the notorious Field Manual FM 30-31B
- Thread starter Kurt
- Start date
How do you exactly "disrupt" Iran? Short of invasion and taking it over Iraq style, you will just piss it off even more. And a pissed off Iran can do many things that are harmful to it is neighbors, it will be worse than a hostile Iran.
well let me see.
embargo. sanction using international AND DOMESTIC laws. I am sure you know the play.
A piss off/hardline Iran would react with desperate measure that further isolate herself.
Iran should take a leaf out of China's book, although I think it is rather too late now.
embargo. sanction using international AND DOMESTIC laws. I am sure you know the play.
A piss off/hardline Iran would react with desperate measure that further isolate herself.
Iran should take a leaf out of China's book, although I think it is rather too late now.
Sanction, embargo is ALREADY happening right now, we are discussing, what is the motivation for attacking Iran, that is another step beyond hard diplomacy.
The posturing of attacking Iran (or the stated policy of regime change) is just way of keeping the pressure on Iran. Iran would go hardline and over-react by stirring up trouble all over middle east. What happen in Syria is more done by SA and the gulf states rather the US (a reaction to Iranian up the ante action(or is it the other way round?)). US is just taking the sides of SA. I reckon US would calculate that Iran is more a threat than militant Islamist. Iran is after all a nation state with vast resource at her command. Iran has an anti-west history and is willing and potentially ABLE to seriously hurt US interest.
By that logic, US would do all things possible to disrupt the Iranian regime including military action be it special force or full scaled occupation.
I agree with you that an overt military action is not likely at the moment. First I do not think the American people have the stomach for it and second is like you said the consequence/outcome is way too hard to predict and control. But like the argument put forth above, the us objective could be to disrupt with the minimum cost and you could never rule out military action entirely.
By that logic, US would do all things possible to disrupt the Iranian regime including military action be it special force or full scaled occupation.
I agree with you that an overt military action is not likely at the moment. First I do not think the American people have the stomach for it and second is like you said the consequence/outcome is way too hard to predict and control. But like the argument put forth above, the us objective could be to disrupt with the minimum cost and you could never rule out military action entirely.
So the end game is to scare Iran... by regime change it is neighbor, this sound like something that is feasible, but a bit overkill.
Kurt
Junior Member
and other stay-behind operation ideas are not about officially ruling the country, but controlling it. Afghanistan is a pretty good field experience on how an enemy - the Taliban - accomplishes that and what effect intended countermoves produce. Iraq is about how to control a metastable situation with a web of shadowy actors meant to act within the parameters the US wants them to. I see these things not as geostrategy, but more as experiments to hone doctrines for more risky games.
The ideological framework, of the world we currently created, makes it an odd move if the military of one country occupies another one and even more odd if they annex it. The idea of nations, a group of humans connected on many levels, with these links forming characteristics that create an internal concept, force the old conquest game to take a different approach. It helps to look on the map and see how old colonial empires vanished and what influential connections still exist. From a South American perspective, with all their independence from the mostly Iberian colonial powers, well, they felt like the "independent" US-backyard free for black ops.
The ideological framework, of the world we currently created, makes it an odd move if the military of one country occupies another one and even more odd if they annex it. The idea of nations, a group of humans connected on many levels, with these links forming characteristics that create an internal concept, force the old conquest game to take a different approach. It helps to look on the map and see how old colonial empires vanished and what influential connections still exist. From a South American perspective, with all their independence from the mostly Iberian colonial powers, well, they felt like the "independent" US-backyard free for black ops.
It is a very simple and obvious answer: a country crippled by invasion, chaos, inept or compliant rulers will not pose a challenge to countries interested in dominating it or its vacated area of influence.
Iran, like Russia, China, and India for example, is a regional power with interests (and the willpower and power to pursue them) that are independent from that of the Western (ex-colonial rulers) group of powers who have established domination around the world for the past few hundred years mostly through divide and conquer including taking advantage of pre-existing local conflicts. The Western powers have been maintaining their domination through a world order set up to be biased in their favor, including the preservation or promotion of conditions for local conflicts around the world to facilitate the divide and conquer strategy. A failed state (unable to develope) even if it generates hostility or terrorists is a less challenging outcome for the dominating powers than a stable state (able to develope) which pursues its own independent path.
Last edited:
Kurt
Junior Member
This wikipedia image highlights the ability to partition Iran into several ethnic groups, although urban areas like Tehran will pose a major problem to this (Iraq tried before, but made several miscalculations). In the North, Azerbaijan could be expanded with a Turkish population(and controlling the Kurdish region) and in the South the oilfields are in regions traditionally settled by Arabs (former region of interest for Iraq). This agglomeration is held together by a tradition of unity dating far back in time, although many of these are descendants of newer immigratory traditions that are being bandwaggoned to this proud narrative highlighted with the and Persia - Iran has been reinvented several times in their history, each time stretching back the narrative to . The other unifying influence is that Iran was converted to Shia and is now the major Shia country with an influential theocracy. As long as the Shia Sunni divide remains important, this provides a major glue against fractioning Iran.
It is a hard nut to crack in order to install something different there that does not pose a problem for the control of the oilfields and their pipelines. I highlighted this notorious field manual, because, while being likely a forgery, it does convincingly show actually employed techniques used for reliably guiding political entities by foreign influence - the modern concept of conquest.