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Is Iran a military threat to Israel ?


RoofGardener

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In Another Thread, @and then commented that....

Actually, no, they couldn't, at least not with any regularity.  The occasional bombing of targets inside Syria was Israel's response to Iran attempting to convoy high-end weapons into Lebanon for Hizballah.  Setting up S-400 batteries at regular intervals might make it a costly proposition for the IAF, as well.  Iran doesn't NEED to send any mechanized divisions across that space.  It only needs a logistics train that can be defended.  Consider this... if Iran wanted to attack Israel today, they could order Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh to launch a massive missile barrage at Israeli cities. The IRGC elements in Syria could do likewise and even send in skirmish forces of the Islamic militias that have been formed for combat within Syria proper.  Hizballah alone has in excess of 100K missiles, many of which are now of greater precision.  The missiles could wreak havoc on civilian infrastructure and could even be used to target chemical plants and refineries.  The resulting response would completely devastate southern Lebanon, southern Syria, parts of the Sinai and possibly even areas in Jordan but the damage to Israel would still be tremendous.  Couple that capability with an ability to resupply those forces and Israel would have a serious problem, long-term.  Tell me, RG, do you actually believe the status quo will be maintained interminably or do you see actual peace between Islamic fundamentalists and Israel in the future?  

Well then.. what do we think ? :)

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Oh just do let Duncan be ... he's trying to reach JC ...

~

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I don't rate Hezbollah as being that much of a threat to Israel, And Then. They are rated highly as light infantry, specialising in small-unit ambushes, and the ability to defend. However, they have no experience (or capability ? ) for large-unit maneuvers. Nor do they have a logistics train, relying instead on pre-positioned stockpiles. This is great for defending Lebanon, but poor for advancing into enemy territory. I really don't think they can invade.

So that leaves us with rockets and missiles. Firstly, they can't launch "100 thousand missiles". They don't POSSESS 100K missiles. They might possess many thousands of unguided "Katyusha" type rockets, but they don't have the trained manpower to launch that many at any one time. And a lot of the Katyusha-type systems are vehical-mounted, and would be rapidly destroyed by IDF counter-batteries fire, or the IAF. And that is before we even consider Iron Dome.

The population of Israel (especially northern Israel) is very well trained in civil defence procedures, and have excellent CD infrastructure. A hail of unguided rockets would cause a great deal of distress, but limited damage or casualties.

So... no. I regard Iran with suspicion, but I don't see the Syria war leading to a "land bridge" that would facilitate Iran attacking Israel.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/25/2018 at 3:13 AM, RoofGardener said:

They don't POSSESS 100K missiles. They might possess many thousands of unguided "Katyusha" type rockets,

Source?  I tend to believe the government of Israel over the mouthpiece of Hizballah.  Also, I don't think I said they could launch 100K missiles at once.

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1 hour ago, and then said:

Source?  I tend to believe the government of Israel over the mouthpiece of Hizballah.  Also, I don't think I said they could launch 100K missiles at once.

I popped over to Beirut and counted them. (It wasn't easy.. they kept moving them around).

97,038... 97,039... 97,040.. 97,041.... OI.... Omar... PUT THAT BACK. 

Blast. 

1, 2, 3, 4, .........

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7 hours ago, RoofGardener said:

I popped over to Beirut and counted them. (It wasn't easy.. they kept moving them around).

97,038... 97,039... 97,040.. 97,041.... OI.... Omar... PUT THAT BACK. 

Blast. 

1, 2, 3, 4, .........

 :D     After 2006 Lebanon war, Israel pulled back, licked its wounds and began analyzing the failure.  And it WAS a failure for the IDF.  In the decade since, they've reported - for whatever you feel that's worth - that regular convoys of weapons have come into Lebanon from Syria, all bound for the south and Hezbollah.  The rare instances when the IAF have eliminated shipments has been due to intel that they carried "game-changing" weapons.  That usually means AA and precision targeting munitions.  

They have seen fit to allow the build-up because they don't need the negative press AND, I suspect, because they knew that the U.S. presidents for most of that time weren't particularly friends of the state.  I watch these reports pretty carefully from Israel news sources, Al Jazeera and Press TV and I see more reporting from the latter sources about Hezbollah and Iran threatening the "Zionist Entity" than I do Israel stirring things up.  The few Israeli reports, 5-6 maybe, that I've seen over the last year have had a unified message.  "We don't want another Lebanon war but if we are forced into it, we will destroy southern Lebanon and eliminate Hezbollah permanently".  They've also urgently reminded, 3 times to my knowledge, the citizens of southern Lebanon that if conflict begins and they are living in a home that has munitions or launchers then they better flee because there will not be any of the restrictions on targeting that existed in 2006 under Olmert.  

You're absolutely correct that Hezbollah cannot fire all their missiles at once, but they haven't been sleeping over the last decade either.  The IRGC has been training them, supplying them and helping them build infrastructure.  The Hezbollah units have also seen several years of battle and that makes a tremendous difference in their effectiveness, I'd imagine.  I'm not sure that Iran is ready to risk open war with Israel at this point because they have too much to lose and no guarantee of winning.  They do have a powerful ally at the moment though and seem to be testing the limits by building a factory to actually locally produce medium range surface to surface Fateh 110 missiles and to begin construction on other bases in Syria, near the border with Israel.  Bibi has met with Putin about this twice and has received no public assurances that he will intervene to stop Iran.  There is no question that Israel will eliminate these bases.  You may have noticed the regular drills of the entire population to prepare them for massed missile attacks over the last couple of years?  Finally, it isn't my contention that Iran wants to invade Israel.  Iran wants to eliminate Israel, gain hegemony over the M.E. and then pull the rest of the Islamic world together into a new Caliphate with a Persian Ayatollah in the seat of power.  Destroying the Jews and returning Palestine to the Palestinians would help achieve this with the masses, if not with the other Muslim leaders.

If all that seems irrational and preposterous, I tend to agree but when was the last time a war was begun for sound reasons on the part of the aggressor?

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Now that Obama has gone, the US would step in most likely.Isreal has Nukes so any Islamic Mullah would be nuts to move against Isreal.

Erdogan seems to be slipping towards the Dark Side and he seems to me to be the bigger threat if ever goes the full monty.

Edited by A rather obscure Bassoon
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On 2/13/2018 at 3:11 PM, A rather obscure Bassoon said:

Now that Obama has gone, the US would step in most likely.Isreal has Nukes so any Islamic Mullah would be nuts to move against Isreal.

Erdogan seems to be slipping towards the Dark Side and he seems to me to be the bigger threat if ever goes the full monty.

When he finally breaks with NATO, formally, he will have one of the largest armies, best weapons and a cadre of military leaders that intimately understand NATO tactics and capabilities.  Hopefully, our planners have seen this coming and have actually found ways to blunt the effects of the loss of bases and secrets.

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6 hours ago, and then said:

When he finally breaks with NATO, formally, he will have one of the largest armies, best weapons and a cadre of military leaders that intimately understand NATO tactics and capabilities.  Hopefully, our planners have seen this coming and have actually found ways to blunt the effects of the loss of bases and secrets.

Why would Erdogan break out with NATO? He has no reason to.

Edited by Clockwork_Spirit
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30 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Why would Erdogan break out with NATO? He has no reason to.

He already went on the Offensive against Kurds backed by one of his Nato Allies, so who says he needs a reason.

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28 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Why would Erdogan break out with NATO? He has no reason to.

I assume he feels he has a reason.  He's buying arms from non-NATO nations, extorting money from the EU for help in slowing the flow of illegal  "refugees" onto their shores and threatening U.S. troops in Syria because they are allied with Kurds.  I could go on but is it necessary?  Erdogan is an Islamist Fundamentalist.  

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4 minutes ago, and then said:

I assume he feels he has a reason.  He's buying arms from non-NATO nations, extorting money from the EU for help in slowing the flow of illegal  "refugees" onto their shores and threatening U.S. troops in Syria because they are allied with Kurds.  I could go on but is it necessary?  Erdogan is an Islamist Fundamentalist.  

I just hope the US have pulled out any Nukes on his soil.

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3 minutes ago, A rather obscure Bassoon said:

I just hope the US have pulled out any Nukes on his soil.

I can't find any confirmation of that but I've heard that we have.  I recently was speaking with a contractor about some renovations on our home and he said his son was in the Air Force, based at Incirlik.  The young man seemed convinced that it would be closed to the U.S. in the coming months.  That's just a second-hand rumor but the gentleman had no reason to lie about it.  If the Turkish forces that are in Afrin, actually gain the upper hand and then move to Manbij where U.S. forces are actively working with the Kurds, we could see casualties on both sides.  Erdogan has threatened U.S. troops that are there with the Kurds.  In his opinion, they are terrorists helping terrorists.  I hope he's just bluffing, for the sake of U.S. troops as well as Turkey's troops.  It would be a bad day for Turkey if they killed any of our guys.

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33 minutes ago, A rather obscure Bassoon said:

He already went on the Offensive against Kurds backed by one of his Nato Allies, so who says he needs a reason.

The Kurds aren't NATO.  If anything, if they counter attack, he could call on NATO to help wipe them out.  If the US doesn't help, then it would be us breaking the treaty.

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3 hours ago, and then said:

I assume he feels he has a reason.  He's buying arms from non-NATO nations, extorting money from the EU for help in slowing the flow of illegal  "refugees" onto their shores and threatening U.S. troops in Syria because they are allied with Kurds.  I could go on but is it necessary?  Erdogan is an Islamist Fundamentalist.  

Turkey has recently reiterated it's commitment to NATO. It's an advantage to have the weight of the Alliance behind them when interacting both with Moscow and European countries. They aren't pulling out any time soon. As for the situation in Syria, the U.S. has made it clear they aren't willing to sacrifice their relations with Turkey over military support to Kurdish millitias.

Edited by Clockwork_Spirit
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38 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Turkey has recently reiterated it's commitment to NATO. It's an advantage to have the weight of the Alliance behind them when interacting both with Moscow and European countries. They aren't pulling out any time soon. As for the situation in Syria, the U.S. has made it clear they aren't willing to sacrifice their relations with Turkey over military support to Kurdish millitias.

Uh huh...

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2 hours ago, DarkHunter said:

If anything there would be a second coup before Turkey left NATO.

Who's left to do that?  He's been getting rid of his enemies for months.

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6 hours ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Turkey has recently reiterated it's commitment to NATO. It's an advantage to have the weight of the Alliance behind them when interacting both with Moscow and European countries. They aren't pulling out any time soon. As for the situation in Syria, the U.S. has made it clear they aren't willing to sacrifice their relations with Turkey over military support to Kurdish millitias.

Weeeell... PERHAPS. But Erdogen has been rattling sabres about NATO recently. What benefits does the NATO alliance offer Turkey, compared to - say - a military alliance with Russia ? 

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5 hours ago, RoofGardener said:

Weeeell... PERHAPS. But Erdogen has been rattling sabres about NATO recently. What benefits does the NATO alliance offer Turkey, compared to - say - a military alliance with Russia ? 

Protection from servitude to Russia pops to mind.

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8 hours ago, and then said:

Who's left to do that?  He's been getting rid of his enemies for months.

He has purged a lot of people but most of them haven't been in the military.  Around 160,000 people have been arrested, detained, or dismissed.  Of that 160,000 only 15,846 have been detained and of that only 8,133 have been arrested.  While I couldn't get how much of the military was arrested did find that 10,012 of the detained were soldiers ranging from generals and admirals to officers to soldiers to those in military schools.  Ultimately the vast majority of the people purged were political opponents in the civil sector and not the military.

It is also important to point how how the 2016 coup was different then the past coups, from what I understand of the past coups and the 2016 coup is that the past coups generally had wide spread military support throughout the general staff down to the regular soldiers, while the 2016 coup from what I understand was only supported and carried out by members of the military sympathetic to the Gulen movement.  

Ultimately while the purges in the military have been significant they almost certainly haven't been large enough to remove the entirety of the more secular leadership.  

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7 minutes ago, DarkHunter said:

Ultimately while the purges in the military have been significant they almost certainly haven't been large enough to remove the entirety of the more secular leadership.  

I hope that your assessment is correct.  The people of Turkey seem to be less than enthusiastic about rolling back the legacy of Ataturk.  Erodgan is behaving like a classic dictator by crushing dissent and the freedom of the press.  When my wife was in her medical residency she had a couple of colleagues from Turkey.  They were a married couple and absolutely delightful people.  I hope that the youth of Turkey can either overthrow this man or escape his designs for them.

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50 minutes ago, and then said:

I hope that your assessment is correct.  The people of Turkey seem to be less than enthusiastic about rolling back the legacy of Ataturk.  Erodgan is behaving like a classic dictator by crushing dissent and the freedom of the press.  When my wife was in her medical residency she had a couple of colleagues from Turkey.  They were a married couple and absolutely delightful people.  I hope that the youth of Turkey can either overthrow this man or escape his designs for them.

He's not even Turkish he's a Armeno-Greek who can't ride a horse and thinks We Indians should be Muslim because of the Q gene which he doesn't even have. As for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He was one of the greatest men in Western Asia.

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4 hours ago, Gromdor said:

Protection from servitude to Russia pops to mind.

Hmm... I don't think Russia has the power to force Turkey into "servitude" ? As both Erdogen and Putin are proto-dictators, I would have thought they would have more in common than they have in difference - at least in terms of realpolitic . ? 

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3 hours ago, RoofGardener said:

Hmm... I don't think Russia has the power to force Turkey into "servitude" ? As both Erdogen and Putin are proto-dictators, I would have thought they would have more in common than they have in difference - at least in terms of realpolitic . ? 

If Erdrogan leaves NATO and ties his lot with Russia?  I am pretty sure he we be the junior partner in that alliance.  Much like the satellite states of the Soviet Union.

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