The Man With the Axe is Wild

In the poker game between the US, Israel and Iran we’d all better hope that Donald Trump will not be a wild card. Global nuclear war is on the table.

I wish to add my comments on this very enlightening article by Simplicius the Thinker in which he analyzed the Iranian attack on Israel of April 14, 2024.

Simplicius the Thinker April 14, 2024: IRAN BREACHES ANGLO-ISRAELI DEFENSES IN HISTORIC ATTACK: A BREAKDOWN

Iran Breaches Anglo-Zionist Defenses in Historic Attack: A Breakdown

I’ll start with an impudent little parody of the excellent Alexander Mercouris of The Duran whose commentary I admire and check on every day:

One should be aware that Simplicius is a Russian source BUT! He has always been reliable, detailed and his accuracy has always been confirmed by subsequent events reported in publicly available Western news. And in this analysis Simplicius is most interesting and informative.

Simplicius:

<< Iran made history yesterday by launching “Operation True Promise”. In our usual style here, let’s cut through all the noise currently clogging up social networks and incisively demonstrate the facts as thoroughly as possible, while also pointing out how this was a game-changing and historic event which has brought Iran onto the world stage in a big way.

<< Firstly, as establishment, Iran’s stated goal for the operation was to strike back at the bases from which the Israeli consular attack was launched on April 1:

<< "IRGC has listed its objectives for last night’s missile attack: Ramon and Nevatim airbases (where attack on Iran Consulate was conducted from). Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ in Tel Aviv (where attack on Iran Consulate was planned) and degrading of Israeli air defence radars and assets.

<< "The footage is of the Intelligence HQ getting hit. I have yet to see evidence of 99% interception. Ramon has been badly hit. Nevatim was hit by more than 7 missiles. Air Force Intelligence HQ completely leveled. Other strikes on air defence installations obviously not close to population centres and out of view but I'm sure sat intel will show extent of damage… “

<< Now, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.

<< This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. This alone was a big watershed milestone that has opened up all sorts of potentials for escalation.

<< Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to watching NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.

<< But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km… >>

As usual for Simplicius his article is a long and detailed goldmine of information that he carefully backs up. Please do read the whole article. I only want to comment on one aspect, the new view that the Iranian attack affords to the global public of Iranian military technology, especially as regards its expertise in medium range ballistic missiles.

Bottom line: Iran used anywhere from $30M to $50M or slightly more in the cost of Shahed stealth drones, long range cruise missiles and, finally Medium Range [up to 2000km range] Ballistic Missiles in a co-ordinated attack mounted at 2000 km range to skilfully penetrate Israeli air defences and strike exactly the targets, two Israeli military air bases, that Iran announced that it would strike – and these bases were struck by ballistic warheads which evinced pinpoint targeting and possibly hypersonic maneuverability. The Israelis, aided by the Americans and French, expended $1.3 Billion dollars to unsuccessfully repel this attack.

In the common and vulgar American parlance, Iran used a portion of its missile and drone technology to demonstrate to Israel (and to the U.S. military) what Israel is going to find out if Israel persists in fucking around by attacking Iran. Israel, and its American backers were at full stretch and failed. Iran has plenty of reserves. This is a political victory for Iran and a global game changer.

WORLD-CLASS IRANIAN MRBM TECHNOLOGY

The Israelis have provided numerous pictures of what they claim are Iranian ballistic missiles they have shot down. These pictures are all of cylindrical metal objects showing very light damage. These large metal cylinders are not ripped apart but only dented slightly; they obviously were not hit by any shrapnel, they simply fell after having been spent.

Simplicius says they are not shot-down missiles but rather they are ejected, separated, booster stages of Medium Range [2000 km range] Ballistic Missiles. Numerous pictures are provided of different but similar spent boosters, which seems to imply that there were many fired and many "Medium Range Re-entry Vehicle" warheads which attained near space ballistic trajectory and went on down to their targets. Such warheads coming in to target at the final stage of flight would be almost impossible to intercept with an anti-missile projectile such as are fired by the US Patriot systems or the Israeli Iron Dome systems.

The Israeli claim that these cylinders are shot-down missiles discredits the Israelis because it is immediately apparent that no one with the slightest expertise could mistake these objects for anything but spent boosters. I’ll provide confirmation shortly.

This possibility that these were Medium Range Ballistic Missile warheads seems to be confirmed by videos taken by amazed witnesses who can be heard exclaiming in Hebrew or Arabic as the red hot warheads, brightly lit up against the dark sky, come down and explode on target. One of these videos widely shared on the world-wide web shows four of these warheads coming in from different angles on steep trajectories, seconds apart, at very great speed to hit what looks to be the same target. It could be that the hand held cell phone camera is wavering, but one or two of these warheads appear to slightly adjust their trajectory just before impact. If this is not a camera glitch – and it doesn’t really seem that it is – that could mean that these warheads are Maneuverable Re-Entry Vehicles, MARV warheads.

The clearest picture of one of the spent boosters shows printing on the side of it. This is what it says:

EMA: UAE.A241

This positively identifies this as a booster for the Iranian Emad – 1 Medium range Ballistic Missile. The very interesting thing about this missile is that it could deliver a Maneuverable hypersonic warhead, the infamous hypersonic glide warhead, MaRV.

So it’s certain that Iranian ballistic missile technology was demonstrated to all the world on April 14 and we can be sure the Iranians learned a lot operationally during this debut display of force. Iran is now a world-class peer competitor in drone, cruise missile and MRBM military technology.

This Iranian MRBM capability is world class technology, state of the art and second to none in its category. The reason why the Iranians have advanced so far is surprising. They have progressed in Medium Range Missile technology faster than even the Russians – let alone the Americans who are decades behind the Russians in any military tech one can name – is that both the Americans and the Russians were hampered in the development of MRBM technology by their adherence to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty from 1988 until 2019 when President Trump abrogated that treaty.

Wikipedia reports:

<< The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty)[a][b] was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (and its successor state, the Russian Federation). US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty on 8 December 1987.[1][2] The US Senate approved the treaty on 27 May 1988, and Reagan and Gorbachev ratified it on 1 June 1988.[2][3]

<< The INF Treaty banned all of the two nations' nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (310–620 mi) (short medium-range) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). The treaty did not apply to air- or sea-launched missiles.[4][5] By May 1991, the nations had eliminated 2,692 missiles, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.[6]

<< President Donald Trump announced on 20 October 2018 that he was withdrawing the US from the treaty due to Russian non-compliance,[7][8][9] stating that Russia had breached the treaty by developing and deploying an intermediate-range cruise missile known as the SSC-8 (Novator 9M729).[10][11] The Trump administration claimed another reason for the withdrawal was to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific, including within the South China Sea, as China was not a signatory to the treaty.[7][12][13] The US formally suspended the treaty on 1 February 2019,[14] and Russia did so on the following day in response.[15] The United States formally withdrew from the treaty on 2 August 2019.[16]… >>

Maybe President Trump was right that the Russians had been slipshod in their strict adherence to the INF Treaty. In any case Iran never signed it and, very notably, China never signed it either.

Co-operation amounting to an informal, but certainly firm and developing, military alliance between Russia, China and now Iran has been greatly stimulated and advanced by the determination of the US and NATO to expand into the Russian security sphere in Eastern Europe which finally resulted in the Kiev Maidan Square Coup in 2014 and the present war on Russia. And meanwhile the US and Israeli threats and sanctions against Iran and the US threats against China have also confirmed in these three governments that they are well advised to stick together.

Iran has provided drone technology to Russia and Russia has announced recently that it will enhance its military co-operation with Iran (not to mention recent Russian assurances of such co-operation with China).

The Israelis "vowed” to retaliate in force to the Iranian attack of April 13-14. But Axios News reported and now even the New York Times has reported that according to their White House sources President Biden phoned Prime Minister Netanyahu to pointedly inform him that the USA would not support any Israeli attack on Iran. Now Israel has backed off on the threat to attack Iran.

I seem to see a consistency in Washington’s deep strategy toward Iran that, it seems to me, few people have noted.

In 2011 Zbigniew Brzezinski, along with 100 colleagues in US Intelligence, issued a report titled, “Weighing Costs and Benefits of Military Action Against Iran”.

Weighing Costs and Benefits of Military Action Against Iran, 2011: IranReport_091112_ExecutiveSummary.pdf

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/event/IranReport_091112_ExecutiveSummary.pdf

While adhering to a neutral tone, this report concluded that if the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities Iran’s acquisition of a deliverable nuclear warhead would be delayed for a maximum of four years at the cost of giving Iran no choice but to develop a nuclear war capability. If the US wanted to permanently prevent an Iranian bomb, said the report, the US would have to invade and occupy Iran, which would take years and expend more blood and treasure than had been expended in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. I felt at the time when I read this executive summary that essentially Brzezinski and his colleagues were afraid that the US military would collapse from the cost of another long and futile war in the Mid-East and Russia and China would gain hegemony over Eurasia and the world without paying a dollar or shedding a drop of blood.

Subsequently the Obama administration brokered a peace deal with Iran. President Trump denounced this “deal” and he and John Bolton and Mike Pompeo threatened to attack Iran, but when Bolton proposed to actually do this attack in response to Iran shooting down a US drone, Trump cancelled the attack at the last minute. I reasoned that, being essentially a man of business, Trump was aware that US war on Iran would set fire to the Persian Gulf oil facilities – one third of global oil supply! – and close the Strait of Hormuz and send the price of oil to infinity and beyond, devastating the US economy.

Now today we have the third US presidential administration to have backed Israel with bellicose words but in the event Washington has refused to support an Israeli attack on Iran.

I hope we can all be reassured by this.

The wild card is Donald Trump, shooting off his mouth as usual, saying that Joe Biden is wimpy and if only he, Trump, had been in charge those Iranians would never have dared to attack precious sacred Israel. I was accused of being a supporter of Donald Trump by people who ignored my criticisms of him over the years. I’ve been supportive of many things he’s done and said, that’s fair.

But his use of this deadly crisis as political grease to slide himself back into Washington where he was so ineffective in “draining the swamp” for four years? Pouring gasoline on the crisis and teasing Israel that he’ll be even more supportive of Israel's war mongering if AIPAC will help him to get elected in November? It’s childish, irresponsible and unconscionable.

It’s also jaw dropping, eye popping ignorance and delusion to believe, as he apparently does, that he is some sort of Superman whose word from on high will call the world to order under Pax Americana. Or would that be Pax Trumpicana?

When I was a kid I and my buddies played draw poker and often enough we’d declare that “Deuces and Jacks and the Man with the Axe and the Ace of Hearts are wild”. The man with the axe was the King of Hearts.

If Trump is going to be the man with the axe in 2025 I think we can all hope he won’t be a wild card.