#Syrian war aircraft

[usafphantom2]

USAF F-117A Nighthawk in an experimental paint scheme

@IL_wheels via X

[komsomolka]

One notable instance of this proxy war occurred in mid-September, when Ukrainian forces, in coordination with militant groups in Syria, including Al-Qaeda offshoot Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS - formerly known as Al-Nusra Front), launched a series of drone attacks on Russian military facilities in Syria. [...]

The operation involved Ukrainian private mercenaries called "Khimek,” affiliated with the Main Directorate of Ukrainian Intelligence, working alongside Idlib-based militants to target a drone production and testing site in the southeastern suburbs of Aleppo, according to a Kiev Post report on 18 September. The following day, further drone attacks were carried out on ten Syrian military positions in Aleppo, the southern Idlib countryside, and in northeastern Latakia. In early October, two major Russian military sites - the Hmeimim Base and a weapons depot near the coastal city of Jableh — were repeatedly targeted.

But these operations were not the first initiative aided by Ukrainian military and intelligence agents in Syria. On 26 July, in what militant forces described as a “devastating” and “complex” strike, they targeted Kuweires military airport in Aleppo's east, used as an airbase by Russian troops, one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Moscow.

The alliance between Ukrainian intelligence and Syrian militant groups, with support from NATO, is a relatively new but significant development. It began earlier this year, when a Ukrainian delegation visited Idlib to negotiate with the HTS leadership for the release of several Chechen, Georgian, and Uighur militants being held in HTS prisons — estimated at between 750 and 900 prisoners — to enlist as mercenaries for the Ukrainians. The concluded agreement involved the release of militants detained by HTS in exchange for 250 Ukrainian military experts providing training, particularly in the use of drones. The trainees include Turkmen Salafists tasked to manufacture drones and photograph potential Russian and allied Syrian military targets, particularly the 25th Division special forces and National Defense Forces in Hama, Aleppo, and Latakia. [...]

US military forces occupying northeastern Syria play a connection and transportation role in this setup. It is the main actor in managing these various conflict zones and coordinating the positions and cooperation of its proxies.

In early August 2024, the US facilitated the arrival of Ukrainian experts in areas near Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib and helped transfer aircraft parts - in exchange for transporting extremist fighters, via US bases in Syria, to areas north of Donetsk Oblast. [...]

The militant groups themselves benefit from this alliance in several key ways. With Turkiye edging toward reconciliation with Syria, and Russian-Iranian military cooperation advancing, these groups are left increasingly vulnerable. Aligning with Ukraine and NATO provides them with new resources and support, ensuring their continued survival in the face of changing regional dynamics. The cooperation also offers Syrian extremists access to advanced technology, particularly in drone warfare, which has become a crucial element in their ongoing fight against Syrian and Russian forces.

[girlactionfigure]

🔘LEGAL SYSTEM DISAGREEMENTS, YET MORE “DEAL” NEWS - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

( VIDEO - US Central Command: the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln is in the area [of the Middle East] )

⭕75 HEZBOLLAH ROCKETS fired at Israeli Civilian towns yesterday in the north, as well as 20-30 or so SUICIDE DRONES.

⭕HEZBOLLAH DRONE STRIKE hit a factory in Nahariya WITHOUT ALARM. No injuries.

▪️APPEAL AGAINST DISMISSAL OF LEGAL “ADVISORS”.. The “Movement for the Quality of Government” NGO appealed to the High Court against the dismissal of ministerial dept legal advisors: "The continuation of the coup d'état, during the war. The govt decision will constitute a serious injury to the independence of the legal advisory system for govt offices, and will result in significant damage to the fundamental principles of the State of Israel."

The legal advisors opinions are considered binding, and appear to often be used in apparent disagreement with ministry policies.

▪️POLICE COMMISSIONER vs. ATTORNEY GENERAL.. Commissioner Danny Levy referred to the letter by Attorney General Beharve-Miarat "if he does not freeze the reassignment of the police senior legal advisor (from his advisor position to a department manager), he will be acting against the law", and replied that "the Israel Police addressed her letter last week and there is nothing to add in the matter. I am busy from morning to night fighting crime and leading the organization." 

After she informed him that his decision was frozen, Levy wrote to Beharev-Miara "I do not recognize a legal obligation to consult with you before making an appointment. Your request means a de facto expropriation of my authority."

.. (Ch. 13) “Legal authorities”, the commissioner’s conduct may lead to his removal.  National Security Minister Ben Gvir: in your dreams.

▪️ECONOMY.. Ministry of Finance: Ahead of budget discussions, the chief economist updated (REDUCED) the growth forecast for the years 2024 and 2025, to levels of 0.4% and 4.3% respectively.

♦️LEBANON - Hezbollah commander of the Eyta al-Sha'ab area surrendered to the Golani fighters.

.. The Lebanese report extensive destruction in the village of Jbaa in Nabatieh district following a series of about 12 attacks on the place last night. Several buildings collapsed.

♦️SYRIA - Syrian sources: Israel blew up a minefield in the area west of the village of al Qahtaniyah in the Qunaitra district in southern Syria. (This would allow rapid maneuvering.)

♦️GAZA - Air Force attacked terrorists in the humanitarian area in Khan Yunis.

♦️GAZA IED’s - Ch. 14, we were asked not to say that there was an explosion inside a building (where soldiers were killed). We will not hide it. 12 fighters were killed by IEDs in Jabaliya. It's time for tough questions (of why going building to building instead of air striking or tank fire.)

🔹HAMAS.. Report: Muhammad Sinwar replaced his brother as the leader of Hamas.

🔹US CENTRAL COMMAND.. General Michael Korilla will arrive tomorrow for a visit to Israel.

🔹US Ambassador to the UN: The US believes that Francesca Albania, the UN's special rapporteur for the “occupied” territories, is not suitable for her position. The UN should not tolerate anti-Semitism from an official appointed to promote human rights.

🔸DEAL NEWS.. proposal of the day: new Qatari proposal: a month of truce in exchange for 11 hostages, mostly females, without ending the war.  As always, Hamas has not agreed while these are publicly floated to pressure Israel.

.. Hezbollah official: "We will not hold talks under fire.. And we have not received an official offer.” (After the visit by the US envoy.)

✡️A word of Torah: Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it. - The Rambam

[warsofasoiaf]

To clarify I am not a Tulsi Gabbard fan just curious about this rebuttal I have heard people use. She is an Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. military, and actually deployed in the Middle East, and is not involved with the dark side of the Intelligence community who profits off endless wars. Again I am not for her nomination but I would like to hear a rebuttal to this because I have my own misgivings about the intelligence community and having an outsider is more appealing then it should be.

The "dark side of intelligence community who profits off endless wars" is a conspiracy theory; that's typically a jab at defense contractors, not the intelligence community. It's also wrong there - but that's neither here nor there.

There's a lot of reasons to dislike and distrust Tulsi Gabbard. In Turkey, when confronted with people who were bombed by Assad, she looked at them dead in the eye and asked: "Are you sure it was Bashar al-Assad, and not ISIS?" People who said they were bombed with chemical weapons from jet aircraft wanted to traffic in the notion that ISIS, which had no air force and no airports, could actually launch a chemical attack against Syrian civilians, despite video evidence that showed it was a Syrian jet. She repeats the long-debunked canard that Russia was forced into invading Ukraine because of "NATO expansionism." She regularly repeats pro-Syrian and pro-Russian propaganda in spite of the evidence. She criticizes Japan for increasing its military strength after China has actively tried to destabilize both Japan itself and the Asia/Pacific region with their actions in contravention of UN Maritime Law.

This is the person that Trump has tapped for the position as Director of National Intelligence - someone who believes what she *wants* to believe. So here's your rebuttal: at best, she is a moron who doesn't listen to any evidence that contradicts her pre-conceived conclusions, and that's not someone who you want as Director of National Intelligence.

-SLAL

[greatworldwar2]

• Battle of Damascus

The Battle of Damascus was a battle between Allied Forced and Vichy French forced and was the final action of the Allied advance on Damascus in Syria during the Syria–Lebanon campaign in World War II.

On June 8th, 1941, troops of the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade Group had crossed the Syrian border from the British Mandate of Palestine to take Quneitra and Deraa with the objective of opening the way for the forces of the 1st Free French Division to advance along the roads from these towns to Damascus. This was one of four attacks planned for the campaign by the Allied commander, General Sir Henry Wilson. Gentforce had been under the temporary command of the commander of the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade, Brigadier Wilfrid Lloyd, since 12 June when Legentilhomme had been wounded. The plan called for the troops of 5th Indian Brigade to advance northwards from their positions at Artouz on the Quneitra–Damascus road across country west of the road towards Mezzeh. Mezzeh was a large village on a junction with the Beirut to Damascus road, some three miles west of Damascus itself. The brigade's supplies, ammunition and the anti-tank element would follow closely behind on the road proper. Meanwhile, the Free French forces would advance along the Kissoué – Damascus road to capture Qadim as a preliminary to entering the Syrian capital, some four miles further north. On June 18th, the Indian troops set out and skirmished their way north. They reached Mezzeh at 04:15. By 05:30, after an hour of fierce hand-to-hand fighting, Mezzeh was captured. However, there was a major problem: the equipment and anti-tank guns travelling up the main road had earlier got ahead of the infantry and run into a Vichy roadblock where most of the vehicles were knocked out. Furthermore, the planned advance by the Free French to Qadim had been delayed, allowing the Vichy defenders to concentrate on the Mezzeh action, putting intense pressure on the Allied position whilst thwarting any attempt to relieve them and bring in vitally needed anti-tank weapons.

On June 19th, Major General John Evetts, commander of the British 6th Infantry Division, arrived to relieve Lloyd and take control of the Allied forces east of Merdjayoun. With the losses suffered by the Indian brigade, he requested that the British 16th Infantry Brigade be detached from the 7th Australian Division and sent to his sector. Three Australian battalions were also detached to Evetts' command: the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion and the 2/3rd and 2/5th Infantry Battalions. By nightfall on 19 June, the Allied position at Mezzeh was desperate. Ammunition was running low, no food had been eaten for 24 hours, casualties were severe, and medical supplies were exhausted. During the night (when Vichy attacks were suspended), three men managed to reach Gentforce headquarters with the news of the position in Mezzeh. Early on June 20th, Brigadier Lloyd, having handed over to Evetts, resumed command of the 5th Indian Brigade and sent a force comprising two companies from the 3/1st Punjab Regiment, two companies of French Marines and a battery of artillery to fight its way through to Mezzeh. But they could not blast a way through and they progressed only slowly against determined opposition from French tanks. A Free French attack on Qadim the previous night had failed expensively, so that they were unable to exert pressure on Qadim that morning to draw Vichy forces away from Mezzeh. That night, however, the Free French with support from British anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns and an Australian machine-gun battalion, advanced against light Vichy defences and captured Qadim by the morning of the 21st.

Throughout the evening of June 20-21st, the Australians fought several actions, attacking a series of stone forts overlooking the Mezzeh and the Quneitra road. Elsewhere, a company of Australians attempted to move around the left flank of the Vichy defenders to cut the road running north-west to Beirut and establish a road block in the Barada Gorge. A see-sawing action took place amongst the forts, during which a force of 59 Australians was briefly captured, before a counter-attack early on June 21st freed them and retook the forts. Meanwhile, a 12-hour defensive action held the Barada Gorge to the west, turning back several French attacks that included tanks and armoured cars. During the morning of June 21st, the Australians consolidated their positions around the forts, and in the Barada Gorge and around 11:00, the Vichy French garrison in Damascus surrendered. By noon, the Allied forces were in Damascus and the Vichy forces were retreating west along the Beirut road. With the fall of Damascus, Gentforce accomplished its primary goal. Elsewhere, fighting around Merdjayoun continued until June 24th, when Allied forces eventually captured the town. The fighting between the Vichy forces and the Allies continued throughout the month. Further actions included fighting around Damour and the capture of Beirut.

[soon-palestine]

The occupied municipality of Haifa declares a state of emergency in the city @AlMayadeenNews

Occupation media: A second wave of drones was launched from Iran

“Israeli” sources to “Israeli” Army Radio: The Iranian attack includes cruise missiles, not just drones.

Zionist media: Yemen also launched drones towards the “Israeli” occupation

Informed Iranian sources to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: The Iranian Army and Revolutionary Guard jointly launched dozens of suicide marches towards “Israel” about an hour ago. Attacks with Iranian drones were launched from the Iranian provinces of Kermanshah and Kurdistan

Iranian television announces the start of a massive attack with marches launched by the Revolutionary Guards on “Israeli” targets in occupied Palestine @AlMayadeenNews

US officials to New York Times: Iran is likely to try to synchronize the drone attack with faster-moving missiles, which will be launched later

Senior “Israeli” official to occupation media: The Iranian attack includes “hundreds of attacking drones”

Occupation media: Reports of a third wave of drones from Iran towards “Israel”

Iranian Shahed drones can be heard flying to occupied Palestine @PressTV

Hebrew Channel 12: The occupation “army” is now carrying out a massive attack in the heart of Lebanon

IRGC: We carried out an operation with drones and missiles in response to the Zionist entity’s crime of bombing our consulate in Damascus. The operation was carried out with dozens of missiles and drones to strike specific targets in the occupied territories.

Occupation media: For the first time since the war on Gaza, there are no “Israeli” planes over the Gaza Strip due to the Iranian threat

US National Security Council spokeswoman: The Iranian attack is likely to continue for several hours

Security source to occupation media: The government’s instructions included entering shelters more protected from precision missiles

For reference, travel times from Iran to “Israel”

Ballistic missile - 12 minutes Cruise missile - 2 hours UAV (Drones) - 9 hours

(UAVs were reportedly launched from Iran)

Sources for Press TV: Iranian drones approach Jordan's airspace

Biden: The United States will support “Israel’s” defense against these threats from Iran

US intelligence source to occupation media: The drones may be a distraction for launching missiles from Iran

Jordanian security officials to Reuters: Jordan is preparing to confront any Iranian aircraft that violates its airspace

Military analyst for @qudsn

The Iranian response will be in 3 successive waves:

Launching dozens of marches directed at the occupation

Marches and strikes from the regions of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to disperse Israeli defense systems

Guided ballistic missiles

Press TV: “Israeli” air defense systems are facing cyber attacks

Hebrew Channel 14: A state of hysteria afflicts the “Israeli” public after waiting for the Iranian response

US Official to @AJArabic : Our forces have not yet taken any action to confront the Iranian attack

US Official to AJ: The Iranian attack targets multiple sites inside “Israel”

Note: Settlers in the occupied West Bank are taking advantage of this time and intensifying their pogroms. One child was killed within the past hour and they’re expanding to more villages

AJ: Heavy flight of “Israeli” warplanes in northern “Israel”

Jordan declares a state of emergency following the Iranian attack on “Israel” @Reuters

Iran's Foreign Minister: Necessary warnings have been given to U.S @PressTV

Occupation media: Iran launched hundreds of drones in addition to cruise missiles as part of its attack against “Israel”

Occupation media: The “war cabinet” is being held in the underground bunker of the Ministry of “Security”

“Israeli” military officials to NYTimes: “Israel” evacuated military bases, launched planes, and prepared air defenses

Occupation media: Initial intercepts of drones in Syrian airspace

US official to Bloomberg: A simultaneous attack with drones and missiles may confuse the “Israeli” air defense system, as it may reach different speeds, altitudes, and directions

UK Prime Minister Sunak: I condemn in the strongest terms the reckless attack carried out by the Iranian regime against “Israel” Britain will continue to defend the security of “Israel” and its regional partners, including Jordan and Iraq.

French Foreign Minister: We condemn in the strongest terms the Iranian attack on “Israel”

Zionist military source to ABC: Iran only targets military sites

US Speaker of the House: We must show our full determination to stand by "Israel"

[capybaracorn]

Australia challenged on ‘moral failure’ of weapons trade with Israel

Regular protests have been taking place outside Australian firms making crucial components for the F-35 fighter jet.

Melbourne, Australia – Israel’s continued assault on Gaza has highlighted a hidden yet crucial component of the world’s weapons manufacturing industry – suburban Australia.

Tucked away in Melbourne’s industrial north, Heat Treatment Australia (HTA) is an Australian company that plays a vital role in the production of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters; the same model that Israel is using to bomb Gaza.

Weekly protests of about 200 people have been taking place for months outside the nondescript factory, where heat treatment is applied to strengthen components for the fighter jet a product of US military giant Lockheed Martin.

While protesters have sometimes brought production to a halt with their pickets, they remain concerned about what’s going on inside factories like HTA.

“We decided to hold the community picket to disrupt workers, and we were successful in stopping work for the day,” Nathalie Farah, protest organiser with local group Hume for Palestine, told Al Jazeera. “We consider this to be a win.”

“Australia is absolutely complicit in the genocide that is happening,” said 26-year-old Farah, who is of Syrian and Palestinian origin. “Which is contrary to what the government might have us believe.”

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war in Gaza six months ago after Hamas killed more than 1,000 people in a surprise attack on Israel. The war, being investigated as a genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has left hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations.

Nathalie Farah has been organising regular protests outside HTA’s factory [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]

According to Lockheed Martin, “Every F-35 built contains some Australian parts and components,” with more than 70 Australian companies having export contracts valued at a total 4.13 billion Australian dollars ($2.69bn).

Protesters have also picketed Rosebank Engineering, in Melbourne’s southeast, the world’s only producer of the F-35’s “uplock actuator system”, a crucial component of the aircraft’s bomb bay doors.

Defence industry push

In recent years, the Australian government has sought to increase defence exports to boost the country’s flagging manufacturing industry.

In 2018, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Australia aimed to become one of the world’s top 10 defence exporters within a decade. It is currently 30th in global arms production, according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute.

It is an aspiration that appears set to continue under the government of Anthony Albanese after it concluded a more than one-billion-Australian-dollar deal with Germany to supply more than 100 Boxer Heavy Weapon Carrier vehicles in 2023 – Australia’s single biggest defence industry deal.

Since the Gaza war began, the industry and its business relationship with Israel have come increasingly under the spotlight.

Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles insisted that there were “no exports of weapons from Australia to Israel and there haven’t been for many, many years”.

However, between 2016 and 2023 the Australian government approved some 322 export permits for military and dual-use equipment to Israel.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s own data – available to the public online – shows that Australian exports of “arms and ammunition” to Israel totalled $15.5 million Australian dollars ($10.1m) over the same period of time.

Officials now appear to be slowing the export of military equipment to Israel.

In a recent interview with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy insisted the country was “not exporting military equipment to Israel” and clarified this meant “military weapons, things like bombs”.

However, defence exports from Australia fall into two categories, items specifically for military use – such as Boxer Heavy Weapons vehicles for Germany – and so-called ‘dual use’ products, such as radar or communications systems, that can have both civilian and military uses.

[See the video embedded in the article]

Australia’s Department of Defence did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests about whether the halt to defence exports to Israel also included dual-use items.

What is certain is that companies such as HTA and Rosebank Engineering are continuing to manufacture components for the F-35, despite the risk of deployment in what South Africa told the International Court of Justice in December amounted to “genocidal acts“.

In the Netherlands – where parts for the jet are also manufactured – an appeal court last month ordered the Dutch government to block such exports to Israel citing the risk of breaching international law.

The Australian government has also come under scrutiny for its lax “end-use controls” on the weapons and components it exports.

As such, while the F-35 components are exported to US parent company Lockheed Martin, their ultimate use is largely outside Australia’s legal purview.

Lauren Sanders, senior research fellow on law and the future of war at the University of Queensland, told Al Jazeera that the “on-selling of components and military equipment through third party states is a challenge to global export controls.

“Once something is out of a state’s control, it becomes more difficult to trace, and to prevent it being passed on to another country,” she said.

Sanders said Australia’s “end use controls” were deficient in comparison with other exporters such as the United States.

“The US has hundreds of dedicated staff – with appropriate legal authority to investigate – to chase down potential end-use breaches,” she said.

“Australia does not have the same kind of end-use controls in place in its legislation, nor does it have the same enforcement resources that the US does.”

The protesters say they will continue their action until manufacturing of F-35 components is stopped [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]

In fact, under legislation passed in November 2023, permits for defence goods are no longer required for exports to the United Kingdom and the US under the AUKUS security agreement.

In a statement, the government argued the exemption would “deliver 614 million [Australian dollars; $401m] in value to the Australian economy over 10 years, by reducing costs to local businesses and unlocking investment opportunities with our AUKUS partners”.

International law

This new legislation may provide more opportunities for Australian weapons manufacturers, such as NIOA, a privately owned munitions company that makes bullets at a factory in Benalla, a small rural town in Australia’s southeast.

The largest supplier of munitions to the Australian Defence Force, NIOA – which did not respond to Al Jazeera for comment – also has aspirations to break into the US weapons market.

At a recent business conference, CEO Robert Nioa said that “the goal is to establish greater production capabilities in both countries so that Australia can be an alternative source of supply of weapons in times of conflict for the Australian and US militaries”.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge told Al Jazeera that the government needed to “publicly and immediately refute the plan to become a top 10 global arms dealer and then to provide full transparency on all Australian arms exports including end users.

“While governments in the Netherlands and the UK are facing legal challenges because of their role in the global supply chain, the Australian Labor government just keeps handing over weapons parts as though no genocide was happening,” he said. “It’s an appalling moral failure, and it is almost certainly a gross breach of international law.”

The Dutch government has faced legal action over the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel [File: Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters]

Elbit has come under fire for its sale of defence equipment to the Myanmar military regime, continuing sales even after the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup, was accused of gross human rights violations – including attacks on civilians – by the United Nations and others.

Despite a recent joint announcement between the Australian and UK governments for an “immediate cessation of fighting” in Gaza, some say Australia needs to go further and cut defence ties with Israel altogether.

“The Australian government must listen to the growing public calls for peace and end Australia’s two-way arms trade with Israel,” Shoebridge said. “The Albanese government is rewarding and financing the Israeli arms industry just at the moment they are arming a genocide.”

Protests have continued both at the HTA factory in Melbourne and their premises in Brisbane, with organisers pledging to continue until the company stops manufacturing components for the F-35.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes of smoke rising from residential buildings after being targeted by Zionist air forces in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City on Friday evening. The Israeli occupation army has ramped up its bombing campaign of civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in Gaza City and various parts of southern and central Gaza as well.]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🚀🚀🏠💥 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES RAMP UP BOMBING CAMPAIGN IN WAR OF GENOCIDE IN GAZA

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) ramped up their indiscriminate bombing campaign of residential buildings, along with the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, killing dozens and wounding many more.

In one massacre, Occupation fighter jets bombed a vehicle on Salah al-Din Street, east of Gaza City, slaughtering 8 civilians including five children, two women and dozens of wounded.

Zionist air forces also bombed a residential building on Al-Wehda Street, east of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, in the west of Gaza City, killing 10 Palestinians.

At the same time, the IOF killed two brothers, Marwan and Azmi Abu Salah, and wounded a number of others after targeting them in central Abasan Al-Kabira, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Zionist occupation forces also bombarded the Aliwa family home, east of Al-Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, martyring three civilians and wounding several others.

In yet another atrocity, IOF warplanes bombed several civilian residences west of Al-Nuseirat Refugee Camp, murdering another five Palestinian civilians and wounding many others.

IOF artillery shelling also continue to target residential buildings in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood southeast of Gaza City, while Zionist aircraft have continued hammering the central Gaza governate.

Elsewhere, the death toll from the violent IOF bombing raids early on Friday morning targeting the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has risen to 42 people killed, including six Lebanese Hezbollah members and several servicemembers of the Syrian military.

Occupation forces also bombarded defense factories in Al-Safira, and explosions were reported in Kafr Joum, west of Aleppo.

Since the beginning of 2024, the Israeli occupation army has attacked Syrian territory on 28 different occasions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The death toll in "Israel's" ongoing war of genocide in the Gaza Strip has now exceeded 32'623, mostly women and children, while another 75'092 Palestinians have been wounded in the current round of Israeli aggression beginning on October 7th, 2023.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[mariacallous]

The Greeks had their chariots. Patton had his tanks. Now, a handful of soldiers are riding into combat in one of the most unusual-looking vehicles in the history of warfare: an armed Cybertruck.

In a video posted to messaging platform Telegram last week, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region, showed off a pair of Tesla’s distinctive boxy electric pickup trucks painted forest green and armed with what appear to be Soviet-era DShK 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine guns—vehicles he claimed had been sent to fight alongside Russian forces taking part in the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The footage shows the vehicles patrolling down a dirt road as part of a four-vehicle platoon, with several soldiers manning their weapons mounted on their truck beds and blasting airborne targets out of the sky.

“Mobility, convenience, maneuverability: such qualities of an electric vehicle are in great demand here,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.

The new footage came just over a month after Kadyrov published an initial video to Telegram showing off a Cybertruck armed with a Russian Kord 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine gun. That Cybertruck, Kadyrov claimed in a separate Telegram post made the day before unveiling the fresh pair of vehicles, had recently been disabled “remotely” by Tesla chief Elon Musk, who had previously denied gifting the notorious warlord the vehicle in the first place, likely because it’s prohibited under US sanctions on Russia.

“This is not manly,” Kadyrov seethed on Telegram over the remote shutoff. (Tesla did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)

It was only a matter of time before some enterprising combatant somewhere slapped a machine gun on a Cybertruck. Both regular militaries and irregular forces around the world have been whipping up “technicals”—or “nonstandard tactical vehicles” improvised from civilian rides—for more than a century. While the general concept of armored cars outfitted with firearms presaged the outbreak of World War I by at least a decade, the conflict accelerated their production and fielding—and, in moments of necessity, innovation. In one of the earliest documented manifestations of the technical, French navy lieutenant Maxime François Émile Destremau prepared a defense of the strategically important coaling station in the city of Papeete in Tahiti against a pair of German cruisers in September 1914 by tearing six 37 mm cannons off the warship under his command and mounting them on six Ford trucks to repel potential landing parties, according to the 2004 book On Armor. As long as the automobile has existed, so has the technical.

The technical as most defense observers know it, built on commercial flatbed pickup trucks like the rugged and reliable Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser, became a fixture of modern irregular warfare during the so-called “Toyota War” of the 1980s that saw militia forces from Chad achieve a decisive victory over the Libyan military thanks to the superior mobility and maneuverability afforded by their lightweight vehicles. (Chadian forces discovered that, at an appropriately high speed, technicals could traverse open areas mined with Soviet-era munitions without risk of setting them off.)

Since then, technicals have become a fixture of conflicts like the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Syrian and Libyan Civil Wars, and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And those conflicts continued to prompt a flurry of novel innovations when it comes to improvised fighting vehicles. Examples include Libyan militants mounting a S-5 rocket pod meant for an aircraft on the back of a truck and a Land Cruiser outfitted with a Russian-made 14.5 mm ZPU-2 antiaircraft gun that American soldiers traded two cans of chewing tobacco for to secure Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021—the latter of which is now in a US military museum. (Does a DShK on a shopping cart count as a technical? That’s up for debate.)

All of those innovations open up the question: Will an armed Cybertruck actually make for a good technical on the battlefield?

Despite the many issues that have plagued the Cybertruck since its release, the vehicle isn’t necessarily the worst option. While the Cybertruck currently has a maximum range of 340 miles (or 500 miles with an extra battery pack)—well behind the roughly 570- to 700-mile range of the Hilux—the former is actually quicker, capable of accelerating up to 60 mph between 2.6 and 3.9 seconds, depending on the model, a noteworthy achievement given the vehicle’s size and weight.

In terms of safeguarding its occupants from external threats like small arms fire, the Cybertruck’s steel “exoskeleton” offers purportedly superior protection to that of the conventional pickup truck, a feature that Tesla has been quick to flaunt on promotional materials. Finally, the Cybertruck, as an electric vehicle, is freakishly quiet, offering an element of stealth that the US Defense Department in particular has eyed in recent years compared to other fossil-fuel-powered ground vehicles.

“There are some attributes that work,” David Tracy, a cofounder of the car website The Autopian and a former auto engineer, tells WIRED. “It’s off-road capable and has big 35-inch tires and good ground clearance. It has stainless steel panels that can take some amount of abuse. From a defense standpoint—as in, ‘How safe am I in the vehicle?’—if you were to take a stock Hilux or a stock Cybertruck, the Cybertruck would probably be the better choice in a firefight.”

If technicals are built for speed and maneuverability, then the Cybertruck “offers significant benefits over the Hilux,” Tracy says.

“It is absolutely, absurdly quick,” he says. “In a drag race between the two, the Hilux would be an ant in the Cybertruck’s rearview mirror. If you need speed and agility, and it isn’t necessarily going through rigorous off-roading or being fired upon regularly, then it could actually work fine.”

Despite these potential tactical benefits, defense analysts aren’t convinced the Cybertruck has a place on the modern battlefield. As retired Marine colonel Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, tells WIRED, the armed vehicles flaunted by Kadyrov on Telegram “are totally cool and totally useless.”

“They are cool because they look like something out of a video game and portray Kadyrov as a sort of futuristic warlord,” Cancian tells WIRED in an email. “They are useless because they don't provide a new capability, except perhaps a bit of stealth.”

Indeed, the Cybertruck is not totally suited for hostile and chaotic environments like the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First, the EV’s exoskeleton actually consists of steel panels attached to a standard “unibody” frame that’s more akin to the chassis of a conventional car rather than the “body-on-frame” design of most pickup trucks like the Hilux. This design, according to Motor Trend, makes the former a weaker and less resilient vehicle. Second, while the Cybertruck is certainly off-road capable, it’s still significantly heavier than Hilux, which can make maneuverability and traction on rough terrain a challenge. Third, while its armor portends to offer at least some additional coverage compared to the conventional pickup truck-based technical, the vehicle’s bulletproofing only appears to work with subsonic rounds like the .45 ACP ammo used in Tesla’s tests and not the ubiquitous NATO-standard 5.56 mm round or, say, a shot from a .50 caliber rifle. (Though, to be fair, aftermarket armor packages for the vehicle do exist.)

Beyond design and engineering challenges, there’s also the critical matter of maintenance and logistics, the lifeblood of any motorized conflict. As Tracy points out, the Cybertruck’s unique complexity and software-forward design (like the lack of a physical connection between steering wheel and wheels) means a distinct lack of spare parts and higher potential for catastrophic system failures, challenges that all but guarantee that the vehicle is unable to operate reliably and ensure consistent uptime—not necessarily ideal for troops whose lives may depend on them.

“Simplicity is everything; simplicity and parts availability,” Tracy says. “If you’re driving a complex vehicle and there’s a failure of some sort and you need someone to flash it with a computer, you’re hosed if you’re in the middle of nowhere. The beauty of the Hilux is that they’re very tough, for one, but they can be repaired with simple tools and fairly ubiquitous parts. The Cybertruck does not really make a whole lot of sense in that regard.”

“It’s great that it is safe in a crash and can take a bullet,” he adds. “But if you break a control arm and can’t get the part, it’s pretty useless.”

Plus, the Cybertruck’s reliance on charging stations would make a fleet of armed vehicles “likely impossible to support” in any sort of protracted conflict like that taking place in Ukraine, according to CSIS’s Cancian.

“I doubt there are garages or mechanics near the front lines who can fix these complex devices, which are so unlike the fossil fuel vehicles that the region is accustomed to,” he says. “Further, I doubt there are many recharging stations in the battle area. Unlike with fossil fuel vehicles, where the fuel can be brought to the vehicle if necessary, the Cybertrucks must go to the recharging point.”

How the Cybertruck will actually perform in a combat situation remains to be seen. But if the Kadyrov video is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before an armed Cybertrucks makes the transition from YouTube sensation to tried-and-true, battle-tested technical.

[tomorrowusa]

F-16 fighter jets are apparently now in Ukraine and under Ukrainian command. ��🇦

Ukraine has received the first batch of fourth-generation U.S.-made F-16 jets, Bloomberg reported on July 31, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. The news comes a year after the allied "fighter jet coalition" took shape at the Vilnius NATO summit under the Danish and Dutch leadership. The deadline for the transfer of F-16s was late July, the sources told Bloomberg. Ukraine received "a small number" of the planes, the sources said. Ukraine is expected to receive at least 79 F-16s from the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway, with the deliveries to continue in the coming years. The fighter jet coalition also pledged to help train Ukrainian pilots and technical staff to operate the jets. It is unclear whether the trained Ukrainian pilots will be able to use combat aircraft immediately or the process will take longer, unnamed people told Bloomberg. Kyiv is yet to confirm these reports. The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American air superiority fighter that Kyiv has begged for since the start of the full-scale invasion. Although some defense experts do not expect F-16s to become game-changers in the war, the jets may strengthen Ukraine's air defense capabilities and shield the country's population centers from Russia's daily bombardments.

Earlier this week we heard that Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) was involved in successful attacks on Russian mercenaries in the West African nation of Mali. Now there's news that Ukraine was behind an attack on a Russian base in Syria – a Putin client state.

Ukrainian special forces strike Russian base in Syria after Putin-Assad meeting

The military intelligence's special unit Khimik struck Russian military equipment at the Kuweires airfield, located east of Aleppo and occupied by Russian forces, NV's sources in the HUR confirmed. The Kyiv Post published a video showing a Russian electronic warfare mobile complex being destroyed, followed by drones attacking Russian military facilities at the airfield. [ ... ] The Defense Intelligence conducted the attack a day after Russian dictator Vladimir Putin met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on July 24. The Kuweires airfield has been controlled and used by Russian forces for military purposes since 2015.

Putin helped Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad crush the Arab Spring uprising early in the 2010s. There are still Russian forces in Syria. Apparently Russia is recruiting mercenaries in the country to fight in Ukraine.

Ukraine is putting Putin on notice that Russian military activity anywhere on the planet is a valid target for Ukrainian forces.

[usafphantom2]

F-117 on ice.

@ron_eisele via X

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Breen :: @SteveBreen100

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 16, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 17, 2024

On Sunday, April 14, 2024, Iran fired about 170 drones, more than 120 ballistic missiles, and more than 30 cruise missiles from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and areas controlled by Hezbollah in Lebanon toward Israel. The strike was in retaliation for a strike on Iran’s diplomatic complex in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, which killed two top commanders in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, along with other officials. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the Syrian strike, but officials from other countries believe Israel is responsible. Iran warned its attack was coming, and Israel and the U.S., along with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and France, shot the missiles down. Israel sustained almost no damage. One Arab-Israeli girl was critically injured.

In the leadup to the attack, Arab countries shared intelligence and radar tracking, opened their airspace while closing it to Iran, and even supplied forces to withstand Iran’s attack. According to David S. Cloud, Dov Lieber, Stephen Kalin, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal, in March 2022, top military officials from Israel and Arab countries met in Egypt at the invitation of U.S. Marine General Frank McKenzie, then the top U.S. commander in the region, to discuss coordination against Iran’s growing military capabilities.  

That prospective coordination had never been tested, but the fact that Arab states stood alongside Israel against Iran highlights changing dynamics in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the attack, a source connected to the Saudi royal family charged Iran with instigating the Gaza war to stop normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon are Iran’s proxies.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250 others, President Joe Biden’s apparent top priority has been making sure the crisis doesn’t spread. On October 10, he warned: “to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t.” 

The U.S. moved two of its eleven carrier battle groups, which usually consist of an aircraft carrier, at least four other ships, and about 7,500 personnel, to the region. At the same time, while Biden has been careful to note that the U.S. cannot dictate policy to another country, he warned Israel against a planned preemptive strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The U.S. has also led the effort to stop Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen from attacking ships in the Red Sea. The attacks have disrupted global shipping, forcing ships to reroute around Africa. 

Since the early days of the conflict, the approach of Israel’s government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to destroying Hamas has caused a deepening rift with the Biden administration. While the U.S. supports Israel’s right to self-defense and “legitimate military objectives,” it has repeatedly called out mounting Palestinian civilian casualties. Then, while the administration has consistently called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the plan for a postwar settlement Netanyahu finally proposed in February rejected that policy and instead called for Israel to maintain military control of Gaza indefinitely. 

Increasingly, the Israeli government has rejected U.S. requests to protect civilian lives, including by allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza, where people are starving. After a brief humanitarian pause in fighting in November, efforts to achieve another pause to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza have failed repeatedly. Frustration in the U.S. over mounting civilian deaths and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has led to widespread protests against Biden as well as against Israel, and has led Democratic critics of Israeli policy to demand that the U.S. condition military aid to Israel on a ceasefire. 

Tensions rose higher when Israel announced it would launch a ground offensive against Hamas in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, without a plan for protecting civilians. More than a million Palestinians have taken shelter there. In March, national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that the president would not support “a military operation in Rafah that does not protect civilians, that cuts off the main arteries of humanitarian assistance and that places enormous pressure on the Israel-Egypt border.”

Israel did not notify the U.S. when on April 1 it attacked the Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria, a strike U.S. defense officials believed put U.S. forces at risk. Also on April 1, Israeli forces killed seven aid workers—including individuals from Australia, Poland, and the United Kingdom, as well as a Palestinian and a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen—with the humanitarian aid group World Central Kitchen. The workers had coordinated with the military and were in three separate marked vehicles.

On April 3, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directly called out Israel’s silence about its attack on Iranian leaders in Syria in a telephone call to his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

On April 4, in a telephone call, Biden told Netanyahu that “the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable.” He said Israel must “announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” He reiterated support for Israel but appeared to distinguish between Israel and its current government. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was on the call, told a reporter: "The president made clear we will make sure Israel isn't left without the ability to defend itself. At the same time, if there are no changes to their approach, we are likely to change our approach.”

Israel has pointed to the inefficient distribution of aid within Gaza as a cause of hardship, but three hours after the call, Israel announced that it would open the Erez crossing into northern Gaza for the first time since October 7, use the Port of Ashdod in Israel as a hub for supplies, and allow more Gaza-bound aid trucks into Israel from Jordan. Days later, Israeli officials dropped the plan to open Erez, and the Ashdod port is not yet accepting aid shipments; Defense Minister Gallant said, “We plan to flood Gaza with aid and we are expecting to reach 500 trucks per day,” but he did not say when that would happen.

While this was taking place, according to the four Wall Street Journal reporters, the administration pressed Arab states for intelligence about a retaliatory strike from Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia shared intelligence, and Jordan allowed warplanes to use its airspace while also intercepting Iranian missiles with its own planes. The White House coordinated Israeli and Arab defensive measures. According to U.S. officials, officials from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council were “in constant, ongoing, continuous contact with Israelis, with other partners in the region, as well as Iran with a series of direct communications through the Swiss channel and other relevant players,” as well as with “Turkey and China,” “in anticipation of the events that transpired.”

This was the background when Iran attacked Israel on Sunday. 

In the aftermath of the attack, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, “The matter can be deemed concluded.” The White House immediately gathered the leaders of the Group of 7 wealthy democracies, who issued a statement calling on all parties to “avoid further escalation.” Then Biden urged Netanyahu to “think very carefully and strategically” about retaliation and noted that Israel had “got the best of it,” as it had killed senior Iranian military commanders but lost none of its own leaders. Netanyahu is under great pressure from his right-wing coalition to retaliate, but some members of his war cabinet have stressed that they want “to establish an international coalition and strategic alliance to counter the threat posed by Iran.”

The U.S. warned Israel it would not participate in any offensive counterstrike against Iran, although it has announced new economic sanctions against Iran. Matt Bradley of NBC News pointed out that an aggressive Israeli response would run the risk of dissolving the fragile cooperation between Arab states and Israel that helped to repel the Iranian attack. That cooperation illustrated that Iran is increasingly isolated, but as Oraib Al Rantawi, director of a Jordanian think tank, told Bradley, “Those Arab countries are in a very critical situation. There is no easy position to take….” 

In the U.S., Republicans, including House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH) and Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton, immediately said the U.S. should join Israel if it launched a retaliatory attack, saying they hoped to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. (David Sanger of the New York Times reminded readers yesterday that in 2015, in a deal with seven countries after two years of negotiations, Iran agreed to surrender 97% of its uranium, but Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and Iran returned to developing weapons-grade uranium.) 

In the House, Republicans who have been refusing to pass the national security supplemental bill that provides additional funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as the Indo-Pacific and humanitarian aid to Gaza, have suddenly snapped to and are demanding additional funding for Israel. A researcher at an Israeli think tank estimated the cost of Israel’s interception of the Iranian weapons on Sunday at more than $550 million.

The Senate passed the measure in February, and the House is expected to as well if House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) brings it up for a vote. But Johnson is facing a revolt from MAGA Republicans who are so adamantly opposed to aiding Ukraine they threatened to oust him as speaker if he tries to pass it. Yesterday, Johnson said he would break the measure up and try to pass it in four pieces. Extremists don’t like this either. Two Republicans—Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie—have said they will challenge Johnson’s speakership, meaning that Johnson will have to rely on Democratic votes not only to pass an aid measure, but also to keep his speakership. 

The House is due to recess from Thursday, April 18, until Monday, April 29. This afternoon, House Intelligence Committee chair Turner and the top Democrat on the committee, Jim Himes (D-CT), released a statement: “We must pass Ukraine aid now,” they wrote. “Today, in a classified briefing, our Committee was informed of the critical need to provide Ukraine military aid this week. The United States must stand against Putin’s war of aggression now as Ukraine’s situation on the ground is critical.” 

Today the House finally delivered impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, two months after approving them, and demanded a full trial.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[girlactionfigure]

⚫WARNINGS, AID TERROR, DEAL BLOCKERS SPOKEN OUT LOUD - Real time from Israel  

⚠️(Arab Desk) We have officially entered a dramatic 24 hours in which there are presidential elections in the US, an Iranian attack threatened and equipment on the move, major American military deployment in the Middle East, and Israeli military preparations in the areas to thwart any incident that would come from the east.

⚠️Official Iranian X account:  “Day of Revenge” (posted last night)

⚠️EMERGENCY PREPARATION IN ISRAEL..  (Links work IN Israel only.)

.. Supplies and Equipment for Emergencies.  https://www.oref.org.il/12490-15903-en/pakar.aspx

.. Preparing your home for an emergency.  https://www.oref.org.il/12490-15902-en/Pakar.aspx

.. Help Prep your Neighborhood and Elderly.  https://www.oref.org.il/12550-20999-en/pakar.aspx

▪️SOCIETY & WAR.. Defense Minister Galant approved the issuance of 7,000 additional draft notices to members of the ultra-orthodox sector starting next week.  Deputy Minister Avi Maoz: "immoral - functioning as an opposition".

▪️ECONOMY.. about 100 airport workers have received a summons to a job hearing - preliminary to being laid off.

▪️PROTEST - AYALON SOUTH.. hostage families block the road SOUTH, demanding DEAL NOW (see the Deal News section at the bottom).

▪️FOOD - Min. Of Agriculture brings a strategic food plan to increase local food production by 35% over the next 10 years.

▪️MORE GAZA AID ORGANIZATION TERROR.. French investigation: members of the organization "Doctors Without Borders" actively participated in terrorist acts against Israel. (Le Journal du Dimanche)

⭕Alarms sounded in Masada, for the first time since the revolt against the Romans - due to incoming SUICIDE DRONES from IRAQI SHIA MILITIAS. Intercepted.

♦️SAMARIA - JENIN.. Reports of 2 terrorists killed by airstrike (or drone strike) in the south of the city.

♦️SAMARIA - KABATIA.. IDF: an aircraft attacked a squad of armed terrorists in the area of ​​Kabatia.

♦️SAMARIA - TAMON..  terrorist in the town of Tamon was killed after he barricaded himself inside a house which the forces surrounded.

♦️JUDEA - ETZION CHECKPOINT.. arrested a suspect from Hebron who came with his vehicle to the checkpoint for inspection, suspect is wanted for arrest dealing with terrorist funds. During the search of his car, security seized NIS 1,100,000 in cash in one hundred and two hundred bills.

♦️IDF SUMMARY - Lebanon & Gaza - 100 targets attacked, capture of hundreds of rocket launches, RPG rockets, explosives, rifles, and more. Dozens of terrorists eliminated in face to face battles.  Anti-tank fire positions eliminated.  Airstrikes on weapons warehouses, launch positions, military buildings.

♦️LEBANON - Battle for Bint Jbeil - (enemy reports only) yesterday around 16:00 IDF maneuvering forces arrived in the south of Bint Jbeil, these forces arrived through Ramish and Ein Abel and also through Yaron - they clashed for several hours with Hezbollah operatives.

🔹A Syrian source reveals: Iran has large weapons warehouses located along several beaches in Syria, including Ladakhia, from there, using fishing boats, Hezbollah transfers the weapons to Lebanon.

🔸DEAL NEWS.. US Sec State Blinken to his Egyptian counterpart: "Hamas once again refused to release even a small number of hostages, in order to guarantee a ceasefire and relief for the residents of the Gaza Strip."

.. Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed to promote a new proposal, in which Israel would offer (large sums of) money and safe passage (out of Gaza) to those who hold (and return alive) Israeli hostages in Gaza.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 3.5

1953 – Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, dies at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage four days earlier. 1960 – Indonesian President Sukarno dismissed the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), 1955 democratically elected parliament, and replaced with DPR-GR, the parliament of his own selected members. 1963 – American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee. 1963 – Aeroflot Flight 191 crashes while landing at Aşgabat International Airport, killing 12. 1965 – March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against British colonial presence. 1966 – BOAC Flight 911, a Boeing 707 aircraft, breaks apart in mid-air due to clear-air turbulence and crashes into Mount Fuji, Japan, killing all 124 people on board. 1967 – Lake Central Airlines Flight 527 crashes near Marseilles, Ohio, killing 38. 1968 – Air France Flight 212 crashes into La Grande Soufrière, killing all 63 aboard. 1970 – The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations. 1973 – An Iberia McDonnell Douglas DC-9 collide in mid-air with a Spantax Convair 990 Coronado over Nantes, France, killing all 68 people abord the DC-9, including music manager Michael Jeffery. 1974 – Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal. 1978 – The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 1979 – Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the German-American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by "off the scale" gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters. 1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, is launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 11⁄2 million units around the world. 1982 – Soviet probe Venera 14 lands on Venus. 1991 – Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 108 crashes in Venezuela, killing 45. 1993 – Palair Macedonian Airlines Flight 301 crashes at Skopje International Airport in Petrovec, North Macedonia, killing 83. 2001 – In Mina, Saudi Arabia, 35 pilgrims are killed in a stampede on the Jamaraat Bridge during the Hajj. 2002 – An earthquake in Mindanao, Philippines, kills 15 people and injures more than 100. 2003 – In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed in the Haifa bus 37 suicide bombing. 2011 – An Antonov An-148 crashes in Russia's Alexeyevsky District, Belgorod Oblast during a test flight, killing all seven aboard. 2012 – Tropical Storm Irina kills over 75 as it passes through Madagascar. 2012 – Two people are killed and six more are injured in a shooting at a hair Salon in Bucharest, Romania. 2018 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pause the Deir ez-Zor campaign due to the Turkish-led invasion of Afrin. 2021 – Pope Francis begins a historical visit to Iraq amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 – Twenty people are killed and 30 injured in a suicide car bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia. 2023 – The 2023 Estonian parliamentary election is held, with two centre-right liberal parties gaining an absolute majority for the first time. 2023 – A group of four prisoners escape from the Nouakchott Civil Prison, before being caught the next day.

[warningsine]

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. fighter jets launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said, in retaliation for a slew of drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases and personnel in the region that began early last week.

The strikes reflect the Biden administration’s determination to maintain a delicate balance. The U.S. wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the U.S. as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, possibly fueled by Israel’s war against Hamas, while also working to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that the strikes near Boukamal by F-16 and F-15 fighter aircraft targeted a weapons storage facility and ammunition storage facility used by the IRGC and affiliated groups. “Both facilities were destroyed,” he said. “We currently assess there were no casualties in the strikes.”

A senior U.S. military official said there had been Iranian-aligned militia and IRGC personnel on the base and no civilians. The official would not say how many munitions were launched by the jets.

A senior defense official said the sites were chosen because the IRGC stores the types of munitions there that were used in the strikes against U.S. bases and troops. The two officials briefed reporters after the strikes on condition of anonymity to provide details on the mission that had not yet been made public.

Syrian opposition activists confirmed the U.S. strikes in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour. Omar Abu Layla, a Europe-based activist who heads the Deir Ezzor 24 media outlet, said the main target was an area known as “the farms” outside the town of Mayadeen. He said it is an important transit site where weapons from Iran are stored before being shipped to Lebanon.

He said the second strike hit an area known as the “green belt” in the Boukamal area that borders Iraq. According to Abu Layla, some people were evacuated before the strikes because the retaliation was expected. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said ambulances were seen rushing to the area but it wasn’t clear if there were casualties.

Meanwhile Friday, an Iranian semiofficial news agency, Tasnim, said gunmen in east Syria fired 10 rockets on a base housing American troops in retaliation for the U.S. airstrikes. A U.S. official confirmed the rocket attack and said there were no reported casualties.

And the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group for several Iran-backed groups, said fighters attacked al-Assad airbase in western Iraq with a suicide drone. U.S. officials said it was shot down a few kilometers away and did not hit the base.

According to the Pentagon, as of Friday there had been at least 20 attacks on U.S. bases and personnel in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. Ryder said 21 U.S. personnel were injured in two of those assaults when drones targeted al-Assad airbase in Iraq and al-Tanf garrison in Syria.

In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the “precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17.”

In a letter sent Friday to congressional leaders, President Joe Biden wrote: “The strikes were intended to establish deterrence and were conducted in a manner to limit the risk of escalation and avoid civilian casualties. I directed the strikes in order to protect and defend our personnel, to degrade and disrupt the ongoing series of attacks against the United States and our partners, and to deter Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from conducting or supporting further attacks on United States personnel and facilities.”

The senior defense official told reporters that the airstrikes will have a significant impact on the ability of Iranian proxy groups to continue to attack U.S. forces. Asked what groups were targeted, the official said there are several that can have different names, but the U.S. holds Tehran responsible for funding, arming, equipping and directing the proxies. The official said the airstrikes were not designed to expand the conflict in the region, but to compel Iran to direct the militia groups to cease the attacks on American bases and personnel.

The Biden administration has not accused Iran of having a direct role in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and has said it appears so far that Tehran was not aware of it beforehand. But the U.S. has noted that Iran has long supported Hamas and has raised concerns that Iran and its proxies could turn the conflict into a wider war.

Austin said the U.S. does not seek a broader conflict, but if Iranian proxy groups continue, the U.S. won’t hesitate to take additional action to protect its forces.

According to the Pentagon, all the U.S. personnel hurt in the militant attacks received minor injuries and all returned to duty. In addition, a contractor suffered a cardiac arrest and died while seeking shelter from a possible drone attack.

The retaliatory strikes came as no surprise. Officials at the Pentagon and the White House have made it clear for the past week that the U.S. would respond, with Ryder saying again Thursday that it would be “at the time and place of our choosing.”

The latest spate of strikes by the Iranian-linked groups came in the wake of a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital, triggering protests in a number of Muslim nations. The Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in retaliation for the devastating Hamas rampage in southern Israel nearly three weeks ago, but Israel has denied responsibility for the al-Ahli hospital blast and the U.S. has said its intelligence assessment found that Tel Aviv was not to blame.

The U.S., including the Pentagon, has repeatedly said any strike response by America would be directly tied to the attacks on the troops, who are focused on the fight against Islamic State militants in the region. They said the strikes are not connected to the war between Israel and Hamas.

Such retaliation and strikes against Iranian targets in Syria after similar attacks on U.S. bases are routine.

In March, for example, the U.S. struck sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard after an Iranian-linked attack killed a U.S. contractor and wounded seven other Americans in northeast Syria. American F-15 fighter jets flying out of al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar struck several locations around Deir el-Zour.

U.S. officials have not publicly tied the recent string of attacks in Syria and Iraq to the violence in Gaza, but Iranian officials have openly criticized the U.S. for providing weapons to Israel that have been used to strike Gaza, resulting in civilian death.

[winterbirb]

Lol I know this isn't an actual question because god fucking forbid anyone try to understand the strategy of people outside their own political camp but I guess I hate myself enough to try, at least with the context I have.

I'll provide an example instead of just a theoretical explanation to show I'm not just pulling hypotheticals out of my ass. I won't be providing sources because I'm sure we're all big kids who know how to find a basic fucking chronology (this doesn't include Opinion Article #69420 I'm talking basic timeline shit)

All that buildup to say:

E.g. in 2013, the US averted war with Syria over the Ghouta chemical weapons attack*** in part through the paradox of de-escalation through escalation combined with a lot of covert diplomatic measures. The situation was that the US decided it needed all chemical weapons out of Syria, and it was backed into a corner not just by the bad PR but specifically the fact that ISIS (which was gaining critical momentum in its Syria campaign) getting ahold of those weapons would be very fucking bad.

However, if the US just made empty threats at Syria, officials wouldn't agree to handing anything over because then they'd look like a bunch of pussy ass bitches.

So the US Escalated, not only said "we'll bomb your ass back to 2004 Iraq" (parpahrased) but also sent over an aircraft carrier. (There was also some psyop fuckery going on between the WH and Congress but we don't have time for that.)

After making "Bomb Your Ass" a real and present threat, a small group of US officials did a little dance to publicly lose face, thus facilitating a way for Russia to enter and act as an intermediary in the negotiations, representing the Syrian side.

The escalation was tied to the deescalation because if Syrian officials weren't actually afraid of getting Hussein'ed, going to the negotiation table at all would've been seen as way too much of a pussyass bitch move and therefore politically dangerous and therefore it would not done. Assad especially couldn't afford to look like a pussy, because Politics.

***I don't think Assad ordered the attack, but we don't have time for that.

Or, a shorter version: the US and USSR both escalated the arms race, but neither side launched a nuke because that escalation ensured they'd both die.

"Weh weh weh but that's immoral" That's a totally different topic.

Obviously this is very easy to fuck up, and even if there are no fuckups, things just might not go right enough for it to work. And Bibi's government sucks ass at diplomacy. Read between the lines in the official statement and you'll see the US officials' uncertainty in the situation that they aren't openly saying.

"But why aren't they openly saying—" get your clown ass out of here 🙄

what the fuck is “de-escalation through escalation”