Brief Update: China Sanctions, Iran Missiles And Blowback, Reader Survey

We’ll briefly follow up on a few items from yesterday.

In one post yesterday I referred to Blinken’s upcoming trip to Beijing to threaten and browbeat the Chinese with sanctions unless they do our bidding with regard to Russia. As I understand these demands, it appears that America is demanding that China participate in at least some of the major sanctions against Russia. The WSJ has taken up that story:

-- GEROMAN -- time will tell -  -- @GeromanAT

WSJ: The United States is developing sanctions that threaten to cut off some Chinese banks from the global financial system that cooperate with the Russian Federation, process payments and provide loans.

American officials say that imposing sanctions against banks is an escalation option in case diplomacy does not help. Washington has recently stepped up pressure on Beijing, warning it could take action against banks that help supply dual-use goods.

(that will give the USD the rest)

#в_мире

 Sofa General Staff

1:06 AM · Apr 23, 2024

It’s an excellent example of Neocon “diplomacy”, in which threats are frontloaded: Here are our demands; implement them or we’ll try to wreck your economy. Sounds like a protection racket of some sort, doesn’t it?

And here’s a comment to that that makes sense to my simple mind. Bear in mind that Russia/China trade is effectively completely de-dollarized and that the de-dollarized portion of world trade is constantly growing. Somehow I can’t see the proud Chinese agreeing to kiss Blinken’s Neocon ass. Nor Zhou’s Irish one. As if the Chinese didn’t see this coming and plan accordingly? All indications are that both the Chinese and Russians—in stark contrast with the American Empire—carefully study geopolitical relationships and their long range implications and craft policies that are not amenable to influence based on our shoot from the hip threat approach. We’ve seen this over and over since the end of the Cold War.

Modad Geopolitics @modadGeoP

These banks will not only continue working with Russia, they will expand their business with Iran, India, Venezuela, the Gulf and the existing and aspiring members of BRICS. The US cannot successfully sanction an economy that is bigger than its own, with far greater manufacturing capacity than its own.

3:25 AM · Apr 23, 2024

Also yesterday, I noted that an Iraqi based militia that aligns with the Iraqi and Iranian governments had announced that it was resuming its attacks on the US military presence in their country, to encourage the US to leave—as requested by the Iraqi government. I presume those attacks will likely extend to US bases throughout the Syraq area, as well as possibly bases in Jordan that support US bases in that region. I noted yesterday that the effect of this could end up being very expensive for the US, depending on how other regional actors react. There’s been an additional development today that follows from that, but first …

Larry Johnson features an expert guest post today that I highly recommend to anyone interested in military matters in the Middle East:

TED POSTOL’S ANALYSIS OF IRAN’S MISSILE ATTACK ON ISRAEL

This post is very information dense, so I won’t try to summarize it in depth. Here’s one important bit of analysis, however. Postol concludes that most of the shootdowns by the US—and, yes, the US did most of the work—were of the slow flying drones and cruise missiles, which had to travel long distances from Iran.

There are now reports that the US Navy provided airborne warning and control systems (AWACS, specifically, Navy E-2 Hawkeyes)) which were extremely effective in vectoring fighter aircraft to targets that they could then quickly acquire and destroy.

I assume—always subject to correction—that those Hawkeyes may have deployed either/or both/and from our carrier in the Red Sea/Persian Gulf/KSA bases. Obviously—due to the flight speed differential—US fighter aircraft were not vectored to ballistic missiles, only to drones and cruise missiles.

The workhorse air-to-air missile of the United States Air Force is a AIM-9x Sidewinder.

The cost of a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is about $500,000.

The cost of a drone is perhaps 10,000 or $20,000, and the cost of an Iranian cruise missile is probably about $100,000.

…

The implications of this are clear.

The cost of shooting down cruise missiles and drones will be very high and might well be unsustainable unless extremely inexpensive and effective anti-air systems can be implemented.

It is certainly possible to shoot down drones and cruise missiles with antiaircraft guns, although these systems will be of limited range and will need to be relatively close to targets they are defending.

At this time, no one has demonstrated a cost-effective defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles with any reliability. So far, even Iron Dome has been a failure against artillery rockets, which are of quite short range and are of quite simple and inexpensive.

There’s much more, including assessments of how Iran achieved a very high degree of accuracy with its missiles.

Now, yesterday I mentioned the possibility that, based on Iran facing down Israel and placing the US in a serious bind (as above, and for other reasons), Hezbollah might up the ante. I suggested, as confirmed now by Postol, that the costs imposed by a Hezbollah escalation could prove prohibitive. Worse, American munitions supplies could quickly become seriously depleted if the US continues to prioritize the demands of the Zionist entity and the Israel Lobby over US defense requirements.

Up till now, Hezbollah has been content to enforce a 10km No-Go zone in northern Israel, forcing the evacuation of many tens of thousands of Israelis from the area. Today that changed, as Hezbollah began targeting urban areas more distant from the border:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

Hezbollah again attacked Israeli cities with drones

Hezbollah has seemingly expanded its range of operations from 10km to 30km inside Israeli territory, after it targeted the cities of Acre / Nahariyya and Safed within the past 48 hours

8:20 AM · Apr 23, 2024

What will be the Israeli response? Evacuate those cities, allowing Hezbollah to extend its No-Go zone? Intensify attacks on Hezbollah, daring them to dip into their enormous stash of ballistic missiles rather than the cheap drones they’ve been using? Whatever the choice, it won’t be good.

Alastair Crooke has argued, as I mentioned yesterday, that the Neocons are desperate to pivot back from genocide in Palestine to more carnage in Ukraine—that seems to have been the overall message of the Johnson/Dem/Trump spending bill and the rhetoric associated with it. Weirdly, our targeted “axis of evil” countries and their allies—as (re)designated by little Mikey Johnson—don’t seem to feel constrained by Neocon ideas on how they should accommodate us. A hot war with Hezbollah is probably the last thing the US wants at this juncture. That is a war that the Zionist entity simply can’t run on its own and would lose in a big way. But the demands on US resources would be prohibitive for an already stretched US military. So, from an “axis of evil” standpoint escalation makes perfect sense, since the US has demonstrated just how much “standing with Israel rather than the US” drags the US down. Just at the time that we’re preparing to bully the Chinese to get with our program. Good luck.

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Reader Survey

This morning commenter Bob rather peremptorily demanded that I “fix” (his word) the ordering of comments to conform to his preference—”Chronological”. Currently the ordering is the default Substack method “New first”. As I noted, I have no preference because all comments land in my email inbox where I monitor them. Some commenters have voiced their preferences. If any commenters have views on this, they can express themselves in the comments to this thread. If there’s a clear preference I can switch the ordering.