alt Hacker News> The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
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> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
> they can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force
I'm genuinely sceptical of this. If America literally invaded Iran, there is a good chance Chinese production comes to back them up. At that point we're fighting with a long logistics chain on someone else's territory (giving them advantages of knowing the land, having local sympathies and having a greater reason to fight) while getting pelted by asymmetric-warfare tactics we can't meaningfully reciprocate.
> unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point
Why? Just remove their ability to destroy Israel. Keep taking out their nuclear programme from time to time and have the Congress ratify the JCPOA in case they come back to the table.
Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population. I get that president's war powers are pretty expansive, but everything has limits.