Iranian here, full internet blackout done here by the the Islamic state, connected through alot of efforts to read news and I came upon this.
By our ideas, hitting power plants and such infra will not effect IRGC by any means, IRGC hates it's own people ( aka Iranians who uprised against them so many times, last being less than 2 months ago leading to 40k+ civilian deaths), it'll just make the economy many times worse for us than it is. IRGC will run it's infra even if it means full blackout of the civilians.
At this point of time I'm getting ready to be laid off cuz our jobs are non existent now ( I am a fellow software engineer)
For next couple of months, life's gonna be shit, either the strikes will end it, or the IRGC.
Wonder what we gotta do.
I keep wondering what Iran planned to do with its 440kg of U-235 enriched to 60% when most nuclear reactors need only 5% and some needing only up to 20%.
I don't care about hypotheticals, there is already a hyper violent belligerent country in the middle east with a few hundred "illegal" nukes. Their officials/thinkers have already stated insane things about using the nukes on eg innocent European capitals without anyone doing counter clarification or pushback. I'd worry much more about the nukes and fissile materials there.
What I find tricky to reason about here is that whether destroying infrastructure comes down to "whether the military advantage outweighs the impact to civilians", and as far as I can tell, there's no robust way to assess this.
Indeed, this seems to be what supporters of Trump are leaning on, as you can make the argument that _any_ bridge, or _any_ powerplant could hypothetically be used by the military, and that this conflict is sufficiently important for the livelihood of people in America/"The West" that doing anything that even slightly helps tips the odds is justifiable.
Hell, farms and water sources could be used by the military to sustain soldiers. Women of childbearing age could produce future soldiers. This line of reasoning has no floor.
There’s a reason that past generations tried to draw a line in the sand and say “we will not cross this line.” It was imperfect and often violated, but at least it served to frame actions as just or unjust. Blatant violations could catalyze domestic opposition to unjust war, as in Vietnam and Iraq. Now that the standard has been eroded into nothing, I don’t know if we can stop further escalation.
Interesting requirement. Where does that leave a lot of other wars? Russia has been attacking Ukrainian infrastructure for a while. Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil production and ports, especially recently. I seem to recall a lot of infrastructure destroyed in the US invasion of Iraq. There have been a lot of wars since WW2 and I find it had to believe that those than involved bombing were all restricted to military targets.
A lot of war is about economics and logistics.
Edit: to add, what about Iran's threats to destroy water supplies?
The problem is also that the world has made it very clear that it doesn't believe in warcrimes. Warcrimes are what's defined as illegal in the convention of Geneve.
The purpose, the idea behind warcrimes is that when warcrimes occur, the world would unite, in the security council, a mandate would be voted in, and the whole world would intervene, preventing warcrimes from occuring, or at least from repeating.
Well, when it comes to Iranian and US warcrimes the UNSC, specifically France, Russia and China have declared there will be no consequence to any warcrime by either side. In France's case it's not that they don't think warcrimes are terrible crimes, it's that they don't want to help anyone.
In Russia and China's case it's that they think this war destabilizes the west and that matters more to them than terrible crimes. Oh and the whole communist stick of "it's not warcrimes, it's internal matters", you know, when they do it to their population. So they have declared they will actively fight to prevent anything being done about warcrimes.
Under those circumstances, of course, warcrimes effectively don't exist, and that's that. Or to put it another way: the world is perfectly happy for you to be discussing the finer points of international law and why this and that is or isn't "a crime".
But the world is totally unwilling to do anything about warcrimes. I mean, let's be realistic. The world is unwilling to do anything about Iranian warcrimes, and perfectly certain the US won't commit any (the US will make mistakes, of course, but not actually commit real warcrimes). Whatever the outcome of your discussion on what is and isn't a heinous crime ... there will be no consequences.
Hypothetically civilians can be used by the military and provide some military advantage as future soldiers or weapons manufacturers or even army rations providers. So let's bomb them too, right?
One thing to consider is that Trump is publicly stating that the US are destroying the infrastructure as a punishment for non-compliance. That basically makes it clear that the motive is not based on military considerations.
dont worry as soon as trump is gone americas sycophant allies will be clamouring to get back to some sort of pre-trump status quo, but i doubt we're ever going back to 100% pre-trump prices.
whoops, was responding to someone but accidentally top levelled this comment, which id rather leave here even though it lacks context -- something about levies on ship transit, which isnt really that much different to global tariffs is it?
63 comments
By our ideas, hitting power plants and such infra will not effect IRGC by any means, IRGC hates it's own people ( aka Iranians who uprised against them so many times, last being less than 2 months ago leading to 40k+ civilian deaths), it'll just make the economy many times worse for us than it is. IRGC will run it's infra even if it means full blackout of the civilians.
At this point of time I'm getting ready to be laid off cuz our jobs are non existent now ( I am a fellow software engineer)
For next couple of months, life's gonna be shit, either the strikes will end it, or the IRGC. Wonder what we gotta do.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...
https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-o...
Indeed, this seems to be what supporters of Trump are leaning on, as you can make the argument that _any_ bridge, or _any_ powerplant could hypothetically be used by the military, and that this conflict is sufficiently important for the livelihood of people in America/"The West" that doing anything that even slightly helps tips the odds is justifiable.
There’s a reason that past generations tried to draw a line in the sand and say “we will not cross this line.” It was imperfect and often violated, but at least it served to frame actions as just or unjust. Blatant violations could catalyze domestic opposition to unjust war, as in Vietnam and Iraq. Now that the standard has been eroded into nothing, I don’t know if we can stop further escalation.
A lot of war is about economics and logistics.
Edit: to add, what about Iran's threats to destroy water supplies?
The purpose, the idea behind warcrimes is that when warcrimes occur, the world would unite, in the security council, a mandate would be voted in, and the whole world would intervene, preventing warcrimes from occuring, or at least from repeating.
Well, when it comes to Iranian and US warcrimes the UNSC, specifically France, Russia and China have declared there will be no consequence to any warcrime by either side. In France's case it's not that they don't think warcrimes are terrible crimes, it's that they don't want to help anyone.
In Russia and China's case it's that they think this war destabilizes the west and that matters more to them than terrible crimes. Oh and the whole communist stick of "it's not warcrimes, it's internal matters", you know, when they do it to their population. So they have declared they will actively fight to prevent anything being done about warcrimes.
Under those circumstances, of course, warcrimes effectively don't exist, and that's that. Or to put it another way: the world is perfectly happy for you to be discussing the finer points of international law and why this and that is or isn't "a crime".
But the world is totally unwilling to do anything about warcrimes. I mean, let's be realistic. The world is unwilling to do anything about Iranian warcrimes, and perfectly certain the US won't commit any (the US will make mistakes, of course, but not actually commit real warcrimes). Whatever the outcome of your discussion on what is and isn't a heinous crime ... there will be no consequences.
> “…tips the odds is justifiable.”
The slippery slope.
whoops, was responding to someone but accidentally top levelled this comment, which id rather leave here even though it lacks context -- something about levies on ship transit, which isnt really that much different to global tariffs is it?
How about each country sets up a blockade and demands their toll for safe passage?
The only sensible strategy is to make IRGC capitulate.