And the Rest... The rest of World politics thread.

[Disciple of Fate]

As Haighus said, the bombing of a diplomatic post is a clear departure from their previous shadow war. Israel has killed Iranian nationals (even on Iranian soil) before throughout the region, where they are often detached helping friendly regimes and proxies. But that has always had a veneer of plausible deniability due to lack of scale or foreign soil.

We need to condemn this escalation, not because it is a logical strategic maneuver by Israel, but because this seems like a calculated political gamble by Netanyahu with no strategic significance for Israel.

Hezbollah had been relatively quiet. Iran has no interest in a direct conflict, because it's not nearly as capable as Israel. But why is Israel risking war with Iran and as a result Hezbollah now? Because it provides a welcome distraction from Gaza and a potential lifeline for an embattled Netanyahu.

This is the Israeli government risking the lives of citizens on both sides to save the career of one man and his government of extremist allies.

[Haighus]

I have a worrying suspicion that Iran is as capable as Israel with the probable exception of active nuclear warheads, when you remove the US from the picture.

Iran does not seem to be a paper tiger, and they have been testing a lot of gear in Ukraine.

I think the Israeli strategy (such as it is as you point out) relies on the US and other allies covering for their consequences. Would so many drones and missiles have been shot down if the US, UK, France, and Jordan didn't help out?

Iran also has a dramatically larger population and significant military industrial capacity that is very resilient to Western sanctions. A full blown war would be very ugly.

[Disciple of Fate]

Most military experts I have seen interviewed around this seem to think that conventionally, Iran is certainly the weaker party of the two. Iran just lacks a lot of modern equipment such as jets, where Israel excels at thanks to decades of US assistance. What Iran excels at is large numbers of missiles and drones, but those won't win an (air) war by themselves.

You run into the same issue when it was brought up with a possible US attack on Iran. Sure, you can win the combat part, but that's the 'easy' part. What are you going to do afterwards, just leave? What will have been accomplished?

Israel will always enjoy a Western/US security umbrella, so Iranian retaliation options are limited beyond a massive strike and hoping enough gets through. Meanwhile, Israeli air power could potentially bomb Iran back to the stone age, after taking out some key defenses, with the US supplying each and every bomb as needed. Iran doesn't have Russia to rely on in turn.

Edit for English source.
www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-iran-israel-would-wield-long-range-air-war-2024-04-18/

[Haighus]

Apr 19, 2024 5:02:54 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

Most military experts I have seen interviewed around this seem to think that conventionally, Iran is certainly the weaker party of the two. Iran just lacks a lot of modern equipment such as jets, where Israel excels at thanks to decades of US assistance. What Iran excels at is large numbers of missiles and drones, but those won't win an (air) war by themselves.

You run into the same issue when it was brought up with a possible US attack on Iran. Sure, you can win the combat part, but that's the 'easy' part. What are you going to do afterwards, just leave? What will have been accomplished?

Israel will always enjoy a Western/US security umbrella, so Iranian retaliation options are limited beyond a massive strike and hoping enough gets through. Meanwhile, Israeli air power could potentially bomb Iran back to the stone age, after taking out some key defenses, with the US supplying each and every bomb as needed. Iran doesn't have Russia to rely on in turn.

Edit for English source.
www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-iran-israel-would-wield-long-range-air-war-2024-04-18/

I'm not convinced that IDf air power (which is undoubtedly more capable) is enough to "bomb Iran back to the stone age" unless they use nukes. I don't think Iran would be like Iraq, and in any case air power alone tends to struggle without the ground invasion to back it up.

I think it is noticeable that the US has not invaded Iran despite various hawkish neocons clearly really wanting to over the years.

Given the clear Iranian focus on missile tech, have they displayed any significant anti-air missle capability?

[Disciple of Fate]

The stone age comment is more in relation to what happens if Israel manages to achieve air superiority. Then it allows them to bomb Iran with impunity, so they could slowly level the country if they had the inclination to do so. Israel doesn't need (and probably has no plans) to launch a ground invasion, it could just keep bombing until they were satisfied with the result.

I think what stopped the US isn't the Iranian military, it was what to do when the war was won. The US was still dealing with the aftermath of Iraq and engaged in Afghanistan, showing that there is a vast difference between mission accomplished and actually achieving any sort of long term goal. With how things ended in Afghanistan, the regime change proponents have been a lot more quiet.

As for anti-air, they have some Russian equipment, but not a significant amount. Plus replacement AA missiles will be hard to come by from Russia now. They have produced some themselves, but establishing a comprehensive air defense network is a lot harder than pointing missiles and drones at a set location. Which we tragically saw with the airliner shot down over Tehran a few years ago.

[Least censored on the planet!]

Apr 19, 2024 3:59:33 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Previously, diplomatic missions were accepted as off-limits for military intervention unless expressly allowed by the nation in question (such as in the Iranian embasy siege in London). It is hard to stress enough that no nation has done this before, it is straight up rogue state behaviour.

Yes, the IRI is famous for respecting the sanctity of embassies .

[Disciple of Fate]

I thought there was never any definitive proof to tie Iran to the bombing in Argentina? Hence it falling under the plausible deniability part, with the Iranian strike last weekend being considered the first official Iranian attack on Israeli soil.

[dabbler]

It's been a while since someone on this site stood up and proudly proclaimed that the side happily carrying out a genocide is in the right as they expand their war

[easye]

I guess I will put this here, as I find it interesting.....

Gaza cease-fire resolutions roil U.S. local communities

www.npr.org/2024/04/18/1244860378/gaza-israel-city-council-cease-fire-resolutions

The agenda for town board meetings in Saugerties, New York is typically dominated by local issues, like park clean-up and the highway budget. The turnout for meetings is reliably small. Not this year.

On a recent evening in early April, more than sixty people braved the sleet and rain to demand that the board approve a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas. It was the third straight meeting they'd shown up for.

Across the country, well over 100 cities and towns have passed resolutions demanding a cease-fire. They include college towns that typically skew progressive, but also some big cities such as Atlanta, Detroit and St. Louis. Officials in Oakland, California unanimously passed a resolution in November calling on Congress to demand a cease-fire and the release of all hostages.

[easye]

Also, Israel launches missiles into Iran in a tit-for-tat exchange.

Here I thought that Israel would accept the relatively harmless missile barrage from Iran in response to their consulate being attacked in Syria and move one. I was not following the situation that closely.

Now, with this retaliation I have this odd feeling that Israel is the one pushing for more militarization, probably for their own internal political reasons. Again, I am not following closely enough to know though.

[Disciple of Fate]

The opinions I have seen about the retaliation is that it is less of a retaliation, and more of a 'see how easily we can get here' action.

[skyth]

From what I understand, Iran is claiming that the attacks were all shot down and no damage was done. Regardless if it's true, it's good to ratchet down the tensions.

[Disciple of Fate]

3 drones/missiles intercepted at the heart of the Iranian military industry can't be very positive for the Iranians. They crossed a lot of Iranian air space, even for an attack seemingly intended to be very smale scale and to do little damage.

Perhaps it was a test for a later strike. Some experts interviewed say that Israel not claiming it might mean this isn't the real retaliation.

[Haighus]

Apr 19, 2024 10:38:40 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

3 drones/missiles intercepted at the heart of the Iranian military industry can't be very positive for the Iranians. They crossed a lot of Iranian air space, even for an attack seemingly intended to be very smale scale and to do little damage.

Perhaps it was a test for a later strike. Some experts interviewed say that Israel not claiming it might mean this isn't the real retaliation.

Yeah, it is unclear whether this was a test or the minimum retaliation Israel felt it needed to do to save face without escalation. I worry it is the former though.

Whether it is drones or missiles is significant. The US says missiles, Iran says drones launched from agents in Iran, Israel has said nothing (except Ben Gvir calling it pathetic and all but confirming some kind of Israeli strike occurred). A long-range missle strike is much more indicative of the quality of Iranian air defenses than a short-ranged drone strike.

[pacific]

Israel does have a good history of being able to penetrate Iran's airspace, despite the latter's best efforts to stop them. Thinking back to a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities some years ago which involved some 20+ Israeli aircraft (I think F18 Hornets) which were able to carry out a bombing raid and return without any losses. So there is certainly a mismatch of capability there. Although funnily enough one of the things the US/Israel are most worried about are the unknown number of 'Persian cats' (F14s sold to Iran before the fall of the Shah) and which were used to devastating effect against Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, and are thought to be extremely capable even against the latest 5th generation aircraft.

As for Iran's power, I remember reading some analysis at the end of the second Gulf war when some Hawks in the US administration wanted to roll on into Iran. The prevailing opinion at that time was that Iran would not be the pushover that Iraq was (bearing in mind that Iraq's military had not really recovered from the first Gulf war) and had/has a significantly stronger military. Commentary was that the US had to do much more to prop up Iraq's military (and give them a chance against a stronger Iran) than the Russians did in Iran, in terms of a proxy-war support. Of course now Iraq has effectively fallen into proxy rule by Iran, following the end of the second Gulf war, so all of those efforts were for nought.