All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat
-Sun Tsu
Israel is now in the process of increasing its escalatory moves against Hezbollah in the hope among other things of putting an end to Hezbollah shelling of the northern Israel border area, which depending on who is counting, has displaced between 60,000 and 100,000 settlers. The latest is Israel’s announcement, widely covered in the Western and Middle East press, that it is conducting a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon. Needless to say, an invasion is an invasion. Recall that Hezbollah launched its campaign on this territory on October 8 in solidarity with Hamas and said it would end the strikes if Israel entered into a durable ceasefire with Hamas.
This is not only an overly dynamic situation, as Lambert likes to say, but commentators are also hobbled by the skewed media coverage and the blackout on war-related incidents in much of Israel. For instance, many commentators who see themselves as anti-globalist and therefore not Israel-friendly are still treating the pager explosions as hobbling Hezbollah’s military communications. Alastair Crooke, who has often visited Hezbollah facilities (including rocket/missile silos) continues to maintain that the Hezbollah militia operations moved over to a its own fiber optic network in or even before 2006 and that that had controls that would detect any penetration. The pagers were used by members of the civilian units and never for military operations. He believes they remain secure even after the successful assassination of Nasrallah. He discussed in an interview with Judge Napolitano that the attack was the result of a humint breach (he saw the fact that Netanyahu approved it from the US the opportunity presenting itself through new intel) and stressed that it’s hard to get senior people to do things like never use cell phones (Note that an Iranian Republican Guard members were also killed in the same meeting; it’s possible the breach came from the Iran side).
So to lean against the widespread pro-Israel triumphalism in the Western press, yes, Hezbollah has lost a big swathe of its senior leadership and has been shown to also have suffered severe security breaches, which likely means at a minimum that internal discipline was uneven. However, its network is allegedly intact and secure (whether it was used as exclusively as it should have been is another matter) and Hezbollah has reportedly also replaced all of the slain leaders (Nearly all of those killed were over 60, so having more energetic, younger men assume top roles may not turn out to be a negative and could well be a plus if they adapt quickly). However, the degree to which Israel was able to identify where key people were when is extremely troubling and Hezbollah needs to very quickly understand how that happened to prevent its recurrence.
There is also a widespread, tacit assumption that the decapitation of nearly all Hezbollah leadership would impair their operations. So far, that does not seem to have happened:
NEW:
🇮🇱🇱🇧 The Israeli army has been unable to enter Lebanon because Hezbollah fighters are constantly bombing their positions – Al Manar pic.twitter.com/IswKmgfgbW
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) October 1, 2024
Hezbollah says it launched a salvo of “Fadi-4” rockets at the headquarters of the Israeli military Intelligence – Unit 8200 and the Mossad headquarters, both located in Tel Aviv.
🟠 LIVE updates: https://t.co/TFMVNuSxKG pic.twitter.com/CkQWpGaDvH
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 1, 2024
Mind you, that does not mean that Hezbollah will soon counter-escalate, say by extending the range of its strikes into Israel. The increase after the pager attacks, of about 50 km, reportedly increases the population in the shelling range to 2 million. That is not to say that Hezbollah is targeting civilians, but that even with attacking military assets, civilians are likely to be in the area too, plus air defense and intercepted rockets and missiles fall where they fall. The result of the increased firing area, however, is that more civilians will need to go into safe rooms or shelters when Hezbollah attacks. That can’t be good for nerves or the economy.
However, driving Hezbollah out of the border area is only one Israel objective. Another is to get the US more deeply committed, ideally by sending in more air support and troops (shame about that busted oiler; wonder how much of an impediment that will prove to be). An ideal scenario would be to get Iran to Do Something that can be presented as enough of an attack on Israel so as to get the US to go full bore after Iran.
Indeed, there has been a lot of criticism in the Arab world for Iran not having stepped up to Do Something. One reason not to do so directly and instead to support allies is that per above, a direct attack on Israel is exactly what Israel wants. Second is the recently elected president Masoud Pezeshkian was opposed and had been led (as in strung along) by the West to believe that if he played nice, Iran would get sanctions relief. Pezeshkian is now making Putin-esque noises about having really been duped and admitting he made a mistake.
But it’s not clear Iran would have had more degrees of freedom up till about now to have dealt more harshly with the assassination of Hamas political leader and negotiator Ismail Haniyeh even absent Pezeshkian having argued for holding fire. In the second half of this Danny Haiphong show, he speaks with Professor Mohammed Mirandi (who was also about 1000 meters from the massive blasts that killed Nasrallah). Mirandi points out that as long as ceasefire talks were supposedly on, Iran was checked in making any kind of serious response. Even if everyone in the Resistance with an operating brain cell knew the negotiations were a big headfake, Iran would not want to be in a position to be depicted by the US and Israel as having sabotaged a possible resolution of the Gaza conflict.
More assets do seem to be moving into the area, even if the numbers are not large:
🚨 Last night, the UK sent a huge A400M military transport plane from its base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv.
The A400 can carry 116 soldiers and a 81,600 lb payload. pic.twitter.com/hrttcCQROU
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) October 1, 2024
Before one contends that this short overview is not giving Israel credit for its great success, it’s worth remembering that shock and awe campaigns don’t have a great track record. Indeed, the start of both the 1982 and 2006 Israel invasions into Lebanon were ballyhooed at the outset as striking decisive blows, when in the end, Israel lost both wars.
And if you want an even more jaundiced view, John Mearsheimer had a talk in the last day with a reporter from the Spectator, who clearly expected Mearsheimer to affirm the reporter’s enthusiastic reading of Israel’s successive blows against Hezbollah. Mearsheimer exhibits impressive sang froid in calmly debunking the Spectator’s assumptions. This is such a great interview that I don’t want to act as spoiler by showcasing some of Mearsheimer’s key points. Arguably his overarching one is that it does not look at all as if Hezbollah has been defeated, and if that is correct, Israel faces a very long slog when it is not at all prepared to wage a protracted war.
This interview would also be useful to circulate to friends and colleagues who might be opent to a very credible analysis that contradicts media Israel cheerleading.
I’ll confess to be wearing an oversized tinfoil hat while saying this, but this almost makes you wonder if Nasrallah faked his death to bait the Israelis into doing just this (as in close in and fight on the ground).
Hizb’ullah has been running into all manner of problems getting Israelis to close in and fight. Israelis know well their own relative weakness in ground forces and difficulties of physically invading Lebanon, and notwithstanding the talk by the civilian politicians, the military has been very hesitant to go beyond aerial bombing. But they might do something more reckless if they believed that Hizb’ullah’s leadership is in disarray.
Further, Hizb’ullah has been having much difficulty getting the Iranians to raise the temperature–and without Iranian backing, Hizb’ullah was reticent to escalate (and put serious presure on Israelis.) Whatever was to be done, had to be done by Israelis themelves.
Now, this is highly imrprobable because this would invovle a lot of moving parts: the Iranians had to be in on this, and if one were to believe that the Iranian security-intelligence organs might be seriously compromised, this would be extremely risky. But then, you’d want to bait the adversaries precisely when you know that they have serious moles (that you have identified) in your organization whom their leadership would trust, wouldn’t you?
But, realisticaly, the chances of this being true is like one in a milliion. Just an idle and amusing speculation and nothing else.
A faked assassination was on my mind, as well, initially. But there is too much evidence now to dispute it.
This occurred to me, also. The best way to ensure your safety is to make your adversaries think you’re dead.
However, I don’t think Hezbollah has a tactical need to feign weakness, Israeli boosters are already euphoric, and were so even prior to the Nasrallah killing. There is a strong faction within Israel (with US support) that is hell-bent on going into Lebanon. I think they’ve held the upper-hand for some time within Israel.
They know they’ll never get this level of US support and freedom of action ever again. They’ve got to take their shot to shift the ‘facts on the ground’ more in their favor before the window of opportunity closes.
I start by acknowledging that I don’t think this could possibly be true either. But having said that, there had been a lot of uncertainty among the professional military types in both US and Israel as to whether a ground invasion of Lebanon is practicable. (Everyone seemed happy with an air war–but you can’t really “defeat” Hizb’ullah by bombing it). Convincing them that Hizb’ullah is in turmoil at the top might be the way to get them to rethink.
The thing about Israeli leadership is that they are simultaneously very clever and very arrogant. The latter makes it easy for them to fall into a trap, but the trap has to be very good because of the former. If this is a trap, this would be the kind of super-clever trap that Israelis would walk into, I think. But, no, I don’t think this is what it is.
Or, if he was being utterly ruthless, Nasrallah may well have arranged for the information to be leaked to the Israelis because his martyrdom will lead his forces to the greatest of victories by giving the enemy a false sense of confidence in it’s own strategic capabilties, even though Israel seems to lack the most basic strategic insight other than that it’s coals will utimately be dragged out of the pits of hell by the US. Or not, as the case may be. At times, it is sensible just to leave an ally to stew in it’s own juices, and the US has recently shown great expertise in doing so to it’s European allies as it cuts them adrift in the Ukraine.
The underground bunker that was bombed appears to have been a longstanding HQ location. The unsupported speculation I have heard was that Nasrallah and others felt relatively safe meeting in this location because they thought they were considering a serious ceasefire proposal and that they would not be bombed in that situation. If Hezbollah and Iran were duped to that extent, then the chances of real ceasefire negotiations are zero for the foreseeable future.
I suppose one shouldn’t discount the possibility that Israel didn’t have the weaponry until relatively recently – The sorts of Bunker busters required might be a recent US addition (intended for Gaza).
Could also be that prior to October 7th Israel might have felt that the collateral damage might be to bad to sustain from a PR perspective (at this point, everyone is desensitized).
The posturing in the western media is shocking. I’ve taken to reading the Israeli opposition daily Haaretz in order to get some sort of balance.
For instance, this morning the NYT and Guardian headlines are screaming about “U.S. officials” warning Israel of an imminent Iranian attack. This same morning, Haaretz reports the opposite — that U.S. officials are warning Iran of imminent Israeli preemptive attacks.
After the attack on Beirut that murdered Hezbollah leader Nasrallah the NYT and Guardian claimed that only 7 to 11 people were killed when 6 apartment blocks were pancaked. The same day Haaretz reported that official IDF sources claimed that over 300 had been killed.
Haaretz has published strong reporting on October 7 as a “mass Hannibal” involving the slaughter of hundreds of mostly socialist and/or secular Israelis at the hands of the IDF. U.S. media has yet to even examine even the possibility of a “mass Hannibal.”
Haaretz is a proudly Zionist publication operating under heavy wartime censorship! Americans are treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed pschitt. I don’t believe anything published by U.S. media about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. It’s WMD’s on steroids.
Good points. In addition to the Hannibal directive issues, most of the debunking of the mass rape stories was also from Israeli sources, while the US mainstream media was still pushing that line. Our MSM is truly just a propaganda factory these days.
The survival of dissident media like Haaretz in Israel, where every red line can be crossed, is one of the great mysteries.
They have to pull lots of punches if you read them closely, which I try to. But they still do journalism often.
Hezbollah will surely lose this war. At best, Hezbollah can drive the IDF out of Lebanon. It can never do anything like kill Nasrallah’s counterpart in Israel. In contrast, Israel can excuse its withdrawal from Lebanon as a “limited” operation.
I suggest you listen to Meaershimer, as you apparently failed to do. He does not agree.
Lose? Did they “lose” in 2006? Israel said they would destroy Hezbollah, then said they must disarm. Did any of that happen? Define “lose”, then rebut the points Mearsheimer (and others) make. Nasrallah was murdered with the assistance of the US/UK, I consider all of this as proxy action of the US/UK – NONE of this would be possible without the massive and multiple-level assistance from the US/UK and vassals. .
While I did not expect a full-scale ground invasion this time, the US/UK gave the green light and as we see, they are aiding Israel every step of the way. The hollow rhetoric from Washington/London is just a typical miasma cloud.
Once again, we see the US willing to take the world to the brink of massive conflagration. The policy appears to be “total hegemony, or total destruction”.
The unequivocal criteria for a military victory, according to von Clausewitz:
1) destruction of the enemy forces;
2) destruction of the enemy’s will to fight;
3) control of the disputed territory;
so as to be in a favourable position to impose a political settlement on the enemy.
In the past 40 years, Israel never achieved those objectives in Lebanon or Gaza; it has yet to achieve a single one of them in its current war against Hamas and its allies. We shall see how it fares against Hezbollah, but the precedents are ominous.
The Houthis seem to have taken a shot at hitting the airport when Netanyahu’s plane was arriving. I don’t think they’ve tried their best. Hezbollah’s probably got greater capabilities.
> At best, Hezbollah can drive the IDF out of Lebanon
Are you sure? all it would take to put Israel into a choke hold is a few hundred drones to run the iron dome counter battery dry, and another few hundred missiles aimed at the five desalination plants and the only airport out of town.
aye!!
ive been muttering under my breath way out here on a dirt road…”fuckin take the zionist scum!”
If you want to give a reason for the US to intervene then you need to do exactly that. Which is (most likely) the reason why neither desalination plants nor the power plants & transmission lines have been targeted.
Similarly even if Hezbollah smacks the IDF around till they run Hezbollah cannot cross the border into Israel proper.
But if Hezbollah drive the IDF out of that would be a defeat for Israel.
The primary Israeli objective is to restore Israeli citizens confidence in the IDF – It’s unclear if this is possible, given the proliferation of, and advancement, in missile and drone tech.
The secondary objective is to make the northern border area safe for Israelis to return to – Again, it’s unlikely they can achieve this objective.
Has anyone noticed the lack of protective cages for the Israeli tanks slated to invade Lebanon?
I wonder if Hezbollah has studied the almost three years long war in Ukraine and whether they took notes on how easy it is to wreck a column of tanks…
Hamas, PFLP, Islamic Jihad don’t have a ton of drone capabilities. So, the Israelis haven’t seen any real drone warfare. We have yet to see what Hezbollah can do with drones. But, judging from the prowess the Iranians have, they’ve probably got a few tricks up their sleeve.
Those Yassin-105 modified RPGs have damaged/destroyed hundreds of vehicles, though. IDF can’t get enough parts to fix them.
John Dolan aka Gary Brecher aka The War Nerd talks about the ever increasing likelihood that we will witness the Crecy and Agincourt of Armored Warfare for this very reason.
How the heck can he call himself The War Nerd and then invoke parallels with two battles where we now know the longbow was impotent against knights, mounted or not, instead of the propaganda win it has been for the British.
The only time a longbow got a mounted knight, their horse, or man-at-arms in heavy armor was luck.
At Crecy the longbow casualties were the mercenary crossbowmen who for some incomprehensible reason decided to not lug along their mantlets that were meant to protect them against archers and other crossbow users. The casualties among the knights only happened after they didn’t assemble correctly for a charge, started it too early, had to cross wet recently plowed fields, through the fleeing crossbowmen, up a hill, and into a position specifically fortified to receive a well executed charge. The resulting melee being described as ‘ugly and brutal’ by eyewitnesses.
Agincourt is even worse. What happened there is that Henry V was too poor to bribe a large amount of nobles to go with him. The French basically brought only nobles. And these French nobles had only one unit as target since only the (relatively) few nobles around Henry V were worth money. One crowd crush on quality wet clay later most of the knights were stuck to the ground. But instead of dying by arrow received a dagger through the weak spots of their armor seeing that the archers were common people and not habit of capturing nobles to ransom them back to their families.
If drone warfare in Lebanon were to mirror those two battles then the Israelis don’t need drone cope cages.
looked at the stock chart for a broad-based Israeli ETF.. Based on “the market” the invasion is a nothingburger…as while it dropped 3% today, it’s still near a 1 year-high and almost 50% higher than Oct 2023.
In my opinion, investors will be in for a rude surprise.
Well, it may be that the Israelis choose not to bang their head into a brick wall for very long. If so, the damage might be limited.
Well, if some big player has many lots to sell, can’t panic people too quickly.
Goes for the rest of markets too.
From Middle East Eye – livestream started 12 minutes ago – without commentary
BREAKING TEL AVIV LIVE – Iran launches direct attack on Israel
Earlier, there were several flurries of apparent incoming and some apparent interceptors but then quiet.
CNN seems subdued. It was all fun and games until they likely realized the brown people could hit back.
NYT just now:
Live Updates: Iran Launches Over 100 Ballistic Missiles at Israel
The lead image shows quite a flurry of incoming over what is said to be Jerusalem with no apparent interceptors.
Lots on Twitter now. 200 to 400 missiles. Iran has made an announcement, says this is retaliation for Haniyeh, Nasrallah, and the IRG guy killed along with Nasrallah. Says worse will come if Israel retaliates for this.
They hit the gas production facilities in the Mediterranean! That provides a total of 80% of Israel’s gas. Dunno if destroyed, partly destroyed, or just damaged, but that alone is a biggie. Also images of blowing up an oil depot on land.
Seeing a half a dozen vids of swarms with scores of incoming impacting, maybe a couple of successful interceptors. Big fail for air defenses if I understood it correctly. That’s what swarms are meant to do.
There’s a thread at Moon of Alabama with posts of videos showing the Iranian attack. The Iron Dome is functioning like an aluminum colander.
I am utterly horrified by the actions of Israel and how today’s retaliatory attack may engulf the whole world in flames and rubble. But many thanks for the laugh and gallows humor in comparing the supposedly vaunted Iron Dome to an aluminum colander. We all knew the Aluminum Colander was porous for missiles, but it conveniently funneled money to the MIC.
Iran claims they also destroyed at least 20 of the Israeli F-35s. Which would be 2/3 of them. At least two air bases were hit, so two, three more nights like this and ground war is all Israel has left.
I should imagone that, if Iran were really “serious,” there’d be multiple waves of missiles hitting the same targets, to “double tap” them as such. Even if the bases were hit, the probability of fatal damage to aircraft, for example, are limited. Iran needs to do real, “permanent” damage to show that it means business. Making sure that Israel’s F35 fleet is completely and irrecoverably wiped out and/or completely destroying Israel’s gas refining facilities would be a message of seriousness, but these will likely require
Are the Iranians capable of precisely locating and targeting these aircraft themselves, or might they be getting help from the Russians?
Israel seems to have gone down the same path as the US, of increasingly relying heavily on its very powerful air force to hurt its enemies but if that capability can be seriously degraded that would level the playing field with the Resistance considerably, and provide relief to Hezbollah and Lebanon.
The F-35s are hangar queens, so they need to be cared for. Yes, its rocket science, but its not like these bases are in mysterious moving locations. Rocket science has been around for a while. The precise calculations and engineering are one thing, but the actual firing and locating are just a mix of high school and basic orienteering. Laser range finders are basically magic.
Between google Earth and human intelligence, anyone can find these things.
I’m reminded of the German artillery experience in World War I.
People are smart even without Steve Jobs and Apple products.
Iran gave the US and Israel notice ahead of time that they were going to attack. Israel put its entire tanker fleet into the air, and therefore the F-35 fleet was probably airborne at the time of the attack.
The hangers at the airbase are hardened underground(not deep) structures built like old school hangers from the cold war.
The videos I saw were at night, and from far away, but they look like contact fuses. On delayed fuses(“bunker busters”) there’s less flash and the fireball column is narrower. These are older missiles, and I think their CEP is gonna be around 100m.(that roadway hit near Mossad HQ as possible evidence) So contact fuse makes sense, since it will have a larger damage radius vs a bomb going off 15 feet underground. Direct hit will probably still blast a hole in the hanger roof and do some damage inside, but not a total loss. Even without the planes, those hangers have a lot of important equipment in them.
So we now have a bunch of F-35s that are in need of a post flight maintenance, and limited capacity to service them. The result will be a delay in Israels unlimited bombing campaign against Gaza and Lebanon, giving them some time to regroup, relocate, recover.
Also, please note that when you hear that a US aircraft needs X amount of hours of maintenance after each mission, that this is a best practices kind of thing. In a pinch they can do several missions back to back, but the longer you delay the service, the more chance something expensive breaks that shouldn’t have.
I suspect they just took the number of f35s based there and pencilled themselves in as having destroyed them. It seems unlikely that Iran has the surveillance to give real time objective assessments of damage.
If the number was anything like that high then the Israeli use of F35s will decline dramatically for awhile, but I don’t expect to see that.
Ritter said Iran does not know the impact of its strikes (yet). He confirmed they don’t have the surveillance to do so.
To hammer home the point of the Sun Tsu quote that Yves led off with, the Israelis have indisputably gotten very good at decapitation strikes on their opponents. They’ve executed several of these strikes in recent weeks and months. They’ve got the intel and targeting and lots of US help. None of this would be possible without US support, of course. Lots and lots of US support.
The fact that they’ve continued to do this in a context where they’ve been losing their military edge for decades shows how strategically inept they’ve been in choosing to continue to pursue this approach.
They’ve killed umpteen Hamas leaders, but Hamas still functions. Hamas is still making the IDF take casualties and the IDF can’t even secure those two corridors in Gaza from sniper fire from Resistance fighters.
This situation is miles away from the sort of fights the Israelis built their reputation on back in the 1967 and 1973 wars.
If Israeli foreign policy approach would be transplanted let’s say in epidemiology, we would never find the causes of diseases for many ailments. Kind of like Regan and HIV/AIDS
Iran is responding:
Iran launches missiles toward Israel
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-lebanon-war-hezbollah-10-1-24-intl-hnk/index.html
Looks like 70-80 % is getting through the defenses.
Maybe they will get the message this time?
Nope.
Many thanks. The frequently disrespectful BTL comments under the Spectator interview are depressing, but predictable (the Spectator having been a safe haven for ultra-Right wing nutters since it was sold off by the cultured and urbane Ian Gilmour in 1967 – read back numbers from the time of his proprietorship, and most especially editorship, and weep).
Given the recent reconfiguration of international alliances, it is all looking painfully like the summer of 1914, but then I suspect Mr Netanyahu knows that (and does not care).
It looks like the only thing he cares about is staying in office and avoiding prison, and thus prolonging hostilities for as long as possible. Maybe Uncle Bibi knows he can stay with the Kushners in the US, once he has to flee Israel to avoid domestic prosecution and will be limited on where he can flee due to international prosecution.
The more I watch Mearsheimer, the more I’ve come to love and respect him. Ditto Sachs.
That they no longer appear on American mainstream media shames us all. Thanks again for being a platform for the rational voices that are being suppressed.
I am grateful that we are able to see them at all, given the prevailing circumstances.
Fwiw YouTube poster Hyperstealth Corp speculates that IDF geolocated Nasrallah by triangulating its Air Force flyover sonic boom feedback that was audible during Nasrallah’s televised speech.
That would explain why they used 80 bombs, they only new the general area.
The point Mearsheimer makes about not underestimating the US kinda contrasts with the USSR style decay, dysfunction and deindustrialization I’ve seen chronicled elsewhere. The red sea fiasco or the army manpower shortage are but two examples that come to mind. I wonder how he factors those things on his analysis
Dan Lazare is not impressed with Hezbollah. He says it’s the end of Arab nationalism and Hezbollah. For a contrarian view, you find this at Sputnik The Critical Hour.
You mean this individual ????
He knows what exactly ?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/01/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah
“Two U.S. naval destroyers launched a dozen interceptors against the incoming Iranian missiles, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The U.S.S. Bulkeley and the U.S.S. Cole fired the interceptors, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said during a news conference. He said that no American troops – there are more than 40,000 in the region — were hurt in Tuesday’s attacks.”
We’ll see if Iran has their deflection game ready again.
Funny that USS Cole comes up in this context, given its history with Yemen particularly.
Now that you mention it, that name is familiar.
Obligatory disclaimer: the vertical-launch missile tubes used by the premiere US destroyers and cruisers can’t be reloaded at sea.
When these systems were designed in the 1970’s, the designers (reasonably) did not imagine enemy volleys totaling hundreds of missiles in the air. So the price tag of for system which could be reloaded at sea was deemed as not worth it by the procurement officers.
Same VLS system is on most NATO warships – funnily enough when. Germany joined in Ref Sea It not only fired its missiles and had to RTB but had no replacement missiles as they were no longer produced and no stocks existed
I saw it asserted that those twelve missiles represent the annual US production.
Ritter live on Napolitano – air defence failed, Israel defenceless.
I think it would be more accurate to say the “defense posture failed” rather than the air defense. The Israelis and West in general operate under the illusion Iran is the equivalent of 19th century locals. The Iron Dome makes quite a bit of sense against a smaller Hezbollah push or retaliation for the kind of raids Israels has been prone to run.
The scale of the conflicts is just much too large for Israel to manage. In retrospect, it seems like the Iron Dome was sufficient to deal with Hamas after the initial months, but the Israelis kept attacking Lebanon inviting responses.
Even the April event demonstrated a certain reasonableness of the Iron Dome system combined with Western allies, but they ran into the basic problem faced by the Killbots when they encountered Zapp Branagan. You need to have more missiles ready to fire than can be fired at you.
The range of missiles has altered the game. The old time Orientalists in the West and the Israelis simply can’t conceive they are fighting equals.
Israel also has the Arrow and David’s Sling systems, intended to counter ballistic missiles. Ritter’s point is that they all failed, and the US contribution too.
Still, it’s an early judgment – much dust has to settle.
Conceptually they must fail. They are radar systems bolted onto a rocket launcher. US paid for both these systems – in fact all three. They will use US Mil-Spec parts like radar modules and ICs. Israel may tart up software and create emotive names but it has not got GDP to compete with US technological capability
Incoming missiles with plasma shield are radar blind and satellites watching Iranian launches may not catch them or be blinded by dummies
Israel is prime target for rocket attack. Strange that it still has water supplies and electricity and a refinery – no doubt it is degradation by instalment. What anyone in Daily Mail thinks U.K. could not be similarly dismembered is strange as the only anti-missile Radar U.K. possesses is on Type 45 warships
It is not strange that Israel still has water, electricity and fuel.
No one except Netanyahu wants the US to but into the fight. Hitting the water or electricity supply will get the US involved, You could get away with hitting the energy supply as long as it is considered symbolic damage (thus that gas platform burning is a definite risk of getting the US involved if it damages the energy security of Israel).
Is anyone familiar with the provisions in the defensive alliance between Russia and Iran? I’m aware that Russia has provided Iran with S300s (and S400s?) and some of their newest fighters. I’m wondering how far Russia would go in providing “technical support” if and when Israel tries to shock and awe Iran. A defensive screen of Russian jets armed with their latest air-to-air missiles would likely be able to contain an Israeli counter. I recall some flap over whether the Iranian constitution allows foreign military forces to be stationed in Iran — likely a hangover from the US/Shah days — but I think that was resolved.
Ritter addresses my question on Napolitano’s show today, starting at around 9:00. In short, Russians have given Iran S400s and advanced fighters and might be staffing both, given the short amount of time the Iranians have had to train on them.
I very much doubt Russia has “given” anything to Iran. I believe they may well have sold Iran such systems – in return for natural gas possibly. Russia + Iran control 70% global natural gas reserves and since Iran and Qatar share a large gas field, Qatar might find it in association since it will want to liberate itself from US in the region.
They key to S-400 is that it feeds radar tracks into Russian Air Defence Control Centre giving a wider sweep of the region. Iranians are probably the cleverest engineers in the region and with Russian education they will be good partners for Chinese electronics businesses. China has a 30-year oil deal with Iran so US should tread warily.
US has a global empire – it lacks forces to keep it all intact – it can engage in West Asia and find East Asia in turmoil. It can provoke Iran into shutting down oil supplies to Europe and US can watch Europe collapse just like North Carolina
As if it wasn’t enough to be more or less sure that we are going to cook because our rulers have allowed global warming to get out of control, now they are shepherding us towards Armageddon.
And just when I was thinking that we had dodged a bullet with the Russian victory in Ukraine (a Russian defeat would obviously have led to a serious danger of nuclear war, especially if the US got their way and overthrew the Russian government — God knows what kind of fascism would have replaced it), and just as I was hoping that the rationality of the Chinese would prevail, the US has placed the survival of civilisation in the hands of Netanyahu and an octogenarian Shi’ite cleric (who is clearly the saner of the two, but one has to think of Biden in that context).
The irony is that nobody seems to care about the prospect of the apocalypse. If the oil price is anything to go by, the markets have “priced it in” and are much more concerned about the possibility that the “wrong” candidate might win the American election and become the CEO of the surviving cockroaches.
No one has used Nukes yet. The Is relies may have some.
Scott Ritter on Judge Nap was good (as linked above). Being really information starved on what’s going on I finally found Col. L Wilkerson on Dialog Works with Nima – long but very good:
Col. Larry Wilkerson: Iran’s Attack on Israel – Israel about to Attack Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXoHPtpG9F4
The thought of Arab states expectations of a Non-Arab state like Iran being obligated to aid Arabs despite Saudi Arabia and UAE actively working to aid Israel is bizarre
What is important is Pakistan and the Ummah. I doubt Erdogan has many cards left tinplate if he does not. Russians do not trust him nor Americans nor Europeans and I doubt he is popular immaturely for his family business relations supplying Israel
This is not going to end and US is now peripheral – North Korea will be active and I foresee West Asia being the place where US is sucked into the vortex with U.K. and trapped in a bleed out
Why is The Spectator even talking to Mearsheimer? They know approximately what he’s going to say. So does this indicate a chinck in the Israeli armor around Western media?
If you mean The Speccie in London it just changed ownership for £100 million to Paul Marshall who owns GB News and is based in Dubai I believe