Israel Under Attack

[Pb]

God bless the IDF.

[K Frame]

Washington Post Gives Entire Staff Day Off To Mourn Loss Of Hamas Leader
https://babylonbee.com/news/washington-post-gives-entire-staff-day-off-to-mourn-loss-of-hamas-leader

I know Babylon Bee is supposed to be satire, but goddamn it they're going to lose their humor cred if they keep hitting the nail on the head so squarely with their stories.

[WLJ]

I was debating on whether or not to put a TBB warning on that 

[Perd Hapley]

Classified intel leaked:

https://twitchy.com/fuzzychimp/2024/10/20/leak-israel-iran-attack-n2402470

This comment:

That information would’ve been safer in the basement of Mar-a-Lago...

[RocketMan]

The potential leak must be fully investigated and those responsible will be held accountable.

Sure thing, skippy.  What color is the sky in your world, by the way?

[Ben]

Classified intel leaked:

https://twitchy.com/fuzzychimp/2024/10/20/leak-israel-iran-attack-n2402470

This comment:

Brought to you by the same people who told Israel to stay out of Rafah.

[WLJ]

Consider how much of Biden's WH staff look like they were scooped up from a Berkeley coffee shop I'm not surprised in the least

[dogmush]

Steelman argument:

Nation States (US included) routinely "leak" stuff to force other nation states to behave in a way we want.  From "leaked" "This is what we know about you", "We see you preparing to do this, stop" to even "Look what our "secret" weapons can do", leaking stuff is a reasonably time honored part of diplomacy.

If Israel was planning on escalating their war to include direct attacks on Iran and/or direct assassinations of 1st tier Iranian leaders, I could see us wanting to stop that, and leaking, publicly so Israel does not get caught in an ambush, the plan would be a way to stop it if Israel was unwilling to see our way.  It's certainly going to hurt our relationship with Israel, but it probably stopped the attack.

Without knowing the extant of the planned escalation, I can't have an informed position on how important it was to stop, although in general, I think limiting escalation between Israel and Iran is a good idea.  So far, we've been pretty successful helping Israel defend against direct Iranian attacks without needing offensive operations.  We should strive to continue that.

[Jim147]

It was Obama's admin that leaked Israels plan to take out Irans nukes and screwed that up on purpose.

[MechAg94]

Steelman argument:

Nation States (US included) routinely "leak" stuff to force other nation states to behave in a way we want.  From "leaked" "This is what we know about you", "We see you preparing to do this, stop" to even "Look what our "secret" weapons can do", leaking stuff is a reasonably time honored part of diplomacy.

If Israel was planning on escalating their war to include direct attacks on Iran and/or direct assassinations of 1st tier Iranian leaders, I could see us wanting to stop that, and leaking, publicly so Israel does not get caught in an ambush, the plan would be a way to stop it if Israel was unwilling to see our way.  It's certainly going to hurt our relationship with Israel, but it probably stopped the attack.

Without knowing the extant of the planned escalation, I can't have an informed position on how important it was to stop, although in general, I think limiting escalation between Israel and Iran is a good idea.  So far, we've been pretty successful helping Israel defend against direct Iranian attacks without needing offensive operations.  We should strive to continue that.

We have been trying to limit what Israel does in retaliation for decades.  It hasn't accomplished much for stopping future attacks.  Just lets the terrorists run back into their UN sanctioned holes and plan the next attack.

[K Frame]

It was "leaked." That infers extra-legal theft and release of the information.

Sure it was...

It was *expletive deleted*ing released.

On purpose.

Do I have proof?

No.

Do I need proof to believe that this information was released on the order of high administration officials, up to and possibly even Biden?

No.

Biden and Harris are still pissed as hell that Israel ignored their warning to NOT invade Rafah.

Israel's doing so, and eliminating the mastermind of the October 2023 attacks, makes the Biden administration look like the gutless cowards that they are.

And that cannot be tolerated.

So I'm thinking we're going to be seeing an entirely new level of US interference with Israel's efforts to protect itself and its interests.

[Perd Hapley]

Steelman argument:

Nation States (US included) routinely "leak" stuff to force other nation states to behave in a way we want.  From "leaked" "This is what we know about you", "We see you preparing to do this, stop" to even "Look what our "secret" weapons can do", leaking stuff is a reasonably time honored part of diplomacy.

If Israel was planning on escalating their war to include direct attacks on Iran and/or direct assassinations of 1st tier Iranian leaders, I could see us wanting to stop that, and leaking, publicly so Israel does not get caught in an ambush, the plan would be a way to stop it if Israel was unwilling to see our way.  It's certainly going to hurt our relationship with Israel, but it probably stopped the attack.

Without knowing the extant of the planned escalation, I can't have an informed position on how important it was to stop, although in general, I think limiting escalation between Israel and Iran is a good idea.  So far, we've been pretty successful helping Israel defend against direct Iranian attacks without needing offensive operations.  We should strive to continue that.

Sure. With an admin that's opposed to both our own and Israel's interests, who knows why they leaked it?

[WLJ]

Be sure to vote for Harris so that she can stop this Trump nonsense

[dogmush]

Question for the group:

If/when Israel just goes to war with Iran, do you th8nk it will be contained to those two countries? If we end up getting involved, even if just to keep shipping in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea moving, how many of out current bases in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,  Bharain, and Qatar will be safe and available for offensive operations?

What does that war look like?

[JTHunter]

Question for the group:

If/when Israel just goes to war with Iran, do you th8nk it will be contained to those two countries? If we end up getting involved, even if just to keep shipping in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea moving, how many of out current bases in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,  Bharain, and Qatar will be safe and available for offensive operations?

What does that war look like?

Don't forget that Putin has already warned the Israelis to leave Iran's nuclear facilities alone.

Could get dicey very quickly. 

[Ben]

Question for the group:

If/when Israel just goes to war with Iran, do you th8nk it will be contained to those two countries? If we end up getting involved, even if just to keep shipping in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea moving, how many of out current bases in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,  Bharain, and Qatar will be safe and available for offensive operations?

What does that war look like?

If it goes off, we'll get involved, but in Ben's World <TM> why do we need to get involved? In Ben's World, the US is producing all the oil we need, so if shipping stops, the Arab princes just go back to being goatherders when they can't sell their oil, and we can just leave the ME to its own devices.

In the real world,  I don't really know what our involvement would look like. I suppose we would try to insert ourselves at sea to keep shipping flowing. I don't want to see US troops feet dry in another ME conflict though. I also worry (tinfoil in place) that CONUS is now inundated with terror cells thanks to our open border, and any involvement at all might set off domestic terror attacks by those cells, with other infiltration cells, like the South China Swords, getting in on the action just from the unrestricted warfare aspect to take the "gimme" opportunity to spread chaos.

[dogmush]

So i think that some of the arab countries would side with Iran, and the rest would tell us we couldn't use bases 8n their country for operations.

And then I think we'd get dragged in. Ships and airplanes at first, but boots on the ground before the end, and after we manage to fight to a standstill we'd end up rebuilding g the mid east. Again.

There would also be terrorist attacks in Europe ant CONUS.


So I think we should avoid letting Israel (or Iran inasmuch as we can influence them) escalate the current, contained conflict into a region wide war.

If the price for that is that Iran keeps sending proxies to die in Palestine, and we keep having to train our Agis crews on Iranian misses, and our B2 crews on Yemeni aholes, and (if we're being honest) Israel takes some rockets that slip through the defenses, I'm OK with that.  Because it's better than the Half-assed Crusade we'd have to do otherwise. Sorry not sorry to the citizens of Tel Aviv.


Now, if we want to talk about a world where the US is energy independent and Israel has a domestic arms production industry capable of meet8ng their needs without US support in the region? Then yeah, they've been wronged, have at it.  But we don't live in that world, and they need our help. 

[Hawkmoon]

Question for the group:

If/when Israel just goes to war with Iran, do you th8nk it will be contained to those two countries? If we end up getting involved, even if just to keep shipping in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea moving, how many of out current bases in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,  Bharain, and Qatar will be safe and available for offensive operations?

What does that war look like?

How many of our bases in the Middle East are safe now? Wasn't there an attack on one just a few days ago?

[dogmush]

How many of our bases in the Middle East are safe now? Wasn't there an attack on one just a few days ago?

Most of them are pretty safe.  Asad Air Base too, some Katyushkas a couple months back.  Asad is one of the main bases for Predator's and is located where it's still pretty easy to get insurgents to lob stuff at it. Union III in Baghdad also gets rockets/morter fire occasionally.

The vast majority of our bases don't see anything like that though.  Most of them are secure and in pretty safe places with little fear of terrorism. Some are actually in pretty nice towns.
https://www.americansecurityproject.org/national-security-strategy/u-s-bases-in-the-middle-east/

[K Frame]

If Israel gets into an actual shooting war with Iran would we get dragged in, as in boots on the ground?

I don't think so.

It would look like every other time Israel and (insert middle east nation/nations here) have gone to war.

So far there have been 6 of them - 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 2006.

Not to mention virtually continuous asymmetrical activities.

In none of those cases did Americans roll out to boots on the ground to fight on the side of Israel. We've supplied a ton of stuff to back Israel, especially in 1973 which, unlike most of the other conflicts, was actually a very touch and go thing for awhile and Israel got mauled pretty badly.

More importantly, though, the Arab nations around Israel have finally learned that *expletive deleted*ing with Israel is not a sure thing at all. They're well trained, well, equipped, well led, well supported, and they're most often fighting for very concrete reasons -- protecting their nation, families, and homes.

The Arab state armies, on the other hand, generally not as well trained, as well equipped, as well led, as well supported, and when you get down to it, trying to base your military goals in terms of "ALLAH DEMANDS THAT WE EXTERMINATE THE JEW PIG INFIDELS!" just doesn't have the same panache.

Sure, there's the spectre of nukes. Iran doesn't have nukes. Israel likely does. Iran knows that. Iran also knows that, unlike 1948 and 1967, most of the other Arab nations in the region don't exactly view them with Allah's love and compassion. Most of the other Arab nations in the region would, I think, be perfectly happy if Iran were to FAFO and undergo a change of government from the bomb throwing Jihadi fundamentalist group to a more secular government that isn't quite as much of a rabid dog at risk to bite both friend and foe.



Sure, Putin is blustering on about the might of Russia. Ignore him. The Israelis certainly don't put any credence in the ravings of someone whose most successful military enterprise has been to show the rest of the world what the vaunted might of the Russian military is an absolute *expletive deleted*ing joke. 

[HankB]

. . . I also worry (tinfoil in place) that CONUS is now inundated with terror cells thanks to our open border, and any involvement at all might set off domestic terror attacks by those cells, with other infiltration cells, like the South China Swords, getting in on the action just from the unrestricted warfare aspect to take the "gimme" opportunity to spread chaos.

There's somewhere north of 15,000 single healthy young (military age) Chicom men who've entered our country illegally along with all the other illegals Biden let in across our southern border - that's enough to man an entire infantry division, and more than enough to become a dangerous fifth column. Look how two terrorists took to sniping random people in the Washington, D.C. area back in 2002 in the "Beltway Sniper" attacks and the panic it caused - imagine thousands like that (but coordinated and better trained) across the entire country.

Guess I'm wearing a tinfoil hat as well. 

[K Frame]

This morning Iran is claiming that all of its Arab neighbors are on board with not allowing Israel to use their airspace to conduct strikes against Iran.

So far none of the neighbors are saying anything of the sort.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/israel-strikes-hezbollah-naval-base-beirut-iran-rallies-gulf-arab-nations

[HankB]

This morning Iran is claiming that all of its Arab neighbors are on board with not allowing Israel to use their airspace to conduct strikes against Iran . . .

They won't grant permission, they just won't notice the overflights. Or they'll limit their response to a sternly-worded diplomatic statement, the way Jordan did when Israeli interceptors crossed Jordanian airspace and took out some of Saddam's SCUDs (that were crossing Jordanian airspace) back in Desert Storm days.

[MechAg94]

They won't grant permission, they just won't notice the overflights. Or they'll limit their response to a sternly-worded diplomatic statement, the way Jordan did when Israeli interceptors crossed Jordanian airspace and took out some of Saddam's SCUDs (that were crossing Jordanian airspace) back in Desert Storm days.

That is what I was thinking.  Plus, Israel has F-35 jets.  Would they be able to see them?  Maybe. 

What I am a bit concerned about is we have bases and small outposts all over the Middle East these days.  If a shooting war starts, we will have our troops in the middle of it somewhere. 

That said, I have my doubts about Iran's ability to sustain any longer term shooting war.

[dogmush]

That is what I was thinking.  Plus, Israel has F-35 jets.  Would they be able to see them?  Maybe. 

What I am a bit concerned about is we have bases and small outposts all over the Middle East these days.  If a shooting war starts, we will have our troops in the middle of it somewhere. 

That said, I have my doubts about Iran's ability to sustain any longer term shooting war.

An S-400 can *probably* see an F-35, if it gets close enough.  It will damn sure see the tankers those F-35's would need to get into Iran though.

Also for those Arab countries, there's a HUGE difference between letting us or Israel use their airspace to shoot down Iranian (or Iraqi) missiles headed outbound, and ignoring a Israeli raid inbound.  I would not expect them to conflate the two.