MKB Weighs In On Iran - Israel Attacks; Update
Today will be a busy day, so I want to get this out quickly. While I’ll concentrate on MKB (MKBhadrakumar), part of what MKB has to say involves Scott Ritter. Further, some observations by Alastair Crooke to Judge Nap lead into this topic quite seamlessly.
Crooke maintains that what Iran was seeking to do was to reestablish deterrence. Israel had been attacking an assassinating Iranian officials with seeming impunity for a period of time. Iran’s goal was to reestablish deterrence.
Moving from there to a 5 part tweet by Scott Ritter that was quoted by MKB, we see a similar concept:
1/5 Ex-US intel officer Scott Ritter: “when we talk about Israel's defence, Israel cannot defend itself. There has been proof of that: Iranian missiles hit Israeli bases. What we also have to understand is the amount of money spent to defend Israel against drones & cruise missile
2/5 “It’s billions of dollars. This is an unrepeatable event. How many days in a row will Israel and its allies be able to use high-tech, multi-billion dollar missile defenses?… The answer is three or five days.
3/5 “They will run out of missiles before Iran runs out of drones. Guess what happens after that? If Iran ends up with the number of missiles and drones necessary to sustain this level of action for a week, they will have exhausted Israel's ability to defend itself…
4/5 “Iran will take Israel apart when it runs out of air defences. In the event of a full-scale conflict, Iran would wait until Israel spent its missiles destroying its drones, and then begin destroying Israeli infrastructure with more powerful missile weapons.
5/5 “Iran didn't want casualties or damage, they wanted to prove something, and they did… Israel cannot be defended. That's what they wanted to prove. There’s nothing anyone can do if Iran decides to destroy it.”
This is Ritter repeating in purely military terms what Crooke is saying: Iran’s goal was to reestablish deterrence by proving the point that Israel cannot be defended.
For his own part, MKB offers an optimistic take—although for my own part I don’t buy the notion that US diplomacy can drive some degree of actual separation between Iran and Russia:
I excerpt most of the conclusion
Credit must be given to Tehran for reading the tea leaves early enough, as incipient differences began cropping up between Washington and Tel Aviv. Tehran sensed correctly that those differences might turn into discord.
Meanwhile, the US is realistic enough to understand that the containment strategy against Iran has outlived its utility and further pursuit of it becomes meaningless when regional states are preferring reconciliation.
In effect, Iran has gained much strategic depth and strengthened its strategic autonomy — thanks to the strengthening of its ties with Russia and China and rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. The profound meaning of Iran’s direct missile strike against Israel cannot be lost on anyone.
The IRNA commentary says: “Iranian attack was the first direct confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the fake Zionist regime. This is very significant in terms of historical issues. Effective attacks deep inside the occupied territories has been an unfulfilled dream of Islamic countries since 1967, which have now come true thanks to efforts by the cradle of resistance in the region. For the first time ever, Iranian aircraft attacked enemies of Al-Aqsa Mosque in the skies over this holy site.”
The US knows Iran to be a tough negotiator who will not compromise on its interests. Washington will look for daylight in the Russian-Iranian relationship, which holds tantalising possibilities to isolate Moscow in the conditions under sanctions.
Iran makes an ideal energy partner for European economies replacing Russia. Suffice to say, the chances are that the endgames in Ukraine war and the Israel-Arab conflict, as they run on parallel tracks, may create synergy going forward.
For all MKB’s talk of DC diplomacy, the Iranians are realistic and experienced enough to know that the Neocon influence precludes the American Empire being a reliable strategic partner on any sort of basis that goes beyond one-off situations. It’s simply not possible and, as MKB says, Iran knows its interests.
The point of all this is that Iran is a highly rational and very shrewd actor on the world stage. The Neocons and Zionists are neither.
There are some updates this morning, mostly via Will Schryver, that provide further support to what Doug Macgregor said early on after the Iranian strike—the strike did serious damage. This is especially impressive in view of the 72 hour advance warning that the US and Israel were provided. That’s almost like Babe Ruth signaling his famous home run before hitting it. In the teeth of perhaps the most well prepared in advance air defense, Iran hit its targets. That’s a big time message.
Will Schryver @imetatronink
 As understanding of what really happened last night coalesces into a clearer picture, it appears Iran had three main targets for their missile attack last night — all of which were struck with ballistic missiles:
Nevatim airbase
Ramon airbase
A secret Mossad base in the Golan
6:59 PM · Apr 14, 2024
The Israelis are very anxious for everyone to believe they shot down 99% of Iran's drones and missiles, and suffered negligible damage from the 1% that got through. See below one of the persuasive pieces of photographic evidence they have presented to prove their point:
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IntelSky @Intel_Sky
16h
The Iranian missiles missed their target, but they were so smart that they were digging and gathering dirt in a coordinated manner.
Mossad Base Destroyed? Unconfirmed reports of a devastating strike on a Mossad base in the Golan Heights have been swirling about all day long.
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MenchOsint @MenchOsint
15h
Update: The heaviest damage of Iran's ballistic missile attack occurred on a secret intelligence base in the Golan Heights, for which ***the IDF has imposed a media ban, so the damage cannot be assessed.*** This intelligence base was involved on the Iranian attack on Damascus.
– Israeli Sources
The U.S. has an advanced AN/TPY-2 X-band radar stationed at Har Qeren, in the Negev desert.
Its mission is to detect Iranian missile launches, and pass targeting data to Israeli Arrow and David’s Sling and U.S. THAAD ABM batteries deployed to protect sensitive Israeli sites, including Dimona and the Nevatim and Ramon air bases.
Iranian missiles struck both Nevatim and Ramon air bases.
The best surveillance radar in the world, working in concert with the most sophisticated anti-missile defenses in the world, were impotent in the face of the Iranian attack.
For all those trying to spin yesterday’s events as an Israeli victory, chew on that fact:
The best missile defense system in the world could not protect the sites they were tasked with protecting from attacks by Iranian missiles. Who has deterrence supremacy?
It ain’t Israel.
Now, for those who have heard Neocons claiming that the Israeli attack on the Iranian diplomatic establish can somehow be justified under international law—as is now being amplified by US MSM shills—these FACTS totally rubbish those lies:
Almost every US or British Embassy hosts a CIA or MI6 station. All house military personnel. Many service special forces.
That the Iranian diplomatic premises were qualitatively different is rubbish.
Finally, a sobering perspective by David Sacks that echoes my statement above the Iran is rational while Neocons are not:
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
The US is the only country in the world that never debates whether it should be involved in wars: only debates which wars and how many at the same time.
China hasn't had a war since 1979, but used its resources when the US was in Afghanistan and Iraq to build high-speed rail.
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David Sacks @DavidSacks
Apr 13
So what happens next? Two possibilities:
1) Israel strikes back hard. The regional war begins. The US gets dragged in to help Israel, not with boots on the ground but in every other way. Netanyahu is comfortable with this scenario or he wouldn't have bombed the Iranian embassy on April 1. Hawks in Washington who have sought war with Iran for two decades are euphoric. Both Ukraine and Israel get funding, but US stockpiles are already stretched thin so hard trade-offs must be made. In particular, there just aren't enough air defense missiles to go around. Both wars go from bad to worse. Biden loses in November. OR
2) Biden tells the Israelis not to retaliate, using all of his leverage to make them stand down. The choice should be obvious but Biden may not be capable of executing Option 2.
So war it is.
10:52 AM · Apr 14, 2024
Simplicius provides his usual thorough coverage:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/iran-breaches-anglo-zionist-defenses
This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly ...
Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. ...
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.
Additionally, Iran did all this with potentially hypersonic weapons, ...
MKB’s writings I have read are usually a lot more realistic and hard hitting.
This one I found, umm, fanciful and sounded very similar to the official Western Narrative. Did he get Drudged?
It lost a huge amount of credibility claiming with the headline “ US diplomacy gains traction in Middle East”, and tops that off with the delusional hope that Iran can be separated from Russia. And ignores the increasing trade between Russia and Iran, as well as the rail links, and increased trade between Iran and China. China’s and Russia’s power both soft and hard are rising, Europes in a downward spiral, as is Biden’s America (fortunately not as bad as Europe yet, but it’s not due to lack of trying).