2026 Iran War Strategy and Analysis
- Thread starter plawolf
- Start date
You mean JASSM-ER, with only 600 miles range. J-11B, J-16, J-20, J-35, heck, even Su-30MKK and Su-35 can go out and kill the carrying platforms long before they can launch the JASSM-ERs.
Price tag of the accumultaed losses of airframes is around 1.5--2 billion now.
Cost of 600 tomahawk covered ONLY by the lost airframes.
If they simply use ship or land launched missiles the full cost of war should be way less.
Cost of 600 tomahawk covered ONLY by the lost airframes.
If they simply use ship or land launched missiles the full cost of war should be way less.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Any use of nuclear weapons by America in Iran will not see much in the way of immediate military responses from any of the other world powers.
Instead the damage will be medium term and devastating. It will be the end of the U.S. as a global power, and cement is new position as world pariah and rouge state.
It will face a worldwide trade boycotts; diplomatic isolation as all of its allies and partners bar a tiny handful are forced by overwhelming global popular outrage to cut all ties; expulsion of it’s military bases from almost all foreign countries and likely face an economic/currency collapse on the scale of Zimbabwe, which will almost certainly descend into Civil War 2.0 as domestic politics polarises into ugly unrecognisable divisions.
You are waayyy too optimisitc. The EU and really much of the rest of the world has barely done jack shit since the beginning of the Israel-US-Iran war. If Trump was a bit more diplomatic instead of being an orange toddler, the EU would probably not even begin the derisking process from the US.
The EU/Europe would simply be content by sitting idly by as the war raged on.
If they actually cared about "human rights" and "international law" that they always peddled, they would have heavily sanctioned the US and put in embargoes, started anti-US petitions/motions in the ICC, UN, and other international bodies etc...
If America actually used tactical nuclear weapons on Iran, then it would almost certainly guarantee that Iran races to get its own bomb and use it on tiny, hyper vulnerable Israel as soon as it can.
And because America acts like an Israeli slave colony, crossing that line would not even solve the problem.
It would force Trump into something even worse, using enough strategic nuclear force to try to erase Iran completely, tunnels, bunkers, everything.
But that is where the logic becomes insane.
The radiation would not politely stay contained. It could hit surrounding states, including American-aligned ones.
And before Iran went down, it could still use whatever top-tier capabilities it has held back so far to wreck all regional energy infrastructure in one go.
Once that happens, the crisis stops being regional. The nuclear taboo is broken, other powers start recalculating, and every open front becomes more dangerous.
And even without getting into diplomacy, the economic blow alone, lost GCC energy and investment, hyper-inflationary shock, the American stock and bond markets' instant destruction, would be enough to push the ultra-polarized US toward a certain civil war.
Which is exactly why I think it is possible in theory, but still unlikely in practice.
And because America acts like an Israeli slave colony, crossing that line would not even solve the problem.
It would force Trump into something even worse, using enough strategic nuclear force to try to erase Iran completely, tunnels, bunkers, everything.
But that is where the logic becomes insane.
The radiation would not politely stay contained. It could hit surrounding states, including American-aligned ones.
And before Iran went down, it could still use whatever top-tier capabilities it has held back so far to wreck all regional energy infrastructure in one go.
Once that happens, the crisis stops being regional. The nuclear taboo is broken, other powers start recalculating, and every open front becomes more dangerous.
And even without getting into diplomacy, the economic blow alone, lost GCC energy and investment, hyper-inflationary shock, the American stock and bond markets' instant destruction, would be enough to push the ultra-polarized US toward a certain civil war.
Which is exactly why I think it is possible in theory, but still unlikely in practice.
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FriedRiceNSpice
Major
Or they simply have Israel do it? Western countries are definitely not going to condemn/sanction Israel, and any criticism will simply be labeled as "anti-semitic."
I don't think they want to set the precedent. Russia has less to lose and more nukes.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Israel using a nuke will give interested 3rd parties far more direct and immediate military options as Israel does not have American nuclear capabilities to shield it from direct consequences. Nor does Israel have the warhead count to really force Iran to submit.
Israel is also ‘in the neighbourhood’, so will be infinitely more exposed to longer term reciprocity.
Israel drops a couple nukes on Iran:
Scenario 1, Pakistan officially extends its nuclear umbrella over Iran and threatens to end Israel outright if it drops any more nukes. Israel dropped nukes but is unable to force Iran to submit and is in an infinitely worse strategic position with all the fallout of using nukes and none of the benefits.
Scenario 2, Iran full sends its ballistic missiles at every Israeli nuclear reactor and doesn’t stop until most of Israel is Chernobyl 2.0.
Scenario 3, Iran cobbles together a quasi nuclear warhead with what enriched materials it has to hand and air burst it over Tel Aviv. Best case, they have a low efficiency nuke that is still several times Hiroshima, worst case they irradiates the place with the mother of all dirty bombs.
Scenario 4, a few months or years later someone drives a van into Tel Aviv with a full yield Iranian nuke in the back and clacks off Iran’s revenge.
The scenarios are not mutually exclusive.
Some Arabs in the Gulf have claimed the "Shahed" drones are coming from the opposite direction (not Iran), claim Israel/US is behind some of the drone attacks. Likewise, Iran has not claimed responsibility for many of the attacks in the middleast.