ETA: @iiandyiiii 2 posts up.
Shooting $10K missiles at $1K drones is a form of economic warfare the drone side is likely to win.
For darn sure both sides are burning through backstock at a furious pace.
Iran does not have the launchers needed for extended warfare. They’re using portable launchers and moving them to avoid destruction.
The first missiles in the barrage have already arrived, and the Iranians are apparently still shooting. There’s also a Shahed drone flying around and so far evading being shot down.
Yemen launched a ballistic missile as well.
The death count in Tamra is up to 5. Meanwhile, an elderly woman was killed in the latest barrage, at an undisclosed site in the center of the country.
This was a building that collapsed in the city of Bat Yam. Four people dead at that site now, including two young children.
The death toll in Tamra is now 6.
Well… in terms of numbers, though obviously not casualties, the barrage last night was significantly smaller than the ones Friday evening/Saturday morning. A complication for Iran is that, with air superiority, the IAF has been able to hunt ballistic missile launchers at will, so 1. even if they have sufficient stockpiles they may not have the ability to use them and 2. perhaps being more judicious in when they use them and what on.
On the other hand, Iran may be looking for an offramp; the foreign minister says Iran does not want to expand the war and according to the Greek PM the Iranians want to deliver “some messages” via Cyprus. Airstrikes appear to be ongoing over Tehran. Looking at the fire maps from NASA’s FIRMS, the Tehran Oil Refinery in the southeast appears to be burning for a third day. The facility at Shahran, in the northwest, was also attacked and on fire as of this morning.
The last Iranian barrage seems to have been neutralized with no injuries. A relief, after the heavy damage from the night before.
Meanwhile, reports from Iran say a large number of additional nuclear scientists were taken out; there have also been strikes against oil infrastructure. Considering the issues that Iran already had with their economy, this could be disastrous for the Ayatollahs’ grasp over their own country.
The expectation is that both sides will continue like this for at least a few weeks. Iran has plenty of weapons stockpiled, and while Israel is striking those targets there are limits to what can be accomplished.
(Actually, literally as I was typing that sentence, the news showed footage from an Iranian “missiles city” that was hit by IDF airstrikes! Article below about what a “missile city” is, and what may have happened to it.)
It sounds like even the deeply fortified nuclear reactors are potentially vulnerable to prolonged assault. While the IDF doesn’t have the enormous penetrating bombs the US has, repeated attack from smaller bombs could eventually cause the underground facilities to cave in. This might take literal weeks of bombing of the same site, so if that’s what it is going to take, the IDF will need to maintain aerial superiority for that entire length of time.
If that was their plan, the targeting of population centers rather than army bases this time around was a bad move. They were warned not to do so at the beginning of the war, but of course they very much did. The result is the escalation of Israeli airstrikes today, and the targeting of oil infrastructure.
It sounds like a number of the eliminated nuclear scientists and other government officials were taken out by Iranian opposition forces, not Israel. No idea if this was coordinated or not.
Opinion piece from Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition, on his perspective on the war.
Interesting “wag-the-dog”-esque effect: Netanyahu’s leadership is harder to contest if he’s a war leader.
They have also since denied these reports in favor of deciding that attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure marks a new red line that has been crossed.
Given their current position towards Israel I’m not sure what that is intended to mean, since it’s not like the Axis of Resistance has a double secret probation option. Conceivably doubling down is meant specifically in order to further shore up support from their proxies, since Hezbollah in Lebanon has sat by and their Iraqi arm said earlier today, incredibly, that they were not aiding Iran because Iran did not need any help to confront Israeli aggression.
Also those remarks come after Iran said they were limiting cooperation with the IAEA and will “no longer announce the details of our nuclear activities to the Agency in advance.” I don’t speak Farsi and I am not keyed in enough to know whether this is spreading on Iranian social media, or whether this is post-hoc rationalization instead of propaganda, but a new conspiracy theory I’ve seen is that the IAEA obtained details about Iranian nuclear scientists to leak them to the Israelis.
Yeah, at least some of them were car bombs, apparently, which seems a bit unlikely under the circumstances and which I’ve seen at least some reporting that Mossad has already denied involvement in.
Not that it matters: the vote of no confidence came before the fighting with Iran, and there can’t be another one for 6 months. The opposition knew they weren’t going to win the vote but did it anyways because it strips the ultra Orthodox parties of their leverage.
Yeah, when your stated position on another government is that they are an abomination that should not exist and must be destroyed, you really leave yourself with very little room for escalation.
Yeah, I think they’re still smarting from their last tussle with Israel! The current operations in Iran could simply not be conducted this way if Iran hadn’t previously had their proxies degraded.
Very little room for rhetorical escalation.
But as between a tense peace stretching over a decade or more versus all out war today there are still a lot of steps in the middle. Whether measured in space, time, or nature and level of violence.
In many ways it’s helpful that the two countries not only don’t share a border, but also have a lot of distance between each other. If, counterfactually, Iran was located where Iraq or Saudi Arabia are, such that skinny Jordan was the only buffer between them, the overall prospects for uncontrolled escalation would be far more grim.
This provides a reasonable explanation of the political situation that brought this to a vote. I doubt there is serious opposition to this war with Iran, they are the actual threat to Israel’s existence, not Hamas or Houthis. I think it’s the general attitude of the world too. There are those America First traitors here but they don’t have much support when it comes to this action because Iran is seen as a threat to the world since they are motivated by religious hatred that can’t be overcome through politics, diplomacy, or economy. They willingly sacrifice their own people and everything they have in this single minded pursuit. Israel is attacking the body of the Hydra which is a good thing for the rest of the world.
Sure, but there hasn’t been a tense peace for almost two years. Iran has been attacking us full force, with its weapons of choice generally being a proxy, but that doesn’t make it less of an attack.
Agreed. I was not trying to suggest that tense peace was the situation a week or a month ago.
Iran’s stated policy of destroying Israel goes back to the early days of the Iranian revolution. Right now is as hot as that long-running war of words and deeds has ever gotten. What happens next is highly unpredictable.
The Iranian head of intelligence and his successor were both eliminated by an Israeli airstrike, according to Iranian opposition forces.
In what I can only assume is another example of TACO, Trump apparently has no appetite for a decapitation strike on Iran’s Supreme Leader: