Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
I've honestly given up trying to predict this administration's likely actions on Iran. In a normal administration, it's likely this kind of attack would result in reciprocal standoff strikes against Iranian missile, radar, and air defense installations. The risk of escalation would be high, but the strikes would likely be calibrated in intensity to send a message without necessitating a massive response (or putting, say, a US pilot in danger of being shot down). Then again, I would have said the same thing after Iranian attacks that downed a large intelligence drone and seriously damaged Saudi oil infrastructure, and the administration's response was... crickets.

Frankly I have no idea what they'll do and I doubt it'll appear to be part of a coherent strategy to confront Iran and/or de-escalate the situation. I think Trump is winging it.
Oh, it certainly wouldn't be part of a coherent strategy, and it would not be to de-escalate things. The administration's response was crickets before because Trump's ego was never engaged on the topic and consequently he didn't care at all about what the Iranians did/were doing. Now his ego is engaged and it's going to be motivating his selection of responses. At this point what I'm hoping is that we're going to be making stand-off strikes and that while Iran may do some of its own as well they'll quickly switch to proxy fighting (and maybe low-scale harassment like getting mortar strike teams and such in position to do some shelling on US facilities, also with help from local proxies). Trump will give himself a pat on the back for his tough response and things will peter out.

Just to remind everyone: if the US actually was planning on, say, toppling the Iranian regime or defeating the Iranian military in detail, they'd need at a minimum several hundred thousand troops, half a dozen carrier battle groups, and a few hundred other aircraft.
It would also be absolutely pointless. The significant Iranian military isn't all that important for their activities across the broader Middle East, we could maybe topple the current regime but we'd never manage to either facilitate or install and keep installed a friendly one. We could maybe give rise to a bunch of bickering factions and tribal interests but if we did plenty of them would be perfectly willing and able to continue the same kind of policies in the Middle East and against our interests as the current regime. We could make life worse and more unstable for a bunch of Iranians but we can't change much vis a vis Iran and the Middle East or Iran and us, with or subsequent to our use of military force.