US threaten Iran with pre-emptive strike

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/uk-military-iran-attack-nuclear

i kinda just can't see past this being the main item on the guardian front page so haven't really screened it but yknow it freaks me out irrespective

The RAF could also provide air-to-air refuelling and some surveillance capability, should they be required. British officials say any assistance would be cosmetic: the US could act on its own but would prefer not to.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner lays the groundwork for his next war (or Romney's first):

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/playing_for_time_on_iran/singleton/

to war we're gonna go

Same old, same old Tonkin Gulf. Assume neocon @NYTimes @Wapo etc will keep readers in ignorance. https://t.co/g1IY58tmB7 via @thedailybeast

— Andrew Cockburn (@andrewmcockburn) May 14, 2019

John Bolton: ‘An Attack On Two Saudi Oil Tankers Is An Attack On All Americans’ https://t.co/Dgny7ss6pJ pic.twitter.com/nvxyCtNCVh

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 15, 2019

It is now confirmed: the US has killed Qassem Soleimani.

— Ranj Alaaldin (@RanjAlaaldin) January 3, 2020

who is that and what does that mean?

Head of Quds force of the IRGC, responsible for Iranian operations in Iraq vs ISIS and in Syria among other things. Hugely important figure

Are we now at war?

i don't know, but it doesn't help that the entire republican party has been pushing for this for 25 years

And half the Democrats.

Fingers crossed they show some spine in an election year.

The proxy war and economic war between Iran and US is pretty much at fever pitch rn but I cant see it blowing up into an actual straight up open war

who is that

worth reading: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander (written in 2013 so he has continued his career since then)

and what does that mean?

it means iran will feel compelled to respond. whether that response compels a response and so on leading to an invasion or some other similarly dramatic event remains to be seen.

Qassem Soleimani and Iran's Unique Regional Strategy by Ali Soufan (@Ali_H_Soufan) https://t.co/cJSJEqcVY4 pic.twitter.com/MwoXQKQX78

— CTC at West Point (@CTCWP) November 8, 2018

obv take all this shit with a grain of salt but

Iranian sources in Iran are warning that killing Gen. Qasem Sulaimani spells war.
"Official reaction will begin with a strike," one says.#Iraq

— Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) January 3, 2020

which tom clancy spinoff would best serve as a basic primer here, thanks in advance

Jack Ryan S2, just replace Venezuela with Iran

tbbdfddbf

this isn’t great

pic.twitter.com/VXeKiVzpTf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020

The defensive actions the U.S. has taken against #Iran & its proxies are consistent with clear warnings they have received

They chose to ignore these warnings because they believed @POTUS was constrained from acting by our domestic political divisions

They badly miscalculated

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 3, 2020

"defensive actions"... lol. I guess the GOP line is that our drones are defending the Baghdad Airport from its own generals?

Welp

what political leader on earth would think that POTUS is constrained by anything

Oh great

In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2011

i didn't even think about that. why did obama do this? why today?

oh wait - in order to get elected for an illegal 3rd term!!

my dad was right

it's been nice knowing y'all

Iran doesn't yet have nuclear weapons. Of course, they are not much more than an insurance policy against a repetition of the Iran-Iraq War, or against a bombing attack by the Israeli Air Force. I guess they could rig up a dirty bomb on short notice to spread radioactivity where it was detonated. But Iran is not an existential threat to the US or Europe.

thank you for clearing that up

Thread displaying Eric Trump's deleted tweet & market manipulation:

1. A tweet from Eric Trump that was quickly deleted.

Note the date and time. pic.twitter.com/GFEft4x5Da

— Arianna (@_Arianna_D) January 3, 2020

These dipshits...

In case you want to know who the US just killed: The Shadow Commander https://t.co/lE3RPOeSUs

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) January 3, 2020

Cool cool, guess which country the US and Iran will use as a battlefield yet again to fight each other? Iraq will be fucked, again.

One of Iraq’s top commanders was killed with Suleimani and the US has apparently arrested two major Iraqi militia leaders - the Iraqi government has framed it as “an attack on Iraq as a state, a government and a people”.

Yeah, the militia leader killed is Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, whose group are Iran-backed.

Democratic members of Congress stripped these from the NDAA because they wanted to give Trump the power to start a war without their having to vote for it. This is their plan working. https://t.co/vRy1MD6RZD

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) January 3, 2020

This was good, BBC Two need to re-TX it ASAP to get it on iPlayer:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003871

I think it’s pretty clear based on the timing that this was meant to get the news media off the steady trickle of incriminating Ukraine information and on to some red meat for the base to get excited about. Or maybe it’s an olive branch to Bolton to keep him quiet.

9. Iranians are more disillusioned with the regime than ever. But Soleimani’s death plays into the regime’s hands - a timely distraction to be used to rally & unite Iranians against the US

— Ramita Navai (@ramitanavai) January 3, 2020

10. What next? Who knows. But Tehran will - at some point - retaliate. The regime can’t afford a war - it is not financially or militarily equipped. It can easily step up its proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, targeting the US & hit back in Israel.

— Ramita Navai (@ramitanavai) January 3, 2020

Geraldo: Don't for a minute start cheering this on, what we have done, what we have unleashed --

Kilmeade: I will cheer it on. I am elated.

Geraldo: Then you, like Lindsey Graham, have never met a war you didn't like.

Kilmeade: That is not true, don't even say that. pic.twitter.com/1VZ3tZJPRb

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) January 3, 2020

did Geraldo support the war in 2003?

If he did, we must face the terrifying possibility that Geraldo has learned something

Geraldo is human garbage but he is occasionally on the right side

It’s been one day since Melania told the press her New Years resolution was “peace on the world.”

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) January 3, 2020

wut a hypocrite

she was misquoted, she said "piss on the world"

big protests today apparently?

There is mounting anger that the retaliatory strikes launched by Iran on US military bases in Iraq were finely calibrated to ensure no US casualties, but scores of Iranian and Iranian-Canadian passengers were killed by their own forces.

Maybe they should overthrow their government

I'm sure it hasn't crossed the CIA's their mind

(xp) And install one more minded to kill Americans?

There will be outlets for anger. Banners with Soleimani's image are flying from Baghdad to Sana'a. There will be Soleimani Brigades (and in Iran, probably a division). Matter of time before some clever boy deepfakes his face onto Obi Wan Kenobi's last moments. Despite some training issues in air defense, Iran has been playing this really well.

Iran's messaging through action has been pretty interesting.
May: 4 tankers disabled at Fujairah, no casualties.
June: shoots down a US RQ-4A, no casualties.
September: halts Saudi exports through drone attack on Abqaiq, no casualties.
January: airbases at Al Assad and Irbil attacked by medium range ballistic missiles with terminal guidance, no US casualties.

Clearly the message in all of these is, "If we wanted to, we could kill hundreds, we could sink ships at sea and in ports, we could shut down Hormuz, step back and start thinking." I think the Gulf states get the message, I suspect the US intelligence community does too. I don't think the dullards at top US elected/appointed positions, who made the cardinal mistake of believing their own propaganda, understand.

or they just don’t care

nice summary, Sanpaku

It's obvious they're deliberately avoiding casualties, though I'm not sure that's a sign of strength that would scare the US military. It seems to me it's more a sign that these attacks are intended mostly for domestic (Iranian) consumption.

Despite some training issues in air defense, Iran has been playing this really well.

lol

Yeah that comment was pretty wtf !

xp: No, the attacks are very much responses to Iran's security situation.

Iran's whole deterrence against foreign aggression relies upon the belief by other parties that when facing existential threats, Iran can shut down 20% of the world's oil supply. The Fujairah attacks demonstrated that even ports on the Gulf of Oman (south of Hormuz) wouldn't operate if Iran (and perhaps local allies) chose. The RQ-4A shootdown demonstrated that air defenses were alert and capable of defending territorial waters. The drone attack on Abqaiq demonstrated that Iran could do pinpoint attacks, had local aid within Aramco and Eastern Saudi Arabia, and Saudi air defense of critical infrastructure was pitiful.

War Nerd describes Saudi Arabia as being resilient as a moon colony, and in Eastern/central Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, where there's no water, it really is; the desalination plants are particularly vulnerable. The US might bring in Patriot batteries to pretend to defend a few point targets, but US forces have relied on air superiority for air defense for 80 years, I have doubts we're good at ground based anti-air/missile defense. Consider the Saudis have defended the airport at Riyadh (also an airbase) against dumb Scud type ballistic missiles launched by the Houthi from Yemen for years, using the same Patriot system. They've had hits against the launch vehicles (which also arc in the the same ballistic trajectory), but never the warhead.

The Al Assad airbase attack demonstrated to anyone watching closely that at least some Iranian ballistic missiles had terminal guidance (perhaps using Russian, Chinese, or even US GPS system). This last bit of news should be a huge wakeup call. Iran in the Iraq-Iran war, and Israel during its confrontations with Hezbollah or Hamas, have both been spared many lives because the ballistic missiles they faced were as dumb as WWII V-2s. Playing darts with a board 50 m away. At longer distances, they might hit within a km of their aimpoint, but most impact relatively harmlessly on empty hillsides. At Al Assad, Iranian ballistic missiles appeared to be hitting aimpoints within 10 m. This could have been a simple as a tailfin kit for warheads (this is how the US retrofits its bombs designed in 1946 into smart weapons).

For Iranian true believers, and for millions outside Iran who viewed Soleimani as a heroic figure in the struggle against Salafi extremism, I'm sure that a more "eye for eye" death would have been more satisfying. That may still come as blowback unfolds over the next several decades.

It really isn't WTF. Imagine you're a 20-something junior officer in an air-defence unit armed with the short-medium range Tor system, tasked with defending the two military facilities a few km NNW of Parand, Iran (one being a missile research facility). Perhaps your CO has gone to bed, leaving you on the night shift. You've received a message to be vigilant for US bombers, following the assassination of a national hero, and a symbolic retaliatory strike. Unfortunately, the two military facilities you're tasked with guarding lie directly under the flight path from Khomeni Intl airport to destinations NW. Also unfortunately, your training emphasized autonomous action, as centers for air-defense coordination were expected to be among the first targets. Scheduled traffic flying over your location went barely noticed earlier in the evening, but here comes a new blip (PS752 took off an hour late). Its tracking directly towards the facilities you guard. Because the Tor is a short range system, and aircraft launching guided bombs rise into a climb before releasing and turning away, you have maybe 2 minutes to determine that this radar blip is not a threat. You have no means of directly contacting the plane. Assuming that there's a hotline to Tehran regional ATC, you could call them to deconflict, but what if you don't have a hotline, have never called ATC, or Tehran ATC doesn't answer in time, or Tehran ATC can't confirm that this incoming plane is a civil flight in time. Sweat is beating on your brow.

This sort of shit happens all the time in wartime. Returning WWII bombers were commonly fired upon by jumpy flak batteries when they flew unexpected paths etc. The speed of modern aircraft radically shortens decision times, guided air defense missiles makes mistakes far more lethal. It takes a lot of coordination and experience to prevent friendly or collateral fire incidents.

Well, whatever the technical reasons I don’t think one can say they managed all this « really well » after such a disaster...

Imagine you're a 20-something junior officer in an air-defence unit armed with the short-medium range Tor system, tasked with defending the two military facilities a few km NNW of Parand, Iran

mmmm, what am I wearing

lol

lol x2

<3

It takes a lot of coordination and experience to prevent friendly or collateral fire incidents.

The Iranian authorities should simply have closed Iranian air space to commercial flights for 24 hours after their missile strike at Iraq, to assess the US response. This is, ofc, hindsight.

@Sanpaku what's a good source for this kind of information?

do you have “war nerd” in an unfilled square on your bingo card or something

Only a glaring lack of knowledge about contemporary surface to air missile systems

cardamon: with respect to the shootdown site, in satellite imagery there's two fenced military sites directly underneath the PS752's intended flight path, just 7 km NW of the impact location determined from the cell-phone video. On the @bellingcat twitter thread this was identified as a missile research facility but I don't have independent knowledge. Munitions bunkers are visible in the northern of the two fenced areas.

As for the life of a SAM operator, I'd direct you to SAM Simulator, developed by a Hungarian. It doesn't include SA-15/Tor, but presumably the experience is comparable. Public data for the Tor missile system is available at a Wiki page. It's very short range point defense as vehicle mounted SAMs go, only 12 km.

As for a timeline of Iranian actions, you could do worse than this Al Jaz English timeline. Probably more reliable than Al Jaz Arabic, where calls for all Shia to be massacred have gone out from on air commentators.

Awesome, thanks

Does anyone have a take on what's the future of this Shia crescent idea - are the Iranian government still trying to create a land link with Hizbollah? Were they in fact doing so as per the BBC doc on Soleimani?

The US government certainly fears this. Some US spec ops that remain in Syria are astride Hwy 2 through Syria's Eastern desert, presumably to interdict this land route from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. The area is uninhabited (as in 200 mi to the next gas station uninhabited), has no oil, no surface water, there's literally nothing else of strategic interest in the area. Iran certainly has good practical cause to want this land connection, to facilitate logistics and trade with Syria and Lebanon.

Last night I listened to a podcast with Armin Navabi in which he said even secularist Iranians are fond of the idea of such a Shia crescent, as it would match the contours of the Sasanian Empire. According to Navabi, Iranian secularists have a romantic affection with pre-Muslim Persia, collecting Zoroastrian, Ancient Persian, Parthian, and Sasanian artifacts (all empires that encompassed a current Shia crescent). Also Trump's tweet about bombing 52 cultural sites was the absolute worst thing he's said or done with respect to these natural opponents of the mullahs.

so maybe it wasn't a strike carefully calibrated not to hurt any americans

BREAKING: Eleven US Troops Were Injured in Jan. 8 Iran Missile Strike https://t.co/ffcpz4AuUh via @defenseone

— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) January 17, 2020

Loud blasts followed by sirens were heard in the Iraqi capital. The Iraqi military told Reuters that two rockets had fallen inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign missions, causing a fire but no casualties. At least one fell 100 meters from the US embassy.

Whodunit

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/01/22/Basij-militia-commander-killed-in-Iran.html

Power moves in a power vacuum I reckon?

the arab minority in south-western iran is a bit restive, there's been attacks on military etc. last few years. there was a massacre of troops in maybe 2018 for instance.

it's such a closed society if you took the regime's word for it there are no problems their grip is total etc

'Sanctions' is a polite way of describing a brutal form of collective punishment that intentionally decimate entire societies. https://t.co/qKMzHCXzi0

— Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) January 15, 2020

The Defense Department said Friday that 34 American service members have traumatic brain injuries from Iranian airstrikes on Al Asad Air Base in Iraq, contradicting President Trump’s dismissal of injuries among American troops this week.

Well, they were only injured in the brain, which he assumes to be a nonessential body part

brains are what bored people came up with to explain instinct

The brain is the most important organ - according to the brain

Brain and brain, what is brain?