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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   24401 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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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.

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.

It is a win in a multitude of ways:

  1. Israel spent far more on this attack than Iran.

  2. 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.

  3. 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?

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.

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.

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.

Benghazi.

The administration's initial reaction, IIRC, was to claim the attacks were incited by an inflammatory video some American posted on the internet.

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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