Given that Iran is suffering attacks on real targets, why are they wasting ballistic missiles on residential buildings? Or is it part of a missile spam to force Israel to waste interceptors while other missiles strike military targets?
I don’t think the have the precision that Israel has, they’re just firing indiscriminately at population centers and as a result they’re hitting random houses and stuff.
This goes back to the earlier thread about using missiles versus airplanes.
Typical missiles aimed at ground targets are good at hitting the same neighborhood they’re aimed at. Typical airplanes aimed at ground targets are good at hitting the specific spot on the specific building they’re aimed at.
Yes, for ICBM level money you can get missile guidance that’s super accurate. But not for just slinging explosives into an enemy populace.
My guess is that they underestimated how hardened the shelters in this buildings are, and how compliant the population would be in seeking shelter?
In almost any other country in the world, if you spent the night launching cruise missiles into apartment buildings, you’d have hundreds if not thousands of deaths. That’s the sort of thing that might bring you to the negotiating table.
It’s definitely a missile spam attack in that they’re launching large waves of them to try and overwhelm the defensive systems. But the main targets do appear to be population centers, so that’s what they seem to be trying to get through the system to get to.
Sure, but they do have the accuracy to be loved at a specific military base, or a specific neighborhood, even if not specific buildings within those areas.
In prior go around, they were sending their missiles primarily towards army bases and the like. Now they’re just targeting population centers.
Oh I agree that they are terror bombing. I don’t think there is some grand rationale where they were deciding whether civilians vs military bases would lead to some future strategic goal - they’re ultimately killing random people as a face/credibility saving exercise. I think last time around the motivation was just to offer a token show of force and were hoping to minimize further escalation and this time around they want to kill Israelis wherever they have the best chance of doing so.
It looks like the two deaths that occurred together were preventable. The victims were near shelters that survived the missile. Tragically, a technical issue with the warning system may have prevented them from taking shelter.
The IDF claims that “Israel has established aerial superiority from western Iran to Tehran” and, in Gen. Effie Defrin’s words, “Tehran is no longer immune.” This follows Iranian confirmation this morning that the armed forces’ intelligence deputy (Gen. Gholamreza Mehrabi) and its deputy chief of operations (Gen. Mehdi Rabbani) were killed in airstrikes.
An Iranian parliamentarian, which is not to say ”Iran” as a policy, has floated closing the Strait of Hormuz, but it seems so far that despite the bluster and threats to attack US military assets if America continues to assist in intercepting Iranian rockets, Saturday has passed without spillover. The German government at least, which has been uncharacteristically willing to distance itself from Israeli policy in Gaza, is a lot less bearish about these attacks.
I’m not sure they can meaningfully respond. They would need to be able to do real damage either to Israeli airbases or to their aircraft directly, which is difficult to do under the best circumstances (i.e. note that Russia was never able to completely prevent the Ukrainian Air Force from operating) and maybe impossible given they can’t even control their own airspace and their command structure keeps being hammered.
They have very few missiles with both the range and the precision to target specific structures or runways; the Kheiber missile has a claimed 30m circular error radius, but they first unveiled that a little over 18 months ago and can’t have many to spare. The rest of their arsenal is either too short-ranged or too imprecise. In their calculus, “force everyone in Tel Aviv to go into shelter every two hours” may seem like the best option.
(Indeed, at least according to Haaretz, the three people killed overnight were not sheltering and would otherwise have been safe—edit: ah. Or were not warned, I see you’ve said.)
The nearest thing to the impact site in Rishon Lezion that isn’t houses is the Hazahav Mall about half a kilometer to the east. So, yeah, the most generous scenario there is that their specific target was a shopping mall. That said, it came very close to just plowing into the dirt, and one wonders if that’s why it wasn’t intercepted, or if that’s where it was going to hit but some last-minute even or failure changed its trajectory slightly.
(Or Iranian claims about their missiles’ accuracy are wildly optimistic)
Israel expands aerial campaign to energy targets.
I’m revealing my complete ignorance in geopolitics here, but in this situation, to what degree are any other countries in the loop before Israel conducts an operation like this? I realize it might be impossible to actually confirm the answer, but for those with some knowledge, who else if anyone was LIKELY to know about this attack by way of Israeli intelligence communication? The US? Saudi Arabia? Jordan and Egypt (since they directly border Israel?) Turkey and Azerbaijan (since they border Iran)?
Impossible to say.
Usually Israel would keep the US in the loop before doing something like this…especially if it wanted more US resources in the area to help if necessary. By extension Great Britain might be in the loop too. I think there are too many countries in the EU to involve them.
But maybe not…it depends on a lot of complex geopolitical calculations/relationships. Recently, Ukraine launched Operation Spider’s Web and blew up many Russian bombers. Although the US is ostensibly an ally and supporter of Ukraine they did not trust Trump so never told the US what was about to happen.
I can’t imagine any Middle East state being told ahead of time. None are that good of friends with Israel.
Maybe sometime, many years from now, we will find out the behind the scenes details but I’d be surprised if we know the answer any time soon.
The US has said they were informed in advance of the original Israeli air raids.
All else is conjecture.
The US and others sent a lot of their embassy staff home a few days before.
I believe you but I wonder how Iran did not notice this? I would think they would have people watching the major embassies 24/7 from nearby buildings and noting all comings and goings. You’d think when they see almost everyone going that would be notable and set off some alarm bells.
They did notice as did others and it made the news. Now maybe this happens from time to time and there isn’t an attack in the end but they had to know.
They did see the withdrawal but anticipated no action with the “deal” talks coming up on Sunday. A number of the leaders, ‘targets’, chose to sleep at home rather than taking precautions.
Where the talks serious or a distraction?
Did the US know about the planned attacks? Some flip-flopping from SoS Rubio about US involvement/knowledge until the attacks proved successful. Perhaps a different story, ‘not us, we know nothing’ had the attacks gone badly.
Three more dead after a ballistic missile directly hit a home in Tamra, an Arab town in the north. This was part of one of the largest waves of rockets so far.
They’ve been shooting down waves of UAVs from both north and south.
I wonder how many UAVs (and missiles for that matter) Iran can have on hand? Seems a lot but it also seems they are going through them fast.
ETA: I recall listening to the Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin some years ago about WWI (his best I think…excellent series). He mentioned that when the war started each country had MASSIVE stocks of artillery shells. They were amazed to find they went through them a whole lot faster than ever imagined. Not even close. Manufacturing enough to keep the war machine running became an almost immediate and serious challenge.
So, who runs out first…Iran or Israel?
I don’t know if it’s a substantial amount, but Iran was providing missiles to Russia for it’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine. I wonder if this barrage is from the same stocks (prior seem mostly to be shorter range ballistic missiles) and if so if this will end up making Putin unhappy. I find I can easily live with this possibility.
Small drones with small explosives are now very easy to manufacture - the big booms of traditional munitions may not last long, but I think it’s likely that (unfortunately) Iran could keep up small scale drone attacks nearly indefinitely. Not enough to actually have a military impact, but enough to cause consistent, widespread fear.
Another wave is incoming.