A headline that even for CNN, I was not expecting to read.
When somebody punches you in the gut, you don’t get up and and throw a roundhouse that misses on purpose. If that happens is because you suck. So Iran did not show some sort of higher moral by launching missiles and not hitting US personnel, it simply means their Surface to Surface capabilities are as accurate as bottle rockets.
But CNN had to kiss Iran’s ass hard because TDS is rampant at its upper levels.
There’s reports that Intel was received 2 hrs ahead of the 2 volleys that were also specified. Something is fishy here
I’m reminded of an old joke — from the “6 day war” in 1967. Message from Cairo to Moscow: “Stop sending surface to air missiles. Send surface to aircraft missiles instead”.
Every SA that misses eventually become SA
The Iranians did manage to hit one thing last night. They shot down a Ukrainian Airliner that had just taken off from the Tehran Airport. 180 dead.
But suppose, for the sake of discussion, that CNN’s premise is true.
Suppose that Iran’s rocket attacks caused zero U.S. casualties intentionally.
Take that thought to its logical conclusion. Where do you end up?
With Trump being a war-savvy genius, Iran’s government desperately trying to save face with their own people, and Trump handing them an “out” during his press release to avoid a full-scale shooting war.
Hear me out:
Soleimani was taken out on Trump’s order (and according to Alan Dershowitz, that order was even more justified under both international and American law then the order to take out Osama bin Laden). Trump has to know Iran will respond (his advisors will have told him such), but the casual ease with which Soleimani was killed gives Iran some well-advised concern over launching a full-scale “counter” attack. So they launch rockets. Four fail before reaching their targets, one misses entirely, and the others go where they’re supposed to but only cause superficial damage and zero casualties.
If that was intentional — if Iran wants to appear to be retaliating but doesn’t want to poke the bear too hard (and their state-run media lying to their people by reporting ~80 U.S. deaths and 200 wounded would seem to confirm that) — it means Trump called their bluff, even before they made their bluff.
Ergo, he’s planning so far ahead of Iran that he’s predicting their reactions.
Then he gives Iran an “out” during the press conference, saying that we have powerful military forces in the area, and that we don’t want to use them but will if we have to. It’s a move straight out of Sun Tzu: A surrounded army must be given a way out. (General Cao Cao comments: “The ancient rule of the charioteers says, ‘Surround them on three sides, leaving one side open, to show them a way to life.'”)
The ball is now in Iran’s court; they can continue to poke the bear over this and risk an overwhelming response, or they can save face by telling their people they avenged Soleimani and call it a day.
All in all, CNN paid the President a great compliment, even if they don’t realize it.
I thought it was something along the lines of a back channel communications: “Hey, we’re launching missiles at you, get your people out of the way, let us blow up some empty buildings. No casualties means no retaliation. Nobody gets hurt and we don’t look like limp-dicks to our people then everybody wins. Deal?”
Remember at the end of Desert Storm, a SCUD hit a US barracks and killed 27 soldiers. Then Bush let fly against the retreating Iraqi army and the US Air Force turned the convoy into the highway of death?
Trump has bigger balls than GHW Bush (God rest his soul). Had the Iranians actually killed a few dozen Americans at a base we’d be pounding every Iranian military installation flat right about now.
I had heard (but not confirmed) that the Iranians had warned the Iraqis that they’d be launching rockets. Given the “partnership” between Americans and Iraqis (the air base in question is a “joint” U.S./Iraq base), warning the Iraqis means Americans got the message, too.
“OK, you got our guy. Let us have a domestic PR win and we’ll call it even,” is a strong possibility. (And the evidence is, most of the everyday Iranian people hated Soleimani; he funneled the resources meant to help Iranians in poverty out of the country, to fund Hezbollah and other foreign terrorist groups in their fights against the U.S. and Israel.)
And I agree, if dozens of Americans had been killed in the Iranian strike, the American counter-strike would make Armageddon look like a firecracker. There’s no military base or nuclear enrichment facility in Iran that wouldn’t be a sheet of smoking glass.
If PDT was really as crazy and unstable as the Democrats and the MSM say he was, he would have instead have been announcing the results of our retaliatory strikes this evening.
The Iranians shot at us. It doesn’t matter if they hit anything or anybody. Those missiles were an ACT OF WAR. Against us and against the Iraqis too.
He is giving them an out. Will they be smart enough to take it? Stop the nuclear program, stop the terrorism.
My guess is NO. They will have a proxy attack a US ally in a few weeks or months; and hope for deniability because it wasn’t them directly. I don’t think Trump will let that go by.
The other angle is that Iran fired into the territory of Iraq. Will the Iraq goverment and parliament condemn this violation of its sovereignty?
The Iran 5th column part (the part that passed the “non-binding resolution asking for the USA to leave”) probably won’t. One might hope this would hurt them in their upcoming election.
Did they miss, or are our point defenses good enough we shot down everything that came close?
They hit some hangars and other structures,
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/satellite-image-shows-airbase-hit-21240678