Tag: S-400

The US & Iran: At War Since 1979

These flags include the following: The Iranian flag, the IRGC flag, the flag of IRGC’s Aerospace Force, the flag of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthi Ansarullah flag, the flag of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), the Palestinian Hamas, the Afghan Liwa Fatemiyoun and the Pakistani Liwa Zainebiyoun

While most Americans lost interest in Iran after the hostage crisis was over once President Reagan was sworn into office on 20JAN1981, do note that there was zero coincidence here as Robert Parry points out in this article:

President Jimmy Carter was struggling to secure the release of 52 American hostages seized at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and Republican operatives again were alleged to have gone behind the President’s back.

The hostages were kept in Iran until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981. Over the years, about two dozen sources including Iranian officials, Israeli insiders, European intelligence operatives, Republican activists and even Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have provided information about alleged contacts with Iran by the Reagan campaign.

This October Surprise controversy finally drew some official attention in 1991-92 around the question of whether Ronald Reagan’s secret arms sales to Iran in 1985-86 the Iran-Contra Affair had originated several years earlier via his campaign’s contacts with Iran during Carter’s hostage crisis in 1980.

As this clip indicates, Iran came back into the US news cycle in the mid-1980s with the Iran-Contra Affair. However, dealing with the enemy was justified to hide the money trail but make no mistake, the US and Iran were still at war. The US really wants the heady days of the 1970s when its puppet, the Shah of Iran, allowed the US a place in the Middle East to “spread democracy” (sarcasm)

While this war has had its seasons, the events of the past week launches the US Empire into a brand new season of war, not just with Iran, but with all their allies in the region, as the extra kick the US gave Iran by a “combo” murdering of Iran’s top general who was on a peace mission between Saudi Arabia and Iraq brokered by Iraq AND Iraq’s general has resulted in the last straw in the Iraq-US “relationship”. If Iraq had a Facebook page it would read:

While Iraq will chart its own course now in off-loading their invader, partial re-builder and since 2014 their “protector” from ISIS, Iran can now count on many more allies in their new and refreshed mission to USXITME (US Exit Middle East).

While many are oblivious as to what Iran’s response was, it was actually the first time the US forces had been directly and accurately targeted since WWII. The Saker explains with a little background:

  • It is has now become pretty clear that Iran took several steps to make sure that the US would know when and where the strike would happen. Specifically, Iran warned the Iraqi government and the Swiss diplomats who represent US interests in Iran.
  • Yet, at the same time, Iran issued the strongest threat it could possibly issue: it told the US that *any* counter-strike aimed at Iran would result in a strong Iranian attack on Israel.
  • The US quite clearly took the decision not to retaliate and to “forget” Trump’s promise to strike at 54 Iranian targets.  I want to stress here that this was the correct decision under these circumstances.
  • It also appears that the Iranians were able to somehow retrofit some kind of terminal guidance capability on missiles which originally lacked it.
  • The level or precision of the strikes was absolutely superb and quite amazing.

When one looks at the data, you have to wonder whether every commander of the 35 “US” bases (on foreign soil) have s**t their pants or not.

.. which means that the missiles were, indeed, guided, and guided very accurately, striking targets of less than ~50m size with a high degree of reliability (in this particular area 3/3 ..) .. the Iranians are very proud of their capability to conduct true precision strikes with an accuracy every bit as good as any Russian and/or US missile.

That is the real effect of a good old slap in the face:

With Iran’s new capabilities as demonstrated by two simple surgical strikes that caught the US Patriot missiles blindsided, and the fact that Russia will be offering their S-400 series defense systems to Iran and S-300 series defense systems to Iraq, the bases in the Middle East staffed by US troops are each very vulnerable as The Saker points out in the scenario below.

… remember the Iranian reply that it had 35 US bases within missile range?  Now imagine this first one:

  • Iran fires 10-12 missile on each and every one of the 35 US bases listed and targets barracks, fuel and ammo dumps, key command posts, etc.  How many casualties do you think that such a strike would result in?

Next, let’s try the same thing with Israel:

  • Iran fires 2-3 missiles but carefully aims them as Israeli air force bases, personnel barracks, industrial sites (including chemical and nuclear sites, not even necessarily military ones! Dimona anybody?), the Knesset or even Bibi’s personal residence.  Can you imagine the panic in Israel?

How about the KSA?

  • Iran fires a large amount of missiles aimed at *truly* crippling the Saudi oil installations, National Guard barracks, airfields, etc.  We already know what the Houthis could do with their very limited resources.  Just imagine what Iran could do to the KSA (or the UAE and Kuwait) if it wanted to!

If only this show of asymmetrical force in the Middle East would be “data” for some critical thinking on the part of the US Military, US Government and US Deep State to defend the troops they have now placed in harms way.

Maybe having Trump watch some Vietnam War clips (you know, the war he was granted one medical and four educational deferments for, which kept him out of that conflict?) and see how the US Empire extracted itself from Southeast Asia. This could easily be done in the Middle East and the rest of the world would respect the US much more if they took that mature move.

Maybe having Trump watch some Revolutionary War clips, and see how the British Empire extracted itself from their thirteen colonies in America.

At the end of the day, the United States would be much more healthy internally, and less of a bully externally. We can only pray for such a day as that.

-SF1

American Empire’s Military Industrial Complex: Corporate Welfare-Centric

After decades of propping up US military manufacturers (not dissimilar to how the US government propped up canal builder, railroads and steel industries in the 1800s), it is becoming obvious that any industry subsidized this way gets very ineffective and very inefficient while never being innovative. One only has to look at recent super-large military projects like the latest carriers, F-35 and littoral class ships to see that for all the money spent, what the US taxpayer (now and in the future as the debt interest for these expenditures hits) got is of little value.

In his blog post, Andrei Martyanov writes about the F-35:

.. to shoot down F-35 one has to have two different bands radar, good sensor-fusion algorithms and decent signal processing protocols and voila’. S-300 PMU2 Favorit can do this, certainly [the] S-400 [can] ..

This explains why Israel is nervous flying near Syria these days. With customers like India and Turkey now opting for Russian build defense systems, the basic “free-market” economics are finally overriding threats from the US Empire. At the end of the day, these countries want good defense of their nation. This is something that the US has failed to accomplish for itself as it is distracted with the military-industrial complex racket that is in effect a jobs program first and the actual defense of the US is a distant priority.

Andrei goes on to explain what gives Russian military industrial manufacturers the edge:

Unlike American military-industrial complex Russian military-industrial complex is not jobs program or corporate welfare system, it never was.  Allow me to quote myself:
For a nation with such a military history as Russia’s the issue of military technology is an issue of survival. As such, weapons in Russia are sacralized because behind them are generations of Russians who shed blood to make those weapons what they are. They have become a part of the culture to such a degree that commercial considerations take a very distant second place to a main purpose of these weapons—to actually defend the nation. This is absolutely not the case in the United States, with some exception for its Navy, with Americans having no knowledge or recollection of what real war is and what instruments for fighting and winning it are needed. Those things cannot be paid for in money, they are paid for in blood.
I guess this should help explain why Russia is so successful on the international market with her weapons.
At the end of the day, the US now realizes its failed MIC projects at the same time it has alienated both Russia and Chine. Not cool. Too bad Washington DC, Pentagon and Deep State could not grasp Ron Paul’s philosophy that what works around individuals works with nations as well .. good trade (sanction free) promotes peace and prosperity .. and that the “Golden Rule” ( Do unto others as you would have them do unto you ) ain’t just for Christians, or for individual relationships, but nations as well.
Moon of Alabama’s post goes on to extend this demise to the littoral class of ships that the US Navy went all in on:

.. the incompetence of U.S. military design are the Littoral Combat Ships, which are essentially unarmed fast boats. The “stealth” DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers were supposed to support ground troops with their long range guns. Built at $4 billion a piece the ships are now losing their guns because the ammunition turned out to be too expensive to buy. Before that they lost much of their stealth capabilities because some necessary communication equipment was left out of the original design. The ships new task will be that of a missile launch platform, a job that any commercial ship, carrying containerized Russian missiles (vid), can likewise fulfill.

Epic fails. I could write more about the latest carrier fiasco, but I digress. This is only a symptom of a bigger issues as Ian Walsh in the same post points out:

There is a lot of ruin in a nation, but for almost 40 years now America’s elites have treated the US as something to loot, and assumed that the good times would keep rolling. They were uninterested in actually governing. They were happy to move much of America’s core manufacturing overseas, to the most likely nation to replace America as a hegemon, because the Chinese were smart enough to make American elites rich.

So all these short term gains are typical in a democracy. A monarchy is actually one notch better in keeping the long-term in mind.

Alastair Crook extends this demise to the West itself when he was quoted in Moon of Alabama’s post as concluding:

as the post-war élites in America and Europe become more and more desperate to maintain the illusion of being the vanguard of global civilisation, how will they cope with the re-appearance of a ‘civilization-state’ in its own right: i.e. China?

I guess it is time to read Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy – The God That Failed“.  This book is pricey ($40), so an alternative is another Hoppe book I have read called “From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy – A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay” is a good read available for $4 (Kindle at Amazon) or a PDF from the Mises Library for FREE!

Placing hope in nations, in militaries and in government leaders is foolish. Time to reflect on family, faith and focusing on the local as the empire slowly dies. Maybe Ron Paul was right on a few things (quote from his book ‘Swords into Plowshares’):

“The people, who far outnumber the would-be dictators, can succeed in a worldwide revolution that fully deprives the dictators of their power. But, any revolt must not lead to just changing the name of the authoritarian system or the political parties in the system. Instead, the revolt must be based on rejecting the trust in government doing the things that only the people can and should do for themselves. This revolt will probably come in stages—in bits and pieces—and be different in the various countries of the world.”
― Ron Paul, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity

-SF1