Originally Posted by
judyjudy
Seems like there are three levels, of which they are only at the first…
Talking past each other
Talking to each other
Talking with each other
PM of Pakistan is trying to help get them to step 2.
Originally Posted by FP
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
offered on Tuesday to host peace talks to end the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.“Subject to concurrence by the US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Sharif
posted on X. The proposal comes one day after Trump said that U.S. negotiators were engaged in “
very, very strong talks” with Iran—a claim that Tehran quickly denied.
From the same article, "and now for the bad news" in terms of this conflict extending in time.
2.
Originally Posted by FP
However, not everyone in the region appears to want the war to end. U.S. officials told the
New York Times on Tuesday that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been pushing Washington to continue fighting Tehran, calling it a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East. This rhetoric mirrors some of Trump’s own
regime-change ambitions for Tehran. Riyadh has rejected Tuesday’s report, stressing that “the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has always supported a peaceful resolution to this conflict, even before it began.”
And the Israelis look to be escalating in Lebanon versus Hezbollah, Iran's ally/proxy.
My takeaway from the above? It's not stopping any time soon. (Sincerely hope to be wrong about that).
It appears that SEC DEF's early comment to the media (four to five weeks operation) was overly optimistic.
Originally Posted by
larssnowpharter
The USA is moving a huge amount of hardware into theatre at the moment.
Yes. A USNI podcast with a former CENTCOM commander.
(Start at about 1:17 minutes in to avoid ads). He makes five points that I'd like to pull out of the extended discussion. He is using a style of MilSpeak that sometimes takes a bit of decoding.
1. This Op Plan goes back a few Presidents (I'll suggest back to GW Bush when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was President of Iran, but he didn't state that explicitly).
2. It gets "re-tuned" based on political objectives, and how those change, even as it is being executed.
3. In his comments about the 'enemy gets a vote' and the limited successes Iran has had with attacking via missiles and drones, he mentions "naked human will" - interesting turn of phrase as regards Iran's position. (I think this podcast was a day or two before the significant attacks on Gulf infrastructure).
4. He asserts "air supremacy" - I disagree (see my previous post as regards potential ground ops on the islands), but to put his point in context, when he was interviewed (about 6 days ago) there hadn't been much talk about ground ops yet and the substatntive movement of the 82d hadn't been seen yet...he was addressing the Air Campaign from a military point of view. He was careful not to stray into the political realm.
5. The SOH is a Joint Force challenge: not just the Navy, and not just the Air Component. This struck me as a careful allusion to there being a ground ops component to the Op Plan / Plan of Campaign, that has been getting adjusted and redone over the years.
Also, I found it interesting he referred to this as a Campaign, but I can see why he did that based on the jargon used on the Joint Staff and in Joint Doctrine.
As much as I dislike the nation of Pakistan, I hope that their PM is able to get the right people to step 2...and that may need to include the envoys from all of the Gulf States who are probably not pleased with being attacked.
For Ninthace:
No point in opening the SOH, if there is no trade left to pass through.
That's a bit of hyperbole. Opening SOH if only half of what was available last year is still available is still useful to a great many nations. But your core point, which I'll put into my own words as Iran's position being "if we are going to bleed, you are going to bleed" is agreed. Iran's capacity for denial (both sea denial in the strait and denial of economic assets) has not been degraded sufficiently.
There is no Easy Button.