What sort of ranged weapons are used to attack a target 15-25 miles away, when precision is important? How capable are the Iranians of such attacks?
I trust the subject is complicated, since oil infrastructure will have varying value. Saddam Hussein attacked it during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, but it was rebuilt.
How valuable is the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island? It’s a deep port oil depot, not a refinery. (So the GD answer to the OP may be, “Who cares?” Let’s have a dozen + replies before we entertain this objection.)
Hijack! The island is home to a number archeological sites, including the oldest Christian ruins in Iran. Kharg Island - Wikipedia
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I invite others to start a thread in GD or PE on Iranian War strategy.
First, if occupying forces camp in the midst of sensitive infrastructure, it would be impossible to attack them without some collateral damage. Even the US’s super-precision low-power weapons can’t do less damage than knocking down a wall or blowing out a building, and pipes and pumps are fragile.
If the forces are away from anything that the attackers would rather avoid damaging, this type of accuracy and range doesn’t exceed modern artillery and drone systems. Ballistic missiles seem like a mixed bag, with accuracy rating between 1/2 kilometer and 10 meters depending on the specific missile.
Air strikes can be kinda accurate, but the entire US Air Force and US Navy Aviation is salivating at the chance to get some aerial victories against manned aircraft.
I would expect that any US deployment would include anti-air, anti-missile, and anti-drone defenses.
If they can ht the US embassy or a airbase in the Gulf States, or Tel Aviv from Iran, I assume they can hit a specific spot on Kharg Island, accurate enough to take out a landing point or a command post if given good satellite intelligence (How would that happen?). Worst case, the Island ships what- 90% of their oil? - I assume it’s big enough that a few damaged parts would not destroy their future economy, while a foreign takeover would be worse.
More likely, as they’ve done for this whole war, it’s tit-for-tat. Israel hit their water purification plant, they hit one across the Gulf - and the Gulf states are a lot more vulnerable to water plant attacks. Israel or US hit one of their oil facilities, they hit one or two across the gulf.
I’m not sure exactly how accurate their missiles are, we haven’t seen a lot of reports of damage from the Gulf States, or especially from Israel. Israel has made it a point to censor any and all reports of damage - national security, of course - so none in the mass media and most reports online on social media appear to be fake, but there’s not a lot of reports of real targeted damage. The Gulf States have also pressured the ex-pat social media types to not post attacks or damage to avoid panic or hurting their image.
I don’t know why people say that. I’ve been looking at nothing but reports and images of damage in Israel for the past three weeks. The censorship is only for the first few hours after the attack, for opsec reasons, and obviously they don’t show any damage to military targets, if any, but other than that I’ve seen any number of images and videos of damage to apartment buildings, railroad stations, oil refineries and highways. And Israel can’t hide dead Jewish soldiers or civilians - if the public found out that the government wasn’t giving the dead the fast and public burial they deserved, there would be major hell to pay.
I’ve seen plenty of posts on social media - but very little from mainstream. The social media posts range from the plausible to what looks like repackaged Gaza or Lebanon or AI videos. It’s hard to tell what’s real, but certainly looks like it’s more than an occasional hit.
I think this whole “Israel is hiding damage” meme is a particularly effective bit of propaganda.
Ynet is the website or Israel’s biggest newspaper, Yediot Acharonot. It’s one of Israel’s leading news sites, as mainstream as it gets, and generally reliable.
This is disturbing on two levels:
Firstly, that major news organizions are ignoring dead Israeli civilians
And second, that so many people automatically assume that there is censorship, when Israel has a fully functioning free press.
In addition to the link mentioned in the previous post by Alessan, here are two more highly reputable sources of news:
I wouldn’t call JP and ToI more reputable at all. More right wing, definitely, but not more reputable.
The difference is that your two sites are written in English and aimed at foreign readers, while Ynetnews is an English translation of the Hebrew-language website that the most Israelis read.
I had the thought generally why has there been such a focus on “smart” weapons like drones and ballistic missiles, when it comes to the straight of Hormuz generally. Given the short ranges involved, wouldn’t traditional heavy artillery be much more effective at attacking vessels in the straight?
Presumably Iran has a huge stock of soviet era heavy artillery that could be hidden, spread out, within range of the straight and pre-registered on the shipping lanes? And that would be more effective and harder to stop that drones or missiles.
The same applies to Kharg Island and the likely approaches for an invasion. Though presumably in the event of a invasion presumably they would not be too concerned about damaging the oil facilities as they would be assuming they would be taken over by the US anyway and would rather they were destroyed. There are also presumably large numbers of troops, artillery, and AAA on the island. Presumably heavily dug in among the oil facilities
That works… once. But you can’t hide artillery fire and its hard to hide artillery pieces once they’re in firing position, so they should expect massive and very fast counterbattery fire.
It works once for every artillery piece as long as you spread them out and hide them. For hundreds of well dug in artillery pieces, that’s a lot of air assets required to neutralize them, it’s not clear the US and Israel could concentrate them at short notice.
It would have to be air attack I think. I don’t think the US or Israel would have significant numbers of artillery within range of Iran?
Here’s a discussion of risks of invading Kharg Island, not strictly relevant to the OP. Debate probably belongs elsewhere.
Also from Bloomberg:
None of Iran’s missiles are as advanced as those of China or Russia, which also have large conventional ballistic missile arsenals. But missiles such as the Fattah are capable of maneuvering in the atmosphere at high speeds on a trajectory between where high altitude and low altitude missile defenses are most effective.
Why is there such a focus on Karg island? The island is a transshipment point. If the US occupies the island then Iran just doesn’t pipe any oil to the terminal. If the US wants to destroy the facility there, that can be done in an afternoon. No major operation necessary. Nothing is going to move in or out of the island until there is a peace deal. Iran will insist that all US and Israeli forces stop attacking/occupying their country before a deal. Once the deal is done, the less damage there is on Karg island the faster the oil moves. So why the focus on the island?
The island is important to Iran, so like any bargaining chip, holding it would give the U.S. leverage.
In negotiations, promises work better than threats. If the U.S. said, “Accept our terms or we’ll blow the island up”, Iran might decide to call their bluff, and if the U.S. does blow it up, it loses its leverage. Better to say, “Accept our terms and we’ll give the island back”; that way, the ball is in Iran’s court. America can wait, island in hand, until Iran is ready to deal.
I go to Google Maps and look at Kharg Island - there’s a huge (yuge!) town centered around the airport. Presumably a decent population. Google says 8,000 to 20,000. So they take the island - now have to deal with guerilla attacks from a dense urban setting. Plus, they have to ensure basic human needs - food, water, electricity - for the inhabitants. Going full metal Gaza on the inhabitants, simply destroying everything with no regard for human lives - not a good move from any perspective. You can’t just wall off the town, if you intend to use the airfield in the middle of town, where aircraft will be easy targets when landing and vehicles going to the airport are liable to attack. Plus you have all these people quite capable of reporting back to someone launching drones as to where the US soldiers are concentrated. Unless they try to attack by sea, paratroopers or helicopters will be easy targets. The US has avoided air casualties so far by flying at high altitude.
So it seems to me, simply taking Kharg Island requires a level of deep tactical thinking that has not been demonstrated to date.
