2026 Iran War Strategy and Analysis

People have a saying, that once you are in a hole, keep digging.

A Professor Robert Pape of Political Science at the University of Chicago said somewhere that NATO is finished, it is already dead, just they have not written the obituary.

He claims that people forget what NATO is. What it is, it is a command structure, where the American general is at the top, giving orders to the European general.

With this Strait of Hormuz issue the past few days, would any European general listen to what an American general asks him to do?

This is the kind of stuff, whether true or not, the lying Liberal media will never publish.

Time to sit back, and watch the show.

mattymat111 said:

Understanding Irans wars strategy ....

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Iran's strategy is very simple:

The excessive reliance on expensive and relatively scarce TLAMs indicates a failure to establish air supremacy over Iran, which would allow the use of bombs. The TLAM employment rate calls into question the Americans' ability to sustain this operation in the long term. Unless the permissiveness of the environment towards Iran fundamentally changes, even more TLAMs will be needed.

Furthermore, without considering Iran's adaptability, the interception rate of JASSM missiles may not be falling, but increasing. This completely contradicts the classic logic of air warfare, where defenses tend to degrade over time – see China transforming fighter jets into drones to overwhelm air defenses.

Everything points to a deliberate Iranian strategy:

Preservation of the most advanced systems
Initial use of lower layers of defense
Gradual entry of the most sophisticated systems at the most critical moment of the war

Now, with American stockpiles being depleted, the tide is turning.

Another critical factor:
Stockpiles of long-range missiles (such as JASSM) are being depleted.
The rate of air missions is falling.
Maintenance problems are beginning to affect fleet availability.

This scenario drastically reduces the US's ability to sustain intensive attacks.

This suggests a classic attrition war strategy:
Iran did not try to win at the beginning.
It tried to survive the initial impact.

Now, with American attrition:
Fewer missiles. More operational failures.

Temstar said:

Shilao's own take on this:

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His view is this wave of firing makes the story from Washington Post more likely - that'll be the one were they plan to land spec ops, build a runway, then land excavating equipment to dig out the uranium and then transport it away.

The plan would have been discussed, sensible people in the Pentagon think it's a stupid plan and don't want anything to do with it, so they start leaking it to the media to show that some in the military also think it's a dumb idea. And now Hegseth is firing anyone he thinks isn't onboard with the plan.

I'm curious if you guys think with today's JSOC, could Operation Eagle Claw be successfully carried out today?

They discussed this on Chahuahui too. The best historical comparison is something like Cactus Air Force during Guadalcanal campaign where they operated fighters from Henderson Field while getting attacked by the Japanese by both land and by naval bombardment on the regular. But with Henderson Airfield they took over a nearly completed air field from the Japanese, then Marine 1st Engineer Battalion spent 6 days working around the clock using material and equipment left by the Japanese to complete the airfield sufficiently to base fighters.

If you have to do this in the middle of Iran, air lifting in either rapid-set concrete or sheet plates yourself then it's scary to just think about the amount of logistic involved and how many things can go wrong. And that's before you get to the Tomb Raider-isk half of the operation.

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Such a plan would amount to little more than mass suicide with extra steps.

Even if they do manage to set up an operational air base (which actually shouldn’t be the hardest part of this plan since they have STOVL assets like F35Bs and Ospreys, so the actual runway requirement could be scaled back massively and/or the runway could take significant damage and still be operationally viable), how is that going to stop the Iranians just raining artillery, rockets, Shaheds and eventually FPVs on this base and just erase it with firepower?

It will be a much more difficult and far more risky and costly plan than even an amphibious assault.

The only way such a plan makes any sense if it is meant to be a massive diversion and decoy. Drop special forces and a load of engineering materials on a suitable Iranian nuclear site like they actually are going ahead with this plan to draw the best Iranian forces to an isolated and difficult to reach part of the country, then do the amphibious assault and airlift the special forces out. But even that plan has massive risks and is likely to result in unprecedented losses for US special forces.

horse said:

People have a saying, that once you are in a hole, keep digging.

A Professor Robert Pape of Political Science at the University of Chicago said somewhere that NATO is finished, it is already dead, just they have not written the obituary.

He claims that people forget what NATO is. What it is, it is a command structure, where the American general is at the top, giving orders to the European general.

With this Strait of Hormuz issue the past few days, would any European general listen to what an American general asks him to do?

This is the kind of stuff, whether true or not, the lying Liberal media will never publish.

Time to sit back, and watch the show.

Click to expand...

Even though EU has 32 countries, only a handful are doing the talking or making decisions most of the time . Some NATO countries GDP are so small that they don't have much of a military or money to contribute.

Iran has held on for a month and has shown it at least has less cucked leadership now who won't quit easily. It has proven it was smarter about dealing with CIA schemes hence Israel had to attack it externally instead of using guys from the inside.

I believe it has proven it's worthy of getting support from others now like Russia or China. It deserves that much for properly trying.

I wonder is Trump's master plan is simply to disrupt all oil production outside of the Western hemisphere to the greatest extent possible? Ukranian vassals are being ordered to hit Russian energy production in the middle of ongoing disruption to Middle East energy production and oil trade. Perhaps it's some sort of sorched earth policy to leave the rest of the world starved of energy in preparation for imperial retreat back to the Western hemisphere?

Randomuser said:

Iran has held on for a month and has shown it at least has less cucked leadership now who won't quit easily. It has proven it was smarter about dealing with CIA schemes hence Israel had to attack it externally instead of using guys from the inside.

I believe it has proven it's worthy of getting support from others now like Russia or China. It deserves that much for properly trying.

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Let's do a quick analysis.

Russia-Ukraine (manned fixed wing only):

270 planes/50 months from start of operation, 26 planes/12 months in 2025 (including 4x Tu-22Ms, 8x Tu-95s and 1x An-12 on the ground in Operation Spiderweb).



Average loss rate: 5.4/month overall, 2.2/month in 2025.

US-Iran:

2x E-3 Sentry, 8x KC-135, 1x F-35, 4x F-15, 1x A-10, 1x F-16. 17 total losses.



Average loss rate 17/month.

It is probably getting aid. Nowhere near as much as Ukraine got, but... I don't think they need it right now. Post-war, sure, they will need economic aid, but even then they'll have some extra money from taxing the GCC.

FriedRiceNSpice said:

I wonder is Trump's master plan is simply to disrupt all oil production outside of the Western hemisphere to the greatest extent possible? Ukranian vassals are being ordered to hit Russian energy production in the middle of ongoing disruption to Middle East energy production and oil trade. Perhaps it's some sort of sorched earth policy to leave the rest of the world starved of energy in preparation for imperial retreat back to the Western hemisphere?

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I’m sure Trump’s master plan is to enrich himself and his family, in that order.

Flying aircraft such as A-10 is criminal negligence

These aircrafts are more or less non-survivable in the modern era. It's one thing for Iran to fly air antiques due to tech and economic limitations but it's another thing altogether for US to willingly preserve this platform and even more, to actively use it in an active warzone.

It's such a stupid thing that I am half thinking that this is a conspiracy so that the Pentagon can point to this downing to finally convince Congress to retire this platform

FairAndUnbiased said:

Let's do a quick analysis.

Russia-Ukraine (manned fixed wing only):

270 planes/50 months from start of operation, 26 planes/12 months in 2025 (including 4x Tu-22Ms, 8x Tu-95s and 1x An-12 on the ground in Operation Spiderweb).

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Average loss rate: 5.4/month overall, 2.2/month in 2025.

US-Iran:

2x E-3 Sentry, 8x KC-135, 1x F-35, 4x F-15, 1x A-10, 1x F-16. 17 total losses.

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Average loss rate 17/month.

It is probably getting aid. Nowhere near as much as Ukraine got, but... I don't think they need it right now. Post-war, sure, they will need economic aid, but even then they'll have some extra money from taxing the GCC.

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+ 1 UH-60