> 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 32 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 28 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.