Quds 1 missile
armscontrolwonk.com
armscontrolwonk.com
Designing a deniable missile sounds exactly like something an Iran Intel agency would do. Especially with how effectively Russia worked in Ukraine, not using directly attributable assets is very valuable and will be a tactic we'll only see more of in the future.
Makes sense they'd simplify one of their existing proven systems and use more drone-esque technology.
The Quds name is also interesting since it's the name of Iran's more elite forces which have operated in their proxies like Syria, and what I thought this article was going to be about https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-com...
"The Holy Hand Grenade" was comedy in a movie. "The Holy Missile" in real life? Not so funny.
along with every single other Intel agency involved in the middle east. Including those agencies/countries that might gain from an Arab Persian conflict.
This sounds like something any Intel agency would do, starting with the US, Russia and China. Although they are probably cleverer and stock weapons from their enemies, to be able to implicate them in attacks if necessary, and justify other actions.
There's plenty of examples in history but no one has done it as boldly as the Ruskies.
Iran already had plenty of experienced in the missile dept with Palestine and Lebanon so it's not exactly new to it either.
Physical fabrication of cruise missiles (which is basically what modern "kamikaze drones" are) isn't the hard part IMO....I really wanna get a look at their guidance/control software. Somebody get the Houthis on GitLab ASAP.
>>>The idea that impoverished war-torn Yemen would be able to develop a cruise missile without any outside assistance seems far-fetched......Is Iran secretly designing, testing and producing missile systems for exclusive use by its proxies?
I think it's possible the Iranians are doing the design work, then sending the CAD files to the Houthis and telling them "cobble together something like this to the best of your ability." The results have been spectacularly successful, and gets around the problems of the blockade if they aren't sending physical hardware.
https://theaviationist.com/2019/09/15/everything-we-know-abo...
The article implied that the TJ100 would not be capable of the range required to hit the Saudi targets if launched from Northern Yemen.
[1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/now-we-know-how-houth...
Clearly whatever intel gathering they have isn't likely to shut down a distributed manufacturing operation.
There's a factor of value-to-loose. Blowing up a fisherman's hut is one thing, and completely another is the case of oil refinery.
I'm led to wonder whether piston engines could've made the trip, and whether Saudi air defense could've shot such a (slower) drone down. Giant-scale RC plane engines exist... anyone know how big these have to get before export controls kick in?
EDIT: forgot source link.
The engine was switched from a more efficient turbofan to a turbojet TJ100. But switching to a piston and propeller engine might have been to much of a change and would have require a complete redesign.
Rather it is mentioned that TJ100-alike engines are used in Iran's drone program (as distinct from cruise missiles), and this raises the possibility that the Quds-1 is a derivative of one of those.
So, it appears that this "drone" attack was actually an attack by an ultra-advanced cruise missile. A missile with higher range than the limits of the INF treaty (from which the US has pulled recently).
According to this article, the distance between northern Yemen and the attacked facility is more than 1250 km. For comparison this is roughly the distance between New York and Chicago, or between Paris and Rome.
Note that the INF treaty was bilateral (it only bound its two signatories, Russia and the US).
"The TJ100 however not only has much lower thrust than the original KH-55 engine but also is just your regular old turbojet. This leads to some questions about range. Both the missile’s smaller size and its more fuel-hungry engine make it seem unlikely it’s range would be anywhere close to the the Soumar’s/Hoveyzeh’s range of 1350km "
So no, the attacks did not happen with the Quds-1 missile, but rather with a much more advanced one. A missile in the same class as the Tomahawk, or the KH-55. These missiles are not garage-level technology.
What would be even more interesting (to me at least) is to see the United States withdraw all our combat personnel from the region and let the players in the region figure it out for themselves. The U.S. has now been at war continuously for 18 years, which is the longest stretch ever. I'm starting to feel like my generation may be the last American generation to remember a time when we weren't at war.
I felt a small surge of hope when Bolton was canned (or resigned, what does it matter really as long as he's gone), but then Trump tweeted that he was waiting to see what the Saudis want us to do, which is frankly ass backwards.
Here's hoping for the end of American soldiers dying in other people's wars in my lifetime, which would make the subject of this article seem like something less than a provocation for yet more strikes by the U.S.
Although I find the bipartisan and widespread media backlash that happens every time either tried to be revealing of the greater DC agenda as opposed to what they've found useful to say during campaigning.
It's a damned if you do type situation, which is a game politicians don't like playing. Kicking it down the road continues to be the standard political option. Not to mention the middle east will no doubt continue to have a never ending series of incidents to make that option easy to justify.
I suggest taking a look at something like Max Boots _The Savage Wars of Peace_. The short of it is that the US has been engaged in near constant active armed conflict since the earliest days of the republic. Post tonkin, and especially the last 2-3 decades, the size and scale of that engagement has certainly turned up. And putting media first (like cnn on the beach during landings in somalia) has changed the public visibility. But we’ve always had men and women dying overseas in service to the country.
I think the OP has a point: since 9/11 we've internalized an ethos and logic of security matters that necessitate our perpetually making war in the Middle East. Other than Vietnam, nothing in our history is comparable.
I've said it before: President Obama's decision not to invade Syria was one of the most respectable and admirable decisions of any president in our history. He made the correct decision within a political culture that demanded he do the opposite. Every leader domestically, across party lines; all his advisors; and all of America's allies demanded and even attempted to shame him publicly into invading, despite it being obvious and beyond dispute it could not have possibly turned out any better than Iraq; indeed, that it was precipitated by Iraq. And he made the correct decision despite the fact that he had already, unwisely drew a red line committing the U.S. to intervention.
Not since Khrushchev and (in the American narrative) JFK has someone proven that kind of leadership--to recognize your mistake and own up to it in the most consequential way possible.
Of course, choosing not to invade Syria meant condemning thousands to die. But it was going to be a slaughter either way. The sin of leaving Syrians to their deaths had been committed more than a decade prior, and revisited every time someone demanded more military intervention.
The best probable outcome for the current go round in Afghanistan & Iraq was something like Korea. Armistice or not we’ve had 30-50,000 soldiers stationed in an active war zone for 60 years. Earlier the US military fought and controlled the Philippines for 50 years. Before that it was China and central America.
The 5 declared wars, with a tidy declaration and cessation, are the exception not the rule. The US public may have an aversion to adventurism, but the US state certainly does not.
Edit: the first found reasonably complete list of these “small wars” with US combat deaths https://www.militaryfactory.com/american_war_deaths.asp I dont have a citation for how it compares to other major nations, but Im skeptical thats its substantially “smaller”.
I think it exemplifies the political forces that channel the nation into perpetual war, particularly this latest 18-year phase. It illustrates that the leadership[1] necessary to counteract these forces isn't understood as leadership but as weakness.
[1] Namely, taking the reins, cutting our loses, and making as much lemonade out of the lemons as possible (e.g. Iran nuclear deal), rather than fecklessly stumbling crisis to crisis trying to minimize loss of face instead of minimizing loss of credibility.
Well, that's partly what the Iran nuclear deal was about. While not necessarily intentional, the fact that Iran was free to go about building their conventional weaponry was a feature--it prevented a power vacuum from opening up. You want a detente between the Iranian and Saudi Arabian spheres of power. Power imbalances create instability. Not just because the more powerful will try to grab more resources, but because (as here) the weaker are politically incentivized to antagonize the stronger powers.
Citation needed.
Generally accepted wisdom is that power balances create instability (albeit one in which rational players can manage the instability to provide the illusion of stability, if so incentivized), and imbalances create stability (albeit one that is fragile and under threat from asymmetric players). This is a separate issue from the values of fairness, equality, and justice, which are far more concordant, on the surface level, with a balance of power between players, even as they are only secured through the institution of an unbalanced, central power.
On a domestic level, a strong federal government provides political stability. Legacy rights, specifically the Second Amendment, which attempt to create a "balance" of power between citizens, result in violence.
On an international level, Pax Romana and Pax Americana. Global stability has been worsening with the decline of American power.
Do you think the Middle East would be more stable if Saudi Arabia were powerful enough to conquer Iran?
Power imbalances are almost by definition how violence arises as it means that forces are out of equilibrium. If you want to avoid all violence, even at the outset, you have to constructively arrange for a balance of powers. It's odd you single out the U.S. because the tripartite (4-part if you include Federalism) structure of American government is renowned for having the foresight to vest powers in distinct branches in a manner designed to maintain a balance through tension. The structure of American government wasn't particularly novel; what was truly novel was the recognition of the utility of constructively leveraging opposing domains of power to build something as sophisticated as a national government.
Yes, it is - it's an unjust stability, which is why I pointed out that the question of justice is separate from the question of stability. Do not confuse justice with stability. China and Russia are stable powers and Rome was a stable power, but none of them are democratically just.
> Do you think the Middle East would be more stable if Saudi Arabia were powerful enough to conquer Iran?
No, because that's a more complicated question than you think. Like I pointed out, large stable powers are threatened by asymmetric players. The US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and defeated their incumbent governments extremely quickly, only to discover that American rule was unstable because of asymmetric threats in both countries. A theoretically (really, only theoretically) sufficiently powerful House of Saud could govern Iran, but there would be enough of a threat from asymmetric players to undermine the stability of Saudi rule in Iran. Being able to quantify the potential for asymmetric threat and accounting for it in a risk profile to try to present the case for or against invasion is, to my knowledge, an open research question in military science, conflict studies, game theory.
> If you want to avoid all violence, even at the outset, you have to constructively arrange for a balance of powers
Literally the explanation for why all of human history is so bloody is because for most of human history, the difference in military power between players was slim to none. Europe was a patchwork of warring fiefdoms with no clear central power (aside from Pax Romana) resulting in two world wars. Latin America was unstable for most of the twentieth century for the same reason (see above). Warlords continue to be a source of much instability across the African continent as much of the continent is run by governments which are too weak to effectively control the sum of their territories from the threats of warlords etc. I have absolutely no idea where you came up with this idea.
> structure of American government is renowned for having the foresight to vest powers in distinct branches in a manner designed to maintain a balance through tension
And the result is quite unstable. Each branch, internal to its own context, yes is quite stable - but the sum total is so unstable that 46 years after Roe v. Wade, there is still no consensus on abortion policy; 52 years after the adoption of the 25th Amendment, there is still no consensus on whether it permits the Cabinet to remove a sitting President who does not want to be removed; 151 years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, there is still no consensus on the true meaning of "equal protection of the laws" across racial and class divides.
Rather, American governance is a case study in how projecting stability externally - both to the general American public, and to the world, each in its own context - can help to mask a deep internal instability, and how that internal instability paradoxically feeds the external projections of stability, for better (Pax Americana) or for worse (industry holding off on investment while it's unclear as to the extent of the trade war with China).
If you have a state of balance that transitions to a stare of imbalance, that is tremendously destabilizing.
It is not the fact of change which is objectionable, only the means.
Has it really been though? At the height of American power during the cold war there were pretty much constantly regime changes and civil wars backed by the US. The instability of the era was intense for people living in these places, but because it was orchestrated in the name of furthering American interests it created a kind of "Global stability" in the eyes of the west. A perfect example of this might be someone like Pinochet or Suharto, whose regimes were the result of violent coups, and who committed politicide domestically, but were "stable" from the perspective of a western businessperson.
If you find that interesting, you might be interested in reading about the withdrawal of colonial forces from Africa.
In his book "War, Guns, and Votes" Paul Collier suggests French military interventions in their former colonies have actually been pretty good for the countries; he argues a 'forces-over-the-horizon guarantee' promising foreign troops will show up to support the government during a war reduced the chances of civil war over 5 years from 10% to 3%.
If this is a crime, then any crime investigation should examine motive, timing and means.
Few recent geopolitical details to keep in mind:
1 - Trump administration just fired the #1 anti-Iran hawk (Bolton) and signaled interest in talking with "no conditions" with the Iranian regime. This would entirely change the Iranian position in the region [1]. It suggest lunacy from an otherwise calculating regime to jeopardize this potential new chapter.
2 - Iran just signed a $280 billion investment deal with China. Which includes presence of 5000 Chinese "security" forces. Essentially creating a Chinese military base across the waters from the US military base [2]. Iran would not want to escalate into a war before it has chance to land the Chinese forces on the ground and use them as a deterrent.
Do keep in mind, aside from the impact of the $280B investment in Iranian infrastructure and oil sector, it essentially makes Chinese currency the second currency of oil trade.
The oil trade in $USD is one of the most important and financial power that America has. This is something started during the Nixon era as a way to deal with the budget deficits needs of paying for the Vietnam war and it has continued ever since ensuing stability of $USD as we print money [3]
Just looking at these, you can make an argument there are multiple entities interested in either breaking any possibility of meeting between US and Iran, as clearly Trump has already walked backwards about "no condition" talk statements [4].
These entities with most to lose from a Trump/Iran meeting are:
Saudi Arabia Israel
Looking at the imagery and precision of these hits, you almost wonder if the attacks might have come from something else. Not to mention we've already had attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf with the original narrative disputed [5] and following a precision attack from a "flying objects" possibly a missile.
Given that the only evidence to Quds is a destroyed missile image from Saudi Arabia (a rather partial entity) from past and there are no actual evidence yet from the attack sites itself, you can as easily look at who has most to gain from a military confrontation with Iran or the very least stopping any diplomatic rapprochement between US and the Iranian regime. A case can be made for both Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Then there is the questions of the means.
On Israel there are multiple options.
1, Israel has some of the most stealth submarines in the world that they got from Germany. It is equipped with a cruise missile [6]
2, Israel can also strike from the air from a distance. Israel recently hit Iraq [7] and it has stealth ability to fly close to the Kuwait border to fire their cruise missiles [8]
The point I'm making, while you can make a case for Iran, you can as easily make the case for Israel. Given the biggest beneficiary of this latest escalation are probably the Israelis (please do not hate me for saying this) we should equally look at this possibility.
Lastly, these missile might have come for the "rebels" in Yemen. It's hard to imagine how an impoverished country could make something like this. Import the parts and everything else and then manufacture and test it. Obviously you could look at Iran as the source, however, there is one more regional player who benefits from the Saudi-Yemen war quagmire which is Qatar.
Saudi Arabia (or rather MBS) began a siege of Qatar and gave an ultimatum of invasion and overthrow of the country's rulers. Despite numerous back channel efforts there is no easing on the tension between Qatar and Saudi Arabia [9] A case can be made that Qatar would want to support the "rebels" and prolong the Saudi-Yemen conflict as long as possible to get leverage over the Saudis.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2019/09/15/threatening-war-oil-dona...
[2] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190907-a-blow-to-washing...
[3] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/072915/how-petro..., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untol...
[4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-attacks-trum...
[5] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-tanker-japan-dama...
[6] https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/israel-submarine-capab...
[7] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/officials-confirm-isr...
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delilah_(missile)
[9] https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/saudi-qatar-hopes-for-m...
Iran is not going to play by the book, they've shown multiple times they are willing to escalate things when it looks like deescalation is more logical choice. One of recent examples is when they shot down a US drone. What is the reason for this is unclear, it's possible that hardliners in Iran have control over parts of the military, and that they push for escalation whenever there is a situation to deescalate things with USA. Another option is that there is no divide in Iran, but that is it well orchestrated "madman" tactic to make USA willing to make bigger concessions.
Rest of the analysis completely ignores the facts that Houthi's are receiving or using Iran built or Iran designed weapons, not just cruise missiles but anti air missiles as well. It is a huge leap of faith to assume that some other country in a false flag created a missile that resembles known Houthi weapons or that multiple countries created a fake narrative that fit Houthi attack.
And after that, Houthi's played into that false flag narrative by taking responsibilities for the attack, even citing methods they used to do the attack (methods seem to be fake, but the point stands).
This theory of a false flag attack makes no sense. It would take several countries with conflicting interests to cooperate (Houthis claiming responsibility, Saudi Arabia accepting huge material losses and faking a rocket in the desert, Israel conducting a stealthy attack far away from their borders, Iran playing along and not exposing it...)
So this needs to investigated from all angles. Every party could be guilty.
And the solution should find a way towards peace instead of towards war. That is the only way to build a stable society for the people.
The drones/cruise-missiles came from north / north-west. Not straight from Iran, but from a source in Iraq. ..If this information is correct.