OT: Israel v. Iran

[Raellus]

By all accounts so far, Operation Rising Lion, Israel's preemptive strike against Iran's strategic military assets has been a spectacular success.

• Israeli commandos operating within Iran, including near Tehran, launched drones and Spike NLOS missiles at Iranian air defense weapons and radars. This also suggests that this attack was ordered well before Wednesday's IAEA report (the latter providing a fait accompli for the Israelis).
  
• The Mossad seemed to know exactly where Iran's top military and nuclear program officials were before/when the attack was launched.
  
• Israel achieved at least temporary air superiority over large areas of Iranian airspace. There's video taken from the ground in Iran purported to show Israeli strike fighters refueling from a tanker aircraft.

Big Picture Questions:

I'm worried that world powers are going to draw the conclusion from this attack and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine's recent Operation Spiderweb, that a surprise first strike against a strategic rival or near-peer offers a very high degree of probable operational and strategic success. China's got to be taking notes and using what they've gleaned to plan (and maybe even prepare) for an assault on Taiwan.

It's wild to me how successful the Mossad has been in recent years with their intelligence gathering inside Iran and, to a slightly lesser extent, in Lebanon, when, apparently, they did not see the Oct. 7, 2023 attack coming. Are Hamas counter-intelligence capabilities that much better than Iran's?

I wonder how much the US administration knew, in advance, about the attack. Was there close coordination, or at least informed consent? Were the recent bilateral talks between the US and Tehran a smoke screen, to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security while Israel finished final preparations before launching Operation Rising Lion? Or, was each ally acting independently, and Israel just took advantage of the situation offered by the US-Iran talks? Trump's claiming he knew everything ahead of time, but it's hard to take anything he says at face value. I don't know how the rest of the world sees us in this particular situation but, if the US was up-to-speed on Israel's surprise offensive v. Iran, it could look like the former was taken advantage of or used, at least. And, as some observers have pointed out, US assets in Iraq and Syria are more vulnerable to Iranian retaliation than Israel is.

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[kato13]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Are Hamas counter-intelligence capabilities that much better than Iran's?-

<Touch tone phone noise> ----- <BEEP!!>

Not anymore.

Regarding the attack everything is an ebb and flow. The problem here is the old warhead vs armor, eventually armor always loses. I hope Taiwan has good relations with Israel and Ukrainian air defense coordinators as there will be many hard earned lessons from both that apply to their situation.

[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I'm worried that world powers are going to draw the conclusion from this attack and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine's recent Operation Spiderweb, that a surprise first strike against a strategic rival or near-peer offers a very high degree of probable operational and strategic success. China's got to be taking notes and using what they've gleaned to plan (and maybe even prepare) for an assault on Taiwan.-

As per the header, but I'm not sure that the concept of success being more likely if you initiate a surprise attack with extensive prior intelligence and international information coordination against critical infrastructure that sits at the heart of your operational and strategic goals is all that new, or far from the thoughts of war planning coordinators.

We don't have to look very far back to see what it looks like when you possess the strike capability to do exactly this even WITHOUT the element of surprise to the then-fourth-largest military on the planet concentrated on defensive lines in an area 2/3 the size of Texas.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by HaplessOperator

As per the header, but I'm not sure that the concept of success being more likely if you initiate a surprise attack with extensive prior intelligence and international information coordination against critical infrastructure that sits at the heart of your operational and strategic goals is all that new, or far from the thoughts of war planning coordinators.

I wasn't suggesting that "well planned surprise attack" was a revolutionary idea. Looking back at my OP, I can see that my point wasn't made clearly. I intended to address psychology. Other world military leaders might see the success of Israel's operation and make the cost-benefit calculation that it would be best to launch a similar op of their own, now, before their rival strikes first or develops effective tech/operational counter-measures.

As an analogy, it's like a kid at school figures out an innovative way to shoplift from a big box store with very low chances of getting caught, and it works, big time. Other kids with similar ideas hear all about it. Now they're likely to try their own hands at that technique at a different big box store before the industry figures out how to stop it. To bring this back to the topic at hand, I imagine that the higher up in the PLA gov't/military are licking their chops right now thinking about Taiwan.

I saw this quote in the comments section of a Warzone post:

"Unless Israel ignites Iranian regime change, the more successful Israel is, the more it drives desperate Iran into a desperate Russian sphere of influence where no one cares about the long-term consequences of deals made to retain short-term power. I could see Russia transfer nuclear technology, machinery, and even completed weapons to Iran in exchange for Iranian soldiers who could finally overwhelm Ukraine's front lines."

Who would stop that?

This seems like a reasonable concern. Iran and Russia already cooperate militarily, at least with weapons sales and tech transfers. For example, Iranian-designed and/or made Shaheed drones are a scourge of Ukrainian cities.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

As an analogy, it's like a kid at school figures out an innovative way to shoplift from a big box store with very low chances of getting caught, and it works, big time. Other kids with similar ideas hear all about it. Now they're likely to try their own hands at that technique at a different big box store before the industry figures out how to stop it. To bring this back to the topic at hand, I imagine that the higher up in the PLA gov't/military are licking their chops right now thinking about Taiwan.

I saw this quote in the comments section of a Warzone post:

"Unless Israel ignites Iranian regime change, the more successful Israel is, the more it drives desperate Iran into a desperate Russian sphere of influence where no one cares about the long-term consequences of deals made to retain short-term power. I could see Russia transfer nuclear technology, machinery, and even completed weapons to Iran in exchange for Iranian soldiers who could finally overwhelm Ukraine's front lines."

Who would stop that?

This seems like a reasonable concern. Iran and Russia already cooperate militarily, at least with weapons sales and tech transfers. For example, Iranian-designed and/or made Shaheed drones are a scourge of Ukrainian cities.

-

As to the Israel-Iran side of the equation, Israel seems prepared to continue hammering and lopping off heads, which barely-targeted Iranian missiles being flung into civilian population centers along with hitting gas infrastructure is probably not likely to dissuade, to put it mildly, and we can probably with confidence say that it's in everyone's best interests to see them capture, kill, or vaporize Khameini, and anyone who could feasibly or credibly make such a deal.

Long-term? And the decidedly darker solution? I think we're going to have to come to terms with limited militarization of critical national infrastructure, at home and abroad.

That big box store of yours is a lot more difficult to steal from if you surround it with armed security or police disallowing anyone except customers with a member ID for the store who are subject to searches in and out, and if they blow people away over theft.

Long term, I think that protecting critical national infrastructure and manufacturing areas with security more comparable to that encountered at nuclear power and storage sites (especially in the context of layered anti-drone systems and enhanced, non-compromising physical security along the lines of proper, militaristic interior guard) is going to be about the only thing that serves to answer the potential threat.

[ToughOmbres]

Originally Posted by Raellus

By all accounts so far, Operation Rising Lion, Israel's preemptive strike against Iran's strategic military assets has been a spectacular success.

• Israeli commandos operating within Iran, including near Tehran, launched drones and Spike NLOS missiles at Iranian air defense weapons and radars. This also suggests that this attack was ordered well before Wednesday's IAEA report (the latter providing a fait accompli for the Israelis).
  
• The Mossad seemed to know exactly where Iran's top military and nuclear program officials were before/when the attack was launched.
  
• Israel achieved at least temporary air superiority over large areas of Iranian airspace. There's video taken from the ground in Iran purported to show Israeli strike fighters refueling from a tanker aircraft.

Big Picture Questions:

I'm worried that world powers are going to draw the conclusion from this attack and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine's recent Operation Spiderweb, that a surprise first strike against a strategic rival or near-peer offers a very high degree of probable operational and strategic success. China's got to be taking notes and using what they've gleaned to plan (and maybe even prepare) for an assault on Taiwan.

It's wild to me how successful the Mossad has been in recent years with their intelligence gathering inside Iran and, to a slightly lesser extent, in Lebanon, when, apparently, they did not see the Oct. 7, 2023 attack coming. Are Hamas counter-intelligence capabilities that much better than Iran's?

I wonder how much the US administration knew, in advance, about the attack. Was there close coordination, or at least informed consent? Were the recent bilateral talks between the US and Tehran a smoke screen, to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security while Israel finished final preparations before launching Operation Rising Lion? Or, was each ally acting independently, and Israel just took advantage of the situation offered by the US-Iran talks? Trump's claiming he knew everything ahead of time, but it's hard to take anything he says at face value. I don't know how the rest of the world sees us in this particular situation but, if the US was up-to-speed on Israel's surprise offensive v. Iran, it could look like the former was taken advantage of or used, at least. And, as some observers have pointed out, US assets in Iraq and Syria are more vulnerable to Iranian retaliation than Israel is.

-

Israeli intelligence is incredibly good but not infallible. Witness the Yom Kippur War. Not being glib-just pointing out that no intelligence service is 100% perfect.

The footage I just watched this morning shows Israel taking out what must be the rapidly dwindling numbers of surviving Iranian F-14 fighters on the ground. There are reports of larger volumes of "cargo planes" departing China allegedly for Europe but then heading toward Iran. An emergency re-supply of drones, drone components or Air Defense equipment?

In the bigger picture, as if I weren't convinced before, older legacy systems may be not merely vulnerable they may already be rendered obsolete barring some new anti-drone technology. Jamming? Anti-drone drones? Building and upgrading the Phalanx or Vulcan to target drones or drone swarms?

Any nation that has ignored it isn't pumping massive amounts of resources into countering the rising drone threat is in real trouble already.

Regarding the operation, it appears that there were two options dealing with Iran developing a nuclear weapon-bad and worse. Bad (negotiations, carrot and stick) you delay the inevitable. Worse, the military option. You then simply set back the existing program by perhaps six months or a year. Then what?

Does that mean that when the Islamic Republic acquires a working device they are more or less tempted to use it?

I do believe that not targeting the Ayatollah/Supreme Leader is a wise move in an already fraught scenario that is unfolding.

We may never know fully if the bilateral talks were a smokescreen or if the US was being used-it could very well be a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing? That seems unlikely; however stranger things have happened.

[Targan]

It's been 80 years and no one has popped off a nuke in anger. Pakistan has had nukes for decades. North Korea tested their first nuke in 2006. Neither has, as far as we know, sold nuclear devices to terrorists or nuked their neighbours. The Iranian regime are authoritarian theocrat weirdos, sure, but they're no more suicidal than Pakistan's or North Korea's leaders. I think it's likely that within a few years Iran will have nukes, and it won't make any major difference to the global risk of armageddon.