at 100/120 will have gone away (i.e they cannot afford it, or their SE Asian economy imploded) such that oil via the ocean is readily available again for the richer/better off countries. I.e you would never bother to ship oil via the train because you can just buy it at the going price.

If the condition of 250 oil is because the US actually blockaded Chinese oil for 6 months, then as I've said many times before rare earth ban + blockade of Taiwan would be likely the response in which INDOPACOM gets to find out how DF missiles cooks them.

Shipping oil from Iran via rail is like virtue signaling.

 

[GZDRefugee]

In a real shooting war, China clears the board in terms of US military assets within the first and second island chains in the opening days or even hours of the conflict. That’s bases, air assets and surface naval assets. Subs might be harder but are largely irrelevant in terms of land attack capabilities, and trying to rely on subs to spam tomahawks where the PLA rules the waves and the skies is just making the PLAN’s job of hunting down USN SSNs so much easier.

Once those forward positions and naval forces are gone, what is the US going to use to hit mainland China with? Tweets? B2s are few in number and essentially non-survivable in the kind of threat environment they will need to fly through to get within weapons range of mainland targets.

It is precisely because China will be so overwhelmingly effective at completely annihilating US forces conventionally that there is a real risk that an enraged and terrified America who cannot fight back effectively conventionally will seek to escalate into the nuclear domain. And the cold logic of game theory maps out that once you are down the path of nuclear exchanges under those preconditions, it an almost inescapable inevitability that those nuclear exchanges will rapidly spiral out of all control into full blown thermonuclear global MAD.

It is only because China has already achieved effective nuclear MAD, and it has the forces and capability to accomplish a crushing conventional victory in East Asia that China now need to address the next escalation risk in the above escalation chain of nuclear idiocy by the Americans. As the Americans have now conclusively demonstrated, you just cannot count on them being sane or rational, so you do not want to bet the future existence of your entire civilisation on the assumption that when pushed to the literal abyss, future American leaders will have the intelligence and moral courage to step back and admit defeat instead of gleefully leaping off while dragging everyone else with them expecting their sky ghost to magic them wings to fly while everyone else falls to their doom.

I wouldn't put it past the Americans to sortie bombers and subs from the CONUS for symbolic strikes. Thus that conventional capability must be mirrored at the very least. Having the capability and using it are very different things.

Direct conflict between nuclear powers always has the potential for ending civilization. However, losing the West Pacific is not an existstential blow to the US. I don't see them risking CONUS for a forward position.

 

[Puss in Boots]

My guy, if oil is 250, people will die from starvation because fertilizers are too expensive to use in India/Bangladesh/Africa. I.e if a customer dies they don't exactly buy things anymore.

People will stop driving in the US, and yes people will stop buying things that they can't afford, including from China; even while the refiners keep gouging profit. Feature, not bug, of the US system. I'm all for fleshing out the gory details of how the US society continue crumble as a result of this, but that is a 5-10 year process that's already underway.

The rest of the world operates on capitalism where yes, the poor will suffer from not being able to afford shit. Affordable childcare and healthcare is already a luxury in the US - is it difficult to imagine that a steak will become a luxury? What about cheap TVs from China?

If oil is at 250, a big portion of oil demand at 100/120 will have gone away (i.e they cannot afford it, or their SE Asian economy imploded) such that oil via the ocean is readily available again for the richer/better off countries. I.e you would never bother to ship oil via the train because you can just buy it at the going price.

If the condition of 250 oil is because the US actually blockaded Chinese oil for 6 months, then as I've said many times before rare earth ban + blockade of Taiwan would be likely the response in which INDOPACOM gets to find out how DF missiles cooks them.

Shipping oil from Iran via rail is like virtue signaling.

The suffering of the poor isn't just about not being able to afford a TV!

In America, if the poor can't afford gas, they struggle to find suitable work. With rising food prices and housing costs, those living on the poverty line will soon be homeless.

Don't try to downplay the impact of this oil crisis on the American economy. When social tensions reach a breaking point, someone will be thinking of buying a rope and hanging people like you, who are oblivious to the hardships of ordinary people, from a lamppost.

 

[GZDRefugee]

Have you considered what would happen if the US still forcibly inspected Chinese cargo ships even when the Chinese navy was in the Strait of Hormuz? That would only make China appear weaker.

Blustering intimidation is meaningless; only being prepared to fight is true deterrence. As mentioned many times before, China has no advantage in the Middle East; everyone knows this.

The US would be very happy to engage in friction with China in the Middle East, while the Chinese navy would be at a significant disadvantage. If you were a decision-maker in the Chinese military and knew that sending warships to the Middle East would put the Chinese navy in such a disadvantageous position, would you still do it?

Don't always think about getting your momentary satisfaction; this is war, not a game! Any wrong decision will cause unimaginable losses!

Let's game out this in a thought experiment. Suppose you are the USN commander of the task force maintaining the blockade. A convoy of Chinese tankers escorted by the standard flotilla of a 054, 052DL and 903 attempt to sail past your picket. You must circumvent the 052 and 054 to attempt boarding and seizure. You know for a fact that the rival destroyer and frigate will not allow that to happen. Any hostile action against another nation's naval forces constitutes an Act of War. This is WAY above your paygrade as an O-6. To even initiate any action, you have to get clearance from the Secretary of DefenseWar minimum. That's 7 time zones away and the rival convoy is already steaming along. Do you:

A) Interdict anyways and risk starting WW3
B) Ping your superiors and wait for a response
C) Let them through

 

[taxiya]

People will stop driving in the US, and yes people will stop buying things that they can't afford, including from China; even while the refiners keep gouging profit. Feature, not bug, of the US system. I'm all for fleshing out the gory details of how the US society continue crumble as a result of this, but that is a 5-10 year process that's already underway.

Hahaha, that is the most moronic invention that I have ever heard of. One more gold medal of mental gymnastic.

Louis XVI had the same feature in his France, Nicolas II had that feature in his Russia. You should pay visits to them and ask how well the feature worked for them.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

People will stop driving in the US, and yes people will stop buying things that they can't afford, including from China; even while the refiners keep gouging profit. Feature, not bug, of the US system. I'm all for fleshing out the gory details of how the US society continue crumble as a result of this, but that is a 5-10 year process that's already underway.

The rest of the world operates on capitalism where yes, the poor will suffer from not being able to afford shit. Affordable childcare and healthcare is already a luxury in the US - is it difficult to imagine that a steak will become a luxury? What about cheap TVs from China?

If society really does crumble and die in the US and across the West and Japan - then what will the ruling class in the US rule over? You think Trump's goal is to bring about destruction of Western civilization? Yes, life is miserable for bottom third of US society, but things are still tolerable for the middle third, and the top third still enjoy better material conditions than the overwhelming majority of people on Earth.

 

[Puss in Boots]

Let's game out this in a thought experiment. Suppose you are the USN commander of the task force maintaining the blockade. A convoy of Chinese tankers escorted by the standard flotilla of a 054, 052DL and 903 attempt to sail past your picket. You must circumvent the 052 and 054 to attempt boarding and seizure. You know for a fact that the rival destroyer and frigate will not allow that to happen. Any hostile action against another nation's naval forces constitutes an Act of War. This is WAY above your paygrade as an O-6. To even initiate any action, you have to get clearance from the Secretary of DefenseWar minimum. That's 7 time zones away and the rival convoy is already steaming along. Do you:

A) Interdict anyways and risk starting WW3
B) Ping your superiors and wait for a response
C) Let them through

As you said, if the US military intercepts Chinese warships, what can the Chinese navy do? Will the Chinese warships open fire?
1. The US is currently eager to drag China into the quagmire of the Middle East!
2. The US has sufficient confidence in its military capabilities in the Middle East!
3. The US has accepted the fact that it will be surpassed by China in peacetime! Therefore, they are willing to use war to change the current situation!
When speculating about the other side's behavior, you often assume that the other side dares not engage in a real battle with you, which is a very wrong idea. If the United States wants to start a war with you, how should you respond?

 

[GZDRefugee]

As you said, if the US military intercepts Chinese warships, what can the Chinese navy do? Will the Chinese warships open fire?
1. The US is currently eager to drag China into the quagmire of the Middle East!
2. The US has sufficient confidence in its military capabilities in the Middle East!
3. The US has accepted the fact that it will be surpassed by China in peacetime! Therefore, they are willing to use war to change the current situation!
When speculating about the other side's behavior, you often assume that the other side dares not engage in a real battle with you, which is a very wrong idea. If the United States wants to start a war with you, how should you respond?

Obviously. If the US attempts to board, the Chinese navy ships will open fire.

If the US wants to start a war, I would give them exactly what they want and vaporize all American bases within the Second Island Chain. Why do I need to engage the US where they want to fight? No, I will hit them where they are weakest and it hurts the most.

Do I need to remind you that the US's Gulf bases are more hardened and have more layered AD than their Pacific bases? Despite that, they were rendered uninhabitable by primitive Iranian drones and missiles. As it stands right now, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and Korea would capitulate quickly because their energy imports are already compromised and they are staring down an arsenal an order of magnitude stronger than Iran's. THAAD batteries were transferred from Korea and MEUs were transferred from Japan. Their defenses are ALREADY weakened. You took out a convoy of Chinese ships, congratulations. You lost the entire Western Pacific for your troubles.

 

[Puss in Boots]

Obviously. If the US attempts to board, the Chinese navy ships will open fire.

If the US wants to start a war, I would give them exactly what they want and vaporize all American bases within the Second Island Chain. Why do I need to engage the US where they want to fight? No, I will hit them where they are weakest and it hurts the most.

Do I need to remind you that the US's Gulf bases are more hardened and have more layered AD than their Pacific bases? Despite that, they were rendered uninhabitable by primitive Iranian drones and missiles. As it stands right now, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and Korea would capitulate quickly because their energy imports are already compromised and they are staring down an arsenal an order of magnitude stronger than Iran's. THAAD batteries were transferred from Korea and MEUs were transferred from Japan. Their defenses are ALREADY weakened. You took out a convoy of Chinese ships, congratulations. You lost the entire Western Pacific for your troubles.

Is China out of its mind? In the current environment, China is developing steadily while the US is rapidly declining. What's the point of choosing this time to fight a war with the US? There's never a guaranteed victory in war. Don't push yourself to the gambling table and confront a madman unless absolutely necessary!
You're making the same mistake I mentioned earlier, always assuming the enemy is weak. You never consider what would happen if things didn't turn out the way you imagine! This is very similar to Trump's thinking.