After this strike, the only AWS region in the ME that remains operational is the one in Tel Aviv (a bit ironic if you ask me).
UAE has been down for months, Bahrain is now offline, Saudi Arabia is still under construction.
UAE has been down for months, Bahrain is now offline, Saudi Arabia is still under construction.
(I realize it’s a stretch from what you’re suggesting but if you think about it, not really)
government contractors may be embedded in high stakes situations.
<https://diamond-age.bib.bz/security-measures-adopted-by-atla...>
One> An executive has to care about a cost center, then proceeds to invest in prevention instead of looking like a hero after, instead of putting off a fire an getting a promotion or bonus. Which is nigh impossible.
Two> Our tech overlords try to push for our cyberpunk present to at least look kinda cool. Which they also refuse todo.
That plus most of Iran's attacks on Israel didn't do anything and likely still won't. Which is why Iran focused on the weaker gulf states even when Israel was involved.
Also, Israel will not abandon (or be abandoned) by the US, but the others might want to cut their losses if supporting the US becomes costlier than being neutral.
The game being played is extremely interesting, with high stakes and no margin for error. Too bad people die.
Won’t be pretty, as no empire has ever fallen peacefully.
Iran knows Israel won't stop itself from attacking for too long. So they are going to wait until that point and they are likely going to try the same targeting methodology to paralyze Israeli airbases. If they manage to do so, they will be able to significantly reduce the US/Israeli strike tempo and to be more successful using drones, not even missiles.
At the peak Iran fired 650 missiles at Israel and only killed 28 people, mostly from hitting a single residential building. These days Iran is only firing small salvos into gulf states and only 20-30 drones at a time. I'd be surprised if they could pull off 2025 numbers when they fired a hundred at Israel.
One way of interpreting that statistic is that they are running out of munitions. Another way is to consider that stockpiles are not running low, but the initial response was a collection of high-burn, uncoordinated, decentralized tactical actions after an attempted decapitation-strike disrupted top-down C&C. Now that the fog of war has cleared, and communication has been restored, a more strategic regime is now in effect.
At the end of the day Iran has more missiles than the US has interceptors. So when you get to the point when you're talking about running out, they just don't need to launch big salvos anymore.
Although what has changed is that Israël is no longer getting guns for free they need to pay for it same as everyone else. Progress!
I suspect that Iran knows that going after Dubai would upset a lot of American (and Sunni) billionaires.
...which I now return to...
You may be confused with southern Lebanon, which is.
Saudi has the advantage that they have the US doing the dirty work for them. No need to do much themselves.
The Saudi main army is pretty incompetent, but the Royal Guard is extremely effective. They are separately trained by the West and maintain comms separate from the main army. And now they've teamed up with Pakistan, which has one of the best air forces in the region.
Qatar recently opened up a route for citizenship to foreign veterans who serve in their armed forces. That guarantees them a steady supply of soldiers from the region should the need arise.
The most vulnerable are Bahrain and Kuwait, but both of them have had help with security actions from their more competent neighbors.