Summarizer

The real thought experiment is ~600m people in central/south American within ~6000km, i.e. IRBM range of US gulf coast, where ~50% of US oil refinery and LNG plant production are. Now that Iran has validated mid tier power can cobble together precision strike complex, it's only going to be matter of time before relatively wealthier countries realize only way out of M/Donroe is to build conventional strike against US strategic infra. This stuff going to get commoditized sooner than later with competing mega constellation ISR. It's pretty clear building up conventional airforce/navy etc will simply get overmatched vs US projection and only credible deterrence is PRC style rocket force. There's a fuckload of places to hide 8x8 missile launchers in the Americas. E: 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production.

Yes, refinery mismatch vulnerability something that can be built around, ~10-15 year horizon. US can also bring down oil as % of energy mix and distribute renewables. If US smart they would do this. But at same time, extend IRBM range by 1000km, and replace refineries with hyperscalers, or whatever targets that worth deterrent value (energy at top of list). Refineries just most immediately very high value targets that happens to be closest to missile range. But the assumption is less about US adaptability/smartness, as the way commodity conventional strikes is trending, CONUS _ will _ be vulnerable eventually. Fortress America is as much function of geography as technology. Just like how 20 years ago Iran couldn't hit Israel or many GCC companies even if it wanted to... now it can. The natural outcome of longer and longer range strikes is at some point US becomes in range of Monroe neighbours who doesnt want to be Monroed.

The problem is they are not would be attackers, they're countries building up domestic defense that US would have to preempt ala Cuban missile crisis, and sustain preemption over entire continent, with each preemption legitimizing rational for more build up. Of course US can try to coerce INF for conventional in Americas, but commoditized conventional precision strike are conventional... and commoditized, it's the kind of product where specialized dual use components may need to be sourced... among millions of TEU traffic, but otherwise local industries can build, like Iran. There's also no global pariah status for proliferating conventional missiles for self defense and hence accessible to many players, coercion / enforcement would require trying to mow grass to keep capabilities out of 600m people...in perpetuity... tall task even for even US. Especially considering form factor of missiles... i.e. sheltered / hidden, they are not major battlefield assets like ships and planes that needs to be out to have wheels turned. Ultimately it's not about winning vs US, it's about deterring US from historic backyard shenanigans by making sure some future time when US is tempted, and US always tempted, it would risk half of CONUS running out of energy in 2 weeks. Like the Iran logic is extremely clear now, no amount of defense survives offensive overmatch, the only thing left is to pursue some counter offensive ability that can have disproportionate deterrence value. The thing about US being richest country is US has a lot of valuable things.

There's no think, this is know territory. Gulf coast PADD3 refineries = disproportionate production of diesel, aviation, bunker fuel for CONUS use. Something like 70% of all refined products used in US comes from PADD3, other refineries cannot replace PADD3 complexity/production levels (think specialty fuels for military aviation, missiles etc). US economic nervous system is EXTRA exposed to gulf coast refinery disruptions. PADD3 refineries (or hubs / pipelines serving east/west coast which more singular point failure) itself enough to cripple US with shortages even if all exports stopped. Gulf gas terminal is for export i.e. doesn't materially impact CONUS, it's deterrence conventional counter-value target. There's also offshore terminals. The broader point being gulf coast has host of targets along escalation/deterrence ladder.

Yes, I'm not disagreeing that there are lots of interesting things to hit on the Gulf coast. PADD3 is just another way to say "gulf" refineries, it's a location not a technical specification. Other refineries can indeed take up the slack. Especially if the US stops exporting. Trains can deliver fuel, trucks. The US military would not be crippled, most certainly, and the domestic US would see primary production kept in-nation, not exported. I'm not sure why you think that only Gulf refineries can make jet fuel. NOTE: I'm not saying it wouldn't be a key attack vector, or non-disruptive. I'm just saying the US would do what it always has done, as any nation would do, it would ensure survival first, and so the rest of the world would suffer far more.

It's location, it's also recognizing refineries in PADD3 are, in fact, technically specific and different from other regional refineries which cannot pickup the slack. Light/sweet vs heavy/sour geographic refinery mismatch are not interchangeable, some products other refineries can produce with low yield, some can't be produced at all. Hence specific highlighting their complexity AND productive/yield levels. US has never tried to survive this level of disruption, which is not to say it couldn't, simply it will be at levels that will significantly degrade CONUS beyond any historic comparison, enough to potentially constrain/deter US adventurism in Americas. Some specific products like SPECIFIC mixes of aviation fuel, only some PADD3 refineries are setup to produce or produce significant % i.e. IIRC something like 90%+ of military JP5/JP10 come from PADD3. That's why I said "specialty" aviation fuel, not just general aviation fuel. Or taking out out Colonial pipeline which ~2.5m barrels - US doesn't have 10,000k extra tankers or 5000 extra rail carts in reserve for that contingency. Turning off export has nothing to do with this, there isn't enough to keep in-nation due to refinery mismatch, or not enough hardware to move it in event of pipeline disruption. Of course predicated on timeline/execution, i.e. US can potentially fix refinery mismatch and harden/redundant over next 10 years. We don't know if/when Monroe countries will start adopting their own rocket force. Just pointing out after Iran has demonstrated defense is useless for midtier powers and mediocre offense can penetrate the most advanced defense, the only rational strategic plan is go hard on offense for conventional counter-value deterrence. The logic like Iran, it matters less RoW suffers more, only specifically that US suffers as well, the harder the more deterrent value. And due to sheer economic disparity, could be trillions for US vs billions for others, even if trillions for US is relatively less.

The biggest effects would be economic, and would drive any sensible country away from a reliance on Gulf Oil. The US is essentially a military/petro-oligarchy wrapped inside a republic pretending to be a democracy. If the global oil economy is badly damaged, the US will be badly damaged with it. This isn't about who can blow the most shit up. It's about global standing in the economic pecking order, which is defined in part by threat credibility, but also by control over key resources. If some of those resources stop being key, that's a serious problem for any hegemon. We're seeing a swing towards global decarbonisation, and this war is an ironically unintentional turning point in that process. The US has had decades of notice that this is inevitable, but has failed to understand this.

We can remove them and do the isolationist thing as many have been clamoring for. Then we have no need for bases in Europe or the Middle East. Gulf States can figure out how to live with a nuclear armed Iran or one that has a repository of thousands of missiles to blow up gulf state infrastructure when they misbehave. We can remove the bases in Europe too, and when Russia invades Lithuania the Spanish and Germans can take care of it. Or perhaps these bases aren’t just in allied countries “at their grace”. These alliance systems don’t just solely benefit America.

>"That's dual use infrastructure. " Especially desalination plants (your sunshine promised to bomb those as well).

I agree in general, but I quibble with the "noticeable dent" part. I think that Iran is doing well given the enormous difference in power between it and the US/Israeli/Gulf Arab coalition, but the only way in which it is putting a noticeable dent in that coalition's assets is economical. And it is only capable of doing that because it is next to a vital narrow waterway and not far from some of the Gulf Arabs' fossil fuel facilities. So I don't think the situation generalizes.

> I don't see any compelling evidence that the US couldn't open the straits if it really wanted to, it's just that the cost in lives and hardware would be unlike anything the US has seen since Vietnam, maybe even the second world war The US invaded Iraq and toppled its government; Iraqi militias are still firing drones and missiles at US bases. Tankers and oil infra are much softer targets… all it takes is hitting one or two tankers and folks will stop shipping.

Trita Parsi of RS had been saying weeks in advance that the Iranians would retaliate against gulf states collaborating with/supporting the US & Israel, would close the Strait of Hormuz, and would continue fighting until it established a pain threshold had been reached and acknowledged by its enemies, in order to prevent yet more "short wars". Iran's previous retaliations that were well choreographed and coordinated in advance with US & Israel would not be repeated. He was not alone in saying this, but he was one of the most prominent, connected, and learned people saying so. Much of the administration and news media are only catching up to all of this long after the fact. Many still cling to the idea that this was unforeseen, or irrational on the part of the Iranians.

They're the only thing involved pretty much. The gulf nations have not allowed the US to launch from their bases in the region. Maybe that will change as they keep getting attacked but as of now the carriers (and now the base on Cyprus) are where the planes are coming from. The strategic bombers, prior to Cyprus, were taking off from the US and flying all the way to Iran and back.

> The gulf nations have not allowed the US to launch from their bases in the region. This is a categorically false assertion that they have been putting to assuage their local populations - which are heavily opposed to the war and the US support. Maybe not all of them, but some of them, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are clearly hosting and allowing the US to prosecute the war from their soil. If they weren't, you wouldn't have had the AWACS aircraft getting turned to smithereens in Riyadh.

AWACS and tankers don’t fire missiles or drop bombs. It’s perhaps a distinction without a difference but it’s the line that appears to have been currently drawn.

Doesn't matter. The internal messaging of the Gulf govts to their people initially was that "we're not hosting US forces, why is Iran attacking us??". Now that veneer is being peeled off.

Keeping the strait of Hormuz open would be one of those functions, wouldn't it? Oh, wait... Seriously, your question is borderline trolling, you know exactly which functions of a carrier group are and are not matched by drones flown from containers. The point is, in case it wasn't clear, that you can do a ton of destruction without necessarily opening yourself up to a counter attack, precisely the kind of advantage that parties that put carrier groups in distance places to project power tend to be looking for. The ability to destroy lots of stuff in a relatively short time without losing a lot of personnel or exposing yourself. And that capability is now to a large extent available to states that before would not have been able to do meaningful damage to coastal cities and coastal infrastructure (think refineries and large scale shipping ports). And you can't even be sure that whoever operates the vessel is in on it. It's not going to help you to stop China from invading Taiwan if they decide to. But it could put a very large dent in the economic capability of any country or bloc that came under a concerted attack. Also note that 'drone' is a pretty wide label that crosses over into what previously was territory reserved for cruise missiles and ICBMs for air power and on the water there are many developments as well. So if you have to hide your carrier group at stand-off distance for fear of seeing it sunk then it is not all that different from that container full of drones. You can destroy stuff, and that's about it. And long term that just makes more enemies, it doesn't really solve anything.

That's true, but when things get cheaper you can afford to lose a lot of them. Suddenly every container vessel is suspect. That trick has a lot of potential and harbors are relatively soft targets and easily accessible from just outside international waters. You could do a shitload of damage to most countries by just targeting a few key locations well within the reach of a basic drone and what sub $1000 drones can do is changing by the day. Armor and artillery are basically useless against a fleet of seaborne drones.

you don't have to do a lot of damage to have a dramatic effect either. Imagine an airport near the coast, you don't have to destroy the airport but if one drone flattens the tires on one out of ever 50 planes on a runway the airport might as well be a smoldering crater. It's like a ddos attack and similar to what's happening in Iran today. All it takes is one drone to hit one tanker and a > 0% of it happening again and no one is sailing because their payload is uninsurable. In the same way, all it takes is one drone to disable one airliner and a credible threat it could happen again and no plane is taking off from that airport ever again.

Actually they are using everything they have to combat these cheap drones. That includes Patriot and THAAD systems as well. Specially UAE, which got struck with more drones than Israel. That is how Iran was able to take out a THAAD radar, because it was deployed so close to them. https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-uneasy-as-us-moves-air-def... https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/middleeast/radar-bases-us...

Imagine being king of a gulf monarchy watching the "no kings" protests. Probably censored.

The supporters of imperialism all about nonviolent protest and democratic principles if it seems feasible it could bring about US foreign policy goals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111067 Or, if an anonymous and uncorroborated source claims tens of thousands of said protestors were allegedly massacred. If it doesn't , and the strategy now involves blowing up desalinization plants ( https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-threat-desalination-pl... ) and invoking a humanitarian crisis on the level of a nuclear catastrophe, well... then they're a bit less concerned about human rights.

The issue though is that this won't get us maritime supremacy. To get civilian tankers through the strait you need that. Iran will still take the occasional shot at these ships and who in their right mind would put their ship into a situation where there is even a 1 in 2000 chance you will be struck? At the end we will have boots on the ground, with real casualties, potentially a ship or two actually damaged and Iran unleashed and attacking everyone's critical oil infrastructure and water infrastructure. They will even probably find a way to hit a ship or two in the red sea just to spread the panic. My original point was that we could 'just blow things up' and get in there, not that we would succeed in achieving a great military objective.

It is hard to game out the best scenario here. Wait, it really isn't. We should just stop. Make a deal with Iran, accept egg on our face and step back. Why? Because they are destabilized. They are likely to crumble. If we keep attacking then they stay alive. If we go away then they have to deal with their broken infra and deeply unhappy population. They were on the path until we hit them. Then, like nearly every country ever, it gave their government legitimacy. If we walk away and focus, hard, on helping the gulf nations that we just hurt badly it will stabilize the region and allow them to fall. But that will never happen because we went into this due to ego and we will stay due to ego.

What if Iran escalates when US decides to go? I don’t think US can go without leaving a power vacuum, which, given current forces positioning, would benefit Iran most probably. I don’t see a path to helping Gulf nations, which will pragmatically be inclined to work with Iran as neither of them can leave like US can.

>That is not to say Iran is winning. Remember this is not a sports game, and no one needs to win. It is possible, and likely, for everyone to lose (be in a worse position than prior). As of right now, Iran looks likely to end the war with permanent control of the strait of Hormutz. They'll tax the gulf countries in perpetuity. Gulf countries can't reasonably afford to go to war with Iran over this either, and it's even less likely that they could prevail in such a conflict. Gulf countries can't even afford to go to war with Iran now, with the US actively fighting there. Iran can suffer terrible short-term and medium-term economic consequences while still establishing a whole new kind of dominance over the region.

He has considered it. He's a psychopathic fantasist. No one sane would have started this war. But the consequences would be catastrophic. Not least that Russia would very likely nuke Ukraine to try to force a surrender. And France would have to decide whether to respond in kind. Trump would not - of course - nuke Russia. Likely not even if Russia launched a first strike. And it's unlikely Iran would surrender, because Iran has set itself up as a patchwork of semi-independent forces. The immediate response would be a mass missile strike on desalination plants and oil installations in Israel and the Arab states. The absolute best outcome would be plumes of smoke all over the Middle East. The worst outcome would be all of the existing minor nuclear nations - North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel - deciding the safety was off, and why not?

Must be nice for western arm chair commentators to discuss this without once feeling the consequences of the actions of their elected government. Where I live - we face a severe shortage of LPG fuel due to this. Quite a few restaurants have shut down temporarily. Migrant workers around the parts who have no access to a kitchen because they live in tiny quarters with a bedding and a common toilet are struggling to find sustainable food. Acquaintances who own workshop are running around trying to figure out food arrangements for their employees. And we are not even party to this shitty war! We are making do with electric alternatives but thats also because we are in the top 5%. Our household staff are struggling to figure out the situation. Induction gas stoves are either stocked our or selling for 3-4x their regular price. Even if they get access to one - electric supply is unreliable and they are not sure how to pay the bill. Electricity usage is subsidized (its free upto 200 Kwh / month) but if it exceeds that they will have to pay full price which hurts their budget quite a lot.

> They won't do anything to crazy. I don't know, they've been talking up a lot of crazy stuff, like strikes on desalination facilities and the power grid. > The craziest thing they could do is 'full invasion' and Congress won't allow that. Genuninely unclear to me whether Congress has control here; don't they currently have a Republican majority who will agree to anything anyway?

My Iranian ex colleague shares very interesting opinion. They trained during his army time to blow everything in the region up. So if things escalate badly the oil and gas importing countries will stay with a fraction of needed oil and gas for years. There is no backup infrastructure anywhere in the world. It will take years to rebuild the infrastructure. It will destroy world’s economy better than nukes.

I kinda expected scorched earth from Iran, or any oil producing state tbh, didn’t Saddam do this retreating from Kuwait?

Stupidly, yes, with carpet bombing. Practically, no, that would be horrible. More horrible, possibly, than taking out the power and water infrastructure.

Trump casually talks about destroying the energy infrastructure, power plants, desalination plants etc. This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death. To willingly deprive a country of 100,000,000 people of water and power coming into summer would surely be a war-crime.

> This is one of the most controversial things that the Russians do in Ukraine - attack the grid when it's cold to try and freeze people to death But the Russians have been doing it. Iran may have targeted an Israeli power plant. The precedent, unfortunately, is set.

Iran already had severe water problems. Attacking the water infrastructure would definitely cause huge civilian casualties. Israel is used to that. Not clear whether America is ready to go into the midterms with an official policy of US-flagged genocide.

There has been (I think) relatively minor hits. And Iran has retaliated in kind (see the latest hit on Kuwaiti desalination plant). The thing is that while Iran's water infrastructure is vulnerable, the Gulf states are much more reliant on desalination ... and hitting them hard there would be a total disaster ... which Iran is capable of doing, but has so far refrained.

> Attacking the water infrastructure would definitely cause huge civilian casualties I personally think there is a wide barrier between electrical and water infrastructure. But given water infra has allegedly been hit already, it doesn’t feel like it’s off the table for both sides the way it once was.