Excellent analysis as always Professor Pape. Quick question, won't the US seizing either Qeshm Island and Kharg Island be a disaster? My understanding is that the US seizing Kharg Island specifically would be a costly endeavor with many US military casualties.
We've raised the issue of Turkey before and Prof. Pape's perspective was that Israeli aspirations towards conquering Turkey are not serious. Now the new messaging out of the Israeli regime is making the case for invading Turkey. What has changed, if anything?
Apologies if this is a stupid question. I neither advance or support such a hypothetical, but I was curious. What would happen if the US and Israel focused on neutralizing iranian proxies instead of Iran itself. We all know a land war in Iran is a disaster. We also know that we can blockade the straight but so can Iran and there isnt much we can do about that. It seems like taking Iran head on is a losing proposition. Would successful operations vs the proxies change the balance of power? Or is that also so hard that the downsides would preclude it. Would think a US ground operation against the houthis, preferably with Saudi assistance and let Israel go after hezbollah, that could atleast shift some of the power back. Im anti war and dont want any of this to happen, just trying to game out what America could actually do.
Excellent analysis as always Professor Pape. Quick question, won't the US seizing either Qeshm Island and Kharg Island be a disaster? My understanding is that the US seizing Kharg Island specifically would be a costly endeavor with many US military casualties.
We've raised the issue of Turkey before and Prof. Pape's perspective was that Israeli aspirations towards conquering Turkey are not serious. Now the new messaging out of the Israeli regime is making the case for invading Turkey. What has changed, if anything?
Apologies if this is a stupid question. I neither advance or support such a hypothetical, but I was curious. What would happen if the US and Israel focused on neutralizing iranian proxies instead of Iran itself. We all know a land war in Iran is a disaster. We also know that we can blockade the straight but so can Iran and there isnt much we can do about that. It seems like taking Iran head on is a losing proposition. Would successful operations vs the proxies change the balance of power? Or is that also so hard that the downsides would preclude it. Would think a US ground operation against the houthis, preferably with Saudi assistance and let Israel go after hezbollah, that could atleast shift some of the power back. Im anti war and dont want any of this to happen, just trying to game out what America could actually do.
How do we track US force deployments, expansion of air power, etc.?
Ask AI to track all available OSINT and give you updates. Its pretty interesting how much OSINT is out there.