Iranian War Is Not The Same As Iraq

There is a similarity though in how the endgame of this is being approached.
The campaign in Iraq was rightfully criticised because of the critical lack of strategy in terms of what came next after saddam was toppled.
There seems to be no defined objective here either so there is the same risk of mission creep and protracted instability.

What does it tell you? After all Israel and the US have been doing exactly that for years in the region too.

Day before yesterday we hit a primary school and killed 65 mostly young children. We have the technology to not hit schools full of children. What’s that say about us?

Given there’s been no nuclear response from Iran, it’s blindingly obvious their possession of any serious weaponry has been greatly exaggerated. This is just Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Libya) all over again and it will turn out the same way: quick air victory, long term utter failure with unforeseen consequences we’ll be dealing with for decades.

All your posts are about speculation and what if's.... from how much Uranium to what they will do or not etc etc.

So why reply... but then i recognised the name.

Also the way Iran is lobbing ballistic missiles and drones at neighbouring countries who absolutely did not take part in the action against them and wouldn’t allow their soil to be used tells you a lot about the IRCG and no it’s not just US bases, it’s hotels, apartment buildings, airports, civilian infrastructure.

Completely agree. People are incredibly naive, at best, about the nature and reach of the Iranian regime.

Some people seem to think the current war equates to the one in Iraq in the 2000s. It manifestly is not the same.
While Saddam treated Iraqis appallingly as the Islamic Republic has done to Iranians, Iran has been exporting terror throughout the Middle East via its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and Houtis, as well as elsewhere including the UK, where 20 terrorist attacks were foiled last year (announced yesterday.)

Cannot be bothered with conspiracy theories or pure speculation.

But yes it’s a discussion forum so you’re right, other people may like to discuss them.

People talk about plans for after the war - how do we know what plans may or may not be in place after the war? Did Britain have a plan for after the war when they went to war with Germany? Maybe they did I don’t know - or maybe they just felt the Nazi regime had to fall.

Not in the same sense, because the two situations aren't in any way similar and can't really be compared.

The US and Israel clearly want regime change in Iran, and while that was an obvious end goal of war against Nazi Germany, Britain did not initiate a conflict with Nazi Germany for the express purpose of toppling that regime. Indeed, in 1939 when war was declared, and certainly through 1942, there was no real certainty that Britain was going to prevail and have to consider what to do with post-war Germany in any case. WWII was a war of eradication, from the US and Israeli perspective at least, this action against Iran is not. The US clearly and understandably believes that if it had a mind to see it to conclusion it would ultimately prevail in a conflict with Iran, so it can think right now in terms of "what will we do after we win?". That's a wholly different proposition from the situation Britain faced in the first half of WWII or the Soviets were facing in 1941-43, because at those points in time they were fighting purely to survive and not really contemplating what to do post-victory.

From 1943 onwards that changed, and more and more thought was given to what on earth the victorious nations were going to do with the defeated ones, but even through the late 40s there wasn't always a consensus and it led to ongoing occupation, division, and the advent of things like the Berlin Wall and the Cold War.

Interestingly though, at the very first face-to-face meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin, Stalin pitched up and immediately enquired as to what the others planned to do once they had destroyed the Nazi regime 😀

@Alexandra2001 I agree with you that comparison to Iraq is pointless - as you say, different times, no troops on the ground and a very different regime.

To say the outcome will be worse however is just speculation unless you can see into the future.

And we also have to consider that the outcome of not intervening could equally be worse than intervening, if we are speculating.

Do you support this war then?

Iran is around 90m people, an Army/Militia of approx 1m, they have acute water shortages, spiralling inflation.... Iran and can and will stop oil tankers heading east and west, very little we can do about that, as these ships cannot get insurance

Nothing is going to be the same again, we will see a return to super hi energy costs, inflation, mass influx of migrants to Europe... very little of which will affect the USA.

I'm not saying Iran should be allowed a Nuclear weapon, no but i don't think trying to bomb Iran into total submission is great either.

The comparison to Iraq is pointless, different times, no troops on the ground and a very different regime but the outcome will be worse.

It absolutely is the same. Anyone who believes differently is naive or stupid or both.

And anyone who is comparing this to ww2 has lost sight of one small factor. Trump thinks he’s Hitler. So if you want to support him then it would be like Britain joining forces with Germany, not going against them.

Regime change is a non concept. It doesn’t exist.

Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and now Iran.

The reality is that no other country can bring about regime change, it has to come from within.

And the truth is that a dictator can only be a dictator with support.

The Iranian regime is in tact still. There will be a vote (all in secret, with very specific conditions) to elect a new leader.

There is no suggestion that anything is going to change for the Iranian people, absolutely none. In fact things are likely to get worse for them.

So while people might want to argue that invading Iran was apparently in the interests of the world, even though we know there were no nuclear weapons and this is just trump trying to throw his weight about before the dementia takes over the derangement, there is not a single person here who gives a shit about the Iranian people caught in the middle of this.

Nothing is going to change for them. Just like it didn’t in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, in fact in Iraq and Afghanistan things became markedly worse.

And anyone who thinks that women are going to benefit from this in any way shape or form seem to have lost sight of the fact that we’re talking about countries and a religion where women are already classed as nobodies. Whatever makes anyone think that’s likely to change now?

I don't think its me that's struggling with the op's point that Iran is not Iraq.

I don't think its me that's struggling with the op's point that Iran is not Iraq.

I never said Iran has nuclear weapons. I said it is seeking to develop them. No one knows how close they are.

But this is a fanatically religious regime, that celebrates martyrdom and believes 100 percent in an afterlife, is comfortable ( to say the least) with killing citizens and is dedicated to destroying Israel for reasons tied into its religion and racist/ religious hatred. And is funding a nest of terrorist groups to murder your citizens. So you know it’s serious in its genocidal intent against you, and their words aren’t rhetoric. If you had a neighbour on your border like this, who felt like this like you, would you rest of your laurels and think ‘ oh well, they probably aren’t too close with that nuclear bomb yet. Nothing to fear’ ?

And what? Are you struggling to keep up?

They particularly fall back to it if they have an anti Western mindset which many seem to have these days - even Westerners.

I think people think that Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, Yemen are all separate spaces, so when the USA or Israel launch attacks there it looks chaotic. It’s not separate though, these are all part of the same conflict with Iran as the backer. Also Syria under assad.

The point is if the IRCG falls you will eventually see stabilisation in the region. Funding cut off to Hamas, Hezbollah, houthis, militias in Iraq should actually see a reduction in violence in the long term

You are already starting to see the effects in Lebanon. Hezbollah fired at Israel because they are stupid, Israel responded and the Lebanese prime minister has told them they need to hand over their weapons and to sit down and shut up. There are pro-hezb accounts on twitter bemoaning Hezbollah’s behaviour. They have already been clearing weapons out of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon. They have the chance to be a normal country soon hopefully.

Cutting off China from Iranian oil will make everyone safer frankly and hopefully Ukrainians will stop being bombed with shaheed drones at some point.

Also Iranians are not Iraqis, there isn’t the same tribal sentiments, they aren’t arabs. It’s an entirely different country. Yes there are multiple ethnicities and no doubt some will agitate for independence movements.

Fundamentally in my view if you believe that Palestinians should have a state that is run for their own benefit and freedom to behave as a normal country (which I do, even if they keep kicking themselves in the ass) then you should wish that for Iranians too.

People who oppose this action either don’t understand whats going on, have a third worldist view so can’t identify the IRCG as imperialists or oppressors (which astounds me), are so anti war that they would have let numerous peoples around the world be massacred so they could feel smug or do understand and feel sad at the idea that a bunch of terror groups are about to get their funding massively diminished.

Given there’s been no nuclear response from Iran, it’s blindingly obvious their possession of any serious weaponry has been greatly exaggerated. This is just Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Libya) all over again and it will turn out the same way: quick air victory, long term utter failure with unforeseen consequences we’ll be dealing with for decades.