International events

[DMC]

It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad seeing so many people going brainlessly hard right over the last six months.  It’s particularly depressing that I’m old enough to remember the last time this happened.  Life is short.  And long.

[House Balstroko]

@kissdbyfire It wasn’t the Iranian embassy that was bombed. It was a building adjacent to the consulate , which was being used to plan attacks against Israeli targets. 

[karaddin]

I 100% accept there were terrorists in that building who were the target, but that doesn't change the underlying fact that bombing part of a countries consulate is different to engaging in a proxy war and unless you're already in a shooting war - its a massive escalation that is almost certainly going to draw a reprisal. That's more true if you view the country in question as a bad actor, which again is the case with the Iranian regime. 

Israel knows all of this, any decision to bomb the consulate building under those circumstances factors in an Iranian response as part of the cost/benefit analysis of the decision to bomb it - lets not treat anyone as stupid or incompetent here when there's no indication that was the case. Iran was always going to respond to this, and the way they chose to do so resulted in a single tragic casualty. Unless you do actually want a direct shooting war with Iran, the obvious course of action at this point is to decide you got a win (quote from Biden) and take the win. 

Iran are awful fucks, they're going to continue to be awful fucks but they're also going to behave in relatively predictable and self interestedly rational ways. I'm not sure what some of you are actually looking for in this thread? Do you think us saying that we don't want to see escalation is somehow praising Iran for being morally good and restrained? Because that sure as hell isn't how I mean it - I mean solely what I said. This action taken was within the bounds of expected state actor behaviour for a direct bombing of their diplomatic facilities in a 3rd party nation and killing of high ranking military personnel, please get off the railroad to a regional war before a whole lot more tragedies happen.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I'm not sure what some of you are actually looking for in this thread?

Fire and blood.

Or, in more common terms, "some people just want to see the world burn."

It should be obvious that warmongering isn't based on anything better than a pissing contest. And some people just love the idea of taking out their metaphorical dick and waving it around in other people's faces, i.e. bombing the shit out of others.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 hours ago, Zorral said:

Face it fella -- the Iranian is a much more savvy guy at war and politics than deaf bibi et al.

Also, we're arguing over what was agreed/arm twisted/negotiated in way or another behind the scenes by all the actors in this -- action, so everybody's face is saved.

Bibi isn’t deaf or stupid.  He’s served personally by increasing the scale of conflict.  The wonder of narcissists with serious political power.

[Altherion]

11 hours ago, karaddin said:

This action taken was within the bounds of expected state actor behaviour for a direct bombing of their diplomatic facilities in a 3rd party nation and killing of high ranking military personnel

I don't think this is within the bounds of expected behavior. Embassies and consulates are supposed to be left in peace, but, as has been pointed out multiple times within this thread, in practice, this is not actually the case and one can find multiple instances of attacks on both diplomatic personnel and diplomatic facilities. Typically, the response to this ranges from a complaint to the host country to attempts to track down the perpetrators to a strike on something associated with the perpetrators similar in scale to the original attack. Nobody -- and I mean literally nobody -- has ever replied to such an attack with a barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones aimed at both civilian and military targets.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I don't think this is within the bounds of expected behavior. Embassies and consulates are supposed to be left in peace, but, as has been pointed out multiple times within this thread, in practice, this is not actually the case and one can find multiple instances of attacks on both diplomatic personnel and diplomatic facilities. Typically, the response to this ranges from a complaint to the host country to attempts to track down the perpetrators to a strike on something associated with the perpetrators similar in scale to the original attack. Nobody -- and I mean literally nobody -- has ever replied to such an attack with a barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones aimed at both civilian and military targets.

And Netanyahu will still be wrong if he pushes on Iran… but I fear it helps him personally and that’s all that really matters to him.

[kissdbyfire]

Right. So I guess Iran should have attacked an Israeli diplomatic facility somewhere in world and killed a dozen or so people. 

[Werthead]

The suggestion this represented the full attack capability of Iran might be correct, but it feels optimistic. As a very simple demonstration, Hezbollah is known to be capable of launching masses of smaller munitions at Israel from Lebanon. They did not do so in concert with this attack. The Houthis may have also been able to fire more weapons, but apparently the US hit a number of launch sites in Yemen with missiles on platforms before they could launch. Also, contrary to Houthi claims, previous US and UK air strikes on Yemen had destroyed significant launch infrastructure as well as storage facilities, limiting their ability to join the attack. More exist and some replacements have come in from Iran, but it is more logistically challenging than it was.

Iran also chose to lead the attack with very slow-moving drones. If they had not done so, they could have fired a larger number of ballistic missiles with far shorter flight-times from Iran and had a more significant chance of penetrating the air defence net. Israel's AA systems were also given a relatively lighter ride because the majority of the weapons were intercepted by Israeli, Jordanian, UK and US aircraft outside of Israel's borders, which had plenty to time to scramble and get into range to intercept (the UK and Israel even had time to launch tankers). Even if we accept that Iran did not have enough launchers to launch more drones and missiles at once (a highly optimistic statement), they could have reloaded and fired again and again, and kept up a sustained, pressurised attack on Israel unfolding over many more hours. In fact, Israel and the US both warned that was the most likely format for the attack and seemed bemused when it stopped relatively quickly.

The one area where I think Iran did fail, and was taken by surprise, was the effectiveness of Israel's anti-ballistic weapons. Whilst I think the attacks over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were not designed to cause real damage, Iran I think did really want to hit that airbase hard as that's where they focused their ballistic strikes. The missiles either veering off and hitting open desert or being intercepted (in at least one case, extra-atmospherically) before impact seems to have been unexpected. As it stands, the airbase took negligible damage.

The US has said it also assesses that around 40% of Iran's ballistic missiles failed on takeoff or still inside Iranian or Iraqi airspace, which the Iranians will likely be furious about.

[Zorral]

In Iran's direct missile and drone attack on Israel, a seven-year-old Arab girl was the only one to be severely injured. The Bedouin girl was hit on her head by shrapnel and has undergone surgery.

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/arab-girl-lone-casualty-iran-attack-israel-hamas-gaza-missile-attack-death-negev-bedouin-tribe-2527362-2024-04-15

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In Iran's direct missile and drone attack on Israel, a seven-year-old Arab girl was the only one to be severely injured. The Bedouin girl was hit on her head by shrapnel and has undergone surgery.

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/arab-girl-lone-casualty-iran-attack-israel-hamas-gaza-missile-attack-death-negev-bedouin-tribe-2527362-2024-04-15

So she isn't dead??? That's good news!

[Zorral]

"I also noted yesterday that we shouldn’t understate just how skillfully the White House seemed to manage a major, major crisis over the last few days. High stakes foreign policy crises like these generally have an almost limitless number of ways they can go wrong and one or two ways they can go right. And so far the White House has managed to prevent damage in Israel and prevent further escalation."

Share link -- https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/getting-into-the-details-on-what-happened-over-the-weekend/sharetoken/t5tl81zIn5G7

Quote

 

.... This has pretty major implications for understanding how massive an escalation this was on the part of Iran and the impact of the success rate of U.S. and Israel missile shootdowns for what happens next. We’ll come back to that in another post. I also noted yesterday that we shouldn’t understate just how skillfully the White House seemed to manage a major, major crisis over the last few days. High stakes foreign policy crises like these generally have an almost limitless number of ways they can go wrong and one or two ways they can go right. And so far the White House has managed to prevent damage in Israel and prevent further escalation. Don’t underestimate how many moving parts this required managing.

Finally I found the results of this poll out of Israel very interesting. According to think tanker David Makovsky, a new poll from Israel’s Channel 13 measures reports these results. On the question how should Israel respond to the Iranian attack:

React Immediately: 29%

React at some point: 37%

Don’t React: 25%

Don’t know: 9%

“React at some point” at least implicitly suggests real flexibility about timing and the means of reacting. But overall this suggests that support for an immediate retaliation is fairly low. So the Israeli government has a fair amount of latitude with the Israeli public in how it chooses to respond and when. That is significant.

 

 

[Zorral]

nvm

[Hmmm]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

The suggestion this represented the full attack capability of Iran might be correct, but it feels optimistic. As a very simple demonstration, Hezbollah is known to be capable of launching masses of smaller munitions at Israel from Lebanon. They did not do so in concert with this attack. The Houthis may have also been able to fire more weapons, but apparently the US hit a number of launch sites in Yemen with missiles on platforms before they could launch. Also, contrary to Houthi claims, previous US and UK air strikes on Yemen had destroyed significant launch infrastructure as well as storage facilities, limiting their ability to join the attack. More exist and some replacements have come in from Iran, but it is more logistically challenging than it was.

Iran also chose to lead the attack with very slow-moving drones. If they had not done so, they could have fired a larger number of ballistic missiles with far shorter flight-times from Iran and had a more significant chance of penetrating the air defence net. Israel's AA systems were also given a relatively lighter ride because the majority of the weapons were intercepted by Israeli, Jordanian, UK and US aircraft outside of Israel's borders, which had plenty to time to scramble and get into range to intercept (the UK and Israel even had time to launch tankers). Even if we accept that Iran did not have enough launchers to launch more drones and missiles at once (a highly optimistic statement), they could have reloaded and fired again and again, and kept up a sustained, pressurised attack on Israel unfolding over many more hours. In fact, Israel and the US both warned that was the most likely format for the attack and seemed bemused when it stopped relatively quickly.

The one area where I think Iran did fail, and was taken by surprise, was the effectiveness of Israel's anti-ballistic weapons. Whilst I think the attacks over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were not designed to cause real damage, Iran I think did really want to hit that airbase hard as that's where they focused their ballistic strikes. The missiles either veering off and hitting open desert or being intercepted (in at least one case, extra-atmospherically) before impact seems to have been unexpected. As it stands, the airbase took negligible damage.

The US has said it also assesses that around 40% of Iran's ballistic missiles failed on takeoff or still inside Iranian or Iraqi airspace, which the Iranians will likely be furious about.

Well, maybe the Iranians did indeed plan to keep attacking with more waves of missiles and drones, but cancelled it after they saw their first one do practically no damage? 

 

Edited April 15 by Hmmm

[Zorral]

White House says Biden will not accept a standalone funding bill for aid to Israel

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-04-15-24/index.html

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

The suggestion this represented the full attack capability of Iran might be correct, but it feels optimistic.

I think even this is generous.  It’s trying to resolve the western cognitive dissonance that Iran actually behaved more responsibly in form of a proportional response than Israel.

[Kalbear]

One thing I'm still a bit surprised about is Jordan responding and shooting down a number of the drones. Imagine thinking Jordan would aid Israel back in 1980.

[DMC]

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

Nobody -- and I mean literally nobody -- has ever replied to such an attack with a barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones aimed at both civilian and military targets.

This simply is not true.  Operation Infinite Reach comes to mind.  I mean, there weren’t drones back then, but it’s pretty much the same type of response.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Hmmm said:

Well, maybe the Iranians did indeed plan to keep attacking with more waves of missiles and drones, but cancelled it after they saw their first one do practically no damage? 

If they intended multiple waves of attacks, they would have launched a second wave of drones 1-2 hours after the first, still an hour or two before the first group reached Israel. They'd have to do that because of the timing imbalance between drones and faster-moving cruise missiles and much-faster-moving ballistic missiles. They fact they never launched that second wave would suggest they never planned a longer attack.

In fact, the Iranian Mission tweeted this was a single strike long before the first drones even reached Israel and before many of the missile components to the attack had launched.

12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

One thing I'm still a bit surprised about is Jordan responding and shooting down a number of the drones. Imagine thinking Jordan would aid Israel back in 1980.

The missiles were overflying Jordanian territory after they warned Iran not to do that. Iran could have routed all of its missiles north over Iraq and Syria, but tried to take a shortcut over Jordan and Jordan responded by shooting them down.

Jordan gets underestimated a lot as probably the least significant power in the region (bar Lebanon and arguably war-torn Syria; even the microstates are usually richer than Jordan with more oil reserves) but they are well-equipped by the USA and exert considerable influence, especially on the Arab street for the sheer volume of Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugees they've taken in.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The missiles were overflying Jordanian territory after they warned Iran not to do that. Iran could have routed all of its missiles north over Iraq and Syria, but tried to take a shortcut over Jordan and Jordan responded by shooting them down.

Jordan gets underestimated a lot as probably the least significant power in the region (bar Lebanon and arguably war-torn Syria; even the microstates are usually richer than Jordan with more oil reserves) but they are well-equipped by the USA and exert considerable influence, especially on the Arab street for the sheer volume of Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugees they've taken in.

Right - I'm not surprised about their abilities to do something - I'm surprised by their willingness. Jordan not only didn't allow their airspace to be used by Iran for this, they explicitly worked to help Israel's defenses. An Arab country - especially one that has so many Palestinians - helping Israel in any way is a pretty big surprise for the world of the 80s and the 90s. Even Egypt doesn't seem that cooperative by comparison.