US Attacks Iran 2026

[barnhart]

...Then when you hear Iranians interviewed about it that are glad then it’s not like the way you make it sound that Trump just wanted to go invade a country and found people to support him. No, there are people that actually do support this that have nothing to do with just being Trump followers

My suspicions are roughly the opposite. I think his cabinet largely believed in the isolationism he ran on in the campaign but he got caught up in the energy of seizing Venezuela with little consequence, listened to a nice presentation from Netanyahu and pulled the lever over the warnings of people like Vance.

He is not influenced by Netanyahu if you go back through the years by Trump talking about Iran long before he was in politics. Abraham Accords was a very good move though.

The fact that nearly all the Iranian high command were caught at one event tells me it was Israeli intelligence that called the target. That seems very likely to be the work of Mossad who are very efficient and motivated at things like this. It was the president's decision alone and he bears full accountability but it seems obvious to me the Israelis told him this would be a valuable target to hit.

[Ernie]

I'm reading comments from Americans who supported the US attacking Iran, but they are not impressed with the propaganda the administration is giving the public. They don't like that Americans were not/are not being told the truth concerning what a war with Iran would look like.

I had never heard this one before but one commenter wrote...

"Support your country always, and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain
It seems like more Americans are doing this, whether they are familiar with the quote or not.

Meanwhile, we as followers of Jesus look for a city not made with hands.

[barnhart]

I'm reading comments from Americans who supported the US attacking Iran, but they are not impressed with the propaganda the administration is giving the public. They don't like that Americans were not/are not being told the truth concerning what a war with Iran would look like.

I had never heard this one before but one commenter wrote...

"Support your country always, and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain
It seems like more Americans are doing this, whether they are familiar with the quote or not.

Meanwhile, we as followers of Jesus look for a city not made with hands.

This seems like a healthy development.

[Soloist]

The US is considerably more apathetic then during Vietnam.

[Ernie]

The US is considerably more apathetic then during Vietnam.

More apathetic towards whether the US is involved in a war with Iran?

Or???

[JohnH]

The US is considerably more apathetic then during Vietnam.

More apathetic towards whether the US is involved in a war with Iran?

Or???

The citizenry cares far less than they did in the Vietnam days.

Of the average, everyday people I visit with, none of them have said a single thing about it.

[Ernie]

The US is considerably more apathetic then during Vietnam.

More apathetic towards whether the US is involved in a war with Iran?

Or???

The citizenry cares far less than they did in the Vietnam days.

Of the average, everyday people I visit with, none of them have said a single thing about it.

Is this because the number of body bags and other casualties are in the dozens instead of hundreds of thousands?

[barnhart]

The absence of a draft is a factor. In the decision to invade Iraq representative Charlie Wrangel wanted to tie the authorization to a reintroduction of the draft but he was ignored. I can see his point, it makes the costs more clear.

[Szdfan]

There is a way to do it, but thankfully, due to the influence, I think, of Christianity, it isn't considered tenable any more, ie total wanton war/destruction that really breaks a people - think Hiroshima, Dresden, Constantinople, Lakota Indians, Georgians, etc.

My understanding of contemporary military doctrine is that air strikes alone are not enough to win a war. Aircraft and missiles play a support role by destroying infrastructure and military capability. However, in order to win a war, an invading military has to occupy to land in order to force regime change.

I think Operation Epic Fury bears this out. Even though the US has killed the majority of Iranian leadership prior to the war, the regime is still in place and still able to resist the US.

If “finishing the job,” means regime change, I don’t see how Trump accomplishes that without a large ground-scale invasion and engaging in the same kind of neo-conservative nation building he ridiculed and repeatedly promised not to get caught up in.

Of course, a ground invasion is incredibly expensive, both in money and human lives and as the past twenty-five years of American efforts in the Middle East, there’s no guarantee of success.

Trump seems reluctant to launch a large-scale ground invasion. I’m concerned that we are instead stuck in a never-ending cycle with the Iranians of broken ceasefires. Both sides at this point seems ready to give up, but also unable to accomplish their ultimate objectives.

This looks increasingly like the kind of forever war Trump promised not to get the US into.

Yeah I agree...what I was trying to point out is that folks aren't ready wage war like Genghis Kahn used to.

Genghis Khan wielded terror as a calculated weapon, turning psychological warfare into a cornerstone of his conquests. “Like Attila the Hun before him and Vlad the Impaler after him, Genghis Khan used rumor to inflate his reputation ahead of whatever military operation is to come,” says Crossland.

He instilled fear in his opponents with mass killings—slaughtering nearly everyone in a city, but deliberately sparing a few. These survivors would then spread word of Mongol brutality, helping convince the next city to surrender without a fight.

On the battlefield, he unleashed sensory overload. Synchronized drums, horns and bloodcurdling battle cries created a deafening wall of sound to disorient and terrify his enemies. He attacked from multiple directions to keep an opposing army, or city defenders, tense and off-balance, unable to anticipate his next move.

His strategies were remarkably effective. Genghis Khan conquered more territory in 25 years than Rome did in 400—largely through fear. “These are classic examples of psyops, and the fundamentals have not changed since then,” says Crossland. “Genghis Khan used the marketplace to spread his rumors. We use social media.”

From History.com. He also engaged in early chemical warfare catapulting dead body parts, heads etc, infected with plague into cities forcing the inhabitants to clean them up and get sick and traumatized prior to any ground invasion.

While it’s not “Genghis Kahn total war,” the US targeting civilian infrastructure is problematic. So our Trump’s previous threats to annihilate “an entire civilization.”

I’m not able to reconcile this behavior with the claim that America is a “Christian nation.”

From today’s NYT:

President Trump threatened on Wednesday to strike bridges and power plants in Iran if it targeted any more ships in the Strait of Hormuz, as the prospect of a prolonged conflict pushed the price of oil to its highest level in over a month.

“Any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship” in the strait, Mr. Trump said on social media, U.S. forces would hit the sites, including in or near the capital, Tehran. Deliberate strikes on civilian infrastructure could be considered a war crime under international law.

Mr. Trump has escalated his threats through weeks of rising bluster and deadly military exchanges, in which the United States has failed to either stop Iranian attacks or force the country’s hard-line leaders, who want to prolong the war, back to the negotiating table.

[R7ehr]

Who would have predicted a year ago that the American peace president would be blockading and firing on and disabling oil tanker ships in the Middle East?