It might be worth noting that: "Part of the selling point is Global Hawks fly so high and normally they should be secure from being shot down."
That's why we should not cavalierly dismiss the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard's air force, when he says: "'An aircraft carrier' was a serious threat for us in the past. But now it is a target and the threats have switched to opportunities."
Maybe he's bluffing. There's no question that the US holds a powerful military hand, and maybe it is absolutely, positively sure it knows where all the missiles are and can defend against them. (That's what those high-flying Hawks are for!) But there's a hell of a pot on the table for raising on a maybe. It's the good hands that lose the most.
Iran is not hiding its tells. There is no "maybe" about the fact that, if there's a carrier sitting in the Persian Gulf launching planes to attack the country, Iran will try to sink it. How many ASM aces did you see Iran get from Russia or China?
For someone, there's a bad beat coming.
As military analyst Andrei Martyanov says, even in the '70s, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt was worried about "the strategic and psychological effects of the loss of even a single nuclear aircraft-carrier would have on the U.S. Navy." And the whole exceptional, invincible country. If Iran sinks, or even hits and seriously damages a US carrier, there will be enormous pressure on Trump to absolutely devastate Iran. Iran knows that, and is ready to respond to it with as much devastating force as it can muster, hitting any target it can.
And we haven't even mentioned what happens if Iran or, as Boot evokes, its Hezbollah ally, rains missiles on Tel Aviv, causing serious damage and casualties. My bet on that hand is that Israel takes the opportunity it's been looking for to nuke Tehran or Qom, establishing its ruthless and irreversible hyper-dominance of the region for once and for all. (It will think.) It's Israel. Who within the United States, during that war on Iran, will protest?
Because Israel, like Iran, and unlike the US public, from whom this knowledge is assiduously hidden in the weeds of deliberately dishonest blather, knows what this conflict is about. And it's not about preventing Iran from getting any mythical nuclear weapons. Again, even Boot knows "the nuclear deal did [that] far better"--and the US throwing away that deal proves it is not interested in Iranian nuclear weapons at all.
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