Radio War Nerd EP #474 — Nihilistic Regional Murder Spree: Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, ?

Good discussion, guys. It's amazing how quickly Gaza has fallen off the front pages.

On the hypersonic missiles I think you forget that every bit of mass spent on post boost maneuvering takes away from payload mass, and probably adds to cost to build. That’s virtual attrition even if the defense missiles don’t hit, and starts to tip the cost ratios between attacker and defender. I’m also curious if Iran has a spy satellite, or can get a recon drone close enough to help with pre strike targeting or post strike damage assessment. Would the Russians risk helping them with that?

Is there any evidence that Nasrallah's assassination has degraded Hezbollah's military capabilities? "Of course it did" is not evidence. We haven't seen any slowdown in their operations, rocket fire, drone attacks, and on top of that it's been a week of them repelling Israeli ground invasion.

I'm seeing pictures floating around the internet of one of the Israeli airbases the Iranians hit. It looks like at least some missiles impacted runways and buildings. I would think the runways would be easy to repair; any aircraft or important parts in the buildings .... less so. I know the Russians have had some success destroying Ukrainian fighters on the ground with Iskander strikes. I wonder if Iran has similar capabilities. Then again, I have no idea if the pictures are even legit.

I cannot see Iran retaliating to an Israeli (US) attack on oil facilities by hitting Saudis, with whom they signed peace brokered by China!

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, you're giving the racist morons in charge of Israel and the USA too much credit. They terrorize, they are good at terrorizing, but you underestimate their victims abilities to adapt to Israel and America's brutal tactics. Yes, Hezbollah having their leaders massacred hurt, but it's pure folly to suggest that such assassinations would cause Hezbollah to keel over. Especially when antizionist resistance in the region has been taking massive assassinations to the chin for decades.

As popular as Patreon is, a lot more goes wrong for me when I play audio files rather than video files, maybe it's an html problem

A very helpful episode. The situation in the Middle East reminds me of a corollary of Murphy's Law, "There is no situation so bad that it cannot be fucked up even further." And a few observations re) the episode's specifics. The U.S. Navy uses various versions of the Standard Missile for air and missile defense. More advanced models works at higher altitudes and speeds. I am not privy to the Navy's price list, but I doubt that any version of the missile costs less than several million dollars. The low altitude missiles for Iron Dome may be somewhat less expensive but as has been observed, shooting down a cheap ballistic missile is an expensive proposition. The tradeoffs in the war of hypersonic Irani missiles versus Arrow air/missile defense missiles is an interesting one we will see play out over the next few months. It is all about Delta V-how much the second stage of the Irani missile has and how much the Arrow has. And an Iranian "weakness" that may be a strength- they don't have an air force. I'm sure their completed missiles are stored in underground bunkers, making the task of the Israeli Air Force difficult. On the other side, I bet most of Israel's aircraft have hardened shelters so destroying planes on the ground is not going to be a trivial exercise. But the true disaster which Netanyahu seems to want is a ground invasion of Iran by a joint Israeli/U.S. force. After all, attacking Iran on the ground worked so well for Iraq.

I read an article that says the Iranians have the S400 system now. I’m really interested to see if it comes into play if Israel decides to fly planes over Iranian airspace…

In the videos, maybe one in ten incoming missiles were intercepted. The rest hit the ground. Who knows how accurate they were.

John: “Iran and Hezbollah can hurt Israel’s economy and get moderate people to leave, but it’s not going to change Israel the way they want” What? You mean an increasingly erratic basket case with a collapsed economy that bombs itself into pariah status? No, I think that’s exactly what they want Israel to be like.

I’m really interested in how all the old players like Lebanese Forces are reacting to the conflict. Also have been watching the PM Mikati very closely

Isreal has fallen prey to one of the classic blunders - never engage in a land war in lebanon

What are the andrew Colburn eps on us weapons development?

If by darwinian theory you mean "only the strong survive" that's fake, if you mean "living things optimize themselves for their environment" then that's true Biologists are apparently figuring out that there is no slave/master relationship between fungi and trees, its re-negotiated every moment of the day, which kind of fucks with the "kill or be killed" thing everyone thinks rules life at all scales.

Is there ANYTHING that would deter isrally reaction though?

It doesn’t really matter if the missile defense systems are good or not; being tied to American defense contractors means the lead times are long and the inventory levels are shallow. If Iran has a large enough stockpile, they can run the missile tubes dry

It’s really hard to scramble f35s because it’s kind of like the bluesmobile at the end of the blues brothers

Successfully leading a pilgrim convoy in that part of modern Lebanon used to get you big cred in groups like the Knights of St John

Wasn't the Russian foreign minister in Iran right before they launched against Israel? It seems like Israel thoroughly severed any chance of US-Iran rapprochement with the new relatively progressive Iranian prez.

It seems Hamas had better counter intel than Hezbollah or Iran. A Great Purge hurts, but you can still win a world war within the decade after.

“Bombing in wonton fashion” haven’t heard that term used for dahiya level bombing before

Radio war nerd self criticism session needs to keep happening in the joshua landis comments thread not this one.

Gaza, Lebanon, Iran ... aaaand now Syria

Israel wanted a regional war, now it gets one. US had better be smart enough to avoid commiting manpower to shore up Israel's aggression.

What’s up with the Lebanese foreign minister saying that Nasrallah agreed to a ceasefire before the assassination?

Trying to take the most long term, ultra realist stance possible, I don't necessarily think Iran or even Hezbollah is losing. In guerilla/irregular terms, the constant escalations from Israel is them "winning" . Not in terms of what they'll witness in their own lives, especially as they (and presumably their families) get killed. But Israel was already taking major PR hits with Gaza. The more they escalate the more they will (potentially) alienate the rest of the world. Let's just say a scenario does happen where Israel destroys Iran's oil, and Iran retaliates and destroys Saudi's oil. And, if the American economy does hit the shitter, leading to Trumps victory, yeah, it's a short term win for Israel. But so what? How many millions of people, even if initially sympathetic to israel, would start to be pissed off? What about their client states (Americas) stability? I honestly don't think Trump is going to "ruin America", but I also think his 2nd potential term would be much more volitale than the first. But what if Trump winning in this fashion basically sours the Democrats on Israel? That's not entirely likely, but we know how much they want Trump to lose. Alienating half of America would be a disaster for Israel, long term. Israel is also in a situation where they'll continually have to escalate. God forbid it gets to nukes. But, if you are a devot Shia Muslim and you do believe in the afterlife, would this be the end of the world? Well, yeah, it would literally be the end of the world but who cares? I think causing your enemy to do a nuclear holocaust would be the ultimate irregular war victory

I would push back on how "in disarray" Hezbollah is, considering the reports of a massive Hezbollah ambush against IOF special forces today. Their operational effectiveness still seems to be relatively intact, and in all honesty I think the hosts are taking Landis and his conclusions with far too few grains of salt

I am now confident that the Biden administration is the harm reduction candidate.

Can't even induce a world war without all the cancel culture

Also I heard the Israelis haven’t used as many jets in Lebanon since yesterday and they have used their navy instead to shell places

The Biden administration has been a boom to the military podcast world.

Been refreshing all day for this drop

Now that’s what I call a War Nerd episode title. Given that so many early episodes focused on events and different stages of the Syrian Civil War and various cold/low boil conflicts through this podcast alone it is brilliantly and painfully clear how much worse things are. Sudan just by itself is staggeringly brutal compared to most conflicts of the recent era. Maybe this is recency bias talking but conflicts seem to be regressing back to a bloody mean.

When does this become episode music? https://youtu.be/2G-chYSznL0?si=HBUxJgu2AmzYQ_pm

We're going to have a lot of episodes soon, I fear

Every time an emergency episode drops, a further escalation occurs. Meaning that Israel will probably respond on Iran within the next 24 hrs now that this episode is out.

first and straight (not)