BRKG ***CONFIRMED... Iran's Qassem Soleimani killed in US airstrike*** (i.e. BUCKLE UP!) - Iran counterattacks

Millwright

Millwright

Knuckle Dragger
_______________
Israel on alert for fallout after US killing of Iran commander

Israel held emergency security talks Friday and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short a foreign visit as the Jewish state braced itself for fallout from the assassination of a top Iranian military commander in a US air strike.


Defence Minister Naftali Bennett chaired a meeting of security chiefs, including the heads of the army, the National Security Council and the Mossad intelligence agency, his office said.


Netanyahu broke off an official visit to Greece and flew home, expressing support for the overnight US strike that killed General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.


“Just as Israel has the right of self-defence, the United States has exactly the same right,” Netanyahu said as he boarded his flight from Athens.


“President (Donald) Trump deserves all the credit for acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively,” he said. “Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defence.”


On the ground, the Israeli army closed Mount Hermon ski resort on the annexed Golan Heights, a disputed territory which borders Syria and Lebanon.


Fighters of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, Israel’s bitter foe with which it fought a devastating war in 2006, are deployed on the other side of the armistice line.


Although an Israeli military source said there were no new troop deployments, tanks and soldiers sealed off access to the Hermon site, while an AFP correspondent also spotted a battery of the Iron Dome missile defence system.


The heightened state of alert came after Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “severe revenge” for Soleimani’s killing, the biggest escalation yet in a feared proxy war between Iran and the US on Iraqi soil.


He was echoed by the leader of Hezbollah.


“Meting out the appropriate punishment to these criminal assassins… will be the responsibility and task of all resistance fighters worldwide,” Hassan Nasrallah said.


Soleimani, head of the Quds Force in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, had long also been in Israel’s sights for his alleged links to attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide.


Among them, Israel’s Haaretz daily said, were the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires and an attack on an Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria in 2012.


– ‘Hezbollah could act from Syria’ –


Yossi Mansharof, an expert on Iran and Shiite militias at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said Hezbollah was unlikely to seek a showdown in Lebanon given the country’s current economic and political crisis.


Hezbollah’s forces in Syria, however, could make a move, he said.


“Hezbollah can act against Israel from the Syrian side,” he told AFP. “They would not dare to drag Lebanon into a military escalation.”


In addition to Hezbollah forces in Syria, the Quds Force and “many, many militias which Soleimani has fostered” are also stationed in the war-torn country, he pointed out.


He said Hezbollah had a worldwide network of operatives, and an attack on American officials, high-ranking military officers or other interests was also possible.


The powerful organisation has boasted in the past that it “can target New York and Washington”, Mansharof said.


In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which rules the territory condemned Soleimani’s killing but did not make any overt threat.


“Hamas sends its condolences to the Iranian leadership and people,” it said in a statement. “Hamas condemns this American crime which raises tension in the region.”


The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the Baghdad strike called for “a coordinated, comprehensive and continuous response from resistance forces” against “American and Zionist interests”.

www.breitbart.com

Israel on alert for fallout after US killing of Iran commander - Breitbart

Jerusalem (AFP) – Israel held emergency security talks Friday and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short a foreign visit as the Jewish state
www.breitbart.com www.breitbart.com
 
TammyinWI

TammyinWI

Talk is cheap
WalknTrot said:
Well, the next few weeks should put an end to the long running controversy over whether there are sleeper cells embedded here in the States. Either they will act, or they never existed.
Click to expand...

I firmly believe that they are here, but, when will they get the "go signal?" This has been a long time in the making.

They practice patience as part of their brainwashing. I personally have a strong, strong inclination that it is going to be summer in Wisconsin when the other shoe drops...and everything will implode quickly...bing, bang, boom.

But as for the timing, who knows, please stay alert, watch you six...i hope that the boogaloo and related activities will not be in the winter.
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
Legal basis for US killing of Iran general depends on threat
By BEN FOX31 minutes ago
​

WASHINGTON (AP) — Did President Donald Trump have the legal authority to order the killing of a top Iranian general in Iraq?

The short answer: Probably.

But it depends on facts that aren’t publicly known yet. And legal experts are quick to point out that even if it was legal that doesn’t make it the right decision, or one that will be politically smart in the long run. Iran and its allies are vowing revenge.

In its limited explanation so far, the Pentagon said Gen. Qassem Soleimani was “actively developing” plans to kill American diplomats and service members when he was killed in a U.S. drone strike Friday near the Baghdad airport shortly after arriving in the country.



That would appear to place the action within the legal authority of the president, as commander in chief, to use force in defense of the nation under Article II of the Constitution, said Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who specializes in national security issues.

“If the facts are as the Defense Department said, then the president relatively clearly has Article II authority to act in self-defense of American lives,” Chesney said.

That justification would apply even if Soleimani hadn’t already launched an attack under the established doctrine of “anticipatory” self-defense, according to Jeff Addicot, a retired Army officer and expert in national security law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio.

“Legally there’s no issue,” Addicot said. “Politically, however, it’s going to be debated, whether it’s the correct response. In my opinion it’s the appropriate response, but it’s certainly legal.”

Self-defense would be a legal justification under both U.S. law and the laws of international armed conflict, though the experts consulted by The Associated Press repeatedly stressed that this would depend on what intelligence prompted the killing, and American authorities may never release that information.

“Under international law, self-defense, to be lawful, will need to be invoked in situations where there is an imminent attack against the interest of the territory, in this case of the United States,” said Agnès Callamard, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. “At this point in time, the United States has not thus far provided any information suggesting that there was an imminent attack against the American interest.”

There are separate but related legal questions about other aspects of the attack that Iran state TV said killed a total of 10 people, including a deputy commander, five Revolutionary Guard members and Soleimani’s son-in-law. Among them: Was this a legitimate military target? Yes, since the general was a military and not a civilian figure, according to experts.









Callamard said the deaths of civilians makes this potentially an “arbitrary killing” under international human rights law. But U.S. experts said so-called collateral deaths have long been an unfortunate fact of war and whether this would amount to a war crime would depend on factors such as how many of the people killed could be considered legitimate targets in a conflict.

Democratic leaders of Congress have complained that they weren’t notified of the strike in advance. Chesney said the administration could likely argue that it has legal authority to protect the troops in the Middle East who were dispatched there under congressional authorizations passed in 2001 and 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

That argument, however, starts to get shakier if the killing of Soleimani escalates into a wider conflict, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who specializes in national security law and the prosecution of war crimes.

“Even though the Executive Branch has pursued ever-broader theories of the President’s unilateral power to use force in self-defense, one of the critical considerations in each case has been whether the force comes with a risk of escalation,” Vladeck said by email. ”Where, as here, there is no question that it does, the argument that the President needed clearer buy-in from the legislature is much, much stronger.”

The question of what happens next if and when Iran retaliates becomes more of a policy question than a legal one.

“Of course, whether this was an effective use of that authority from that point of view is to be determined in the days and weeks ahead,” said Chesney

apnews.com

Legal basis for US killing of Iran general depends on threat

WASHINGTON (AP) — Did President Donald Trump have the legal authority to order the killing of a top Iranian general in Iraq?
apnews.com apnews.com
Posted for fair use
 
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TammyinWI

TammyinWI

Talk is cheap
auxman said:
Shall we start with the NYT?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1213127582566117376
View: https://twitter.com/NewBookofDaniel/status/1213127582566117376
Click to expand...

Had to copy this over...very interesting indeedy.

Daniel Bobinski
  • Copy link to Tweet
  • Embed Tweet

A friend of mine asked a great question: Did the NYTimes know in advance AND attempt to tip off Qassem Soleimani of the incoming missile strike?pic.twitter.com/qBmck47OVO
ENXlGkNUYAUzCHn.jpg

7:58 AM - 3 Jan 2020
 
M

mecoastie

Veteran Member
Ractivist said:
That was a foolish statement and did change the tenor of our dear dear leader. He has a history of such manlyness.
We can hope to come out on top, but, the risks are great. If the muslim menace decides to unite against their common enemy here on conus.......no telling how this ends up. Depends if they are united with a kill plan. If so one can bet it is the power grid, easiest targets. It takes little more than a couple dozen teams with AK's, working strategically to put the lights out. Let me count the ways......if they ever wanted a reason, this is it. Shades of ww1.
Click to expand...
TammyinWI said:
I firmly believe that they are here, but, when will they get the "go signal?" This has been a long time in the making.

They practice patience as part of their brainwashing. I personally have a strong, strong inclination that it is going to be summer in Wisconsin when the other shoe drops...and everything will implode quickly...bing, bang, boom.

But as for the timing, who knows, please stay alert, watch you six...i hope that the boogaloo and related activities will not be in the winter.
Click to expand...

If it was me I would pop the grid in the winter. Right when a long hard cold snap starts. Keep it down for a week and you would create havoc.
 
Heliobas Disciple

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
auxman said:
Shall we start with the NYT?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1213127582566117376
View: https://twitter.com/NewBookofDaniel/status/1213127582566117376
Click to expand...


ENXlGkNUYAUzCHn.jpg large.jpg

Here's the article, printed on the 2nd. The missile attack was on the 2nd, even if this was published after the fact (which is doubtful as it was in the evening here), it had to have been written before the attack to be ready to go to print. hmmmm



Hypersonic Missiles Are a Game Changer
No existing defenses can stop such weapons — which is why everyone wants them.
By Steven Simon
Mr. Simon is an analyst at the Quincy Institute and teaches international relations at Colby College.
Jan 2, 2020

Last week, President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced the deployment of the Avangard, among the first in a new class of missiles capable of reaching hypersonic velocity — something no missile can currently achieve, aside from an ICBM during re-entry.

Such weapons have long been an object of desire by Russian, Chinese and American military leaders, for obvious reasons: Launched from any of these countries, they could reach any other within minutes. No existing defenses, in the United States or elsewhere, can intercept a missile that can move so fast while maneuvering unpredictably.

Whether or not the Avangard can do what Mr. Putin says, the United States is rushing to match it. We could soon find ourselves in a new arms race as deadly as the Cold War — and at a time when the world’s arms control efforts look like relics of an inscrutable past and the effort to renew the most important of them, a new START agreement, is foundering.
Hypersonics represent an apotheosis of sorts for many warfare theorists and practitioners, who have long contended that air power alone can have a decisive effect in a conflict. They have always been wrong. The allies lost about 100,000 aircrew members in an attempt to destroy German industry and the popular will to fight during World War II, but the war in Europe was won with boots on the ground.

In Asia, the war was won at sea, though surrender was purchased with atomic weapons, delivered by long-range bombers. This seemed to vindicate the role of air power, at least until the superpowers concluded that such destructive weapons could not really be used to fight a war. Their primary strategic role devolved to deterring the other side from using its nuclear bombs in a vast, self-canceling enterprise. If strategic air forces did come into play, it would only be to ensure mutual destruction.

Hypersonic weapons, at long last, appear poised to fulfill the promise of air power. In an era when the use of ground troops has proved costly, unpopular and generally ineffective, and where threats might be real but not necessarily “strategic,” they are a godsend: missiles whose accuracy minimizes the risk of collateral damage, that pose no risk to aircrews, are unstoppable and phenomenally accurate, can yield an impact equal to five to ten tons of high explosive with no warhead at all yet be capable of delivering a nuclear bomb, and can reach nearly every coordinate on the surface of the earth within 30 minutes. Death from the air, guaranteed on-time delivery.

The United States has been developing its own hypersonic program, under the project name Prompt Global Strike. But the Russians got there first because they’ve made hypersonics a priority: They offset Russia’s inability to sustain an expansive high-tech military infrastructure, and they represent a direct response to Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Mr. Trump withdrew presumably so America could develop stronger defenses against a nuclear attack; with the Avangard in its arsenal, Russia doesn’t have to worry too much about penetrating whatever defenses the American military had in mind.

It gets worse. China, India, France and others are all developing similar weapons. The age of hypersonics, when even medium-size powers can deliver unstoppable damage on an American (or Russian, or Chinese) city, is a whole new game.

For starters, hypersonics change the way we think about crisis management. Suppose the United States detected an adversary’s launch of a missile — or mistakenly thought it had detected a launch, as American authorities had actually done in January 2018. At a moment like this, the stakes are high, and the time frame for decision making is extremely compressed. Throw in exhaustion, intense emotions and uncertainty about the other side’s intentions, and you have a seriously volatile situation.

If the contending parties are armed with hypersonic missiles, the time frame for deciding what to do is even shorter, and the uncertainty about what your enemy is targeting and the nature of an incoming warhead — is it nuclear or conventional? — is virtually total. In such a situation, the overwhelming incentive is to shoot first. Think of two gunslingers in a dark room.

Moreover, hypersonics are a weaponized moral hazard for states with a taste for intervention, because they erase barriers to picking fights. Is an adversary building something that might be a weapons factory? Is there an individual in an unfriendly country who cannot be apprehended? What if the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Qassim Suleimani, visits Baghdad for a meeting and you know the address? The temptations to use hypersonic missiles will be many.

Hypersonics also push us toward a slippery slope. They blur the line between conventional and strategic weapons, and their easy, justifiable use — say, to kill a single terrorist leader in a crowded city — could make it easier to accept their widespread use, with much more destructive consequences.

Hypersonics might look like just a zoomier version of existing weapons, but in fact they are game-changing. When the United States used nuclear weapons against Japan, they were thought to be a dramatic advance on bombs already in use, even those used to generate firestorms that had already devoured the cities of Germany and Japan. It was not until later that they were understood to be categorically different and ultimately too destructive to use.

If past is prologue, deployment of the systems is going to take place well before their ramifications are fully understood. By 1950, as the Chinese Army was overrunning American and South Korean forces, the Truman administration had already grasped the dilemmas intrinsic to nuclear weapons; the Soviet detonation of a hydrogen bomb a few years later drove the lesson home. But between the exuberance of acquiring a new military capability and the sobering realization of its dangers, there is plenty of opportunity to use them.

As someone who worked on counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff, I feel my pulse racing just to consider these possibilities. I’ve been in too many situations where I know hypersonics would have been compellingly presented as the best possible response. The allure of such a weapon would be nearly irresistible.

The biggest threat from hypersonics is that they come at a time when the world’s arm control treaties are falling apart. We need a multilateral agreement to limit hypersonic arsenals and their use, but unfortunately, the United States, which would have to take the lead in orchestrating the negotiation of such an agreement, is uninterested in any deals that might tie its hands.

President Trump, who declared that trade wars are easy to win, has also welcomed an arms race on the grounds that the United States would beat all comers. Congress has only rarely approved arms control treaties — and with the Senate in Republican hands, it seems scarcely likely that an agreement limiting hypersonic weapons would find favor.

Beyond American politics, the multilateral nature of an agreement would in itself impose obstacles, because of the number of countries that would need to be involved and the frictions between them. Such agreements have been hammered out in the relatively recent past, including the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Missile Technology Control Regime, which imposed both range and payload limitations on a variety of missiles. But those already seem part of a different era, when the world agreed on the importance of investing in arms control.

For the time being, it’s more likely that with the Avangard’s debut, other countries will want this capability for themselves. As national programs gain momentum, the development, acquisition, fielding and, ultimately, use of these systems will become very difficult, if not impossible, to stop.

As at the dawn of the nuclear era, when the advent of nuclear weapons became intertwined with an emerging Cold War, a new and radical development in military technology is emerging just as post-Cold War realities give way to new ones. We need to channel the wisdom of the prudent arms controllers of the Cold War, who understood the urgent need to control weapons with terrifying implications.

Steven Simon is an analyst at the Quincy Institute, professor of the practice of international relations at Colby College and a co-author of “Our Separate Ways: The Struggle for the Future of the U.S.-Israel Alliance,” was senior director for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council from 2011 to 2012 and for counterterrorism from 1995 to 1999.

Correction: Jan. 2, 2020
An earlier version of this article misidentified the treaty from which Donald Trump withdrew the United States. It was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, not the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
 
bw

bw

Fringe Ranger
Heliobas Disciple said:
Here's the article, printed on the 2nd. The missile attack was on the 2nd, even if this was published after the fact (which is doubtful as it was in the evening here), it had to have been written before the attack to be ready to go to print.
Click to expand...

The article is talking about risks to foreign adversaries. The fact that we took out one mentioned doesn't constitute a warning, it's just the nature of warfare now.
 
S

Squid

Veteran Member
I doubt that Iran would risk losing it’s Air assets by attacks against US directly, attacking Kurds and US is different world.

Russia’s response to me sounds muted and calculated to appear to side with local ‘allies’ while not getting confrontational with US.

Would expect harsher tone from Chinese when they get around to lambasting Trump while trying to walk tight-rope of not antagonizing US ‘customers’ Their timetable for war with US regionally to consolidate power is still maybe 2-5 years out at the shortest.
 
S

summerthyme

Administrator
_______________
bw said:
The article is talking about risks to foreign adversaries. The fact that we took out one mentioned doesn't constitute a warning, it's just the nature of warfare now.
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If it were just a generic article, I'd agree. However, it specifically named Soleimani, AND it pinpointed the exact way and place we took him out. Someone had advance knowledge... And absolutely no concept of OPSEC.

Summerthyme
 
S

Squid

Veteran Member
There was a really long anti US and anti Trump post from I think that guy that makes sausage, but fell asleep reading it before I got through the second paragraph.
;)
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
@IntelDoge
·
2m

Commander of Iran Quds Force stating people need to be patient and "wait to see the dead bodies of Americans all around the Middle East .
 
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jward

jward

passin' thru
Earlier analysis of the most likely responses available to Iran...
The regime could hit back directly with missile attacks on US targets - highly unlikely as this would guarantee US strikes on their own soil - or via proxy forces in the region.

One tactic could be increased attacks against international shipping in the Gulf - a vital transit point for global oil. Another could be cyber attacks, potentially even directly on the US.

Tehran could also commit further breaches of an embattled nuclear deal with global powers. The United States is no longer a party but Britain, France and other powers still see the pact as the only way to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state
 
R

raven

TB Fanatic
summerthyme said:
If it were just a generic article, I'd agree. However, it specifically named Soleimani, AND it pinpointed the exact way and place we took him out. Someone had advance knowledge... And absolutely no concept of OPSEC.

Summerthyme
Click to expand...
yea, but I don't think he will be getting his bonus check from the Ayatollah cause it was too little, too late
 
wvstuck

wvstuck

Only worry about what you can control!
There are too many options to even think them out, check your supplies, make sure you have both eyes open.
 
Tristan

Tristan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
summerthyme said:
If it were just a generic article, I'd agree. However, it specifically named Soleimani, AND it pinpointed the exact way and place we took him out. Someone had advance knowledge... And absolutely no concept of OPSEC.

Summerthyme
Click to expand...

Or, they were purposefully trying to break OPSEC.
 
T

The Traveler

Veteran Member
EMICT said:
I would like to know the hour that the article was written and published by Mr. Simon.
Click to expand...
Me too. I went to the NYT and read the article. If this was written before the strike, this writer should be arrested by either US Marshals or US Army MP's and sent to Gitmo post haste.
ETA, the article does say the former head of the Islamic Republican Guard, so maybe after the strike.
 
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Millwright

Millwright

Knuckle Dragger
_______________
Where did he get the info?

THAT'S the big question.

Might have something to do with all those Obama holdovers that just got $#itcanned.
 
Lilbitsnana

Lilbitsnana

On TB every waking moment
Idrees Ali ‏Verified account @idreesali114 4m4 minutes ago



U.S. Defense Secretary Esper cancels plans to take personal leave later this month amid tensions with Iran, U.S. officials tell Reuters.
 
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