Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

The problem is they can't just flatten Iran. Using B-52s or a tactical nuke to destroy Tehran would kill tens to hundreds of thousands of Iranians who hate the regime, and probably not that many regime loyalists.

They've also already destroyed most obvious military bases, AA sites, missile launch sites, factories etc. This is going to be the same problem as Serbia/Kosovo, you keep pummelling the targets that are already destroyed and unless you want to commit mass genocide, you can't really do anything else. That leads to you walking away (leaving Iran de facto victorious) or the near-inevitable conclusion that you have to send in ground troops.

The US is pulling THAAD and Patriot launchers out of South Korea to send to Gulf allies. Seoul is not happy about this.

Three oil tankers have been hit and heavily damaged near the Strait, dissuading anyone else from trying to cross.

Breaking story that another two tankers have been hit and are ablaze off the coast of Iraq.

Oil tanks in Salalah, Oman are ablaze.

A Chinese cargo ship behind the Thai tanker hit this morning turned right around and got the hell out of the Strait. Apparently Iran's promises not to hit Chinese vessels are not worth very much.

The FBI has issued a warning to Californians that there is intelligence suggesting an Iranian plot to use cargo ships off the coast of California to launch attacks on military and civilian targets in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They regard the possibility as plausible.

The Moscow region has had very spotty internet for 5 days, which is interesting.

The Institute for the Study of War has said that Russia has had to dig deep into its strategic reserve to send reinforcements to the crumbling Zaporizhzhia front and shore up the rot on the Kupyansk front. In some areas, Russian units are being told to simultaneously defend a front from a significant offensive and advance without support, resulting in the unit either not moving in confusion or moving out of cover and being destroyed.

The ISW conclusion is that Russia's manpower limitations have now reached a crux and Russia must either decide to concentrate forces on one big offensive on one sector of the front, mobilise hundreds of thousands more troops or abandon plans for a Spring 2026 offensive and go over to the defensive along most of the line. Or carry on as they are now and risk an entire front just collapsing.

It'd be interesting to find out how they're planning to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Their entire navy has effectively ceased to exist, and the straits are pretty wide, you'd need to drop hundreds to thousands of mines out there, and ensure they stay put, and can't easily be destroyed.

I'd be more concerned if Iran had bought Poseidon from Russia to go after the US carriers, but that would probably trigger an American nuclear strike on Russia, so very unlikely.

Tiste Simeon, on 09 March 2026 - 08:54 PM, said:

Ukraine rotates its anti-drone teams off the line for R&R regularly, it's a pretty stressful job, since if you miss or get it wrong, an apartment building in Kyiv might be getting blown up or power might be cut off to half a city. But it's also not the most technical job, there's a lot of people trained to fire a machine gun out the back of a chopper or off the back of a pickup truck, or increasingly using those British-built anti-drone microdrones, which sometimes sit on the ground until a Shahed wanders into its field of view and then automatically blows it out of the sky with minimal oversight.

So there's a lot of Ukrainian anti-Shahed teams sitting around off the line who can pack up and go to the Gulf. This is also important because it earns them a ton of goodwill. IIRC, a couple of the Gulf States by themselves were talking about underwriting 20-30% of Ukraine's ultimate rebuilding costs, so staying on their goodside is a good thing.

Ukraine also desperately needs Patriot missile refills from America, so sending their teams to help protect American soldiers earns them goodwill from the USA (probably not Trump, who'll forget about this in five minutes, but still).