"How many have died in Putin's Ukrainian stunt? Over 1000 a day for nearly four years?"

It's not Putin's Ukrainian stunt, it's an American Ukrainian stunt.

"The questions to ask are 'How well trained were the operators?' and 'How well maintained was the equipment?'."
Why are they the questions?
Choose some different ones.

"Those questions could be revisited in Iran over the coming weeks. Tens of thousands of unarmed civilians murdered by the regime so far. Will Trump keep his word and step in?"
Says who? And define 'step in'

'What is the cause of the conflict' Fester?
This is the most basic of questions, but one needs to ask it to centre and focus logical thinking.
To make sure one's thinking is well grounded moving forward.

Max Blumenthal : Did U.S. Policy Deliberately Harm Civilians in Iran?
http://www.youtube.com/live/U4n_E00yYus?t=120

2 minutes in, watch.

Here we have Scott Bessant openly stating that the fall in the Iranian currency was US 'economic statecraft'.

You think some baboon U.S. banker in on the plan didn't short the Iranian currency and make a profit on someone else's (the Iranian peoples) loss?
You think they would let a crisis or opportunity to make $ go to waste?
(No more than others would not allow the Bondi crisis go to waste.)

So what was the cause of the conflict in Iran?
- U.S. economic sanctions and interference leading to civil unrest?
Aided by Western intelligence assets (CIA and Mossad) inside Iran who sought to co-opt and transform peaceful protests into mass killings and blood flowing on the streets, because that's what you have to do, if you want success according to the regime change handbook.

For the most part, yes that's what happened.
But we can't forget there is a genuine water crisis in Tehran.

You know I'm against sanctions and overthrows.
For this exact reason - the same one you cite.
How many innocent people did you say were killed?
(Inflated numbers by Western NGO's and some more innocent than others, but I digress...)
In any case, regime change is a stupid game where innocent people get killed.

They shot and beheaded police in order to provoke a heavy handed government reaction, then use this reaction to deligitimise the government saying they're killing 'peaceful protesters'.

What sort of reaction would Albo get on the international news headlines if he started gunning down Palestinian protesters, how would he react if Palestinian protesters murdered 100 cops including beheadings?

It's all artificially manufactured and stage-managed strife Fester.

The Shah was visiting Israel wearing his skull cap and kissing the ring, I mean western wall.

How far separated are these intelligence assets that conduct these covert foreign actions in other countries from their domestic counterparts charged with preventing them in our own?

Five-eyes nations + Israel.
For all we know they encourage individuals to become extremist like the FBI does for entrapment, and then allow some attacks to happen when it's political useful to do so.

And I'm not saying that is what happened, but it could be.
That's the smell I get when they carry on about synagogue doors burning and the 'Iranian state sponsored it.'

'Do their synagogue doors not deserve to burn?'
(Not that I'd support it, but I don't really care either)

Smells like bs, lacks any evidence or logical sense that it'd be state sponsored.
A manufactured narrative to capitalise on a manufactured public reaction.

Don't you lot understand 'Problem, reaction, solution'?

"Don't you lot understand 'Problem, reaction, solution'?"

Hi AC,

My simple take is that the problem in Iran is from a regime that values its ideology above the lives of its people. I think that if you want peace you must value people more than your ideology.

Did you know that China is helping the Iranian regime? What does that say about how much the Chinese government values the Iranian people? Accomplices to murder?

More on the concerns from China and Russia....
http://tiny.cc/963y001

Much of the success of the US operation came from the coordination of the US space programme into the military. In large parts, real-time information around the Maduro operation was controlled by the US Space Force. These other nations are miles behind the US in that regard and are unlikely to catch up quickly.

An accident in Russia has destroyed one of its diminishing space launch sites and they will struggle to maintain any sort of launch capability in the near future. China is desperately trying to emulate SpaceX's successes with rocket relaunch but have repeated failed. Reports are that they are reverting to their old tactic of just trying to steal the technology in the face of an inability to duplicate it.

We are reminded of the history of these issues. Repeatedly over the decades we are told that the technology of whoever happens to be opposing the US is equal to or surpasses that of the US. But when there is a real world clash of those technologies eg Yom Kippur, the Six Day War, Desert Storm, the US technology proves to be vastly superior.

In those examples, we are always informed by the partisans that it wasn't really the technology that failed but the operators. I see some of the less informed here repeat that assertion.

But prior to the Maduro operation we were told that Caracas was completely protected by the best Sino-Russian technology available AND that the operators had been fully trained and probably supplemented by Chinese and Russia forces. Only after it all fails does the narrative change.

The US has an incentive to down-play the lead they enjoy. For purposes of pride China likewise.

But for the moment, following the events in Caracas, Taiwan is safe. Geopolitical events might change the equation, but the military equation remains the same.

Your link doesn't really change the core issue, mhaze. It mostly reinforces it.

The PJ Media piece you cite is celebratory narrative, not neutral analysis. It attributes the success of the operation to a "jaw-dropping" level of US space and cyber integration, but that capability didn't suddenly emerge in 2026. ISR dominance, cyber disruption, EW, SOF insertion, and space-enabled overwatch are institutional US strengths that predate Trump by decades

What the article actually describes is a combined-arms special operation against a degraded client state, not a revelation about peer-level warfare. Shutting down a national grid, jamming comms, suppressing air defenses, and inserting SOF under ISR cover says more about asymmetric advantage than about the intrinsic inferiority of Chinese or Russian technology.

On Russia and China specifically:

- Export systems in Venezuela are not proxies for homeland defenses.

- Operator competence, integration, maintenance, and doctrine still matter, whether one likes it or not. Dismissing that as "less informed" doesn't make it false.

- Space integration is not a US monopoly. China and Russia are actively pursuing counter-space, redundancy, and denial strategies precisely because they already assume US penetration capability.

The historical examples you cite (Six Day War, Desert Storm) actually underline the same point: US success flowed from doctrine, training, integration, intelligence, and coalition structure, not from a single technological silver bullet suddenly revealed in combat.

As for Taiwan, the extrapolation still doesn't follow. Different geography, different warning time, different alliance structure, different force posture. Beijing's planning has never assumed perfect denial. It assumes cost-imposition and escalation control. One raid in Caracas doesn't rewrite that.

In short, the article describes impressive US institutional capability. It does not demonstrate a sudden strategic exposure of China, nor does it show that "the military equation remains the same" in any simple sense.

At most, it confirms something already well understood: the US remains extremely good at projecting power against weaker, poorly integrated opponents. That's not new, and it doesn't justify the broader conclusions being drawn here.