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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.
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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