US threaten Iran with pre-emptive strike

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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?