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Yes, but that only works in battles between matched actors ie US vs china or asymmetric war between small stateless terrorist unit vs state actor.

for a small state to take out a capital ship of a large armed-to-the-teeth-and-spoiling-for-a-fight nation would be pretty suicidal. If Iran sank the Kitty Hawk or similar carrier, Tehran would be replaced by a smoking hole in the ground. However vulnerable, Iran has to leave capital ships alone.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Feb 16th, 2012 at 08:50:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The object is political and economic, not military.

The West is extremely vulnerable to an oil price hike, and all Iran has to do is blow some shit up to create that price hike.

It doesn't matter if Iran sinks a carrier, or if Iran has crappy pilots. Rest of World has around a week to prove that Iranian action - whatever it is - is ineffective and that the oil flows as normal.

If it takes more than a week, the West is in serious trouble.

It's impossible to imagine action taking less than a week. The only successful outcome for the West would be total regime change in Iran - and it's unlikely China or Russia would allow that, because China particularly needs access to Iranian oil.

See e.g. this from Bloomberg.

This is not primarily a military problem. It's an economic one. And when Iran has something the rest of the world needs, bombing the country back to the Stone Age makes no sense as a response.

Given that Iraq is still ramping up production and the Saudis are struggling, there's very little elasticity in the oil supply. So turning Tehran into a smoking crater would be a very, very bad idea - even if led to regime change instead of an extended Iraq-style civil war, which I think is the more likely outcome of any attempt to invade or destroy.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Feb 16th, 2012 at 12:33:47 PM EST
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The fact that it would be insane to do something does not reliably discourage the American government from doing it anyway (see, e.g., Iraq).

Iran needs to have a reasonable chance of winning for it to want to start a war. Just making the other guy lose is not sufficient.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Feb 16th, 2012 at 12:46:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That it would be insane is no surety the Iranians won't do anything either. Sometimes, people just do crazy things.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Thu Feb 16th, 2012 at 12:56:47 PM EST
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The Iranians, however, have had a demonstration of the destructive power of modern warfare within living memory. One hopes it was convincing, given the scale of human and industrial destruction it entailed.

The Americans have not had such a demonstration since 1865.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Feb 16th, 2012 at 02:49:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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