The Fog of War?
Media Miasma
We often talk about the "fog of war". The fog really comes from the media. It is an unhealthy fog. A miasma.
In any war it is hard to know what's going on exactly. Each side will minimize its losses and exaggerate its successes.
All official announcements must always be taken with a grain of salt -- sometimes a shaker full .
This is the case with Iran's strike on Israel.
The IRGC said that 90% of its missiles penetrated Israeli defenses. The Israelis said they shut down "most" of the incoming missiles-- and said there were no casualties, meaning, one supposes, no civilian casualties.
So what really happened?
No one really knows.
Simplicius or Complexius?
Which drives a lot of people to the social media--including Twitter – sorry – “X” —and information sources such as the hugely popular Simplicius the Thinker.
This is what Simplicius wrote about the Iranian strike in his article : Operation True Promise 2: Iran Strikes Again as Missile Barrage Overwhelms Israeli Defenses.
In truth, Iran openly admitted notifying the US—and thereby Israel—of the strikes in advance, which gave Israel forewarning to take all their F-35s to the sky. This is standard procedure for high value assets like that before any strike, regularly carried out by both Ukraine and Russia in the SMO.
There are allegedly reports that Israel did in fact take its F-35 fleet to the skies as evidenced by a fleet of refueling tankers that were airborne, which suggests the F-35s were kept aloft throughout the duration of the attack:
Ummm….!!!
I encourage you to read Simplicius — but carefully…
No, Iran did NOT notify the US and Israel in advance -- that was last time.
The Iranians say they didn’t. The Israelis say they didn’t. The US say they didn’t .
Note that Simplicius says there are "allegedly reports" of a fleet of refueling tankers airborne! So, maybe there was a fleet, maybe there wasn’t. Maybe there was just one tanker, maybe not.
What we have here is gossip.
To be fair, Simplicius it is not actually an analyst – I am not sure he is even really one person--perhaps a group of people collecting reports from various sources, with a single editor, a writer to try to patch things together in narrative form.
In any case, the Thinker site does not analyze — it aggregates, providing a sometimes marvelous range of information, which can be extraordinarily useful, if you know how to parse it, and how to separate rumor from conjecture and speculation—and take the time to confirm and verify.
It's a kind of information supermarket. You have to pick and choose. And read the labels.
However, Simplicius. in this case. also qualifies his earlier remarks--sorta -- writing …
So, we don’t yet know if any real damage was done, but the one take away that we’re again able to make is that Iran is at least capable of penetrating all Western air defense nets. That is because the US openly announced their attempt to interdict the strikes as much as possible, in futility—as reported by the official US Naval Institute.
I guess he didn’t see the picture of the crater.
"In futility" ?
An “overwhelming” strike …but “futile”? Maybe I am reading this wrong. After all, I am dyslexic!
In any case, that is NOT what the US said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two U.S. guided-missile destroyers destroyed a handful of Iranian missiles using a combination of weapons, including the Standard Missile 3, a U.S. official confirmed to USNI News on Wednesday.
USS Bulkeley (DDG-84) and USS Cole (DDG-67) fired about a dozen interceptors at Iranian missiles fired at Israel, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Am I nitpicking? Of course. I am analyst, that’s what we do. Nits, nits, nits…. little bugs hidden in the hair.
Let’s just say there is a big difference between “futile” -- and “minimally successful”, which would be a more accurate characterization of the US efforts at air defense.
In his article, Simplicius also has a lot of photographic and video footage culled from the social media. Which, for me, was as confusing as just surfing X to figure out things. The fog of war becomes the fog of social media. Granted, I am easily confused.
As I said, the“Thinker” is an aggregator —not an analyst like, say, Mercouris or Brian Berletic or Alastair Crooke or Larry Johnson and others.
That is not to say that Simplicius does not provide a vital service-- but one should be very careful about accepting what he says as the final truth about anything. If you are looking for the truth about events, start with him for an overview of reports and speculations and ask questions, look for contradictions, and errors. You don’t have to accept his judgements, anymore than you accept mine.
There is always something to eat in a supermarket. But it is you who choose. It is you who must think about it.
I make loads of mistakes. I have been stung a lot by accepting speculations and conjecture as fact . I get things wrong all the time. I'm hardly one to criticize anybody. Nobody gets things right all the time. So…question, question, question.
The media is a jungle.
In my case, I am fortunate to have commenters to call me out when I screw up-- so I learn from my community— which helps me compensate for my somewhat limited abilities.
Some stuff on True Promise 2
Analysts look for anomalies and contradictions. And there seemed to be a lot in Iran’s True Promise 2.
Why so few casualties for example? The strike was “overwhelming” right?
One should remember that Iran was striking at military facilities-- which accounts for the lack of civilian casualties. In such cases, as in the Ukraine, civilian casualties are mostly caused by shrapnel from interceptor missiles.
Israel doesn’t like discussion of talk its military casualties-- which it likes to pretend don't exist-- despite evidence that it has lost a lot more of its men than it wants to admit.
Did it lose a couple of F 35's? The F35 is hard to maintain, and has a low level of operational readiness anyway….. No big deal.
These inordinately expensive air aircraft would be dispersed and protected with lots of reinforced concrete They might've lost one or two – but probably not a lot to Iranian missiles. In the long term it might save them money.
The Russians, targeted Ukrainian bases housing a variety of aircraft used to launch cruise missiles -- and managed to kill just a few attack aircraft —using the best attack kit in the world —and those Storm Shadows kept on coming.
And the Russians had /have complete air superiority.
All good fun for video gamers.
As I wrote earlier, this Iranian strike was more of a symbolic event to show that Israeli and US air defenses could not defend defend against a major attack if the war escalated further--which the Iranians say they don't want . They did just enough damage to make a point.
Next time, they promise to hit infrastructure. And they said hey hadn’t used their best weapons.
If the Israelis respond they can expect twice as many missiles, with heavier payloads, better targeting and maneuverable warheads.
Will Netanyahu get the message?
When has he ever? He’s a yahoo.
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I am very pleased to see polite disagreements between people like Julian, Simplicius, Big Serge, Andrei Martyanov (who, if I remember rightly, once made a mistake very long ago!), John Helmer, the Duran, etc. That is the best way of getting at the truth - as long as the debate is civil, orderly, and sensible. We should all be ready to admit and acknowledge our mistakes, and to weigh the facts and our opinions against those of others. Let discussion thrive!
I like simplicius. He does a great job with Ukraine war imo. But when it comes to the mideast i seem to find him 50/50. Don't seem like he does a thorough analysis of the mideast as he does Ukraine.