Libya has a 10x lower population density than Iran, among other disparities. I'd be careful leaping to comparisons before anything has happened, considering how benign the Twelve Day War ended up being.

"Hands off the nuke or we kill you" is a great populist policy on paper, but difficult to implement in reality. Especially if your air campaign fails, necessitating a suicidal ground invasion.

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alephnerd 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Libya has a 10x lower population density than Iran, among other disparities

Libya's population was overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of regions in the same manner as Iran.

Furthermore, Iran no longer has functional AD systems and the initial strikes were limited to nuclear sites and a handful of strategic site.

This time strikes are planned to be more generalized

> "Hands off the nuke or we kill you" is a great populist policy on paper, but difficult to implement in reality. Especially if your air campaign fails, necessitating a suicidal ground invasion

We can keep striking Iran indefinetly.

A nuclear program requires an industrial base, and with what is current being proposed, a scorched earth approach of targeting Iranian industrial [0], security [0], and leadership capacity [1] is being planned.

You truly do not need boots on the ground if you do not care about maintaining a functional country at the end of such strikes.

That is the approach the US is adopting now. For all this talk of "regime change", the answer is we don't care what happens after.

This is why I called out Libya - it was an industrialized country with an active nuclear and ballistics missile program with the capacity to harm much of Europe. The months of NATO strikes degraded their industrial capacity and the country collapsed into civil war, but it was no longer a major headache for Europe in the same manner that it was under Gaddafi.

Iran collapsing into a Libya or even Syrian style civil war is a good outcome for the US. It sucks for the region (and hence why the Gulf and Turkiye has been lobbying against it) but it is good enough for us in the USA.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-military-prepar...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-strikes-iran-co...

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bigyabai 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> We can keep striking Iran indefinetly.

People said that in the Twelve Day War, and it was entirely unclear at the end whether or not the key OKRs had been achieved. It seems silly to suggest that they can expand their target list and receive more clear results.

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alephnerd 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> the Twelve Day War

The US only conducted limited strikes on Iran's nuclear program. The rest of the conflict was unilaterally led by Israel.

> whether or not the key OKRs had been achieved.

Iranian nuclear capacity was degraded [0] setting the program back by 2 years [1].

For a short term conflict, it met the limited OKR of preventing an Iranian nuclear breakthrough in 2025-26.

But this game of cat-and-mouse will continue as long as Iran maintains industrial capacity. The only solution at this point is generalized strikes degrading Iran's industrial capacity indefinitely.

If that also means Iran collapses into a Libyan style civil war, so be it. You put boots on the ground if you care about controlling strategic points and reducing civilian casualties - a generalized airstrike to kill one high value target and killing 200-300 civilians is easier than risking a strike force to extract that target.

We don't care if the Bagh-e-Chehel Sotoun becomes a bagh-e-chehel hazar jamajmeh, if Tehran's urban infrastructure collapses, and Khorasan, Sistan-ve-Balochistan, Kurdistan, Iranian Azerbaijan, and Khuzestan collapse into ethnic and communal violence.

This is what we did to Imperial Japan in WW2, Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and Libya in 2011, but unlike Japan and much of Yugoslavia, we have no appetite or interest in deploying a Marshall Plan or Dayton Plan.

That said, there is an offramp - give up the entire nuclear program and place it under American or EU control.

Those are the options.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-status-ira...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-strikes-destroy...

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mullingitover 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

> If that also means Iran collapses into a Libyan style civil war, so be it.

Pretty cavalier way to talk about a monumental humanitarian catastrophe.

Say what you will about the Libyan leadership, the collapse of the country was categorically A Bad Thing. Wishing that on the people of Iran is monstrous.

	▲	alephnerd 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Say what you will about the Libyan leadership, the collapse of the country was categorically A Bad Thing. Wishing that on the people of Iran is monstrous Morally, absolutely. But morals don't run the world - interests do. And it is in our interest to not spark a nuclear race in the Middle East, the same way it was in our interest to firebomb every Japanese wooden city during WW2 instead of putting boots on the ground as well as airstriking much of Urban Serbia during the Yugoslav War. As such, Iranian leadership will have to give up their nuclear ambitions if they wish to offramp. This is what a multipolar world looks like.