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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1625 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

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.

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.

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