Even if Iran got a bomb, I have to think they're be stupid to use it. It would be suicide. Even giving it to hamas or hezbollah or some other terrorist group would be stupid because everyone would know where it came from. That's not something you can plausibly deny.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Even if Iran got a bomb, I have to think they're be stupid to use it. It would be suicide. Even giving it to hamas or hezbollah or some other terrorist group would be stupid because everyone would know where it came from. That's not something you can plausibly deny.

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There are sects of the Muslims that are actively pushing for the end of the world (or at least a sh-ton of bad things). It has to happen for the 12th Imam (their version of the second coming of Christ) to appear. This isn't your normal power posturing kind of scenario we're talking about.

For those wondering on the latest in South Lebanon

now that the ceasefire with Hizbullah has gone into effect:

IDF demolished Hizbullah throughout Southern Lebanon

more progress today

the IDF needs to take the Trump clips of him warning Hamas to release the hostages

and play them over loudspeakers 24 hours a day.

A tunnel in northern Gaza's Jabalia used by a Hamas cell in an attack that killed three soldiers in October was recently discovered and destroyed, the military says.

In the attack on October 10, three reserve soldiers of the 460th Brigade were killed by a roadside bomb.

The IDF… pic.twitter.com/OFhGAi2oVX

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) December 17, 2024

LMCane said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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Even if Iran got a bomb, I have to think they're be stupid to use it. It would be suicide. Even giving it to hamas or hezbollah or some other terrorist group would be stupid because everyone would know where it came from. That's not something you can plausibly deny.

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"Even if Hamas could launch an invasion and kill 1300, I have to think they're be stupid to use it.

It would be suicide.

It would be stupid because everyone would know where it came from. That's not something you can plausibly deny."

I can do the same for Hizbullah, for Qaddafi in Libya, for Assad in Syria, for Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

since when is rational thought popular amongst Islamist dictators who love to die for Allah?

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Hamas wanted a response the same way al qaeda wanted a response. They miscalculated and got one they didn't expect. A nuclear attack invites and demands a nuclear response. That's the only outcome anyone would expect and why Russia is taking massive casualties without resorting to them. Even Putin knows that's not a line you can cross. Not saying Iran couldn't or wouldn't, but I don't think it's likely they'd just lob a nuke at Israel or slip it to someone to do it for them.

Islamist dictators want the bomb so they can threaten to use it the same way Russia and North Korea do. It just ensures no one moves against their dictatorship and tries to remove them. If Iran got the bomb, I doubt they'd use it against Israel, but it would make regime change in Iran infinitely harder.

your conclusion is based on logic. Hamas and Hezbollah arent basing their attacking on logic..

I'm basing it off of self-preservation instincts of radical Islamic leadership.

American Hardwood said:

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I'm basing it off of self-preservation instincts of radical Islamic leadership.

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the same self-preservation instincts of

Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Yehiya Sinwar, Khaled Mashaal, Nassan Hasrallah, Osama Bin Laden, Maher Assad...

those instincts?

I don't think those leaders were looking to die. Some spent a lot of time hiding to prevent their own deaths. Making a great miscalculation as to the response of the people you are attacking is not the same as doing something you know will get you killed and destroy your nation. It is very, very clear now what Israel will do. Islamist foot soldiers are no stranger to suicide missions, the leadership not so much.

cool video showing the barren wasteland of "the Israeli occupation of syria'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held an assessment today, on the summit of Mt. Hermon, together with Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Head of Northern Command Ori Gordin and ISA Director Ronen Bar.

Full remarks >>https://t.co/NRjHIULl6y pic.twitter.com/EU3ltNl4yK

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) December 17, 2024

TBF, that article says the Israeli intelligence services had come to the same conclusions and Netanyahu decided to go for it anyway. Also pretty sure the beeper attack, which most analysts making those assessments probably didn't even know was possible, severely crippled hezbollah and prevented them from coordinating the overwhelming launches that analysts predicted. That kind of attack has never been done and that kind of capability was completely novel, so it shouldn't be surprising it wasn't considered.

I'm left wondering if it really is that bad or if all of the "failures" were just some psyop to advance some agenda.

The infamous fissile nuclear material stockpiles and portable bioweapons labs of the Iraq war buildup come to mind.

American Hardwood said:

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I'm left wondering if it really is that bad or if all of the "failures" were just some psyop to advance some agenda.

The infamous fissile nuclear material stockpiles and portable bioweapons labs of the Iraq war buildup come to mind.

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Failure is typically much more visible than success, and there is a lot of ambiguity and conflicting information when it comes to intelligence. No one is going to get it right 100% of the time. You have to look at the information and its sources to estimate it's reliability and veracity, and that's not exactly easy when there's a lot of conduct between information and sources.

You could consider Iraq something like an Ellsberg Paradox, where participants are given a choice between a quantifiable option and an ambiguous or unquantifiable option, except in the case of Iraq there are two unquantifiable options: Saddam is lying and has covert WMD programs or he's telling the truth and does not. Research into the paradox has shown that people strongly prefer the known quantity over the ambiguous one, and I would venture a guess that in the case of two ambiguous options, they would choose the one with the least ambiguity or the one they have the most information about (there's research showing this as well).

In the case of Iraq and picking and choosing what intelligence to believe and what conclusion to draw, I think it was easy for analysts and policy makers to lean towards believing intelligence that Saddam was lying because he wasn't trustworthy and had a history of seeking out and using WMD's, while evidence to the contrary was effectively trying to prove a negative. Obviously there's more information and less ambiguity on one side than the other. Also on that specific scenario, it becomes easy for that bias to compound between analysts and agencies. What is estimated to be true gets passed and used as support to estimate the truth of other things and so on. The compounding uncertainties can get lost and easily result in overly confident conclusions.

Solid explanation but I think you are missing one of my points regarding the Iraq example. That is, choosing a particular ambiguity because they WANTED that explanation in order to promote a particular outcome.

I agree. I think the beeper attack wiped out a significant portion of their "upper middle management" and left huge portions of their forces leaderless and unable to quickly maneuver or do anything in coordination with other units.

American Hardwood said:

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Solid explanation but I think you are missing one of my points regarding the Iraq example. That is, choosing a particular ambiguity because they WANTED that explanation in order to promote a particular outcome.

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I get that a lot of decision makers wanted that outcome, but I think the entire intel community spent the years leading up to that answering the question of whether Saddam was complying with, "Probably not, but we don't know by how or how much." There was probably a push to ramp up those assessments to worst case scenario in the wake of 9/11. Absent that, I don't think anyone would have supported an Iraq war, but with the history of state sponsored terrorism in the ME and Saddam's history, I think it was a very vivid picture that became prevalent and believable. Recency and availability bias made the risk suddenly very salient.

And in retrospect, it may not even have been merely a question of whether Saddam was helping terrorists as a matter of policy, but whether someone employed by him in a WMD program might. Think A. Q. Khan type assistance but also with chemical or biological weapons.

I can't say them wanting such a conclusion didn't play a part, but I also didn't think it was the sole driving factor either.

AtticusMatlock said:

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I agree. I think the beeper attack wiped out a significant portion of their "upper middle management" and left huge portions of their forces leaderless and unable to quickly maneuver or do anything in coordination with other units.

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You could tell because they didn't immediately retaliate with any kind of large strike or coordinated effort. Even if there were some kind of response plans, the was no command chain to signal them.

AtticusMatlock said:

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I agree. I think the beeper attack wiped out a significant portion of their "upper middle management" and left huge portions of their forces leaderless and unable to quickly maneuver or do anything in coordination with other units.

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To be more precise, the "nether region management."

And to further this, think of it like the deep state. There's not necessarily a cabal or organization running it, it's just the collective and compounding biases and self-interests of bureaucrats. In the case of Iraq, it simply moved in a different direction.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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American Hardwood said:

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Solid explanation but I think you are missing one of my points regarding the Iraq example. That is, choosing a particular ambiguity because they WANTED that explanation in order to promote a particular outcome.

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I get that a lot of decision makers wanted that outcome, but I think the entire intel community spent the years leading up to that answering the question of whether Saddam was complying with, "Probably not, but we don't know by how or how much." There was probably a push to ramp up those assessments to worst case scenario in the wake of 9/11. Absent that, I don't think anyone would have supported an Iraq war, but with the history of state sponsored terrorism in the ME and Saddam's history, I think it was a very vivid picture that became prevalent and believable. Recency and availability bias made the risk suddenly very salient.

And in retrospect, it may not even have been merely a question of whether Saddam was helping terrorists as a matter of policy, but whether someone employed by him in a WMD program might. Think A. Q. Khan type assistance but also with chemical or biological weapons.

I can't say them wanting such a conclusion didn't play a part, but I also didn't think it was the sole driving factor either.

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In the case of Saddam, you also can't discount the fact that he was being lied to by his own people about what they had accomplished. What our intel folks "knew" was probably coming from surveilling some of those people as well, so at least some of our intel misses likely came from relying on lies told to Saddam as accurate information. When it comes to Israel and Hezbollah, it is clear now that the Israelis had deep intel into Hez due to the thousands of pagers they had in Hez pockets. The main thing the Israelis probably underestimated with Hez was how their attacks on Iran would end up muting any Hez response.

Agree on Saddam

RE Israel and hez, I agree the Israelis had deep intel, but I don't think we or their analysts has access to enough to make accurate predictions. That whole thing was apparently very compartmentalized, so how they were getting that intel and what they could do with the pagers was probably unknown and not part of the assessments. When those predictions were made, I don't think anyone would have predicted it would start with most of hezbollah middle management having their hands and balls simultaneously blown off.

ETA Attacks on Iran were after the fact IIRC. Hezbollah had already been gutted and decapitated. They didn't respond because they were impotent. Iran responded with their missile barrage, and Israel castrated Iran's air defenses in retaliation.

Yeah, I am pretty sure nobody in our intel community knew anything about the pagers or we would all have known about it via the NYT and WP. I also agree with you that you could probably count the number that knew about them in Israel's intel groups on the fingers of 2 hands max. Their lower-level folks acting as liaisons with our intel community were never going to be read in on that op.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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ETA Attacks on Iran were after the fact IIRC. Hezbollah had already been gutted and decapitated. They didn't respond because they were impotent. Iran responded with their missile barrage, and Israel castrated Iran's air defenses in retaliation.

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Unless I am remembering wrong, the 1st Iran attack where basically everything was shot down and the op where the senior Hamas guy was killed in Tehran came before the big Hez attacks. By the time Israel carried out the pager attack and the decapitation strikes on Hamas, Iran was well aware how little they could do to reach out and touch Israel, how easily Israel agents could access highly sensitive Iraninan sites, and also well aware that their air defenses were useless against the Israeli attacks. The 2nd attack and Iran's AD and missile plants being destroyed just finished driving home what Iran already knew.

Yeah, I thought you were talking about Iran's second strike after they attached hezbollah. I'm not sure their first one did much to mute hezbollah's response (or lack of one) to the pagers. I think Iran probably got super spooked with the bombing and ineffectiveness of their long range weapons, but a strike the size of the pager op demands a response. If they could have, they would have. I don't think Iran held them back at all considering Iran went on to provoke them again.

Hizbullah assets continue to be found and demolished in southern Lebanon

The IDF says it demolished rocket launchers and weapons at Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon

During operations carried out by the 300th "Baram" Regional Brigade, the IDF says troops found anti-tank missiles, an artillery piece, explosive devices, and rocket launchers.… pic.twitter.com/rTxS514oMl

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) December 19, 2024

txags92 said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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ETA Attacks on Iran were after the fact IIRC. Hezbollah had already been gutted and decapitated. They didn't respond because they were impotent. Iran responded with their missile barrage, and Israel castrated Iran's air defenses in retaliation.

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Unless I am remembering wrong, the 1st Iran attack where basically everything was shot down and the op where the senior Hamas guy was killed in Tehran came before the big Hez attacks. By the time Israel carried out the pager attack and the decapitation strikes on Hamas, Iran was well aware how little they could do to reach out and touch Israel, how easily Israel agents could access highly sensitive Iraninan sites, and also well aware that their air defenses were useless against the Israeli attacks. The 2nd attack and Iran's AD and missile plants being destroyed just finished driving home what Iran already knew.

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This above is a correct recitation of events.

but the only missing part was the Israel Air Force had attacked hizbullah with 1000 sorties a few minutes before they were planning on launching hundreds of cruise missiles from Lebanon into Tel Aviv. that was last spring

EDIT: My bad this is old footage from 2020 pointed out by LMCane

Coordinated air strikes on houthis in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and the IDF. (Assumed)

Who had that on their Bingo card?

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/mFDvNZS9Ur

JFABNRGR said:

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Coordinated air strikes on houthis in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and the IDF. (Assumed)

Who had that on their Bingo card?

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/mFDvNZS9Ur

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Brutal....those Houthi guys (BUNCHED UP GREEN IN TENTS OUT IN THE OPEN DESERT) don't give me the impression that they have any military training or expertise. Merry Christmas MOFO's

JFABNRGR said:

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Coordinated air strikes on houthis in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and the IDF. (Assumed)

Who had that on their Bingo card?

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/mFDvNZS9Ur

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it says "old video' on the post.

is there any actual date when that was taken?

considering the Saudis spent years bombing the Houthis about FIVE years ago.

i don't think this is at all related to what the Israelis did

but the United States Air Force CENTCOM did also bomb Yemen yesterday