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Notes -
Iran-Israel War(?)
Well it's happening gents. Iran has launched a massive attack at Israel, consisting of at least 100 drones followed up by cruise missiles, and with ballistic missiles assumed (possibly confirmed) to follow. Presumably this is intended to saturate and overwhelm Israeli Air Defenses. Iran has stated this is a response to what is claimed to be an Israeli strike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, which killed seven members of the Revolutionary Guard including two top commanders. Israel has not claimed responsibility for this attack, but it is largely agreed by those in the know that Israel did it. Without attempting to consensus build, I will assume arguendo that Israel did in fact bomb the Iranian Consulate unless I see evidence to the contrary. Netanyahu has convened his war cabinet, the British PM has condemned the attack, and President Biden while apparently initially going to address the nation has instead called a "lid" meaning no more announcements today.
Civilians in Tehran and across Iran are preparing for what is believed to be an inevitable Israeli counterstrike.
As of writing Israeli, British, American, and allegedly Jordanian jets are in the process of intercepting drones and missiles en route to Israel. The attack appears to be against exclusively military targets, a pleasant change of pace from the general behavior of Middle Eastern combatants.
Update: Well it appears this was much ado about what has become something of a nothingburger. While I hesitate to call a mass drone/missile strike by Iran against Israel nothing, well. Iran has stated that the matter is concluded, and Israel has claimed interception of 99% of the incoming drones and missiles. Israeli medical authorities have reported no casualties as of a few minutes ago, aside from a Bedouin 10-year-old girl in serious condition. This number may rise, but it is my opinion that it is unlikely to break mid double digits.
Update 2: After a phone call between Biden and Netanyahu, it appears that Israel no longer intends to retaliate. The tit has been tatted, and since no Israel citizens have died, and only the one poor girl was injured, the Netanyahu administration seems willing to just let this one go instead of escalating.
The death toll seems to have come to a grand total of zero.
This isn't war, this is kayfabe. An event for the sake of having an event. Is the Iranian military truly this incompetent? They could do better than this if they really wanted to cause damage. It feels like the purpose was domestic propaganda. All regimes need some level of popular legitimacy. "We are the only state willing to open fire on the Zionist dogs," is good for Iranian prestige in the region.
Yes, the Iranians are frequently delusional from getting high on their own supply.
They did almost no damage in their retaliation for the Soleimani strike, but that’s not what they believe.
They have to maintain their pride without it getting in the way of self-preservation.
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What else could they do? Israel bombs their consulate and kills their people.
(1) We do nothing. Everyone now thinks we're toothless cowards and Israel takes this as carte blanche to do what they like when they like to who they like (2) We respond seriously. Now we've kicked off a war in the region and everyone blames us, the same way that clever bullies can get you in trouble by running to Teacher when you finally hit back at them. (3) We make a token response. This shows we are not just going to lie back and take it, but it also can be cooled down fast enough not to escalate things worse.
I think they went for option three and I think we're lucky they're sensible enough or cautious enough to do so.
They could credibly signal they intend to no longer actively engage in proxy warfare and distance themselves from their proxies. They won't, but they could.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate because the Iranian asymetric warfare commander who has been organizing a multi-month bombardment campaign of Northern Israel was at the consulate, where he was quite likely in the business of facilitating further bombardments because that literally was part of his job. Everyone with an understanding of the region understood that context as soon as the Iranians publicized and admitted it was the IRGC Commander, and that as such this was not a tit-for-tat provocation stand-alone incident where Iran was responding to an Israeli kinetic instigation, but a tat-for-tit-for-tat cycle where Iran would be responding to an Israeli response.
The difference is significant- and telling in how the Arab states responded- as the difference between responding to a response versus responding to an instigating response is that any game cyclic equilibrium will look at the response of the response for indications on whether the cycle will continue. People who believe that an Iranian non-response would be perceived as cowardliness and Israel believing it can act with impunity aren't familiar with the region. The accusations could come regardless- how Iran chose to respond is indicative of how it intends to continue with the policies that provoked the Israeli retaliation.
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Plus #3 is a response that is going to be ineffective against Israel, but is a legitimate deterrent to everybody else in the region who doesn't have the Iron Dome setup.
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You know, for all the frequent concerns about AI killbots, modern smart weapons have, in practice driven what is, to use your term, kayfabe. I could point to how concerns about nuclear mutual destruction, while technically a valid concern, have thus seem to have caused a (fragile) truce on Great Power conflict. It seems that one outcome of true "smart weapons" would be the establishment of this sort of kayfabe, like in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Taste of Armageddon," but with no actual deaths, just our robots going at each other with the owners of the losing bots ceding the conflict, because of the implication.
Now that I think about it, the post-WWII era already has quite a few conflicts that are settled not by outright conquest, but by leveraging power into situations where one nation-state could clearly squish the other like a bug, and the loser taps out like a wrestling match, rather than a mano a mano fight to the death. It seems that some of the more enduring conflicts that exist (Israel/Palestine, for example) continue because the "losing" side refuses to tap out, and the rules of the international arena don't really consider such cases.
But it leads us to weird things like today's events, where one clearly-outgunned side is clearly and deliberately firing live ammunition at the other, and the fired-at parties seem to be left batting down the ammunition, and wondering whether it's worth the trouble to flatten the other side.
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This was to have been expected given how the Ukraine war has been going. Both sides in that war routinely get a large fraction of their attacking assets intercepted when they attack targets that have substantial air defense protecting them. And Russia has better technology than Iran does, plus does not have to fly their assets over non-friendly airspace first before even getting to the target country. And Israel is small, so relatively easy to cover by air defense, and it has put a lot of resources into air defense. Based on all this, I predicted earlier today, when the news that Iran was launching the attack broke, that about 95% of Iranian striking assets would be intercepted, and it looks like I was pretty correct.
Also, it was obvious almost as soon as the news broke earlier today that Iran had started the strike that they were going for a limited attack, not starting a full-scale war against Israel. Firstly, because Iran has no rational reason to start a full-scale war with Israel, especially not before they have created a nuclear deterrent. Of course, states do not always behave in rational ways. However, secondly, if Iran was launching a full-scale war they would have launched more assets and would have probably managed to get Hezbollah to simultaneously attack Israel.
This is a double edged sword -- there's no defensive depth either. Which is why I hypothesize that the permission by Jordan to use their airspace was tactically relevant.
I think the fact that the USAF has bases around and can operate pretty much anywhere in Iraq/Syria/Jordan was probably more relevant.
My understanding is that Jordan and Saudi require the US to get permission for each operation.
Syria of course is a different story.
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Hey, US taxpayers are paying for many of the pretty lights in the sky. How much do you think Arrow interceptors cost? Several million each. It wouldn't surprise me if Israel and co spent a cool billion on air defence today. Iran wouldn't have spent nearly so much - they come out ahead even before damage is factored in.
But Israel is also much wealthier than Iran- the cost/benefit analysis in terms of fractions of national wealth looks very different.
Only in nominal terms, in PPP Iran's economy is 3x bigger. While some have issues with purchasing power parity it does seem unreasonable to measure sanctioned countries in USD terms.
For purchasing internationally (and thus for the arms industry) nominal GDP is more important. PPP is a better indicator of domestic prosperity. International suppliers care about what you can offer them at market exchange rates, they don't care about your domestic prices. If Israel can offer me $500 for some small electronics part and Iran can offer me $400, I don't care if it's cheaper to live in Iran.
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If Israel is overrun it won’t be for financial reasons. A billion is nothing to it or its benefactors.
True - though past a certain point the cost of the marginal interceptor missile rises to infinity. It's not simple to put those things together! There's no liquid anti-missile market.
Israel seems to have been shooting at Shaheds with air to air missiles: https://twitter.com/YaariCohen/status/1779511490795511988
The cost ratio is something like 10:1 against - unsustainable. It might not even be worth the wear and tear on the aircraft.
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It is a win in a multitude of ways:
Israel spent far more on this attack than Iran.
It caused widespread disruption in Israel. Few people slept well last night, flights were cancelled, large numbers of people hid in bunkers and thousands of soldiers participated in the air defence operation.
Air defence is limited by industrial capacity, not money. The interceptors are complex machines and production is limited. SAM were low priority during the 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan so few SAMs were bought and production capacity was reduced. Now Ukraine is consuming SAMs at a rate several times higher than production and their interception rate is dropping due to shortages of SAMs. Ukraine will also need thousands of SAMs after the war ends to rebuild. Israel is firing SAMs wildly as they are exceptionally casualty averse. Meanwhile China builds missiles are drones at a higher rate than any other country and they are stockpiling their weapons. Depleting SAM inventories is a success in itself.
Iran just gave Israel the option, but not the obligation, to launch a massive attack on Iran without Israel losing the support of the US.
So do you think this is why Israel bombed the consulate? Every reply so far seems to be concentrating on Iran as the aggressor, with nothing about "but their consulate was bombed".
Suppose an American consulate were bombed by anybody, what would you expect the US response to be?
Let's imagine that Iran didn't just bomb a US embassy, but stormed it and took diplomats/civilians hostage. What would happen?
There's precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
The US response would probably be to tighten economic sanctions on Iran, but to avoid military escalation. As the Ukraine war shows, the US is very wary of escalating conflicts, even with second-tier powers like Russia or Iran.
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It was a consulate in name only. It was a QF operational base used to conduct operations against Israel.
The Iranian MFA didn’t lose a bunch of passport stampers here.
“Why did Israel just blow up an Iranian MFA building without provocation” is not the correct framing here.
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I suspect the US response to be blaming the free speech rights of an American that was orthogonal to the consulate attack
I don’t follow.
I was making a joke about Benghazi.
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Benghazi.
The administration's initial reaction, IIRC, was to claim the attacks were incited by an inflammatory video some American posted on the internet.
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I'm pretty sure he's referring to the narrative blaming the 2012 Benghazi attack on "filmmaker" Nakoula Basseley Nakoula's YouTube video "Innocence of Muslims."
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Israel probably bombed the consulate in retaliation for what Iran's proxies did to Israel. International relations is not governed by rules treating agents symmetrically.
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The main result has been to reaffirm how utterly hostile the Arab states are to Iran even in the middle of the partial Saudi-Iranian detente. Iran has no force projection, and a combination of the Quds expeditionary force, Hezbollah and a few Shia militias would never be enough to overrun Israel. This has made me a lot more optimistic about Israel’s position in the region; the Arabs and Turks both know that even if the masses hate Israel, Iran is a much more substantial threat. The Arabs just want the Gaza thing to be over (they don’t really care how it ends) and for things to go back to ‘normal’.
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Yes. They look like clowns. Keep in mind this is a country which fought Iraq to a standstill for ten years, the same Iraq which the U.S. defeated in a week with a 1000-1 casualty ratio during the Gulf War.
It is going to be very tempting for Israel to attack their nuclear sites now after this demonstration of "strength" by the Iranians.
If the Israelis were smart, they might have let some of the missiles get through, lol. This is just too comical.
What world are you living in? Plenty of Iranian missiles got through. It's right there on video. Are people unironically believing the Israeli '99% shot down' routine?
https://twitter.com/RadarFennec/status/1779343332012888288
Yes, I believe the IDF's numbers. I think they say 103 of 110 ballistics were intercepted, and 100% of drones. Potentially the 7 that got through were let through deliberately as a cost/benefit calculation.
Iran remains completely incapable of affecting Israeli warfighting capability. They are not able to accurately target Israeli military installations.
They could, of course, overwhelm Iron Dome if they shot their wad all at once at densely populated areas.
Apparently only half oh the missiles they atempted to launch actually worked: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage/card/many-iranian-missiles-failed-to-launch-or-crashed-before-striking-target-u-s-officials-say-TCd4YP2fiODhl1t9QDrL
Which on the one hand, lol Iran sucks. But also makes Israels defense look a bit less impressive. 7 leaks from 55 missiles launched is a lot less impressive than the "99%" interception rate we heard at first. More like an 87% interception rate.
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The IDF is under extensive domestic pressure to accurately report military casualties. The fact that there are no great number from yesterday is telling. They let some through the way the US let Iran attack some empty, evacuated US bases after Soleimani.
There's also the points that one of the key premise of the Iron Dome system as a system that doesn't just bankrupt the country is it's trajectory tracking for when things are believed to be going for low-risk impact areas. Rather than shooting expensive interceptors at everything, it, well, doesn't, and the parameters for what it does/does not accept risk on are subject to different factors.
As such, Ranger's twitter doesn't really indicate as much as one might want one way or another. Things 'getting through' the Iron Dome isn't the failure state, it's the intended state. At the same time, it doesn't mean the system wasn't being overwhelmed... but also doesn't mean that the system was running out of ammo / got hit / etc.
Without clarity on to what was being hit, there's not much saying whether the system succeeded of failed at it's purpose.
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Calling them "the same country" is really oversimplifying, since both countries changed a lot over time.
Notably: Iran purged most of their military leadership after the 1979 revolution, and was struggling to rebuild when Iraq invaded in 1980. They managed to fight back pretty well, considering how lacking they were in equipment for most of that war, and came close to winning. But the US, USSR, and other countries were selling a lot of weapons to Iraq, which kept them going.
When the war finally stopped, Iraq was totally exhausted and indebted, with no one left to sell them weapons. Their soldiers and population were horribly demoralized from the years of bloody warfare. You can't generalize from that and say "oh I guess invading Iran would be a cakewalk." They've had several decades to re-arm and re-train their military. Not to mention that this is a country roughly the size of the eastern United States with a population of 90 million. Israel is 10 million and roughly the size of New Jersey, by way of comparison.
You only need to summary execute couple of Ayatollah and decimate the revolutionary guard - the people of Iran will do the rest.
Iran is the perfect country in which decapitating strike will work well.
Where "the rest" is anoint a few more Ayatollahs and reconstitute the guard, and hate America even more with even better reason?
Few people in Iran supports the current regime. And if they do reconstitute - you kill them again. Until they are tired of dying
Why should I believe that?
I'm not sure why I, or the United States, should care so much. If they did anything significant enough to the US I can see killing them until whoever replaces them includes "don't fuck with the Great Satan" among their policies, but other than that, such a policy seems pointless.
Absolutely massive protests that erupt every couple of years. And the participants there are actually people with something to lose. Unlike the LARP-ers in the west.
They try to obtain nuke. That is actually good enough reason for regime change or preventive nuclear strike.
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I don’t support regime change ops in Iran, but I think the regime has questionable vitality now and, while not at late-80s-USSR level, is kind of coasting on inertia and the successful purging of most internal resistance more than it has huge domestic support.
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90 million poor Iranian people are not an asset. They are a liability. Zergrush is not a viable strategy in the 21st century. If Israel and Iran shared a land border it might be different, but only because the millions of Iranian casualties would affect public opinion.
Israel has just show that Iranian missiles and drones are essentially worthless. Yeah, if they launched their entire arsenal in one night, they'd do some damage. But they wouldn't affect warfighting ability.
I didn't say this. No one is saying this. What I am saying is that Iran is powerless to hurt Israel directly. I'll go further. Iran is also powerless to stop Israel from flying over it and bombing whatever it wants. The reason that the U.S. "failed" in Iraq and Afghanistan is that it was trying to invade countries and make those countries like them. This is impossible. On the other hand, killing people is easy. Unless you're Iran of course.
A lesson from the Ukraine war is that highly modern weapons which give countries like israel a technological edge get smashed up under large conventional operations which devolve into trench warfare in which quantity has a quality all its own.
Iran doesn’t have the logistics to mobilize large groups of soldiers to the front or to arm, equip, or feed them. It’s a mythical man month problem. Mobilizing more soldiers would actually lead to worse outcomes.
Iran probably doesn’t have the ability to wage a large conventional war on the other side of multiple hostile countries in the least stable region on earth. That’s true. But if troops were crossing the Iranian border, Iran’s millions of conscripts defending itself and operating in nearby hostile countries would be adequately fed and supplied absent a total collapse of Iranian war fighting ability- Iran is able to supply more limited forces quite well on a much longer and more difficult logistical tether and their defense establishment legitimately looks more capable than in the 80s, when starvation was still not the main challenge facing millions of Iranian conscripts.
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It was already known by people who closely follow modern war that Iran's missiles and drones have very limited ability to impact Israel's war-fighting capability. I'm not even that much of a war nerd, but I knew it. What happened today is not news in that sense. It changes little about what people who closely observe military stuff think about Iran's military capabilities.
Iran's missiles and drones do, however, have the power to close the Persian Gulf down for a long time if Iran wanted to. They also could severely hurt Saudi Arabia's oil producing capability.
These recent back-and-forth airstrikes are a side show anyway. The key thing for the Iranians is, or at least should be, to build a nuclear deterrent as soon as possible. From what I understand, they are pretty close to it. To the point that I'm actually surprised that they risked destabilizing the status quo by retaliating for the Israeli strike against their leaders in Syria. The status quo actually favors Iran because Westerners are increasingly turning against Israel and have not been doing anything directly to slow the Iranian nuclear program. On the other hand, I think that today's retaliatory strike is unlikely to expand into a full-blown conflict, and the Iranians know this, so it changes little. Today's strike will also do almost nothing to alter Westerners' opinions about which side they want to win, since it is clearly a limited military retaliation for the Israeli strike in Syria.
"missiles and drones" is really not a useful category. The drones they're using: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136, are propeller-driven and move at 115MPH at low altitude. Very, very easy to shoot down, at least when you have the resources of several advanced nations and days of advance notice. They are, however, being used against Ukraine to deadly effect.
The real danger is the ballistic missiles. Unclear how many of them were launched here, but it doesn't seem to be very many. Those are much larger, they move at several thousand MPH and at a much higher altitude. Much harder to intercept. It does seem like Israel was able to intercept one: https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1779312589039694002 . But Iran has over 3000. If they launched all of them all at once, that would be a very deadly threat that even the US would not be able to stop. this reply also goes to @jeroboam because I really think you're underestimating the danger of Iran. This was not an all-out attack by them. This was a minimal attack, to make a show of force but also show restraint.
I agree, but even if Iran launched every single asset that they have, I think that while it would kill many people, it would not knock Israel's military out of war-fighting shape. And that's even before accounting for the fact that it would do even less to hinder the US' war-fighting capability. Ukraine shows that a military that is being heavily supported by the West can endure two years of war against an opponent that has a very large arsenal of missiles, including ones that are better than anything Iran has. Granted, Ukraine is much larger than Israel, but on the other hand the US would have no reason to limit its direct help to Israel as much as it limits its direct help to Ukraine, since Iran does not have nuclear weapons. I hope that soon they will have nuclear weapons, but for now they do not.
It was definitely a limited attack. A full attack would have involved more missiles and drones, and almost certainly would have also included Hezbollah launching an attack.
Why do you want Iran to have nuclear weapons?
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Yes, I agree with most of this. Iran's actions demonstrate great military weakness and lack of desire to expand the conflict. But I'm not sure everyone knows this. I just responded to a comment that argued the opposite in fact. I'd argue the consensus is Iran is a true regional power.
Probably, but as this isn't 1990 it matters a lot less. They'll just be hurting themselves. The U.S. is the world's largest oil producer and there are large reserves in South America waiting to be developed. Oil trades at $85/barrel, down 60% from 2008 levels in inflation-adjusted terms. Lots of wiggle-room there.
Yes. That's the meat. Will Israel attack Iran's nuclear capability? It will be good for the world if they do. Terrorists should not have nukes.
Yep, many people didn't know it of course. But people who even half-seriously follow modern war without being blinded by some sort of bias knew it.
Sure, but having the Persian Gulf closed down for months would still be a giant shit show for the world economy. And probably not good for the Democratic Party in an election year given that in today's US political situation, there is unlikely to be some sort of "rally around the flag" effect as a result of any war that didn't start with the US getting directly attacked, and the Democratic Party base is divided about Israel to begin with.
This is a matter of preference. Personally, I am in favor of Iran getting nukes because I do not wish them to be continually threatened by Israel and the US. The "world" would largely be unaffected. It's not like if Iran gets nukes, they are going to nuke Zimbabwe or Thailand or something. In fact, even if they got nukes, given the reality of mutually assured destruction they almost certainly would not even nuke Israel or any US assets.
I think it's pretty well-accepted that an Iranian nuclear capability would likely result in a number of regional counter-moves, such as:
The regional Sunni Arab states may then perceive a much more serious threat from Iran. They would likely seek to either build their own nuclear weapons or come explicitly under the protection of one of the existing nuclear powers. We're talking Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Oman, Quatar, Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan. Iraq and Syria aren't usually seen as Sunni-aligned, but they may not necessarily take such a thing lying down either.
Israel has long maintained a policy of "nuclear ambiguity", refusing to explicitly confirm that they do have a nuclear arsenal. If Iran does openly have a nuclear arsenal, I would think Israel would change this policy.
It's also the status quo of nuclear geopolitics that nuclear powers are not allowed to attack or threaten non-nuclear powers with nuclear weapons. You can attack, invade, and conquer with conventional weapons, but nothing nuclear. Once you have your own nuclear weapons though, you're now fair game for other nuclear powers to more directly threaten.
So, maybe Israel and Iran openly pointing nuclear ballistic missiles at each other? Not sure if that's a good thing. At least they might both cool their jets a little with the constant proxy wars.
Maybe American nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia? It's possible. There's precedent in America defending them from Saddam's invasion, and the Saudis don't seem terribly interested in manufacturing their own high-tech weapons. Or maybe they would ally with an openly-nuclear Israel? Both don't sound very likely now, but it's hard to see the Saudis just sitting idly by with an nuclear-armed Iran right across the Persian Gulf.
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What's the smallest nation or group that you would like to be armed with nukes. Iran is a state supporter of terrorism with a population of 90 million.
Presumably, Saudi Arabia or Japan having nukes is a much smaller threat so I assume you are cool with them. Let's go smaller.
Taiwan?
Qatar?
Cuba?
Should Catalonia have nukes?
How about Texas?
Hawaii?
The NRA?
Antifa?
The KKK?
Can I get a nuke? I mean, mutually assured destruction if I use it right.
Iran is about the LAST country that should have nukes.
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I think there’s a lot of space between kayfabe and total war. Wiping Israel off the map was never on the table—Iran’s goals have to be more measured. They might actually be satisfied with everyone in Tel Aviv needing to change their pants.
That said, the style probably was more important than the casualties. Announcing “the matter is concluded” via tweet? Is the Trump administration writing their press playbook?
Didn't they write part of it in all caps as well? I definitely had the same thought regarding Trump.
Twitter delenda est.
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