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Laxtonto

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Laxtonto

  1. UAE aint going to remotely go for that.... It is already pretty obvious that the rest of the ME oil states are OK with Israel and the US making sure Iran does not get nuclear weapons. There is no way that they have OK'd flyovers by US and Israel, and then decide to close the Strait of Hormuz because the Iranian nuclear enrichment sites got hammered by the US a week later. If this was going to happen, it would have happened day one, when it could be used as a real threat and a bargaining chip. The only people who gets really hurt now are the ME states that can't use the EW Petroline pipeline Suadi reopened that runs from Jeddah to Qatar. Could it slow exports of crude, yeah. Any military action in the Persian Gulf alwaysx slows both production and transport. Would the rest of the region stand by and let it happen, knowing that it doesn't stop exports from the entire Persian Gulf states, but only a few? Especially when SA takes the smallest hit while the other gulf states take the brunt of the disruption? I would be very surprised if this happens (and in truth, if the Iranian leadership follows through) and if it does Iran is a "accident" away from other ME states kicking them while they are down as well.
  2. Map info nerds unite!
  3. Anyone try to fill out a lineup card with what we have right now? I don't know enough about the portal adds to do it...
  4. Add this to the steadily growing pile of "Mossad is scary"... The level of penetration Mossad has into the Iranian day-to-day operational intelligence is insane.
  5. Reza Pahlavi, the shah’s heir, releases statement to the people of Iran
  6. So, as we get to the hard realization that Iran can not stop Israel in the air and Israel does not have the air and ground capability to fully accomplish their full set of goals, we get to the "what now" part of all of this. 1. People keep discussing destroying the Iranian oil and gas production to bring "Iran to their knees" and thus ending the war. This is probably both overly simplistic and missing a huge part of the puzzle. If the idea were so binary, the US would have wiped out Kharg Island years ago, and Iran would have just drifted off into obscurity, right? The problem goes beyond OPEC+ and economics, and falls into the simple idea of what comes after. If you ever view the dream of a return to the classic Iranian Persian Monarchy with sympathetic ties to the west, the environment needs to be viable for success. If you wipe the refining capabilities off the map, you are looking at decades and decades to rebuild the refining capability at the cost of billions and billions of dollars. Without the ability to both extract and refine the natural resources, Iran has no economic future, and the Iranian people are looking at mass poverty and hardship. If you expect the current style of government to stay in power, you are balancing the idea of keeping the populace alive and having hope while trying to limit the headaches they can bring about with the hard currency they can make. If you expect a regime change and want that regime to last long term, you can't destroy the one resource they have to provide them a viable future. So what do you do? That is the hard question, and why you are seeing Israel right now targeting domestic storage, production, and use facilities instead of the big refineries. I swing back and forth on how I view this because, without resources, Iran as a regional power player shrivels and dies. But without a future, the idea and dream of a Western-aligned Persia dies as well. This is why sanctions have always been used instead of strikes on refineries in the past. The "cut the baby in half" approach would be to target the field incrementally to halt production and therefore halt supply instead of the refining capability. Recapping a burning well is still a problem, but in the grand scheme of things, it is not viewed as a generational timeline that the loss of refining capability would be. 2. We are seeing a steady degradation of the Iranian response capabilities. Ignore the "damage porn" of missiles getting through to the Israeli cities, and just focus on numbers. Missile intercepts are always going to be a fixed value tied to a distribution. That distribution will be a function of intercept capability and missile path. Missiles will get through and there will be casualties. That should be a given. What is more telling is not the damage but the count of missiles launched per wave. That is tied directly to the finite number of launchers. If you are paying attention, we are seeing a steady degradation of Iranian launch capabilities, with Israel having assigned a heavy priority of targeting launchers (even over air interdiction of missiles in flight). As there are fewer and fewer launchers, the intercept rate will steadily increase. The mix of a finite number of launchers and a limited number of ballistic missiles always puts a natural time limit on the number of days Iran could provide a military threat of response (not a nuisance threat), and by targeting the launchers, the volley size per wave is steadily decreasing. At some point, the launches lose military value and move into political theater. 3. What do you do as Iran at this point? They have limited military responses available in the air. Israel is not invading on the ground (yet), and their neighbors are not going to let them move an army over their territory to let them attack Israel. Besides, any form of land assault would be a disaster with Israel having total control of the skies. Unless Egypt goes rogue and surprise attacks Israel, there is little to the idea Israel will have to engage in a large land battle at or near their territory. So Israel is insulated by a major land or air assault, and Iran has a finite number of ballistic missiles and launchers and the window of their ballistic missile response being anything other than a nuisance threat is closing. The only thing they have going for them is that the overall goal of Israel cannot be accomplished via air attacks (without the US becoming involved) and would require Israeli forces on the ground in mass. So what do you do? You have already hardened the locations you can, and troop distribution and movement mean very little in this type of war. There are already as many troops protecting their hardened nuclear production and research facilities as would be functionally possible, and your lone military response is a finite resource. At this point, the best approach would be unconventional warfare strategies (ie terror attacks, suicide bombings, ect.) and political pressure. The problem is that the unconventional strategies are something Israel has become hardened to due to decades of Hezbollah, Hamas, ect. attacks, and they have little to no political capital to use (which erodes even more if they use unconventional warfare). Iran is in a waiting game and is in a completely reactionary stance that will be dictated by what Israel and the US decide. The best approach is to try and get Israel to the table now under the condition of a complete ceasefire. The problem is that Israel has a "plan" of targets that covers 10-20 days of targets, and unless it becomes politically disadvantageous, they will stick to it. Much like with Gaza, their willingness to ignore the "bad" press on the global stage has insulated them from these types of demands by Iran. The only thing Iran has left to trade is their nuclear weapons program, and until it becomes apparent that it is either trade that or their regime being in power, Iran will not truly negotiate, and Israel knows this. What makes it more dangerous is at some point the US (or someone else) may decide that the only way this stops is to provide Israel the airframes needed to drop the ordnance to collapse these hardened facilities. There is no real "end" to this that is positive to the current Iranian regime, without outside intervention on their behalf. Without their proxies, Iran is a "paper tiger" and the ME political landscape has made it more advantageous to be neutral on this topic than it is to be an ally to Iran. We can get into the religious/cultural ties with all of this, but even the Sunni/Shite rift and Arab vs. Persian divide only mean so much. We are now seeing the ME starting to act more "rational" as they begin to accept that the problems Iran brings to the region are no longer worth what it would take to "save" them. You can call it becoming westernized, or the power of capitalism, or the spread of exposure to rational discourse because of the internet, or the desire to normalize relations for a stronger ME as a whole, but the shift has occurred and now it doesn't look like anyone is coming to ride in and save the Iranian regime. Without it, it is just a matter of time for either Iran to cave to the Israeli and US demands (which may lead to a regime change) or being overthrown.
  7. Lots of unconfirmed rumors out there that he may have died in the blast on a strike on his bunker NW of Tehran. I give it 60% its true. I would go higher, but none of the regional Arab news are saying anything either way. Worth monitoring because there have already been reports of others in the government already leaving for Russia and other parts. Regardless, I think Israel now has the green light from the rest of the ME that he is a valid target with limited reprisals.
  8. A few new things... 1. Israel has been fairly restrained "so far" vs the Iranaian economic targets. Not sure how long it stays that way. 2. Estimates are that before this all started, Iran had approximately 2,200 ballistic missiles. Of those, there are reports of 200+ that have already been launched and at least that (with estimates much higher) being destroyed in the initial round of air strikes. Being pessimistic, Iran has less than 20 sets of active large-scale strikes. Essentially Israel knows that Iran has only so many mass strikes available. 3. The drone strikes (a la the Ukrainian truck carrier approach) has had a large enough impact that Iran has in essence, grounded truck traffic in most of the country. To me that is fucking wild. 4. Lots of non-military adjacent politicians and their families are heading to Russia right now. Not a major surprise, but interesting to see them accept that Israel has operational control of the air and can attack all cities at will. This forces them to either live in bunkers for the foreseeable future or pull out to Russia, with many doing the latter. 5. The wild idea of China being an impartial arbitrator in all of this ignores the simple fact that they (and India) are a major destination for Iranian crude and natural gas shipments from the fabled "ghost fleets. That being said, they actually might be a good choice because their interests align with Iran only if the Iranian refineries still exist. That would put an impetus on Iran to negotiate if their major destination of exports for hard currency is the one trying to be the middleman in this situation. 6. The BBC reports that Israel has been "ineffective" in stopping refinement capabilities in the more hardened facilities is partially true. That being said, I expect Israel to flatten everything they can and then go from there. This is why they keep pushing for US involvement because they do t have an airframe that can deliver the knockout blow to these hardened facilities. I do wonder at some point if we see Israeli troops on the ground in a few specific sites, just to finish the job. 7. It is staggering how the rest of the big players in the ME are just staying out of this. Not a peep out of Egypt, Saudi and Jordan are allowing fly overs. Iraq is trying to be as noncommittal as their current situation allows them. I am really surprised we have not seen more blowback from the rest of the ME. Outside of the rogue groups within Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, causing some issues, this has been extremely localized. In truth, I am stunned.... 8. Iran can still threaten to try and close the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, but with how the rest of the ME has reacted so far, I would be surprised if they allow anything more than a token disturbance to happen..
  9. No, they both voted. One in the their House and the other in their Senate. If you would like, go look it up here and here. That is directly from the Minnesota's .gov system. That was the reason I looked it up because it seemed too stupid to be to actually be believable... This may end up being politically inconvenient for people, but if the local reports are correct, this is going to get much worse because the name being provided to local law enforcement is someone embedded in Minnesota state politics. This whole thing is fucking wild. It has no real part in the the fabric of America and the whole thing is a travesty. Minnesota has always been their own strain of weird politically, but for the most part has been fairly civil with their differences. If the name being circulated is the true, it makes no sense to me.
  10. Both elected Democrats (one a former Speaker of the Minnesota House) voted with the Republicans to remove illegal immigrants from Minnesota Care this week (HF001). One was in the Minnesota House and the other in the Minnesota Senate. The Bill passed 68-65 in the Minnesota House and 37-30 in the Minnesota Senate. Everyone I know in Minneapolis is going WTF...
  11. They will always have ballistic missiles buried in the mountains (though once they are launched, that launcher is probably toast) and so they can just lob missiles at cities to try and overwhelm their anti-missile systems or hope the shrapnel of the knocked down missiles hits the population and economic base. So basically, they are then more of a terror weapon than military weapons and it means the population for both countries are under constant air/missile warnings from it. While war is war, Israel is giving Iran the option of military targets only or military and economic targets. The issue is that the only economic targets for Iran are oil/natural gas and 90% of their refining capability is centralized in one spot. If Israel wants to go there, Iran can not stop them. This was one of the US threats when discussing Iran getting their proxies in line in the past, and I would suspect the Israelis are much less restrained in their actions if Iran does not back down. The problem here is that limits the Iranian response because their ballistic and drone capabilities are going to be much less precise, and so there are a smaller set of military targets that would fall under the margin of error of their guidance systems.
  12. Here is a big one... I say this because now Israel is in visible negotiations with Iran regarding their response and now put the Iranian oil fields on the table as a viable target. The fact that so far this has only been explicit military/nuclear capability targets is probably more restraint than expected, and now Israel is openly dictating the terms of what is a viable response if the current leadership wants to stay in power long-term. The destruction of the Iranian refineries on Kharg Island would essentially destroy all oil/natural gas export capabilities of Iran and their only real avenue for hard currency. Can Iran be restrained in their response while saving enough face to keep their proxies in line? I am guessing no, and Israel torches only a portion of the infrastructure of the Khuzestan Basin at the start and tells OPEC to get Iran in line or they are going to hit Kharg Island. That is the real jewel economically for Iran and OPEC will either have to demand Iran to play ball or Iran gets economically neutered and most of the major players in the ME no longer have a financial reason to put up with their bullshit.
  13. Normally, I would agree because of the regional aspect would make all the rest of the ME be forced to go after Israel. Now, I am not so sure. Saudi is signalling they want more normalized relationships with Israel and the long-standing Arab vs. Persian (Shia vs Sunni) rivalry has always made Saudi/Iran unlikely bedfellows. If Israel is promising a move back to the prior Irian monarchy will be the result and with it an end of the headaches caused by the Iranian proxy wars, I could see several of the ME countries signing off. My guess is that it is more going to be a classic "color revolution" that will be pushed by others in the ME after Israel neutralizes the Iranian military's ability to commit to mass reprisals. As an interesting datapoint in all of this, Iran has cut off all internet access to the country.
  14. That top one has to Mossad disinfo to try and stir up a further purge in the Quds. If this is actually true, I have no words for the level embarrassment this would be for the Iranian security forces. Also, if this is true, how is the ayatollah still alive? This level of access would would mean that Israel would have backdoor access to the political leadership movements and would be one of the few people that would be expected to have access to the ayatollah at all times.
  15. Some quick things that should now be obvious that people don't seem to really accepting: Big Picture 1. Yesterday was day 61 from when the current administration told Iran they needed a deal in 60 days. All of the other news surrounding the U.S. being against the attacks are just theater. 2. If it hasn't been figured out, this was all worked out during the ME trip recently and greenlit as a contingency if Iran did not come to terms. 3. Saudi, Jordan, and Quatar are all at worst allowing this to happen with Saudi being the most active providing help on the fringes. 4. Of the proxies out there that generally bend over backwards to help Iran, only the Yemen Houthies have been vocal about it. Lebanon went out of their way to publicly muzzle Hezbolah regarding providing support to Iran. Note that so far the Houthies have only denounced Israel without mentioning the US. Iran/Israel conflict itself 1. Israel has operational control of the skies over Iran and has since the prior set of attacks in Oct 2024. It was rumored to be much more successful vs the current Iranian AD systems that being reported, but it is now obvious that Iran now can not stop the Israeli air force. 2. Israel has been on the ground in Iran for weeks. The level of infiltration by the Mossad in Iran is something that is being understated. It was a scary wakeup call for Iran when they killed Ismail Haniyeh in July of 2024 in Tehran, but the level of infiltration is well beyond what anyone suspected. 3. Many of the targets hit were obviously being surveilled right until impact and the number assets needed to do something at this scale is a feat that is very hard to achieve with this level of success. What is more subtle about all of this is that some these assets must still active as they have been used for secondary decapitation strikes, such as the strike on the Iranian AF command. The only way you can pull off that level of strike after the initial element of surprise is over is by having boots on the ground. 4. Isreal set up and used a similar drone swarm "carrier" approach that Ukraine used to target pre-identified Ballistic missile stockpile and launcher. The Israel intel has been so complete that there is little doubt it came from within. Now, whether was it acquired or given to Mossad is going to be a point on contention, but there is no way this number of targets were acquired, identified, and then equipped with some type of homing/target acquisition beacon could have been done through just basic visual/sigint/sat work. This is probably the most subtle point that is going to get glossed over, but the failure of information security within Iran is the only way some of these targets could ever be identified and being that the variety of easily mobile targets destroyed is so high, this failure has to be complete on a variety of systems, across a variety intelligence/military silos, with support from human assets that work within these silos. 5. Mossad is fucking scary...
  16. The reports about lack of action and defensive response may be tied to they have nobody to give them orders and not sure how to proceed... Didn't help that after their last President died in the heli crash, there was a large internal purge in the maneuvering to find his replacement (who is sounds like is now dead anyways)... This led to a hollowing of that next level down and so we are now having even "newer" personnel in charge now that probably arent as nuanced in thier understanding on what options they have as a response.. Much like with the beepers, Israel cut the head off the snake, and the military response is suffering from the lack of leadership.
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