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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1600 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 18, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Iraq

Well, we’ve all been following Iranian militias firing on American servicemen and vice versa in Iraq. Now everyone is getting in on the fun. Iran has launched airstrikes on Iraq and Syria The situation has strangely reversed a bit with Iran now retaliating against the ISIS terrorist attack that killed over a hundred of their civilians by launching airstrikes: “at what it claimed were Israeli “spy headquarters” near the U.S. Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, and at targets linked to the extremist group Islamic State in northern Syria.” The latter target of course being in retaliation for the ISIS -claimed terrorist attack that killed over a hundred Iranian civilians.

Turkey decided to get into the action too by…also bombing Iraq and Syria, though they’re strafing for Kurdish militias in retaliation for the Kurdish PKK attack on a Turkish base last month. Iraq is understandably not thrilled about any of this (how does Syria feel? Who’s to say?), recalling their ambassador from Iran and calling their attacks an infringement upon Iraqi sovereignty. Presumably they’re not thrilled with Turkey either but they never had any kind of working relationship before (this is not Turkey’s first random attacks into Iraqi soil).

Basically all the cool kids are launching attacks in Iraq, a country that is really only marginally connected to the actual Israeli-Palestinian war by virtue of the fact that the different powers all have some degree of presence here as well. Rough hand to draw.

Pakistan-Iran attacks updates: 9 killed near Iran’s southeast border

For those not following along, Iran seems to have picked a bone with Pakistan for sheltering militants and has launched airstrikes within their territory. In retaliation, the Pakistanis seem to have launched their own attack on Iranian soil.

I'm not a very good Indian, by any standard, but even I am chortling at the whole affair. The US was far too timid about striking the Taliban when they fled over the porous border, and it took goddamn Bin Laden for them to take off the kid gloves and send Gravy Seals in. On the other hand, fellow Islamist nations seem to be far more laissez-faire about just taking each other on, on a whim, and I can't say I really feel like Pakistan is the aggrieved party.

Honestly, I don't even see much in the way of downsides for a hot war between the two, whoever loses, the rest of us win.

shame on you, @Soriek, for missing such salacious events on the world stage and leaving something for me to add that is semi-informative haha

What are the odds that it actually turns into war? Pakistan is pretty close to being a failed state and Iran isn’t trying to start a major war as opposed to some border skirmishes.

My modestly (un)informed opinion is that it is quite low. At least going by the old tradition of India and Pakistan occasionally lobbing shells at each other or taking potshots, which doesn't usually go hot. In this case, it was likely more of a face saver than the Pakistanis genuinely wishing to up the ante.

The mantle has now passed to you to lead Transnational Thursdays.

On the other hand, fellow Islamist nations seem to be far more laissez-faire about just taking each other on, on a whim, and I can't say I really feel like Pakistan is the aggrieved party.

This latest episode of Iran just kind of attacking all its neighbors is pretty uncharacteristic at least, and is hopefully just their way of showing they won't take terrorism lightly, not a continuous thing they're going to commit to. Iraq and Syria at least aren't going to retaliate militarily. I can think of one or two downsides to a war with Pakistan! Though hopefully this won't turn into that.

This latest episode of Iran just kind of attacking all its neighbors is pretty uncharacteristic at least.

I dunno—isn't Iran attacking it's neighbors something Leonidas would be familiar with?

Fair play, fair play

I thought that the framing of this as "Iran attacking Syria" by Western media was somewhere between misleading and downright manipulative, considering that the Syrian government is still facing an insurrection backed by a myriad of internal separatists and outside interests and not in control of its entire territory, the attacks were targeted at one of those insurrectionist factions, and if anything Iran is now geopolitically on the same team as the Syrian government (via Russia). This is like framing the Battle of Manila as the US attacking the Philippines, or the landing at Incheon as the US invading South Korea.

Somewhat fair on the framing, but all this is true of the attacks on Pakistan and Iraq as well. Ex: Pakistan is also an Iranian ally, is also facing an insurrection backed by internal separatists who are a common enemy of Iran, are also not in control of all their territory, and the Iranian attacks were only against that insurgent group - but Pakistan still very much interpreted it as an attack and responded in kind. Iraq is Iran's closest ally, with pro-Iranian militias embedded throughout politics and security affairs - and is now reporting them to the UN Security Council, so it's not unreasonable to suggest these attacks violate even the normal fuzzy bounds of Iran's historical relationship with its allies.

The particular branch of ISIS that launched the terrorist attack on Iran, ISIS-K, also isn't based out of Syria but Afghanistan, so it's not quite as simple as a direct retaliation either.

This latest episode of Iran just kind of attacking all its neighbors is pretty uncharacteristic at least

Iran just kind of attacking all its neighbors isn't uncharacteristic at all, it's the acknowledgement of it that represents a departure from historical norms.

Usually they launder things through proxies though, directly lobbing bombs in all directions is unusual, especially at their allies - they like their plausible deniability.

That being said, how far is Iran from nukes? I know they're not Japan-level "could be any time in the next month if they put their mind to it", but they've been working on it for a while.

There's more to it than just throwing together some plutonium for warheads. You really want hydrogen bombs for good yields, lower mass and higher cost-efficiency, they're less irradiating too. You need a secure delivery mechanism, long range missiles of the kind Japan isn't supposed to have. You need warhead miniaturization for practicality. Gravity bombs won't be all that useful - why would you need to use nuclear weapons if you have that kind of air superiority? It'd take a while to turn a technical nuclear weapon capability into practical nuclear arms.

The Israelis and Israeli-adjacent media have been fearmongering that Iran is months away from nuclear weapons for the last 20-30 years, nobody knows the real status of the Iranian nuclear program except the Iranians. Iran nuclearizing induces ugly dynamics, Saudi nuclearization amongst other things.

You need a secure delivery mechanism, long range missiles of the kind Japan isn't supposed to have.

Point of order: Japan already has long-range missiles that, as today's events have demonstrated, can accurately deliver a payload to targets roughly 400,000km away. It is as trivial to make a missile of that sort deliver a payload onto an arbitrary spot on the Earth as it is to deliver a car to an arbitrary orbit.

The Iranian space program is... a bit less developed by comparison.

Your average space-rocket makes a poor long range missile. They're extremely big and obvious targets, not protected in siloes or road-mobile. They take a long time to be readied for firing, many are liquid fuelled and need that to be pumped in. I'd imagine they'd have absolutely enormous radar signatures and would be relatively slow by ICBM standards - ideal targets for missile defence.

The Iranians have real experience firing off long-range missile into contested airspace, combatting missile defence. They have a lot of missiles and launchers, hidden and defensible.

I have no doubt that Japan has the technical capacity to produce long-range missiles but there's more to establishing practical capabilities than converting civilian rockets.

Hard to say for certain but I suspect that it's a lot closer than official narratives would have you believe. The Disconnect between CNN's estimates and Janes' is one of the reasons Obama's "Iran Deal" was so contentious.

Just spit-balling but I'd guess 3 months to a Year if they decide to go for it in earnest and Israel doesn't respond with a preemptive strike. In contrast I'd put estimate the Japanese at something like 6-8 weeks if the cultural baggage and budgetary issues were to be hand-waved away.

In contrast I'd put estimate the Japanese at something like 6-8 weeks

How would that work out with the need to refine enough weapons grade plutonium / uranium?

The time needed to gather/refine the materials is part of why my estimate is 6 - 8 weeks instead of 36 hours to a week.

Probably with Japan accepting design compromises to build a working nuke off of reactor-grade uranium- IIRC South Africa did that back in the day, and a shitty gun-type nuke is a lot better than nothing.

You can't build a deployable nuke out of reactor-grade uranium. Even for highly enriched uranium, you need tens of kilograms of it. Plutonium is much more efficient, which is why everyone who can uses it. A "shitty gun-type nuke" needs even more of the material than implosion type weapon since it's significantly less efficient at getting enough of the material to go critical before the whole thing blows up.

There was a scandal a while back that makes me uncomfortable about putting the United States of America on the list of countries that can make advanced hydrogen bombs.

I'd imagine the destructive power of any bombs our adversaries could field top out at Hiroshima, and mostly are “dirty bombs.”

For what that's worth, which ain't much.

I thought Japan was ‘in theory 36 hours, but they’d have to get all their people in a room together so more like a week in practice?’

I definitely agree that if Iran decided they needed a nuclear weapon now, they could have one in less than a year. But 3, 6, and 8 months are very different timeframes with very different implications.

This is one area where if Kishida stays in power in Japan things will stay interesting. Abe talked about Japan hosting nukes but Kishida has been powerfully in favor of nuclear de-armament his whole life and has helped lead international efforts in that space. He was actually the Congressional representative from Hiroshima so it's personal for him and his constituents. That said, his reputation as a lifelong dove in general enabled him to finally boost defense spending without any real complaints, whereas when Abe tried to do the same he understandably made everyone nervous. So Kishida's anti-weapon, anti-war credentials ironically makes the citizenry trust him more to be responsible with actually wielding weapons and war. Nukes are still totally unthinkable for now, but in a situation many steps down the road with a lot of other factors changing plus a national emergency, he's still the highest potential leader they've ever had to facilitate an unthinkable situation.

My estimation for Japan is basically, 1 week to finalize a design (assuming they don't already have one on file), a second week to gather the necessary materials/personnel, and then 4 - 6 weeks to actually build, test, and deploy a handful of functional bombs.

The timeline for Iran is a lot hazier simply because the available information is far less reliable. Though I do agree with you regarding the implications.

The mantle has now passed to you to lead Transnational Thursdays

oh god oh fuck

Uh.. A good leader leads from the the rear delegates responsibilities, I'll let you have it back, for now.

This latest episode of Iran just kind of attacking all its neighbors is pretty uncharacteristic at least, and is hopefully just their way of showing they won't take terrorism lightly, not a continuous thing they're going to commit to. Iraq and Syria at least aren't going to retaliate militarily. I can think of one or two downsides to a war with Pakistan! Though hopefully this won't turn into that.

I do think the odds of a hot war on a larger scale are modest, if only because Pakistan does have nukes (and this is closer to posturing). I do wish they'd fire said nukes in a direction that wasn't mine, if they had to, but it does seem unlikely to me.

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