And Iran Retaliates For the Embassy Attack

It’s the FINAL COUNTDOWN! Da da da da, na na na na na, da da da da, nananananana nananananaaaaaa!

Lookit them luftbaloons go!

I’m totally having flashbacks to the ’80s. Woo-hoo!

Well, our rulers were hellbent on testing the fortitude, resolve, and unity of BRICS and here we are …

I’d imagine that China and/or North Korea are going to have to enter the fray eventually, but maybe, for now, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen, and Iraq will be enough to make Israel and their rabid attack Rottweiler, the U.S., back off.

Z

People get ready. . .

Iranians probably released that to make sure the world knows why they did it and offer a ladder down for Israel. I think they know Isrsel won’t, so we’ll have a regional war with possible nukes involved. Ffs, this world is shit.

If genuine, that series of tweets is one of the more remarkable diplomatic documents I’ve ever seen. It basically acknowledges that they don’t have the throw weight required for high intensity conflict or the desire to go beyond what they have done. Interesting gambit – we’ll see how that works out when everyone else has escalation dominance.

A couple of potential datapoints:

1) Clearly the notion that the US had said they were staying out of things was fanciful.

2) Reporting is that Hezbollah launched dozens of Katyushas at a military target on the Golan. If true, that’s a very calibrated response (way less than they could) and potentially indicative of the extent to which they chart their own path.

3) Given that the IDF knew of the attack for hours before it hit grace of early warning platforms in the Gulf, there may well be an element of Kabuki here. The order of attacks may be indicative. If Iran launched their ballistic missiles against things like anti-air and detection assets with a ToT to help the Shadeed attacks, they were serious -if they launched those later, not so much. More a reminder of the pain they can inflict, much like the ship seizure.

4) A lot will depend on how Israel responds. They have a significant opportunity to widen if they want. Maybe the West uses this as a step point to pressure them on ending Gaza, but the extent to which western statements are chewing the scenery doesn’t leave me optimistic. I haven’t systematically looked, but I have seen zero coverage indicating any signalling of restraint on Iran’s part, which is key to understanding their response.

Netanyahu is Rosh HaMemshala, Head of Government, not President of Israel. The President of Israel is Isaac Herzog.

Reporting on Iran and the nature and motivations of its foreign policy is vanishingly thin in the West. It is amazing that any of us news junkies can imagine that we know much of anything at all. The U.S. government occasionally hands out self-serving caricatures of a state perpetually on the verge of becoming a rogue nuclear power. (Bordering Pakistan and Russia, rival to Saudia Arabia in the Gulf, bete noir for Israel, why would they ever aspire to nuclear war making capability? I cannot imagine the motivations. /sarc But, why don’t they ever get there? Mossad? Israel blowing up mountain redoubts? No one mentions their religious objections. Funny that.)

Iran does not want all-out war with Israel, with all the destruction that would entail at home. I am confident imputing that much motive without knowing anything at all of Iranian politics.

The sacredness of a diplomatic compound in Syria? I seem to remember an incident at the founding of the current Iranian regime that would tell otherwise as far as respect for diplomatic territory. Considering the generals killed, it looks to me like Israel correctly identified the location of a de facto military command center in support of Hezbollah attacks on Israel.

Eye for an eye? Military asset for military asset? I can believe that Iran intends a “proportionate response” in game theory terms rather than righteous altruistic punishment. Inviting a return to the standoff status quo ante fits nicely.

The Gaza genocide, though, looks to me to be a more extreme strategy, predicated on the unwillingness of any capable opponent to engage in extreme measures to stop it. That would seem to include Iran. Israel’s “crazy man” pose, adopted to ward off potential opponents, is a bluff that can be and has been called by Iran. If Israel accepts Iran’s offer to stop escalating, it admits its own rationality and acknowledges awareness about the limits of its power. That changes the game.

It looks like the general approach was to exhaust the Israeli missile defences with drones, plus cheap short range stuff from ally groups right next to Israel, and then send in the more serious missiles later. And apparently it worked; through much of the night, Israeli (plus some British, apparently) missile defences were stopping nearly all the attacks, but towards the end a bunch of stuff got through.
Apparently it has also been estimated that Israel spent a BILLION DOLLARS defending itself in one night. Makes you wonder how many more such nights they can do, especially if some of the stuff that got through targeted missile defence systems. Of course Iran et al.’s supplies of missiles are not infinite either, and if it kept on, Israel would be striking back.

In any real pissing match of missiles versus missiles, one big problem for Israel would just be that Iran is much bigger geographically. You don’t have to do that much destruction in Israel before bloody everyone is affected, but Iran–let’s see, quick Google, calculator . . . Iran is about 80 times as big as Israel. Doesn’t mean you have to bomb 80 times as much to be effective, but . . . still probably a lot more.

“I was really glad to hear that Biden has apparently told Israel that we will continue to protect Israel from attacks, but we will not participate in any Israeli attacks on Iran.”

“I don’t think Israel understands that it’s starting to alienate even staunch US supporters like Biden.”

“Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Iranian attack is that it was probably discussed in back-channels with [Iran] . . . before it was launched, and at least tacitly approved!”

I have no quarrel with elkern or his commentary here quoted and unquoted. And I think all these things have been “reported” in the media and I believe I have seen such reports, but am I the only one who starts feeling queasy about the “narrative management” that may have gone into planting these stories?

There’s a lot of pressure on the Biden Administration to square the circle on staunch support of Israel, avoiding WWIII and ending an ongoing genocide. It is not like the Administration can risk having Biden address the nation to explain his policy. Or, losing Michigan and Minnesota in November. So, there are all these “reports” paraphrasing what is said in communications that may not even have existed between Biden and Netanyahu or unnamed interlocuters and Iranian representatives.

Somewhere there’s an IDF soldier yelling, “No chocolate croissants for terrorists!” (Washington Post – I don’t make these things up; I just pass them on.) But, is there really any American official saying, “You stepped in it this time Bibi; take what you’ve got coming and shut it down!”?? Is there any solid evidence verified against interest by any official source, named or unnamed?

At this late date, is there any reason to believe anything other than the famine and the explosions? Just discard all this nonsense about what Biden “feels” or may say “in private” (aka secret — secret from dear Bibi himself for all we know or can confirm).

It brings a tear to one’s eye to read the recent torrent of tweets by the Wailing Wall-ators in our rulers’ rigged obstacle course of a Congress that essentially attest to “our” elected officials’ willingness to lay all of their constituents’ lives on the line for all-blessed Israel.

Z

@Carborundum

Pretty sure you have it exactly backwards. The drones were there to distract and soak up defense assets to clear a path for the missiles. And probably to help reveal air defense locations.

What actually happened is that despite the attack being essentially publicly announced hours ahead of time (it was known the drones were on their way for hours), Iran successfully penetrated what was claimed to be the densest, most multilayered and professionally manned air defense network on the planet. David’s Sling, Patriot, THAAD, Aegis, plus numerous other systems, all active against an attack they had hours to get ready for and stuff still got through. Not just hypersonics that very likely got through entirely unmolested, but even at least a few of the slower conventional cruise missiles got through. Israel can claim it intercepted 99% or even 100% of the attack, but there’s plenty of often shockingly clear footage that shows this to be a lie. One video in particular is one of the most incredible pieces of war footage I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot over the last decade), where air defense fills the sky with a barrage and kills a bunch of…something. And then four missiles, much faster than anything else, still streak out of the sky to impact on the ground. That’s the full, abject failure of Israeli air defense on full display. Iron Dome has been definitely defeated.

Iran just made Israel spend over a billion dollars in defense assets to stop an attack that likely didn’t cost Iran even a tenth as much. Israel will doubtless get the US to replace everything, as happened when Hamas’s rocket barrage depleted Iron Dome’s stocks, but that’ll take at least a few weeks (and be yet another strike against Israel in US domestic politics. Another billion in free stuff for the parasite nation? People are getting tired of it).

Iran just proved it can get through any air defense Israel or the US can muster. You say this demonstrates the limits of Irans capabilities, but there’s literally no reason to think this was anything other than a sharp warning. Iran is both warning Israel that the time of indirect proxy fights and actions with plausible deniability is over, while also placating its own citizens who were demanding Tehran Do Something. It’s also citing international law that this was a legal and justified act of self-defense. Israel started this, this was the Iranian counterpunch.

Iranian is officially saying they consider this evening the score for the embassy attack and that they consider the matter closed. The ball is now in Israel’s court for if things escalate further, and Iran has demonstrated that Israel would be very wise not to do so.

Iran has proven the range and capabilities of their missile tech to resoundingly defeat NATO defenses. The only open question is how accurate they are, and the evidence is ambiguous. They don’t seem to have hit anything significant (they hit bases that matter, but its not clear they hit anything of real importance within those bases), but is that evidence of an inability to accurately target, or the exact opposite? Did they hit exactly where they wanted and they deliberately hit things of little importance because they wanted to avoid a body count and just prove a point?

Regardless, let’s say their accuracy isn’t great. Doesn’t matter. If they want to get serious, that just means Iran will have to generously target something that absolutely want dead in the future. Like, say, the Dimona nuke plant. If they can’t be confident in precisely hitting it with any one missile, just launch fifty. Something will land somewhere important.

It’s also likely that most of what was used in the attack was older stock. Iran was been rapidly itterating missile tech for years; I wouldnt be suprised if much of what was used was stuff that was no longer premier anyway. Use it or lose it, help clear out room in the storage facilities.

Finally, you can be sure they collected lots of good info on the location of Israeli air defenses. Those defenses will be even more ineffective against any more barrages in the near future, before things get drastically moved around and reorganized.

Also this retroactively confirms basically everything Russia has ever claimed about the effectiveness of its own missiles in Ukraine. Yes, Patriot sucks, and yes Russia has defeated it. This also makes the likely capabilities of China even more credible. Glad I’m not a US sailor on a surface ship right now. This really puts how dominant the Houthis (actually, let’s not play that game: the Ansrallah political movement, the legitimate government of the country of Yemen) are into stark relief. The US is now desperately putting out feelers for a diplomatic resolution to that stand off because it knows how outclassed ships and their defenses are against even relatively crude missile technology.

I understand that the social media consensus is that the drones were to saturate Israeli defences and increase the probability of a successful ballistic missile attack, but that doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me. Ballistic missiles are generally the higher Pk system, assuming one has a good CEP (reporting has been that the Iranians have terminal guidance capability). Given the right force mix, one can can increase overall effectiveness by using the high Pk systems to degrade defensive capabilities against the more numerous lower Pk systems. This is a variant of what was looked at way back in pre-diluvian times when we first started talking about hybrid warfare (which did not mean the same thing as the term has come to mean). Using drones to saturate defences against the cruise missiles does make sense, however.

At a less abstract level, ballistic missiles come in at a couple of thousand metres a second, from an apogee somewhere around 150 km and have a ToF somewhere around 12 minutes at this range. That’s quite a different profile from a drone, which comes in at a few hundred kph somewhere on the order of 500 m AGL over an extended period. I don’t see how an array of low altitude threats is going to saturate ABM detection assets, which tend to be pretty distinct. There is some potential engagement bleed-over with Patriot, but given that the Israelis have spend a lot of effort developing Arrow and don’t appear to field PAC-3 vehicles, I suspect their doctrine would be to use Patriot only once Arrow is expended. As I have previously said, not sure where their medium-capability ABM system fits in – I assume that it is intended for shorter-range threats like Zelzal (I think based on Frogfoot?).

As to overall Iranian performance, I’m afraid we’re going to have to differ in our views. A handful of apparently ineffective hits for this level of expenditure is going to really modify internal perceptions. They’ve made a huge investment in ballistic missiles, both materially and mentally, and this performance is going to be a lot less than they expected – particularly after their successful strikes in January. I suspect this is so poor that it’s going to materially affect the internal strategic influence of the IRGC. Cynically, I suspect IAI is going to more than recoup the total cost of this little coup de main in sales to the Gulfies. The notion of reducing the Iranian threat to their extremely non-mobile asset base is going to seem very, very attractive.

I know it’s become a common talking point that the Iranians will have gained valuable intel from these strikes, but I have my doubts. The general contours of the systems they were up against are pretty well known. People love to make a huge deal about how secret squirrel everything is, but you can plainly see the launch points for the stationary systems on commercial imagery. The surveyed firing points for many of the mobile systems are also there if you know what you’re looking for. Given that any ELINT platform would have been confined to Iranian airspace, I’m dubious they got a huge amount of useful new take. Based on the reporting of how many missiles failed to launch or experienced mid-flight spontaneous disassembly, I suspect their dominant learning is that quality control really matters.

Ah, the “world’s densest air defence network”. If I had five bucks for every time that got said, I’d be able to buy quite a spectacular Australian red! (Curiously, always a different location.) 😉

Is it heavily defended? Sure, particularly against ballistic missile threats. Is it perfectly defended? Clearly no – and particularly not if it were facing an array of threats that hadn’t been reduced by at least two thirds by external forces. If I was a Strike Eagle driver, the Israeli rhetoric would be frosting my wheaties.

However, the issue here isn’t whether Israeli defences were hermetic – the issue is whether the damage Iran inflicted was sufficient that it establishes a credible deterrent and, ideally, establishes escalation dominance. Judging from the Western world’s response (which is who they are primarily attempting to deter), I would say that it has not. This is actually going to cause us problems as it is going to lead us to doing dumb things because we don’t accurately perceive the risks – particularly those that are going to emerge over the next decade or so.

In the near term, it is my opinion that the odd diplomacy around this attack may well be indicative of fissures within the Iranian defence and foreign relations establishment (this is normal for the Iranian political system, but the I think the scale is greater than usual) and it’s likely to be used by people who want to take the IRGC down a peg or two. Absent a significant provocation from the Israelis (who may absolutely be dumb enough to provide one), I think this is going to end up them costing them. I would be on the lookout for a calibrated intensification of the things they are good at (indirect unconventional warfare) as they attempt to re-assert their importance in the hierarchy.

I’m sorry, but I am quite missing your point. Are you trying to say that because some threats made it through ABM systems are useless and Israel is bad for not obligingly following Iranian strategic conceptions? I guess my thoughts would be “no”and “what did they think would happen?”