Iran caused more extensive damage to U.S. military bases than publicly known

oa335

my thesis is that the IRGC has successfully established deterrence by demonstrating relative resilience against US attacks (still have boats and missiles), ability to meaningfully strike US bases and its Allies, and willingness to sacrifice a lot of Irans civilian infrastructure. its hard to sift through the propaganda on both sides, but I haven't yet seen anything to disprove this convincingly. anyone else?

basisword

Not surprising. In years to come I'm sure we'll find the USG has lied as much to the public during this war as Russia and North Korea would to their citizens. The "laundry fire". The pilot "rescue". The lack of transparency on injuries and casualties. Look at Netanyahu's recent health issues. He didn't lie - he 'delayed the report'.

statguy

This has massive strategic implications for the US. The US couldn't protect its bases in the middle east from a middle power like Iran and in fact its bases were the reason that its "allies" in the gulf were attacked. Iran would have no reason to attack those allies otherwise. The US has also shown that Israel is the only ally that it really cares about. Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia are taking notes. Prediction: there is not going to be a war over Taiwan - Taiwan will gradually come to a Hong Kong like agreement with China.

pram

One thing I noticed in the videos on Twitter of quadcopter type drones being flown into US bases in Iraq, is there doesn't seem to be any current defense. They were flying around with impunity, taking their time looking for a target. It's definitely scary.

Bender

I would expect more of this. Most of Iran's military infrastructure is deep under 500 to 800 meters of hard rock, heavily funded by US tax dollars bully lunch money and the oil industry. Most everyone else's military infrastructure is mostly on the surface just begging for attention. My personal preference would have been that the US had built it's bases in the same manor is Iran or better. At least I think we could have possibly done better. Keeping most infrastructure under ground means less dependency on power for cooling, more surface land for other functions. Maybe put some earth-bermed greenhouses on the surface and grow some produce for the locals.

actionfromafar

An AWACS was picked off sitting on the ground, that's a bad look. It took Russia years to get to that stage in the war. One has to wonder how much of the bad US performance is due to deep, systemic problems and how much is due to a rushed and unplanned military operation.

Jamesbeam

Don't forget the emotional damage. Their war propaganda is so much better than that of the US military. Lego Trump, soul-crushing tweets, with Trump it is like taking candy from a toddler but still… I’m glad the US is winning so hard they don’t know what to do about it. Otherwise, they would look blatantly incompetent on a Russian army 3-day special operation level. I am seriously no longer concerned about Greenland.

OutOfHere

Article doesn't fully load. It says "Just a moment. We are getting your experience ready." and is stuck there.

pazimzadeh

trump did literally everything backwards. he should have started with the blockade and increased the pressure over time, with decapitation strikes at the end if needed. also..help arm the people of iran before doing anything else. that would have made iran look like the aggressor when they eventually bombed their region. instead the islamic republic's "strategic patience" fully paid off and now most rational people sees them as victims. what trump's doing is like trying to cure multi-drug resistant bacterial infection with whatever random antibiotics are on hand - the very thing that created resistance.

metalman

missed the real message that "they" are desperate to hide, which is that Iran destroyed a great deal of infrastructure while causing very few casualties, because clearly they have very high precision armaments, and intel, so the message is : they can hit other targets at will and escelate plus China stated that they are delivering new missles and systems that Iran payed for before this began, right about now.

KevinMS

They consider these bases expendable and nonessential, maybe even just political gestures.