stoic

@Indikur @FlyoutChase @ktea613 the Americans having Superior might is not a facade but American having Superior integrity and morality is the facade. So if they keep this up that would be exposed not them losing a war because that's not going to happen against iran

I popped over to @GeoConfirmed's website at geoconfirmed dot org and it verified the impression I'd got from my OSINT feed: Iran is losing this war, badly. Because if they weren't, the gulf states part of the map below would be absolutely awash in red icons. The gulf states claim they've shot down hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles, and I believe them, because by rights the huge number of SRBMs (even if most of them are older and of questionable accuracy) and drones should be doing significantly more damage. Iran's threat held to the world's oil supply was always two-fold - first, closing the strait of Hormuz, and second, directly damaging gulf state oil infrastructure to stop extraction. Instead they're going for a counter-value strategy... and doing a piss-poor job of it, given we can count the number of targets hit in the gulf states seems to still be in the single digits. It's normal to go after an enemy's C3 (command, control, communications) to disrupt their ability to pass on orders and co-ordinate attacks, but by erasing almost all of Iran's most senior military and political leadership in one stroke, there wasn't even anyone to give those orders even if C3 had been intact. Operating on their own initiative and/or pre-planned strikes, they're just not massing enough fires to achieve salvo weights that can effectively saturate defenses. And they can't count on superior magazine depth either, as they're on a timer; with the ample resources of the USAF - and also the IAF, supported by American tankers - operating constantly in their airspace to find and destroy their launchers. Once they fall below a certain critical mass of launchers their ability to penetrate defenses will vanish. To say nothing of the ongoing campaign against the regime's enforcement apparatus - police stations, IRGC bases and armories, etc. They don't have an infinite amount of time to apply the pressure they need to force a ceasefire. In short, they're absolutely hosed, and it looks like this is going even better than what I expect the most optimistic expectations of the war planners were. Because damn.