US threaten Iran with pre-emptive strike

a series of immanent attacks... We don't know precisely when

Politicians, reporters, family members, please explain the Caroline test to our appointed leaders.

I think it would be more meaningful if Americans had any interest in International Law

notification on my phone:

NYTIMES: The U.S. unsuccessfully targeted a senior Iranian official in Yemen on the same day a drone strike killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

any other assassination attempts on that day we should know about?

contrapoints got cancelled day prior

the Iranaian Official didn't take the free Hamilton tickets so the whole thing was called off

Iran Says It Unintentionally Shot Down Ukrainian Airliner

The Iranian govt throwing IRGC under the bus? Whatever this is, it opens for criticism: Rouhani’s senior advisor asks in a poll whether ppl believe the statement of IRGC commander Hajizadeh regarding the #UkrainePlaneCrash #PS752 #Iran https://t.co/unrNxTdGGH

— Sune Engel Rasmussen (@SuneEngel) January 11, 2020

WSJ: U.S. Warns Iraq It Risks Losing Access to Key Bank Account if Troops Told to Leave

Iraq won't be the last to transfer its trade accounts to other venues.

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?