Middle East Running Iranian threat news and discussion thread

[Guardian Box]

BTW, here is a story of one near shootdown of an airliner.
One of the side effects of invasion of Czehoslovakia in 1968 was temporary cooling down of relations between Yugoslavia and USSR. So Soviet air force started testing Yugoslav air force response. Thus one day at dusk several squadrons of Soviet jets are flying towards various points at Yugoslav-Hungarian border and Yugoslav fighters from Batajnica and Željava air bases are scrambled. Soviet jets turn at border but one continues on it's path and pair from Željava is vectored to intercept it. It's dark and they get into position to fire and get weapons free command, then the flight leader calls the control that he sees light coming out of side windows. Command fears plane might be carrying out Spetnaz drop, but tell the pilot to wait for their confirmation. They call civilian flight control and wouldn't you know, there is a Swedish airliner in right this quadrant at the exact height their intruder is flying. One Soviet squadron just happened to fly on the same vector towards border and pressure did the rest. The involved are convinced the Soviets did it on purpose, but the people in plane survived because pilot was level headed and the commanding officer on the ground followed protocol instead of rushing the decision.

They'd better got some medals for that.

 

[Marduk]

The level of fuckup here is compounded by the fact that airplane was not entering the AD zone (most common cause of such fuckups) but was taking off from one of the main airports in the country, the AD crew and their superiors should be acquainted with takeoff/landing corridors and thus attack orders should have been countermanded, unless everyone in the chain of command was suffering from mass hysteria, which quite possibly they did.

BTW, here is a story of one near shootdown of an airliner.
One of the side effects of invasion of Czehoslovakia in 1968 was temporary cooling down of relations between Yugoslavia and USSR. So Soviet air force started testing Yugoslav air force response. Thus one day at dusk several squadrons of Soviet jets are flying towards various points at Yugoslav-Hungarian border and Yugoslav fighters from Batajnica and Željava air bases are scrambled. Soviet jets turn at border but one continues on it's path and pair from Željava is vectored to intercept it. It's dark and they get into position to fire and get weapons free command, then the flight leader calls the control that he sees light coming out of side windows. Command fears plane might be carrying out Spetnaz drop, but tell the pilot to wait for their confirmation. They call civilian flight control and wouldn't you know, there is a Swedish airliner in right this quadrant at the exact height their intruder is flying. One Soviet squadron just happened to fly on the same vector towards border and pressure did the rest. The involved are convinced the Soviets did it on purpose, but the people in plane survived because pilot was level headed and the commanding officer on the ground followed protocol instead of rushing the decision.

This story is demonstrative of the answer to "why countries need planes for air policing, why not just ground radars and SAMs" question.
One of the major points is that visual identification is worth more than anything the latter has available.
If Iran used fighters on air policing duty for this and did visual identification, this wouldn't have happened.

 

[PsihoKekec]

They'd better got some medals for that.

Couldn't, the event was state secret until 1991 and afterwards no one cared.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

The level of fuckup here is compounded by the fact that airplane was not entering the AD zone (most common cause of such fuckups) but was taking off from one of the main airports in the country, the AD crew and their superiors should be acquainted with takeoff/landing corridors and thus attack orders should have been countermanded, unless everyone in the chain of command was suffering from mass hysteria, which quite possibly they did.

No, it shouldn't have been. The mistake was made at whatever level decided to not ground all civilian flights when going to Iranian Defcon 1 and expecting US air attacks.

In the situation Iran was facing, when they made the decision to launch the ballistic missiles, they absolutely should have been at Defcon 1 and with all of their air defense systems on wartime, live combat, ROE and alert levels.

In this case, the airplane was delayed an hour for mechanical difficulties. I assume that it had filed a flight plan and all authorized flights had been added to the exclusion list so that the air defenses wouldn't shoot at them. Then the delay happens, the revised flight plan doesn't get entered into the system, and when the plan takes off it is squawking a transponder code that was authorized in the area an hour ago but isn't authorized at the time.

The air defense systems being used handle everything save the button press to fire automatically. So the guy at the chair sees an unknown plane that the computer says is unauthorized appear suddenly on his scope and, thanks to the realities of stealth systems, he literally has seconds to make the shoot/noshoot decision while his standing orders in that situation are going to be to shoot anything the computer says is unauthorized unless you are positive that the computer is wrong.

So he fires. The same decision that any air defense officer in the world would make in the same conditions.

This is a fog of war incident, not a mistake on the part of anyone in the chain of command below (or above to any real extent) the level that decided to not ground all civilian airplanes in Iran for the duration.

 

[Deleted member 88]

I wonder how long before the current nationalist unity in Iran falls apart.

The Iranian government suppressed protests hard back in November, what happens when this crisis is no longer at the front of people’s minds and the Iranian population finds out domestically that nothing has changed.

The problem however with any revolt seems to be that the security services have shown they will fire on protesters if ordered to do so.

Combine with an internet blackout and the Iranian regime can kill a few hundred people and suppress dissent quickly, before it escalated to the point that the army has to be called in(the artesh being made up of conscripts probably wouldn’t fire and would defect).

So the government can endure unfortunately.

 

[Erwin_Pommel]

Well, this certainly is interesting, I went Yes as a joke but hot damn was a majority Yes still a surprise. Like, even with those who I talked to and are bashing the States they still agreed that Solei' being gone was a good thing. Though, I guess I should be glad it's only a relatively small lead and the votes cast is too low to do any wide brushing opinions.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

it's also Twitter...

something like 12% of the population is active on Twitter, it's big for social media but not THAT big.

 

[Erwin_Pommel]

True, true.

 

[Arch Dornan]

Well, this certainly is interesting, I went Yes as a joke but hot damn was a majority Yes still a surprise. Like, even with those who I talked to and are bashing the States they still agreed that Solei' being gone was a good thing. Though, I guess I should be glad it's only a relatively small lead and the votes cast is too low to do any wide brushing opinions.

In this one a reporter is acting like a tard just becuase of their sore pride when in a land where rights are restricted they can really kill you for the wrong thoughts.

I would wish he was alive if only to make a video to laugh at people like him.

 

[Erwin_Pommel]

In this one a reporter is acting like a tard just becuase of their sore pride when in a land where rights are restricted they can really kill you for the wrong thoughts.

I would wish he was alive if only to make a video to laugh at people like him.

Some times I wonder if we need to start investing more into school-based emotional support as a lot of these people seem to e projecting former bullying experiences from what I've seen and it has ultimately corrupted their viewpoint as they view the one big "bully" as wrong no matter what and all opposition is good.

 

[GoldRanger]

Some times I wonder if we need to start investing more into school-based emotional support as a lot of these people seem to e projecting former bullying experiences from what I've seen and it has ultimately corrupted their viewpoint as they view the one big "bully" as wrong no matter what and all opposition is good.

Why the SJW bullying (and they do a LOT of it) doesn't register with them then?

 

[Marduk]

How sheltered and ideologically blinded one needs to be to not see the difference between getting shot, or thrown into prison (and Iranian prison at that, not first world prison), and having the president say mean things about your professional group?

 

[Erwin_Pommel]

Why the SJW bullying (and they do a LOT of it) doesn't register with them then?

No clue, but I have noted from my school years that a lot of the bullied will become the bully to others and justify it in a way that doesn't make it bullying, somehow.

 

[Big Steve]

It doesn't really change the hypocrisy of Trump denouncing his press critics, and in phrasing often used to justify violent suppression in other countries, while arguing for more press rights elsewhere. If anything, his prior anti-press tantrums undermine his moral authority in calling for greater freedom of the press within other countries.

 

[DarthOne]

It doesn't really change the hypocrisy of Trump denouncing his press critics, and in phrasing often used to justify violent suppression in other countries, while arguing for more press rights elsewhere. If anything, his prior anti-press tantrums undermine his moral authority in calling for greater freedom of the press within other countries.

‘Freedom Of Press’ doesn’t mean ‘the Press are allowed access wherever or to say blatant lies’. Or are free from criticism. Their job is to report as accurate and with as little bias as possible. Somethey they’ve been consistently and blatantly FAILING at as of late.

 

[Tryglaw]

‘Freedom Of Press’ doesn’t mean ‘the Press are allowed access wherever or to say blatant lies’. Or are free from criticism. Their job is to report as accurate and with as little bias as possible. Somethey they’ve been consistently and blatantly FAILING at as of late.

In addition, the idea of "freedom of press" should be cleared up on the issue "freedom from what / to do what".
Certainly, press / media need to be free from censorship (even if that is less and less the case these days, instead of censorship imposed from without, we have censorship imposed from within, this being self-censorship and political correctness), but at the same one needs to remember that press can never be truly "free".
State-owned and private media alike are and always will be beholden to their owners, said owners' agendas, biases and interests, never mind the financial interests needed to keep them going. Commercial media will always have a major disincentive to run stories hitting their owners, major advertisement buyers and those in power that control media regulations (one hand washes the other) or public money flow. State-owned won't be much different then that.
As symbiosis between big business conglomerates owning the private media and the political class entangles both these groups, sooner or later you see them blend into "more of the same"...

 

[Marduk]

It doesn't really change the hypocrisy of Trump denouncing his press critics, and in phrasing often used to justify violent suppression in other countries, while arguing for more press rights elsewhere. If anything, his prior anti-press tantrums undermine his moral authority in calling for greater freedom of the press within other countries.

There is no hypocrisy in this. Trump has exactly as much right to denounce his press critics as his press critics have to denounce him, a right which they have been milking for everything it's worth since years. It's only fair that Trump returns the favor.
There is a fundamental difference between that, and putting the press critics in a dungeon or before a firing squad. That's freedom of the press. Freedom from badmouthing and denounciation is not in any conventional idea of "freedom of the press" .

Also, are you implying that islamic, communist and other dictatorships give a rotten rat's ass about Trump's "moral authority", or anyone else's for that matter?

 

[LordsFire]

It doesn't really change the hypocrisy of Trump denouncing his press critics, and in phrasing often used to justify violent suppression in other countries, while arguing for more press rights elsewhere. If anything, his prior anti-press tantrums undermine his moral authority in calling for greater freedom of the press within other countries.

Calling people liars, even if it was inaccurate (which it isn't), is not even remotely the same as having laws restrict their ability to speak or publish news.

It's a world of difference from imprisonment, beatings, or death.


I'm honestly struggling to wrap my mind around how you can even begin to meaningfully compare the two. Seriously, where do you get the idea that these things remotely resemble each other morally?

 

[Deleted member 88]

Press coverage of Trump is about 95% hostile.

Trump unlike the gentlemen republicans of yesteryear hits back. He doesn’t play the by the rules of “you have to be nice to people who will never respect or like you because...morality or etiquette or something”

Trump as far as I know hasn’t imprisoned journalists, shut down CNN, he doesn’t have a “kill list” of major talking heads to get rid of, or anything remotely of the kind.

That’s very different from what Iran or China or Turkey or Russia does to journalists and the press who attract the ire of the government.

 

[Arch Dornan]

TDS sinking so far Pelosi would sweep the protestors under the rug because Trump is for the protesters.

Even an Iranian MSM news anchor is as broken up about the suppresed protests.