sure, I'm just talking pure strategy e.g. if you were going to war with iran, what's would be the ideal play?

If the goal is to overthrow the regime by force, you need boots on the ground. The basic approach might be something like the Iraq war but bigger, and with an actual plan for the aftermath. And it might end up being the biggest (or at least the most intense) war the US has fought since WW2.

Air strikes are effective at killing people and destroying property, but their impact on the situation on the ground is limited. Even if you manage to destroy the regime, there needs to be an alternative with sufficient legitimacy and institutional support to replace it. But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge. So you either need occupying forces to provide the institutional support, or the likely outcome is a civil war.

> If the goal is to overthrow the regime by force, you need boots on the ground.

You have the Artesh in Iran, their standard military which is bigger than the IRGC and aren't under Islamist rule and they are loyal more to the democratically elected government than the Islamist one.

> But authoritarian regimes are pretty good at keeping the opposition weak and fragmented, making such alternatives unlikely to emerge.

They never destroyed the Artesh, that army has been the same since before the 1979 revolution, so your analysis is wrong for Iran since they do have those power structures in place. If you destroy IRGC the rest of Iran would run just fine. They have elections, they have a democratically elected government of reformists who want to move away from Islamist rule, those elected politicians however don't have the power to do that currently but if you shift the power enough it could happen.

Destroying the regime is much easier than destroying the IRGC. The former requires killing enough key people and destroying enough key infrastructure to make the regime unable to govern and take initiative. The latter requires killing most of the people with the weapons and ideological commitment to continue fighting. If you do the latter, the country will not be in a state where it can hold democratic elections.

The Gaza war is a good example. Israel quickly reduced Hamas to a mostly reactive resistance force. But it was unable to destroy Hamas as a relevant force.

As for the standard military, authoritarian regimes are also keenly aware of the threat posed by the military. That's why they have large internal security forces, such as the IRGC. Common practices to mitigate the threat include promoting harmless unambitious people to leadership positions and trying to keep the ranks free of people with strong ideological commitments. While the standard military outnumbers the internal security forces, it tends to consist of people willing to serve the regime and choose the status quo over a civil war.

> Destroying the regime is much easier than destroying the IRGC.

IRGC is an oil money empire, they aren't ideological warriors they are mercenaries that fight for money, remove the oil and the empire crumbles. Its like removing ad revenue from Google, it would destroy the company and what is left would be a small husk of its former self.

So blocking the oil will massively weaken IRGC and keep Artesh the same, since Artesh is made up of people who actually want to fight for the country.

Sure they have some nice statements about ideology and saving the world etc on top, but the main driver is the money.

Ideological commitment and personal beliefs are orthogonal, much in the same way as religion and personal faith are orthogonal. IRGC members are ideologically committed, because they have chosen to serve the regime. They are committed, because if the regime ever fails, things will be bad to them personally.

Authoritarian regimes also understand that they need to keep their core supporters happy. If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.

> If oil money dries up, everyone else will suffer before the IRGC. See North Korea for an example.

90% of IRGC funding comes directly from their own oil empire, without oil they barely have any funding. They can't make the other parts suffer before themselves here since they get it directly from owning the oil exports, it doesn't go via the government.

If they start trying to take money from the military then they would start the civil war themselves, they can't do that.

90% of revenue, not funding. Most of it is revenue from the businesses they run, and most of that goes to ordinary business expenses.

In any case, it's just an arrangement that has worked for the IRGC so far. If it stops working, the regime can make other arrangements. Such as extracting more money from the 90% of the population that are not particularly relevant to the continued existence of the regime.

Assuming the goal is 'Advance American interests'... Not tearing up the nuclear deal. Instead, soft and hard power should have been used to leverage compliance with it.

Instead, of course, he tore it up in exchange for... Nothing.

Well, not nothing, Israel likes to have an excuse to bomb Iran whenever Bibi needs an excuse to stay out of prison.

That option came off the table when the IRGC went through killing thousands of their own civilians and turned off the Internet.

And how exactly is that the responsibility of the United States? And why just in Iran? There are so many other conflicts in the world. Sorry, but this argument has never made sense.

No, it didn't. USA is not the world police. Trump literally ran on this, "USA first" and all that.

Yes, the Iranian government brutally murdered thousand of civilians in January.

Are Iranians safe now?

The US put the Shah in power which directly resulted in torture and killing of Iranians, and led to the Islamic Revolution.

The US removed Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrors specifically so that Saddam could bomb Iran, including with chemical weapons.

You sound like you’ve never heard the major arguments against your position.

Yes, US sponsored chemical weapons attacks on Iran claimed 30 to 50 thousand Iranian lives that is still grieved like an open would today. To say nothing of downed civillian passenger jet by the Americans and the coup to oust Mossadegh.

Notably, Iran did not retaliate in kind to the US sponsored Iraqi attack with chemical weapons, now considered weapons of mass destruction. This might be related to the notion that WMDs are un-Islamic, which got formalized as Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons.

Iran also has a doomsday clock ticking down saying Israel will get destroyed by 2040, only reasonable way that can happen is a nuclear weapon. If they really didn't want a nuclear weapon they wouldn't be so against bans on them enriching uranium.

Edit: Since some people don't seem to believe me:

> The clock was programmed to count down from 8,411 days, corresponding to a 2015 statement by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who predicted that "Israel won't exist in 25 years".[1][2][3] He claimed in his statement that there will be nothing left of the Jewish state by 2040.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Square_Countdown_Clo...

Oh no, not a clock!

But seriously, why do you think a nuclear bomb is required for Israel not to exist in 25 years?

Haven't Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Soviet Union all ceased to exist in the last 50 years?

Trump’s reason for going to war with Iran had nothing to do with Iranian civilians lives or internet access privileges. The optimists say it was because of Iran’s nuclear weapons, slight optimists say it was over oil, cynics say it was a distraction from his role in the Epstein files. Literally no one thinks he actually had Iranian civilian best interests in mind.

There is another option - he was completely played by Netanyahu, possibly using some of those points.

The NYT article on it is interesting (and possibly paywalled). https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...

It was very obvious from the beginning that this was the case, and now more and more information is coming out to support that this happened.

> it was a distraction from his role in the Epstein files

I would love to know who chose the name "Epic Fury" (other than some kid in a COD lobby). Epic Fury. E.F. Epstein Files.

The USA is not responsible for Iranians' safety.

That's weird, I thought we were there to bring democracy to the people of Iran?

Well, that was the reason last Tuesday, or was it the Friday before that? I forget, since there's been so many.

The primary reason was always to eliminate the threat of Iran, if democracy could come out of it and so on that's secondary reasons.

What changed last month?

This situation is in large part due to bad decisions by American leaders, with this one being an absolute stand out.

The thread isn’t eliminated and America looks weaker.

> The thread isn’t eliminated and America looks weaker.

The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this. If USA pulls out Israel will finish the job for sure since Iran isn't in a position to stop Israel bombing their powerplants, and without power they can't do anything.

So the question now is what state we can get after the threat is eliminated, not if the elimination was successful.

> The threat is eliminated, Iran will not be a threat again after this.

I guess we will see. They have worked out how to control the straits quite effectively and made the US look very foolish. It’s weakened a load of US relationships and damaged a load of economies.

For a regime that’s eliminated, it’s sure proving hard to wrap things up, and the oil is not flowing.

It’s going to be interesting to see what any peace settlement looks like as the longer it goes on the worse it hurts everyone. Will Iran be the first to cave?

Is this what America winning looks like?

The USA doesn't have the power to eliminate the Iranian regime that the Israeli far-right doesn't like. Most of its military assets are deeply entrenched in the mountains.

Israel, on the other hand, has been manipulating the US president into entering an unwinable war, bombs its neighbors, including UN blue helmets soldiers, and now invades Lebanon and Syria. Its officials have publicly stated to agree with the "great Israel" plan.

Why aren't the USA considering that Israel is a threat and bombing it as a result (since it's the only available tool, apparently?).

Quite the contrary, the “genius” decapitation strike sold by Netanyahu only led to the coming of a new leadership with much more hardline views. While there was no threat to the US to start with, the current regime is much more entrenched, and its military still seems quite potent.

Iran is not a threat for the USA.

That option was completely on the table.

By that rationale, should America bomb China? Russia?

there is no rationale to pure nonsense

If this has been a simple humanitarian mission, then why hasn't the US got involved in other recent situations?

and we give a hoot exactly why? america first, yes? why aren’t we in sudan, a lot more dire situation. give us a break with this nonsense

It takes two too tango, so Iran would stop its proxxy warring on the us if the us stopped responding? How did that work out under biden and obama?

> It takes two too tango

Wot? Will this apply if goes after Greenland too like he has threatened?

Of course, Denmark is doing the fandango by not simply handing over the territory.

Same as the Ukrainian had the audacity to act as a sovereign nation and seek membership of alliances that benefited themselves.

Let me be more precise. One is enough to start a war and iran is a imperial local power that is constantly attacking its surrounding region with proxxies. The idea that only the mighty and resourceful can start wars is ridiculous. germany was an underdog in a jonny come lately situation compared to the french and British empire and started two wars. Same is happening here. Asymetric agressor can still be an agressor.

You are aware who started this war?

Iran by shooting on ships in the red sea and on israel wih hezbullah?