6 ms·

Setting aside any considerations on our side: for this war (or really any war), it's worth turning the chessboard around to look at things from your adversary's

by bm3719 7mo ago

Setting aside any considerations on our side: for this war (or really any war), it's worth turning the chessboard around to look at things from your adversary's perspective as much as possible. If you're the Iranian regime, the world is a hostile place. You're surrounded by enemies and potential enemies. In your time of crisis, the friends you thought you had are acting like they don't know you. The situation is one of existential threat. A future reality with your head on a pike is a very real possibility. You don't exactly have many options here, so maybe you play the only move you can make. It's a risky one, but it's at least bold and will be effectuating. Interestingly, this move also attacks your real enemy: the globalized market. Iran would do well for itself in a world of 1926; in 2026, there's going to be friction. In a sense, they're not fighting the US/Israel. They're fighting our datacenters. I'm sure the strategy for this conflict was vibe-planned to a large extent. A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society and go live in a Hobbesian state of nature in your local park. That might work for awhile, but eventually, the system will come for you. And that's just neutrality. Pick a fight with capital, and you'll always lose.

davedx 7mo ago
> A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society and go live in a Hobbesian state of nature in your local park. Sounds more like the Taliban than Iran's ex-leadership. Pete Hegseth is hyper-conservative too. Actually all three of the main combatants are hardline religious groups.
- the_af 7mo ago
  > Pete Hegseth is hyper-conservative too. Actually all three of the main combatants are hardline religious groups. You get downvoted for saying something that's true, and it's not even a defense of the Irani theocratic dictatorship. Namely: at least some of the support for the war (and for Israel) in the US is religiously motivated. Religious as in "fundamentalist". This doesn't make the US a theocracy, but it does mean many of the decision makers are making decisions based at least partly on Christian fundamentalist doctrine. There are already some reports [1] of US troops complaining they are being told they've embarked on a mission from God. It boggles the mind. > "One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed “at any moment to join” operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ” > "“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added." (This was just one report of many). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran... Edit: wow, downvotes for quoting a mainstream newspaper with evidence that US policy is at least influenced by Christian fundamentalists, and this without any real argument to counter this, just drive-by downvoting? Sheesh, is this what passes for debate in HN?
  - engineer_22 7mo ago
    Now this is all conspiracy theory, but it's food for thought. The USA's media strategy appears to be aimed at Christian Zionism to justify involvement in Israel's regional affairs. There are many influential Christian Zionists in government and politics in the US. Ted Cruz comes to mind as one outspoken example. If you subscribe to these beliefs, all of this is perfectly rational, that this war is a signal of the end times, that the faithful should not shrink before the fight, the return of the Christ and millennium of peace are within reach. There has also been conspiratorial speculation that one of the goals of this war is to incite antisemitism in the United States, to spur the return of the diaspora in America to the Holy Land. Israel needs bodies, if they are to realize the Greater Israel Project. Now this is all conspiracy theory, but it's food for thought.
    - learingsci 7mo ago
      There are not many Christian zionists in decision making positions in the US. You’ve named 1 person and how much power does Cruz actually have. The powerful are non Christian zionists. That much is blatantly obvious. Kushner, Witkoff, Lutnick, the entourage around Epstein, most of the cabinet of the current (non Christian president), most of the cabinet of the prior (catholic so non dispensationalist) former president. The media itself, which is used to manufacture consent is filled with, owned by and answers to non Christian zionists. Get a clue.
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway-11-1 7mo ago
        the people currently making decisions may not be christian but are certainly beholden to christian zionist, their largest voting bloc are reactionary suburban white evangelicals
wossab 7mo ago
Iran is firmly sided with China and Russia. China buys all their oil and doesn't want to see US/Israel expand their reach. They are very likely to support Iran. On their end, Iran has been preparing for exactly this for decades. If anything, the complexity of the globalized market means more weak points to strike. Which in 2026 is cheap and easy with swarms of drones. Meanwhile, the US is still carrying out precision attacks with expensive ordnance which they have limited supplies of. TL;DR: Capital might very well lose this one.
- ignoramous 7mo ago
  > On their end, Iran has been preparing for exactly this for decades Given the 12 day war and now, it doesn't seem like they are putting much of a fight. The US air superiority has completely done them, it'd seem. > Iran is firmly sided with China and Russia. Doesn't seem like those two will move an inch.
  - mamonster 7mo ago
    Russia isn't moving for obvious reasons (I don't think IRGC planners even expected them to move, Putin has made it clear a 100 times he is out of anything involving Israel). But that said Putin arguably did his job already by destroying Patriot stocks and thus putting US on a timeline in terms of protection. With China the issue is different: They have a completely different military ecosystem so it's not like they can send them their own stuff. We already saw in Ukraine that running 2 types of equipment along each other is a pain in the ass and strains logistics. China is likely aiding them with satellite imagery instead.
    - the_af 7mo ago
      I think China will sit this one out. There's nothing to gain for them with direct involvement. Any assistance to Iran (like satellite imagery) will have limited effect, and the Chinese know it. In my opinion, there's no way the Islamic Republic survives this. For any rational international actor, there's no sense in becoming involved in a lost fight.
vrosas 7mo ago
Iran is on “death ground” as Sarah Paine would say. It’s a TERRIBLE idea to put your enemy on death ground because all they can do is fight now. We’re going to keep bombing them until there’s nothing left. Iran is going to end up looking like Afghanistan (a broken country of small feudal states) at the end of this. Edit: By Iran, I'm referring to what's left of the current Iranian administration and military, not the entirety of the Iranian people.
- RobertoG 7mo ago
  Or, here me out, you could just leave and go home. But I suppose that's unthinkable.
- keiferski 7mo ago
  No, this isn't what Paine means by death ground. Paine used that to refer to Soviet citizens/soldiers that knew they would be erased/eliminated if they lost. The Iranians don't think that their opponents want to eliminate their entire civilization.
  - malfist 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - keiferski 7mo ago
      Sure, those things exist, but let's not pretend that modern war is remotely comparable to the Eastern Front of WW2.
    - rayiner 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - malfist 7mo ago
        [flagged]
keiferski 7mo ago
Yes this is pretty much my read as well. You can debate the morality or pragmatism of this war (or any war) but fundamentally there is no winning against global Capital. The US, some other country, are just vectors for larger forces. Which IMO is why attempting to combat that from the outside is probably fruitless, and a better route is to try and gain control from the inside. Iran (or Russia, for that matter) would be dominant forces if they were integrated with their neighbors. Imagine Russia inside the EU – they'd have as much/more influence than Germany. But they're outside, increasingly isolated, and thus open to erosion, whether in a hostile war like today's, or just by being outcompeted and culturally left behind.
- wavemode 7mo ago
  This old clip comes to mind: https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE
- geoka9 7mo ago
  Some would say Russia is very much inside the US and somewhat inside the EU through its proxies (currently govts of Hungary and Slovakia, quite possibly in the future - France and Germany).
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
KellyCriterion 7mo ago
> well for itself in a world of 1926 The explanation is here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Seyed-Hosseini-23/publication/333455875/figure/fig2/AS:763940258734080@1559148959675/rans-population-growth-between-1960-and-2017.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Seyed-Hosseini-23/publi... Population grew from 1950 at 20+million to today 80+million; every country quadrupling the population would collapse?
zorked 7mo ago
They're fighting our datacenters. (...) A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society You do know that Iran has technical universities, works on advanced weaponry, and the leader of their National Security council has a computer science degree? It is important to at least look at things as they are, and not through the prism of orientalism. Iran's regime is socially conservative. But so is the current US government. There is no sign that they are anti-technology or isolationist.
- bm3719 7mo ago
  I agree, that's why they lasted as long as they did. It's a strategy that works, but only for awhile. They tried to use the apparatuses of global capital without fully integrating within it. That makes them an exteriority from the perspective of the market. In the end, that (plus their essential resource flows) only make them a more viable candidate for expansion of capital's machinic assemblage. The force of the market hasn't colonized all of the Earth yet; it yet has many peripheries. There's plenty of room for expansion in, say, central Africa. It'll get there eventually, but right now its focus is elsewhere. The assemblage will always weigh the costs/benefits, then select the next best space to expand into. That's what it's doing here. The goal is to convert some of its surplus value into ingesting a bit of its frontier, and make of it its own.
heraldgeezer 7mo ago
[flagged]
- ben_w 7mo ago
  > And so is being Israel with Iran right there with Hezbollah, Hamas etc... Incredibly biased comment. How would it help any of us, to imagine ourselves being an alternate reality version of the Iranian leadership who in turn are imagining themselves being the Israeli leadership? In order to guess what Iran does next, all we have to do is the first step, to imagine ourselves in the Iranian position, not to hypothesise about a much more competent Iranian leadership than actually exists which had the empathy needed to put itself in anyone else's position rather than call Israel and the USA un-metaphorically the big and little Satan.
throw310822 7mo ago
> In a sense, they're not fighting the US/Israel. They're fighting our datacenters. LOL. Sorry, this is silly. Do you really think that Iran hates data centers? The best scenario for Trump is to make this a limited war that nobody even notices outside of Iran's borders. He wants to announce to Americans "see? We did what we wanted and it was over in a few days, you barely noticed it". While the nightmare scenario is to end up bogged down in a long drawn war with global repercussions, inflation, market crashes or even boots on the ground for months and years. Iran can't win a military confrontation with the US, but it can make it so expensive that the US will decide to back off. These are strategic attacks, their form of "second strike". Raising the price of an attack on them, exactly as a nuclear armed country would retaliate on cities and not on military bases.

by bm3719 7mo ago

davedx 7mo ago

> A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society and go live in a Hobbesian state of nature in your local park. Sounds more like the Taliban than Iran's ex-leadership. Pete Hegseth is hyper-conservative too. Actually all three of the main combatants are hardline religious groups.

the_af 7mo ago
> Pete Hegseth is hyper-conservative too. Actually all three of the main combatants are hardline religious groups. You get downvoted for saying something that's true, and it's not even a defense of the Irani theocratic dictatorship. Namely: at least some of the support for the war (and for Israel) in the US is religiously motivated. Religious as in "fundamentalist". This doesn't make the US a theocracy, but it does mean many of the decision makers are making decisions based at least partly on Christian fundamentalist doctrine. There are already some reports [1] of US troops complaining they are being told they've embarked on a mission from God. It boggles the mind. > "One complainant, identified as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) in a unit that could be deployed “at any moment to join” operations against Iran, told MRFF in a complaint viewed by the Guardian that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ” > "“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added." (This was just one report of many). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran... Edit: wow, downvotes for quoting a mainstream newspaper with evidence that US policy is at least influenced by Christian fundamentalists, and this without any real argument to counter this, just drive-by downvoting? Sheesh, is this what passes for debate in HN?
- engineer_22 7mo ago
  Now this is all conspiracy theory, but it's food for thought. The USA's media strategy appears to be aimed at Christian Zionism to justify involvement in Israel's regional affairs. There are many influential Christian Zionists in government and politics in the US. Ted Cruz comes to mind as one outspoken example. If you subscribe to these beliefs, all of this is perfectly rational, that this war is a signal of the end times, that the faithful should not shrink before the fight, the return of the Christ and millennium of peace are within reach. There has also been conspiratorial speculation that one of the goals of this war is to incite antisemitism in the United States, to spur the return of the diaspora in America to the Holy Land. Israel needs bodies, if they are to realize the Greater Israel Project. Now this is all conspiracy theory, but it's food for thought.
  - learingsci 7mo ago
    There are not many Christian zionists in decision making positions in the US. You’ve named 1 person and how much power does Cruz actually have. The powerful are non Christian zionists. That much is blatantly obvious. Kushner, Witkoff, Lutnick, the entourage around Epstein, most of the cabinet of the current (non Christian president), most of the cabinet of the prior (catholic so non dispensationalist) former president. The media itself, which is used to manufacture consent is filled with, owned by and answers to non Christian zionists. Get a clue.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway-11-1 7mo ago
      the people currently making decisions may not be christian but are certainly beholden to christian zionist, their largest voting bloc are reactionary suburban white evangelicals

wossab 7mo ago

Iran is firmly sided with China and Russia. China buys all their oil and doesn't want to see US/Israel expand their reach. They are very likely to support Iran. On their end, Iran has been preparing for exactly this for decades. If anything, the complexity of the globalized market means more weak points to strike. Which in 2026 is cheap and easy with swarms of drones. Meanwhile, the US is still carrying out precision attacks with expensive ordnance which they have limited supplies of. TL;DR: Capital might very well lose this one.

ignoramous 7mo ago
> On their end, Iran has been preparing for exactly this for decades Given the 12 day war and now, it doesn't seem like they are putting much of a fight. The US air superiority has completely done them, it'd seem. > Iran is firmly sided with China and Russia. Doesn't seem like those two will move an inch.
- mamonster 7mo ago
  Russia isn't moving for obvious reasons (I don't think IRGC planners even expected them to move, Putin has made it clear a 100 times he is out of anything involving Israel). But that said Putin arguably did his job already by destroying Patriot stocks and thus putting US on a timeline in terms of protection. With China the issue is different: They have a completely different military ecosystem so it's not like they can send them their own stuff. We already saw in Ukraine that running 2 types of equipment along each other is a pain in the ass and strains logistics. China is likely aiding them with satellite imagery instead.
  - the_af 7mo ago
    I think China will sit this one out. There's nothing to gain for them with direct involvement. Any assistance to Iran (like satellite imagery) will have limited effect, and the Chinese know it. In my opinion, there's no way the Islamic Republic survives this. For any rational international actor, there's no sense in becoming involved in a lost fight.

vrosas 7mo ago

Iran is on “death ground” as Sarah Paine would say. It’s a TERRIBLE idea to put your enemy on death ground because all they can do is fight now. We’re going to keep bombing them until there’s nothing left. Iran is going to end up looking like Afghanistan (a broken country of small feudal states) at the end of this. Edit: By Iran, I'm referring to what's left of the current Iranian administration and military, not the entirety of the Iranian people.

RobertoG 7mo ago
Or, here me out, you could just leave and go home. But I suppose that's unthinkable.
keiferski 7mo ago
No, this isn't what Paine means by death ground. Paine used that to refer to Soviet citizens/soldiers that knew they would be erased/eliminated if they lost. The Iranians don't think that their opponents want to eliminate their entire civilization.
- malfist 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - keiferski 7mo ago
    Sure, those things exist, but let's not pretend that modern war is remotely comparable to the Eastern Front of WW2.
  - rayiner 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - malfist 7mo ago
      [flagged]

keiferski 7mo ago

Yes this is pretty much my read as well. You can debate the morality or pragmatism of this war (or any war) but fundamentally there is no winning against global Capital. The US, some other country, are just vectors for larger forces. Which IMO is why attempting to combat that from the outside is probably fruitless, and a better route is to try and gain control from the inside. Iran (or Russia, for that matter) would be dominant forces if they were integrated with their neighbors. Imagine Russia inside the EU – they'd have as much/more influence than Germany. But they're outside, increasingly isolated, and thus open to erosion, whether in a hostile war like today's, or just by being outcompeted and culturally left behind.

wavemode 7mo ago
This old clip comes to mind: https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE
geoka9 7mo ago
Some would say Russia is very much inside the US and somewhat inside the EU through its proxies (currently govts of Hungary and Slovakia, quite possibly in the future - France and Germany).

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

KellyCriterion 7mo ago

> well for itself in a world of 1926 The explanation is here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Seyed-Hosseini-23/publication/333455875/figure/fig2/AS:763940258734080@1559148959675/rans-population-growth-between-1960-and-2017.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Seyed-Hosseini-23/publi... Population grew from 1950 at 20+million to today 80+million; every country quadrupling the population would collapse?

zorked 7mo ago

They're fighting our datacenters. (...) A hyper-conservative regime like this will probably fare (at least in the long run) about as well as you would if you decide to nope out of society You do know that Iran has technical universities, works on advanced weaponry, and the leader of their National Security council has a computer science degree? It is important to at least look at things as they are, and not through the prism of orientalism. Iran's regime is socially conservative. But so is the current US government. There is no sign that they are anti-technology or isolationist.

bm3719 7mo ago
I agree, that's why they lasted as long as they did. It's a strategy that works, but only for awhile. They tried to use the apparatuses of global capital without fully integrating within it. That makes them an exteriority from the perspective of the market. In the end, that (plus their essential resource flows) only make them a more viable candidate for expansion of capital's machinic assemblage. The force of the market hasn't colonized all of the Earth yet; it yet has many peripheries. There's plenty of room for expansion in, say, central Africa. It'll get there eventually, but right now its focus is elsewhere. The assemblage will always weigh the costs/benefits, then select the next best space to expand into. That's what it's doing here. The goal is to convert some of its surplus value into ingesting a bit of its frontier, and make of it its own.

heraldgeezer 7mo ago

[flagged]

ben_w 7mo ago
> And so is being Israel with Iran right there with Hezbollah, Hamas etc... Incredibly biased comment. How would it help any of us, to imagine ourselves being an alternate reality version of the Iranian leadership who in turn are imagining themselves being the Israeli leadership? In order to guess what Iran does next, all we have to do is the first step, to imagine ourselves in the Iranian position, not to hypothesise about a much more competent Iranian leadership than actually exists which had the empathy needed to put itself in anyone else's position rather than call Israel and the USA un-metaphorically the big and little Satan.

throw310822 7mo ago

> In a sense, they're not fighting the US/Israel. They're fighting our datacenters. LOL. Sorry, this is silly. Do you really think that Iran hates data centers? The best scenario for Trump is to make this a limited war that nobody even notices outside of Iran's borders. He wants to announce to Americans "see? We did what we wanted and it was over in a few days, you barely noticed it". While the nightmare scenario is to end up bogged down in a long drawn war with global repercussions, inflation, market crashes or even boots on the ground for months and years. Iran can't win a military confrontation with the US, but it can make it so expensive that the US will decide to back off. These are strategic attacks, their form of "second strike". Raising the price of an attack on them, exactly as a nuclear armed country would retaliate on cities and not on military bases.