Satellite Photos Reveal Extent of Damage from Iranian Strike on Air Base in Iraq
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I don't believe for a second that they would not intervene if their economies are affected by another Middle East war where this time it is one of their significant business partners.
The idea this would cause an escalation from Russia and China is also absurd. Of course they are backing them now because it's politically convenient, but when push comes to shove, they won't fight. As long as the US doesn't try to expand its geopolitical aspirations in the Middle East, which has been a complete and utter disaster ever since George W., nothing will come of this skirmish.
> The idea this would cause an escalation from Russia and China is also absurd. Of course they are backing them now because it's politically convenient, but when push comes to shove, they won't fight.
The best surprises are the ones you do not see coming. You can say what you want. You don't make the decisions. Furthermore I stated my opinion that they would intervene. It was not a prediction as you take it. I strongly dissented from your opinion.
> if the US hits its refineries, etc, Iran is hosed
This one makes me laugh! To believe that one country would be hosed from striking at oil. There's an elephant in the room that indicates it would not be in the best interest of anyone to stifle turmoil in an OPEC state given that other countries will have to deal with the offsets and refugees. Think we've all seen the effects around the world with these wars. Very funny!
At this point, calling someone a terrorist is a dog whistle, because it's so broad to be almost meaningless. The differentiating factor seems to come down to US-backing.
If Iran did anything like a terrorist attack on US soil, it would open the door for the US to completely devastate Iran through bombings, etc, and that's not what the Iranian government wants. What they did was probably the smartest thing they could do, which is show explosions on their TVs so say they attacked back, but incur no loss of life to escalate things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_attacks_on_Israeli_diplom...
2) Iran has connections with Hezbollah and god knows who else. I would not dismiss the possibility.
3) There are enough people all over the world who would be incensed enough at the US to self radicalize.
2) Iran is Hezbollah. They're basically the same thing.
3) If Iran attacked the US with their fictional "sleeper cells", the world would be completely on the US side. This is why Iran didn't kill a single US soldier in their attacks yesterday.
2) ok not sure I was implying different.
3) you missed the point. If the US attacked disproportionately, it is highly unlikely that the USA would have the support of the world. At this point it would be expected for them to retaliate through any means available. Did you see the accuracy of their rocket? It destroyed a specific building at the base. The reason there were no casualties was because Iran told Iraq (who told us) that they were going to attack. No one wants an escalation.
2) saying that Iran has connections with the Hezbollah is like saying Trump has connections to the Republicans. Iran IS Hezbollah. There's a difference.
3) I'm not sure what you're arguing at this point. I said the same thing. Iran doesn't want an escalation because they know they can't win. If they caused any US deaths, it would lead to escalating destruction of Iran. You were the one that said "sleeper cells" around the world would start conducting terrorist campaigns or something. But that's absurd and would never happen because if they did, the US would make Iran pay and they would have the support of the world. Obviously dropping a nuke on Iran is out of the question, as is destroying cultural sites, but if these "sleeper cells" killed Americans, you could expect massive damage to Iranian infrastructure that they wouldn't be able to recover from in a timely manner.
Don't get caught up in specific words like sleeper cells or terrorism. I have no more information than you. I just know if I don't have a nuclear bomb, I need a nuclear option and I expect today's press conference by Iran with the flags of all the groups they support was a signal of the threat.
Perhaps you personally profited from the Iraq war, but US taxpayers footed a bill in the trillions to keep that going. People died. It isn't a game of Civ.
Arrogance blinds.
Trump is all show, anybody following him knows there's no secret 5-d plan there's just instinct and bad decisions made without thinking about the details. Also without getting all the data from background briefings because he considers them boring.
Edit: Thank you, Planet Labs, for making them CC-BY-SA!
https://help.npr.org/contact/s/contact?request=Ask-the-Publi...
My analysis is Iran's attacking a US base directly and ensuring of no US casualty was its best strategic option to avoid war.
1 - Iran had to save face domestically and regionally so had to attack.
2 - Most importantly, Iran had to immediately attack. With the calculation that many types of false flags or attacks against US personal by other entities would instantly be attributed to it.
A - Their foreign minister Zarif, made it clear that Iran will retaliate "direct and promotional" and not through any proxies, which was the same message signal by their Supreme leader[0]
B - After the attack ended, Zarif made it clear Iran is done with their retaliations[1]. So to avoid being blamed for any further attack that may take place in future date against US forces or interests.
Iran calculus probably was to avoid a high likely hood of attacks possibly orchestrated by Saudis or other entities (who benefit from a Us-Iran escalations) disguised as Iranian.
Having quickly retaliated, ensuring no US casualty and made it clear they're done, they're closing the door for getting blamed for false flags and trying to avoid additional escalations against US.
This signals a very rational and calculating player who doesn't want to escalate against US.
The question is how much US media would now push the narrative of crossing "red line" and forcing Trump to take escalatory military action.
One can even argue even this article uses a language like, "Iranian missile strike has caused extensive damage" and *"...show hangars and buildings hit hard by a barrage of Iranian missiles" to set the stage for US to take re-retaliatory steps.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/iran-says-it-has-concluded-its-resp...
Back channels are important.
Some speculation on possibilities in https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-s....
Edit: wiki shows even lower tech ballistic style electromechanical guidance on their page. Thats 1960s tech.
Those missiles landed dead-center on buildings. (Seriously, look at the images!) This demonstrates an impressive operational capability to select which targets to destroy.
https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-threat-and-prolif... claims "GPS/unknown"
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-s-ball... "improved the precision of the Fateh-110 guidance system, which uses both INS and Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) with a projected CEP of 250 m."
> Edit: wiki shows even lower tech ballistic style electromechanical guidance on their page. Thats 1960s tech.
The US still fields missiles with "1960s tech":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman#Minuteman-III...
I'm not so quick to dismiss these Iranian missiles. They seem to be accurate and able to effectively perform the job they were meant to do. It's a mistake to classify military technology as lower=worse/higher=better like it's a tech tree from a videogame. Inertial navigation systems like these missiles seem to have are actually superior to GPS in many circumstances that are relevant here. Yes, they drift, but that's not a huge issue over a short flight time. More importantly, they're self-contained, jam-proof, and don't rely on a service provided by an adversary.
Iran has a very backwards military with almost no air force and no serious navy power at all.
The few planes they have are mostly ancient and their navy consists of speed boats.
They have a thousand tanks that are a mixture of ancient and more modern tanks with medium capability compared to the US.
They have a large standing army that is moderately well trained, with some large elite forces, and they have good ballistic missile capabilities. They have almost zero ability to properly defend their territory from the US when it comes to air strikes. They have almost no ability to keep up a foreign strike outside of their borders, with their ballistic missile stockpile being their sole means. Basically they have almost no ability to sustain foreign strike capability via their military. Outside their borders they have numerous proxy terrorist organizations they fund persistently for asymmetric warfare.
That's all they have. They're an impotent military after decades of sanctions and grinding poverty. In a war context that of course doesn't mean the US would find invading to be easy (it would be a disaster), it means the US strategy would properly be to sit outside of their borders and destroy everything inside of Iran and never invade; acquire air dominance (would take one or two weeks max), and continue wiping out all infrastructure and military capabilities as needed.
If Iran had focused on developing the best tank force or air force possible, would it make a difference? No, Iran's most likely enemies are either the US or a country supplied by the US and the best Iran could produce would still fall short. They would certainly lose a conventional war.
So Iran has focused on developing asymmetric warfare capabilities. Their very large infantry and special forces mean any invading force will have an extreme insurgency problem to deal with, which could keep any enemy bogged down in a bloody and expensive war for literally decades. And their ballistic missile force can target important economic, military command or political targets, adding another significant deterrence.
Iran has been developing a variety of land-based anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles. Given that their naval interests are limited to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Sea of Oman (and the Caspian), that's probably enough naval power. Your air strikes are going to have to track down mobile launchers.
> and they have good ballistic missile capabilities
That's not a bad resource mix to potentially defeat the US Navy using asymmetric tactics:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a30392654/millenni...
>> Once U.S. forces were within range, Van Riper’s forces unleashed a barrage of missiles from ground-based launchers, commercial ships, and planes flying low and without radio communications to reduce their radar signature. Simultaneously, swarms of speedboats loaded with explosives launched kamikaze attacks. The carrier battle group’s Aegis radar system—which tracks and attempts to intercept incoming missiles—was quickly overwhelmed, and 19 U.S. ships were sunk, including the carrier, several cruisers, and five amphibious ships. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes,” Van Riper said.
> The problem? U.S. forces had expected Van Riper to sit back and come under attack, and then to launch a counterattack with his surviving forces, which could be easily brushed aside. Van Riper, who actually wanted to win the exercise, refused to sit on his hands and let the Americans attack first.
As you might guess, it has a slightly different view of what went down, and how representative it would be of a real conflict.
One of the most glaring issues in your quote is this:
> The carrier battle group’s Aegis radar system—which tracks and attempts to intercept incoming missiles—was quickly overwhelmed
This wasn't actually the Aegis radar that was overwhelmed, it was the system to simulate an Aegis radar for the purposes of an exercise. Actual Aegis systems don't seem to have the same problem.
> "There are other structures at the air base that would be exclusively for people so maybe they intended to strike sites with equipment over people."
Maybe being a key word here.
target /ˈtɑːɡɪt/ noun 1. a person, object, or place selected as the aim of an attack.
back channels are very effective and should be embraced in business and politics
The pics are from Planet Labs, but PL does not have anything on their blog about it.
edit: I'm surprised how little damage each hit inflicted. Purpose more to say "we struck the US" rather than actually do damage, I suppose.
> I'm surprised how little damage each hit inflicted. Purpose
> more to say "we struck the US" rather than actually do damage, I suppose.
I'd imagine the Iranian state-of-the-art varies significantly from Hamas's state-of-the-art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket).
One of the difficulties in ballistic missile defense is actually destroying the warhead. Because it is ballistic, hitting the missile and destroying the body during the terminal phase isn't good enough. The structure is essentially dead weight at that point; the warhead is still on track (roughly) to its target. That's why current ABM systems focus on boost-phase interception, because then a body hit completely throws off the missile trajectory.