🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran just put a price on American soldiers and raised the red banner of revenge, and the war aim in Tehran has hardened into driving America OUT of the region
Matthew Hoh on what Iran is actually fighting for now:
"Defeat means you've chased them from the region."
That distinction anchors the whole conversation.
Deterrence would mean letting America stay while making it bleed. Matthew argues Tehran wants expulsion, and the evidence keeps stacking: a $30,000 bounty on any invading US soldier, doubled if a woman brings him in, and a new mural in the capital showing the Statue of Liberty in ruins beneath the red flag of Karbala, a banner Iran has flown maybe once before, after Soleimani.
His Marine's-eye breakdown of a ground option is devastating arithmetic.
No non-permissive amphibious assault is possible, an air assault is a photo-op raid at best, and sustainment collapses at max helicopter range against a battlespace Iran has spent decades preparing.
Yet his closing warning cuts the other way: war is a superhuman force that devours whoever thinks they've mastered it, and Iran's pride could still cost it a victory already in hand.
@MatthewPHoh @WeTheBrandon
