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Etsy Archipelago

And I’d really like to hear how the Israelis successfully bombed knowledge.

The Israeli special operation to use the Men In Black memory-wiping device to make every nuclear scientist in Iran forget how nuclear physics works

Yeah, without any tangible evidence of said “commando operations” this just feels like cope. We all saw how commandos worked out in Gaza and they got their shit kicked in. I have a hard time believing that they did some James Bond-esque infiltration of Iranian nuclear sites and primed every centrifuge to self-destruct or whatever they could possibly be talking about.

Against surface facilities there were some successful covert operations in the past I believe, but now that everything important is underground, I can’t imagine there’s much you could even do. That’s why Israel and the US had to attempt this in the first place: the era of doing stuxnet shit and slamming drones into surface facilities was over, and a more dangerous military campaign was required with gigantic bombs to even try and breach them. If Israel could have achieved lasting damage to Iran with just covert commando operations then they would have just done that, no need to start a war and attempt forceful strikes on nuclear facilities.

‘No survivors’: Israeli media reveals details on latest Hamas ambush in Gaza

Hebrew media has released new details on the resistance ambush against Israeli forces in south Gaza’s Khan Yunis, in which seven soldiers were burned alive in their troop carrier following an explosive attack claimed by Hamas’s armed wing.

“At exactly 5:30 pm yesterday, the first report came in about a fire breaking out in an armored personnel carrier (APC) of the POM type, belonging to the engineering forces. Initial investigations suggest that a militant approached the APC and attached an explosive device to it. The device detonated, causing the entire vehicle to catch fire,” Israeli journalist and army radio correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on 25 June.

“Military firefighting teams rushed to the scene to extinguish the fire in the APC. A D-9 bulldozer was brought in and dumped sand onto the vehicle in an attempt to smother the flames, but all firefighting efforts failed,” Kadosh added.

After failing to extinguish the flames, rescue forces towed the military vehicle to Israeli territory as it was still on fire with the soldiers inside.

“The fire was only extinguished once the vehicle had reached Israeli territory. Rescue teams and helicopters were dispatched to the scene, but none of the fighters survived. No one remained to be rescued from the wreckage. All seven soldiers were killed.”

Kadosh went on to say that it took several hours to identify the bodies of the seven Israeli soldiers.

Couldn’t have happened to nicer people.

I have added a point of clarification there, thank you.

Overall I think Simplicius has been considerably worse on this conflict compared to Russia-Ukraine, it seems out of his area of expertise, but still more worth listening to than like 95% of twitter western military analysts or random OSINT guys. Or, god help you, the media dipshits on TV.

I don’t think it’s entirely his fault as this really is just a very different war to the Ukraine one, and I think you need a more comprehensive analysis of the political situations of each actor in the conflict (and politics is where Simplicius nosedives into downright incompetency) whereas for Russia/Ukraine you really can just sit on your armchair and move toy soldiers around on a map on your big table and treat it as a mathematical and logistical exercise and still be mostly correct in your conclusions.

more like the Israeli Atomic Espionage Agency, am I right

The latest Simplicius: Humiliation: Israel Tucks Tail After Failing All Objectives in War against Victorious Iran

I think the title’s blatant triumphalism betrays how there’s a battle in the media over the portrayal of the conflict, with both sides basically doing their own victory dances. I will say that the Israeli side does look a little depressed as the fragility of their society and economy and military has been laid bare, and there does appear to be a psychological blow to Zionists that may or may not translate into lasting change (e.g. mass evacuations). But like, you shouldn’t have to constantly insist that you’ve won a conflict; the results should speak for themselves beyond all doubt. So I’m personally comfortable calling this a draw, but let’s see what Simplicius has to say about it.

• Simplicius’s previous argument that the strike on Fordow [using 14 bunker busters and not 6 like I thought? I’m not sure if I’m just losing my mind but I thought the US said 30 missiles and 6 bunker busters?] was an allowed strike seems strengthened by the fact that Iran responded with what was basically certain to be an allowed strike on Al Udeid.
• All parties involved got an off-ramp from a conflict that, even if it wasn’t going particularly great for Iran, was going very badly for Israel - you don’t want to get involved in an attrition war if you are a tiny state with infrastructure that can be easily disabled and you are opposing a country with ten times as many people and thousands of ballistic missiles.
• Iran had already taken out a significant number of Israeli heavy drones (combat-capable, rather than merely surveillance), such as Hermes drones. It’s not clear how many Israel has, but we’re talking a couple dozen of each type, not hundreds.
• These Israeli drones and missiles were the primary method of destruction on sensitive military targets. As more were shot down, Israeli jets would have needed to move further into Iran and risk being shot down.
• There is still little evidence that Israel was capable of flying over Iranian territory for any meaningful distance. The only evidence we have is that of Israeli jets over a coastal city. All Israeli combat footage over Iran was taken from drones. Now, we have seen Israeli fuel tanks wash up on the Caspian Sea coast, showing that Israel flew in from the north to bombard Tehran, rather than flying all the way through Iran to hit it. This isn’t to be like “See! Israel has been fricking owned!!” because like, they can still bombard Tehran and do heavy damage - it’s just important to clarify how that was done so that people don’t learn the wrong lessons.
• Despite Trump’s insistence, it’s increasingly clear that if Iran’s nuclear program has been set back at all (which it might not have) then it is only briefly. It is well-known that Iran’s enriched uranium was shifted out of Fordow, and its location is not publically known. Some (in American media, even!) go further to say that Fordow was basically untouched and that the centrifuges are fine, according to leaks from White House intelligence.
• Simplicius says that the US only has - well, had - 20 GBU-57s, and if that’s true, then their production rate must be truly glacial. With 14 dropped, there are now 6 remaining, which is insufficient for any kind of broad campaign against Iranian underground capabilities, especially if 14 of them were dropped on Fordow and it was fine, or at least not obliterated. [This point by Simplicius seems flatly incorrect, US production of these sorts of bombs is more along the lines of 6-8 per month, and they only have 20 of a very specific model.]
• Iran’s airforce was basically a no-show during this conflict. It’s not clear what happened with that; some are suggesting they were moved to the far east to be out of harm’s way, and perhaps if the conflict intensified and became extended then they would step in. It’s probably also not a bad idea to conserve as many planes as possible, especially as some of their pilots train on the Russian jets they received.
• The Israeli modus operandi against other regional actors was applied to Iran and met similar failure - they attempted a military victory and lost, and lost quite badly at that. Now, again, this isn’t to say that Israel is therefore owned and mad, because where Israel seems to actually do quite well is in winning the peace - they are great at infiltrating and undermining nations that have been weakened by war even if technically victorious. We saw this happen in Lebanon and Syria, for instance.
• Simplicius says that it’s not clear when the conflict will erupt again - maybe in hours, maybe in days, maybe even months or years. But Iran has created a degree of deterrence. Importantly, it has dealt a heavy blow to Israel’s IMEC plan to create a new transport corridor to the Mediterranean that bypasses unfriendly states, with Haifa’s port damaged and clearly much more vulnerable than the alternatives (such as the existing Suez Canal route, and China’s BRI), which is important on a geopolitical level. China just can’t stop winning, folks. They’re getting tired of winning.

Ideally there would be a synthesis of the hardliner approach to Israel and the West but the reformist approach to social issues, plus a willingness for, if not outright socialism (given Iran’s anti-communist history that seems totally implausible in the short-term) then at least a strengthened capitalist-based command economy. The reformists will destroy Iran by not sufficiently opposing Israel, while the hardliners will destroy Iran by being too repressive internally on issues that simply don’t need to be repressed even under an Israeli siege and propaganda warfare situation. But of course, it’s not as if the government merely dictates these opinions from on high, there must be many factions based on social and economic classes pulling one way or another, so even a hypothetical coup by a hypothetical “synthesis party” wouldn’t ameliorate the contradictions in the short term.

If the war continues then Iran might - might - manage to win anyway, but I’m really getting the impression that in Iran, the left arm doesn’t know what the right arm is doing. This goes beyond the standard messaging issues where you promise some overwhelming once-in-a-century response and then little happens; even Pezeshkian himself admitted a while ago that he doesn’t always know what’s going on.

“the Chinese Communist Party are traitors, only Shia theocracy has the will to do what is necessary”

The argument was that Iran was the only country with the ability to defeat Israel, and such a defeat would be very beneficial not only in a humanitarian sense but also in the geopolitical strategic sense of reducing American influence in the Middle East, and so China should do anything they possibly could to help Iran achieve it. But now I know that it wasn’t China’s fault for not trying to help, but Iran’s fault for not accepting any. On October 8th 2023 at the absolute latest they should have knocked on the doors of Russia and China and gone “We think it’s possible that Israel will go berserk and start a regional war and that will include us, we want to sign economic deals, we want to sign military deals. If you can’t do much officially due to the sanctions regime then we’ll accept covert help, plus we’ll be gearing up our nation for this eventuality and doing intelligence sweeps and dragnets that we should have done earlier and at a greater intensity when Soleimani was assassinated, plus getting reforms ready” but because of the internal contradictions of the Iranian political class, I suppose that just wasn’t possible. They just didn’t have the existential sense of urgency required until it was too late and Hezbollah was pacified. I remember Iran going around talking to the leaders of Gulf states trying to get an embargo on Israel early on but that was pointless, they would have never broke off trade with Israel.

Ironically now, the Middle East might be the strongest holdout of the US going forward. I expected that the approximate series of American imperial collapse would be Middle East -> Africa -> Asia -> Europe -> South America but maybe Israel will still be putting people in concentration camps well past the mid-century. With the benefit of hindsight, that the US would spend inordinate effort to protect the world’s oil supply was predictable, but the Resistance was just much stronger back in late 2023 and we weren’t aware that their efforts would be squandered due to an ineffective and infiltrated Iranian leadership, so Israel’s defeat in the short term seemed plausible even if a little unlikely.

This conflict has taught me: do not “trust the plans” of countries/territories that aren’t controlled by Marxists (Ansarallah and Hamas get an exception, you don’t survive that long under those conditions without your government having great competence). Every time I’ve been like “Well, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to do THAT” it turns out they are, indeed, stupid enough to do that

100%. Iran hasn’t yet lost, but Israel will try and achieve through “peace” what it cannot achieve through war. It will work to destabilize Iran, smuggle weapons in, and probably continue terror attacks regardless of any ceasefire. Now we might be in the most dangerous phase yet.

apologies Xi, I will now trust the plan

edit: this is in response to my (and others’, but definitely my) pessimism and lack of understanding about why China isn’t helping out Iran, but now I understand: it genuinely wasn’t China’s fault

A genuinely fascinating part of this conflict is that organizational military and economic power has been inversely proportional to the time it takes for those organizations to cry uncle

Hamas is the least well-armed and well-equipped and yet has been fighting for nearly two years straight with only intermittent breaks

Ansarallah, which might be more well-equipped than Hezbollah but less able to use all their power due to the distance, joined a couple months after the conflict began and has been fighting up to this very day

Hezbollah had tens of thousands of missiles and was brought to ceasefire in about a year

Iran is a giant state with (more or less) full sovereignty over its entire territory and with massive military production and (if the ceasefire rumor is true, which it maybe might not be? idk?) was brought to ceasefire in like, two weeks

You really don’t want your president to be saying that he has no idea what’s going on, generally not a good sign

However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no later than 4 am Tehran time, we have no intention to continue our response afterwards.

What the fuck is wrong with Iranian politicians? Why would the time at which the attack stops matter more to the response than the casualties and damage you endured during that attack?

You should be in prison for saying this. Purged. Gone.

Let’s assume Trump is totally making shit up and trying to will a ceasefire into reality purely based on the power of his own words and it fails - what does that imply? That if Iran is seen “breaking” this totally invented ceasefire that something will happen? Will that "something* be some big escalation, like Israel assassinating Khamenei or something? Will it be the US announcing that they have to step back in again? That this comes right after Al Udeid is suspicious.

If true then Hamas and Ansarallah are shackled to a corpse

If true, then Iran is genuinely fucking insane. I said a week or so ago that I was becoming a China sceptic, and now I’m slingshotting the other direction. Sorry for doubting you President Xi, I can see why you aren’t doing much to help a government that changes its entire foreign policy every two weeks.

I’m not gonna toot my own horn and be like “I saw this coming!” (especially because I’ll look stupid if a ceasefire doesn’t happen or it doesn’t last and then Israel and Iran go back to war with each other) but I’ll admit that I have had Bad Vibes™ ever since I saw the Iranian statements on the attack on Al Udeid and realized that had the exact same wording as their statements on Israel, y’know, along the lines of “We will severely punish the aggressors, they will regret ever touching us, there will be no aggression on us, we will re-establish deterrence,” and I knew that that attack was just kayfabe, I was like, oh god. This is just corporate statement wording but with Iranian military statements.

An Iranian general probably gets insulted by somebody at a cafe or something and then they go “You shall never know peace on this earth, I will begin Operation Unending Justice to crush you and your collaborators, this is a duel to the death…” and then the guy says “Woah, sorry dude,” and then the general goes “Ah sure, I forgive you,” and then leaves.

I am anxiously waiting and hoping that Iran isn’t going to do something incredibly idiotic, but after the last two years I can’t instantly dismiss them committing some great error that gets a lot of people killed for no real reason.

if the US doesn’t attack Iran after this AND Iran doesn’t just immediately sign a ceasefire with Israel and commits to a war of attrition and pressure that forces Israel to stop the genocide, then this was a great strategic play by Iran

if the US does attack Iran after this then Iran has been pretty much objectively outplayed

if Iran decides to make peace with Israel after this then I suppose we’ll be waiting for the war to resume in 10-20 years with a few million dead Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians and just hope that China is an unstoppable juggernaut by then and/or Iran has better leadership with fewer comprador moderates