Posts Tagged ‘Damascus’

Breaking: Iran Launches Drone Strike Against Israel

Saturday, April 13th, 2024

Not even sure that this is worth a breaking, since it’s drones rather than missiles or planes, but Iran just launched a drone attack at Israel.

Iran launched a massive drone attack toward Israel Saturday night into Sunday morning local time, following through on its vow to retaliate against the Jewish state after several top Iranian commanders were killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Damascus earlier this month.

The Israeli military estimates that the attack involves over 100 drones, which won’t arrive in Israel for another few hours. Some reports indicate that the airborne operation will also include missiles. This would mark the first direct Iranian attack on Israeli soil.

On Friday, President Joe Biden said that Iran’s retaliatory attack against Israel was imminent and warned Tehran against carrying out the attack. “Don’t,” he said. U.S. officials believe the attack, once it hits Israel, will lead to a wider regional conflict that extends beyond Israel and Iranian proxies such as Hamas or Hezbollah.

Airspace in Israel, Iraq, and Jordan have been closed as the attack unfolds. U.S. and Israeli officials said they plan on intercepting the Iranian drones before they reach Israel, according to reports.

Early reports said “over 50,” now it’s “over 100,” and some Iranian sources say “500.”

According to a Denys Davydov livestream, U.S. planes in Iraq have scrambled to shoot them down.

It’s one thing to get drones past spread out Russian SAM systems, and quite another to get them past modern U.S. and Israeli aircraft, AWACS and Iron Dome.

Iran claims ballistic missiles are on the way. We’ll see. Nazi Germany hit London with V2s back in 1944, so it’s not like the basics are out of Iran’s technological reach. Still, I wouldn’t expect anything more sophisticated than a SCUD, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Iron Dome could shoot those down as well.

If it is just drones, it strikes me as more a performative strike than anything that will actually damage Israel. This was Iran gets to say “We struck back!” without actually committing serious assets.

Livemap says “dozens” of rockets have been fired from Lebanon, which is honestly pretty by the standards of Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Of course, Hamas isn’t launching any rockets, because they’ve contracted a terminal case of IDF.

Developing…

Update: Jordan has gotten in on the intercepting action.

Update 2: Explosions in Damascus. It’s possible Israel has struck back before the drone even got there…

Update 3: One missile hit the Negev and over 100 drones have been intercepted.

Update 4: Boom!

Update 5: Israel says that 99% of some 300 Iranian drones were intercepted. At least that’s 300 they can’t sell to Russia…

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Posted in Economics, Guns, Jihad, Military, Obama Scandals | 5 Comments »

Islamic State Shrinks Again

Saturday, July 28th, 2018

The ongoing destruction of what remains of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is more of a process than a series of discrete battles at this point. A story I’ve been watching develop the last few weeks has finally achieved fruition: The complete elimination of the large, thinly-populated Islamic State enclave in eastern Syria along the Iraqi border.

This was the situation at the start of Operation Jazerra Storm:

Here it was two weeks ago:

A tweet featuring a map of the operation a few days ago:

(And yes, those blue areas near the Syria-Iraq border on the Livemap are salt plains, not bodies of water.)

Now the pocket has been completely cleared:

The hard nut of the Hajin pocket has yet to be cracked, but that should be next on the SDF list, since the the Islamic State has been completely driven from the rest of Syria east of the Euphrates.

More news of the war against the Islamic State:

  • The Syrian Democratic Forces held their first direct talks with Assad’s government.

    The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are holding talks with the government in Damascus for the first time on the future of huge swathes of northern Syria under their control.

    The Kurdish-majority SDF, founded with the help of the US to fight Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in northeastern Syria, now controls almost a third of the country and is looking to negotiate a political deal to preserve its autonomy.

    “We are working towards a settlement for northern Syria,” said Riad Darar, the Arab co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, the SDF’s political wing.

    “We hope that the discussions on the situation in the north will be positive,” Mr Darar said, adding that they were being held “without preconditions”.

    The SDF now controls 27 per cent of the country, accord to the UK-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, having seized Raqqa and much of the eastern province of Deir Ezzor from Isil militants with the help of US airpower.

    The Kurds have used the cover of the Syrian war to carve out a semi-autonomous enclave in the northeast of the country, which it calls “Rojava”.

    Rojava is also known as the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria.

  • This is a very interesting development: “Political wing of SDF to open offices in Latakia, Damascus, Hama, Homs.” The caveat here is that it comes from Al Masdar News, a notoriously pro-Assad outlet, and that I haven’t seen it anywhere else.
  • At the other end of Syria, Assad’s forces are methodically destroying the Islamic State pocket in the Yarmouk Basin (again the Al Masdar News caveat, but they have the most recent story on the fighting), hard against the Golan Heights and the Jordanian border.

    • The Yarmouk Basin pocket is one of three pockets of Islamic State control west of the Euphrates. There’s another large, sparsely populated pocket northeast of there, where the Islamic State is active enough to still commit atrocities, and the large, sparsely-populated pocket immediately to the west of Deir ez-Zor.

    Likewise in Iraq, there are only two pockets of Islamic State control left: A large, sparsely-populated area east of the Syrian border in northwest Iraq, and a tiny sliver of land between Tikrit and Al Fatah Air Base.

    That little sliver has been static for months, with no fighting indicated, so it may just be a map artifact, or an area no one has been able to verify if it’s liberated or not. Keep in mind that the Iraqi government declared that the Islamic State was defeated in Iraq back in December, but counterinsurgencies tend to take time. Espicially counterinsurgencies against Islamic terrorists. It took 14 years to end the original Moro insurgency in the Philippines, and some would argue that it was never entirely eradicated…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »

    Israel, Iran and Syria Throw Down

    Thursday, May 10th, 2018

    Following several weeks of Israel hitting (primarily Iranian) targets inside Syria, Syria (and Iran) struck back, firing missiles (reportedly from Iranian Quds forces) at Israeli positions on the Golan Heights, while Israel responded by stepping up missile and aircraft strikes, and launched an artillery barrage against Hezbollah forces just inside Syria.

    What all did Israel hit?

    An IDF statement said fighter jets had struck “dozens of military targets” belonging to Iran inside Syria. They included:

  • Intelligence sites associated with Iran and the “Radical Axis” – a term Israeli officials use to refer to an alliance between Iran, Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas
  • A logistics headquarters belonging to the Quds Force
  • A military logistics compound in Kiswah, a town south of Damascus
  • An Iranian military compound north of Damascus
  • Quds Force munition storage warehouses at Damascus International Airport
  • Intelligence systems and posts associated with the Quds Force
  • Observation and military posts and munition in the Golan demilitarised zone
  • The Iranian launcher from which the rockets were fired overnight

    • .

    The IDF said it had also targeted several Syrian military air defence systems after they fired at the Israeli fighter jets despite an Israeli “warning”.

    Meanwhile, Iran’s missile attack was reportedly a massive failure. “Four of its missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system and the rest fell in Syrian territory.”

    Let’s get the obligatory meme out of the way:

    How real remains to be seen. It’s not remotely 1947, 1967, or 1973 real, or even Lebanon 2006 real. It’s probably more real right now than Bekaa Valley 1982 real, which was plenty real enough.

    So, I dunno. A three, maybe?

    Livemap shows the activity in the theater:

    So what happens now? Does the situation escalate or deescalate? I suspect deescalate, mainly because Israel may have run out of Iranian targets in Syria to bomb…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »

    U.S., France, UK Hit Syrian Chemical Sites

    Friday, April 13th, 2018

    President Donald Trump orders U.S. military to attack Syrian chemical weapons sites, in coordination with France and the UK.

    Here’s President Trump’s announcement:

    I’m on record as stating that the United States has no compelling national interest at stake in Syria after the destruction of the Islamic State. that said, anyone predicting that Russia is willing to risk World War III over Syria is having a case of the vapors.

    It’s ironic that President Trump is the one actually enforcing Obama’s foolish “red lines”…

    Edited to add: Tweet showing airstrikes in Damascus:

    In the video it appears to have taken out the power grid.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 1 Comment »

    Syrian Rebels On Outskirts of Damascus

    Monday, January 30th, 2012

    What the headlines says, although they were repulsed.

    If President Hamlet was thinking about helping topple Assad, now would be a Real Good Time to jump off the fence.

    Plus, unlike Libya and Egypt, not only would it be very hard for the next government to be worse than the current one. Plus it would be a blow to Iran and Hezbollah, and thus would dramatically improve the possibility of real peace and a stable government in Lebanon.

    (Hat tip: Michael Totten)

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »