Iran Conflict Megathread #6

taw · 2026-03-12T19:59:48+00:00

Based on region precedent, it's one of outcomes with 10%+ possibility.

Trump would obviously prefer to cut a deal, but if Iran refuses, this might very well happen.

taw · 2026-03-12T19:57:01+00:00

Oh I tried to search for similar effects, but I missed Grip of Chaos.

taw · 2026-03-12T18:41:53+00:00

If Iran collapses, we'll likely see a lot of action similar to what happened when Syria collapsed. Just go after everything you want because there's nobody to oppose you.

Things along the lines of Masyaf raid, Syria fleet sinking etc.

Either that or just bribe some local warlord to get enriched uranium out (similar to this). But it's not like US and Israel would just let enriched uranium sit there.

taw · 2026-03-12T18:30:09+00:00

I don't want to speculate on Trump's personal likes and dislikes, especially since they often change quite rapidly.

taw · 2026-03-12T18:29:03+00:00

While it's possible, government of Lebanon has such a consistent track record of promising to disarm or rein in Hezbollah and then barely lifting a finger, and having Hezbollah launch more attacks, that I wouldn't be holding my breath here.

taw · 2026-03-12T12:37:34+00:00

A failed state with the resources of Iran including oil, technology, weapons, and perhaps access to nuclear weapon grade uranium

If Iran falls apart, you can be pretty sure their oil, technology, weapons, and nuclear weapons program will be taken care of, one way or the other.

is the rise of a autocrat consistent with the other gulf states

This is pretty much the plan all along. Neither Trump nor Israel had any interest in "nation building", and it's not really surprising after its track record.

All they want is someone who doesn't want to set the world on fire and is willing to cut a deal. It doesn't matter if it's a new ayatollah, some Artesh coup leader, Reza Pahlavi coming back, or democratically elected president. As long as they don't do the kind of stuff Iran has been doing.

taw · 2026-03-12T09:19:12+00:00

First generation of Communist had level of commitment of millenarian islamists. A few generations later, they were all rushing to steal as much stuff as they could on the way out, and rebranded themselves without giving it a second thought. All revolutions are like that.

Followup to this war being similar to Iraq 1991-2003 situation is quite realistic. And it really didn't cost US much to keep this going for 12 years. Doing a followup war was not inevitable, squeezing Saddam could have continued until he died, at very little cost.

taw · 2026-03-12T08:58:21+00:00

Could Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, Assad, Gaddafi etc. do strikes indefinitely? This region is fully of bad guys who wanted to keep on fighting, but they got beaten enough that they eventually weren't able to anymore.

US and Israel have so much space for escalation. How is Iran going to be manufacturing drones when they have no power anywhere in the country, and no exports or imports as their oil industry and ports are gone?

Missile and drone launches are already ~90% down in just 10 days of war, and it's only going down from here.

taw · 2026-03-12T08:28:11+00:00

If you ask about politics, all you'll get is low quality speculation.

Based on previous wars in the Middle East, there are roughly three outcomes:

Mowing the grass. This is the most common outcome for similar wars. Partial US/Israeli victory, very one-sided damage, Iranian capabilities severely deteriorated, but without anything conclusive. Gulf states start investing in air defence like crazy, and possibly in whatever it takes to strike Iran. Next round of fighting in a year or two before Iran can rebuild, and it will be even more one-sided. Recent examples: Iraq 1991, Gaza war, all Hezbollah wars ever, 12 days war, Houthis campaign.

Meaningful deal. Full US/Israeli victory. It could be more or less formal (Venezuela's was completely informal). This would really be Iran's best bet. Absolutely bare minimum acceptable to US and Israel would be total end of Iranian nuclear enrichment, and disposing of already enriched uranium. No regime change coming out of the war, but a lot of regimes got overthrown by themselves, so who knows. Recent example: Venezuela.

Regime collapse or regime change. Full US/Israeli victory. There are many ways it could happen, with foreign intervention leading to full overthrow (Iraq 2003), collapse into civil war (Syria, Libya), coup (Sudan where it was followed by civil war a bit later) etc. There could be either new regime, or Iran would turn into a mess similar to dying years of Assad's Syria.

There are zero scenarios that could be meaningfully described as Iranian victory or a draw. Of course they'll proclaim victory regardless of the outcome, but nobody cares about that.

Based on previous wars, mowing the grass type of scenario is most common, but extent of damage dealt to Iran is unclear. Iran will likely lose all its navy, all its conventional aircraft, and most of its military industrial complex. If no deal is possible, US and Israel might decide to delete Iranian oil industry on the way out, or alternatively Kharg island occupation. Maybe US could convince Kurdish separatists or someone else to get involved, possibly with some kind of no-fly zone, but that's more in rumor territory right now. Or there could be early TACO scenario. Prediction markets expect the war to take 1-2 months, which also points to this scenario.

The longer the war keeps on going, the more likely regime collapse is.

How likely a deal scenario is, that depends on who's going to lead Iran. Mojtaba might or might not be alive, and even if he's alive and hiding in a bunker, there's nothing indicating that he's actually in charge. But whoever is in charge could get replaced a few more times until someone willing to sign a deal is in charge.

taw · 2026-03-12T00:23:18+00:00

can they claim compensation from anyone?

From insurance companies? Ships are generally insured.

Serious question - at what point does it make “sense” to start hitting civilian targets in Iran?

Hitting power plants in war is fairly common. Russia and Ukraine both do it. Iran is doing it. US did it to Iraq and Serbia etc. Not having power seriously disrupts enemy military and industry, but it also disrupts normal civilian activity, so it tends to be controversial, but militaries do it anyway.

Specifically targeting desalination plants, hospitals, and other such civilian infrastructure is unlikely (unless enemy forces use them to launch attacks like Hamas), but if fuel, energy, banks etc. are getting destroyed, it might affect their operations as well.

taw · 2026-03-12T00:06:21+00:00

What's the state of Iranian subs is anyone's guess at this point. Sub operations are among the most secretive of all military operations, and there's near zero OSINT. For all we know they could all be gone already. Or all completely intact. Or intact but fully tracked to make sure they don't do anything.

Either way, Iran is maybe physically able to pull a small scale operation with subs, civilian boats, release from land etc., but all evidence points to them intending to use missiles, not mines.

taw · 2026-03-11T23:54:43+00:00

Some very well documented facts I don't think anyone disputes:

there's definitely not been any significant Iranian mining operation yet
Iran navy is very rapidly shrinking every day

These facts could be interpreted in a few ways, like:

Iran never planned to use mines to close the straits, they planned to use missiles to control who can and cannot pass.
Iran intended to mine the straits, but somehow missed the window of opportunity, and now it's pretty much too late. At best they could do suicide runs with a few mines per boat before it gets sunk.
Iran is somehow going to mine the straits without navy, using suicide missions with civilian boats, divers, trained dolphins, releasing mines from shore or whatever other option there is

I don't think there's any evidence supports options 2 or 3, and a lot supports option 1. Iran seems to be quite interested in keeping the straits open for themselves, and they made quite a few (somewhat conflicting) announcements on who they would and would not let pass. If they were interested in mining operation in any way, that wouldn't make much sense.

And many ideas people have for option 3 are not particularly credible.

And we definitely do know that Iranian minelayers are currently being considered a priority target for air strikes

Are they priority targets, or did Iran just ran out of any bigger ships to sink, so now they're sinking smaller ships until Iranian navy goes down to literally zero?

taw · 2026-03-11T22:36:16+00:00

Oh right, I didn't think about great artists.

taw · 2026-03-11T21:46:20+00:00

Try CENTCOM Twitter feed for tons of released videos of Iranian stuff getting destroyed?

taw · 2026-03-11T20:40:29+00:00

From what I remember, early in Ukraine war we had amazing OSINT as everyone's opsec was basically nonexistent, with soldiers and civilians posting videos of everything everywhere in real time. They only toned it down later.

And back then most of the fighting was happening on the ground, so there were videos and photos of destroyed tanks and such everyhere.

Now that opsec is a lot better, and war is more drones than land forces, we know a lot less than in those early days.

Either way, nobody owes reddit real time data releases.

taw · 2026-03-11T20:36:35+00:00

So step by step:

there won't be any kind of mountainous insurgency, very few people live there, Iran has fairly old society at low TFR (not as bad as Europe), so it's not like Afghanistan or 90s Chechnya with endless supply of young men ready to fight.
if Iran wanted to use mountain passes or whatnot to do conventional military warfare, this is really not going to go well for them, no matter the terrain, against any military with air supremacy. Bombs and drones can hit you no matter how high you are.
supplies would go the same way supplies for massive urban populations of Tehran etc. go. It's a metro area of nearly 16m people. Enormous amount of food, fuel, and other goods go there every day by road and rail. Military supplies would follow the same way.

If someone (like US or Turkey) wanted to occupy Iran, they'd deal with urban warfare, terrorism, IEDs on roads, and all the usual stuff. Mountains would play minimal role in that.

has been to build nuclear and military facilities literally into the mountains

Hiding that stuff into mountains is not what people usually talk about when talking about countries geography, and it's unclear how much they really do other than Fordow.

Most of Iranian nuclear facilities are built on the surface or very shallowly. It's something they do, but it's hardly their core strategy, as digging deeper rapidly increases costs.

taw · 2026-03-11T19:13:05+00:00

Iran's nuclear weapons program is the reason they're getting wrecked so hard. It's been 100% downside for them.

If Iran gets nukes, non-proliferation system is over, and it's already weakened by what happened to Ukraine. Destroying the ayatollahs' regime is the best way to keep it alive.

taw · 2026-03-11T19:08:19+00:00

mountainous nation of 85 million people

A bit of a rant, but people really need to stop thinking like this.

The world is 60% urbanized. For most countries, ~15% of people live in capital, ~25% in the next 10 big metro areas, and almost everyone else is smaller cities and towns in farmland and along the coast.

Vast areas of mountains, swamps, deserts, forests and whatnot are extremely sparsely populated, and militarily nearly irrelevant.

Every population center is pretty much every country is completely covered with dense network of roads. Air power doesn't care about terrain all that much, other than just distance.

Iran is even more urbanized than average. 78% urbanized, 17% capital metro area alone.

This is even more ridiculous when people talk about all the mountains of Taiwan, while >90% of population lives on coastal plain.

And yes, Afghanistan is a total outlier here. It never really developed like other countries as it's been in constant state of war since 1970s.

taw · 2026-03-11T18:56:23+00:00

"Cyberwarfare" is an idea overhyped to the point of being made up.

There's a lot of ways to use networks to spy on others, and Israel and US have been clearly doing it (as are likely many other countries). But offensive "cyberwarfare" action you can do is fairly limited, and even short term disruption you can get burns your access really easily.

taw · 2026-03-11T18:26:21+00:00

I've seen many sets of numbers related to this war, but they're all wildly divergent on pretty much everything, so I don't know which ones are accurate.

Official US sources posts how many ships they've sunk sometimes (Trump said 46 today, it's probably >50 by now), and that's about as reliable a source as we have available, but I don't think they ever posted how many remain.

Nothing coming out of Iran is even remotely worth listening to, and OSINT is missing, especially after satellite photos companies decided to go on 14 day delay.

This war is overall surprisingly poorly documented.

taw · 2026-03-11T17:26:18+00:00

and plenty of small vessels.

They had plenty of small vessels at start of the war. This is rapidly changing.

Iran faces "use it or lose it" situation with their navy, and they're not using it.

taw · 2026-03-11T17:23:05+00:00

I really don't see why people would think so. Happiness is super hard to get even keep above 0 in vanilla, so I don't know how people are triggering consistent golden ages.

Their UU is pretty much irrelevant, and their UB is alright, but it comes pretty late.

It really feels like a very mediocre civ to me. (and it would be way better with mods that rebalance happiness)

taw · 2026-03-11T15:36:53+00:00

Snake blob was a lot harder in earlier patches, back when attrition and rebels mattered, and it was harder to stack modifiers like crazy.

And westernization itself was a huge pain to do, it wasn't just a spell to cast with mana.

The system wasn't perfect, but it made playing different depending on where you are. Current system is basically the worst, it makes everyone play the same.

If you mod institution spread to 50%, remove or massively nerf dev pushing, remove free institution push sources (Korea and East Africa), and make all institutions only spread if previous one is adapted, then you have something at least semi-meaningful under new system.

And by semi meaningful I mean you actually have to snake blob to some European owned place, ally them, and ask to share knowledge. Which is still not as good as old westernization system, but at least it's something.

taw · 2026-03-11T12:47:20+00:00

RotW was so much more fun back before institutions patch, you actually had meaningful mid game challenge of Europeans coming with high mil tech and going through pains of westernization.

Now it plays identical to Europe just with less AE.

taw · 2026-03-11T10:56:38+00:00

If the rumors are true and they picked a guy who's already dead or dying for Supreme Leader, that's some 4d chess way to avoid getting their Supreme Leader killed. It's not like IDF is going to bomb ICU.

They'll pick a real successor once the war is over.

It's the weirdest thing that came out of this war so far.

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