According to the IDF, "50 Iranian targets" in Syria were hit. Five Syrian SA-22 (Pantsir S1) systems were also struck due to the fact that these systems targeted the Israeli planes, or so the IDF stated. This claim is, however, dubious given that the SA-22 is chiefly designed to target low flying aircraft and, more specifically, cruise and other missiles that fly at extremely low altitude. It was these systems, in conjunction with older Soviet-era Syrian air defense systems - updated in recent years by the Russian military - that shot down about 70% of the cruise missiles fired at Syria last month by the US, UK and French militaries.
Learning from a previous attack that resulted in at least one Israeli jet being shot down, last night's attack involved the use of mostly air-to-surface missiles fired from high altitude, well beyond the range of the SA-22 and other Syrian systems. So it's unlikely that Israeli jets fired on these positions in response to any 'barrage' from Syria. It is much more likely that these targets were pre-defined by Israel, largely via satellite imagery.
An IDF graphic showing the "Iranian" targets allegedly struck by the Israeli attack on Syria.
Notice in the video above that one individual runs towards the SA 22 and appears to enter it while several others stand to the left, suggesting that the system was not 'active' at the time. Compared to last month's 100+ cruise missile attack by the US, UK and France which was clearly signaled days in advance, Thursday night's attack by Israel was a relative surprise and for that reason, likely met with more success than the cruise missile attack. Nevertheless, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, "Syrian air-defense systems shot down more than half of the rockets".
Syrian/Russian air defense missiles rise into the sky to counter Israeli missiles
Israel's plausible 'moral' justification to attack "Iranian military targets" in Syria is a useful ruse to attempt to achieve the real goal: the defeat of the Syrian army and removal of Assad, which also remains (at least in some 'deeper' departments of the US establishment) the primary goal of US foreign policy in Syria.
It is a testimony to the complexity (not to mention the distastefulness) of the 'great game' of global geopolitical 'chess' being played out across the globe by the 'great powers' that, one day before Israel attacked Russian/Syrian air defenses in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was President Putin's VIP visitor at the Russian Victory Day parades.
'Is that an Iranian plane?' Israeli PM Netanyahu during his attendance at the Victory Day parade in Moscow
Even before he was president, Trump made it clear that he thought the Iran deal was "bad". Being a businessman and focused on "making America great again", it seems reasonable to conclude that his viewpoint was from a business perspective. The Iran deal eased sanctions on Iran for non US companies and citizens only. As a result, most of the increase in trade in the almost 3 years since the deal was signed has been between Iran and European, Chinese and Russian businesses. European imports and exports with Iran are almost back to pre-sanction levels and there is a lot of investment potential there.
But that's not the whole story. Obviously there is significant Israeli influence on Trump, as there has been on US presidents going back a long time, and Israel is very concerned about growing Iranian influence in Syria because it poses a direct threat to Israel's disproportionately powerful position in the Middle East. The same goes for Saudi Arabia. These problems have everything to do with Russian intervention in Syria in October 2015. The Iran deal was signed in July 2015, at a time when the Syrian government was expected to fall, dealing a significant blow to the so-called "Shia crescent" from Lebanon to Iran and therefore Iran's ability to expand its influence. But since the Russian intervention, that situation has been completely turned around, Iran has been empowered in the region, not to mention the powerful role Russia is now playing there.
So what we seem to be looking at here is an alignment of Trump's "show me the money!" foreign policy model and Israel's policy of 'containing' Iran at all costs. The fact that John Bolton - an inveterate war hawk and believer in American exceptionalism and the US' manifest destiny - has just become Trump's national security advisor merely adds fuel to the fire.
But despite the continuing "WW3!" scaremongering from the mainstream media and, I'm sorry to say, much of the 'alternative press', it's unlikely that events will escalate into a major military conflict between nuclear-armed nations. There will likely be more Israeli strikes on Syria as both the US and Israel (and Saudi Arabia) pursue their regime change goals in Syria by other means, but the new emerging powers in the Middle East need only respond by protecting their vital interests and judiciously allowing that new reality to emerge naturally.
The triumvirate of the US 'deep state', Israel and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, are facing an 'existential' struggle to retain their increasingly tenuous domineering position in the region. The real problem for them is that they really aren't fighting against any nation state or ideology (despite what they claim) but rather the reality of a new natural order manifesting itself across the globe. And people who try to wage a war against an emerging natural order, or reality itself, are always going to (eventually) lose.
Reader Comments
Despite wish of western oligarchs, things ain't gonna 20 years back.
Like this stuff about 6 millions and holocaust. BTW. For what 15 years ago were folx in EU prosecuted (holocaust stuff) is today on wikipedia.
[Link]
[Link] Wikipedia: Soviet civilian deaths 12.5 - 19 million, European Jewish deaths 4.8 - 5.9 million
[Link] National WWII museum: Soviet civilian deaths 13.3 - 15.2 million
[Link] Second World War history: Soviet civilian deaths 13.2 million, European Jewish death 5.9 million
seems to me Russia is more entitled to talk about anti-Russian sentiment, then Israel is to talk about anti-semitism.
The PTB talk about Holocaust denial, while they deny the price Russia paid.
It is still too many people no matter what their religon, culture, or beliefs.
so perhaps Trump just wants to bluster his way into a good trade deal for the USA, as a businessman of course.
Keep your friends closer, but keep your enemies even closer?
It's gonna be terrifying!
It's gonna be WAR!
Oh wait, it's some words about 'easing tensions'...
[Link]
Israel is trying to create the impression of Iranian aggression to pressure the Euros to back out of the Iran Deal.
Russia's likely response to losing 30 or so
IranianSyrianair defence systems?Send replacements.
What if it was you, your spouse, or your child?
Would you give your life, because some clown considers it "an acceptable loss"?
Shalom
We'll be fighting in the streets/With our children at our feet/And the morals that they worship will be gone/And the men who spurred us on/Sit in judgement of all wrong/They decide and the shotgun sings the song...There's nothing in the streets/Looks any different to me/And the slogans are replaced, bye the bye/And a parting on the left/Is now a parting on the right...I'll tip my hat to the new constitution/Take a bow for the new revolution/Smile and grin at the change all around/Pick up my guitar and play/Just like yesteday/Then I'll get on my knees and pray/We don't get fooled again/Don't get fooled again/No, No!/
Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss
"Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who
"The sky is glass. The sea is brown. And everyone is upside down".
Under such circumstances, where would I be without my Bucket T.T. Bucket T. Bucket. T? LOL....[Link]
A good article as usual. However, your confidence: "But despite the continuing "WW3!" scaremongering from the mainstream media and, I'm sorry to say, much of the 'alternative press', it's unlikely that events will escalate into a major military conflict between nuclear-armed nations." may be misplaced.
You are quite correct that no sane person would want a nuclear war between Russia and the West. However, not everyone in positions of power is entirely sane. You should get a copy and read "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman, about how WWI got started. There were only a small handful - about 3-5 people in each country - Russia, Britain, Germany, France, and Austria - who wanted a war to reset the balance of military power and economic might between the European nations. Everyone else was dead set against a war, yet it happened - by accident, more or less, for most people, but by design for the handful.
John F. Kennedy was so impressed with the book that he inscribed a copy and sent it as a present to Harold MacMillan, your Prime Minister. After the Cuban Missile Crisis he recognized how close the world had come to a nuclear war - avoided literally by minutes on several occasions during that event, during which once again there had been a small group of war-hawks trying to push JFK into starting it - and he instituted a secret channel of communication with Krushchev via his brother Bobby and the Washington bureau of the KGB. This treason was the final straw for the MIC that got him killed, and later his brother Bobby also.
The point is that there ARE insane people in positions of power, who can be resisted by sane people like Putin, Shoigu, Lavrov, and their counterparts in the US whose names we do not know. But when you have an insane President, and insane people running the MSM propaganda machine, and more insane people among the Neocons who infest 95% of the think tanks in Washington, and infest the State Department and CIA, and insane Zionists like the Israelis who think they are protected as God's Chosen People, and millions of insane Fundamentalist Christians hoping for Armageddon so they can be Raptured into Heaven to sit in the lap of Jesus, the preponderance of influence is on the side of the insane ones.
For this reason, just like 1914, it is entirely possible that a nuclear WWIII could get started, probably as a conventional conflict, which would quickly go nuclear when one side or the other started to lose.
You SOTT editors seem to be living in a world of Alice in Wonderland or Gone With The Wind or Wizard of Oz optimism, in which everyone makes it back home to Kansas and the Wicked Witch Of The West melts in the rain. I certainly hope I am totally wrong about this, and I appreciate that alarmism sells newspapers and advertising on YouTube, making a shitload of money for the fearmongers, but I think your blissful optimism is misguided. In six years, when the entire Russian administration will change, perhaps to be replaced by less cautious people, who knows what catastrophic accidents may result? One can only hope that the USA in the meantime goes bankrupt, or some other event occurs which makes the insane ones less confident that they would survive a nuclear war or be raptured into the lap of Jesus. Anything can happen - our ancient Alien observers might reveal themselves, a pandemic could wipe out billions, we do not know, and those events would certainly be a wake up call for the crazies among us.
However, you do not know the astonishing weapons that have been and are being developed on both sides, weapons which make everything we know obsolete, and this is extraordinarily dangerous, as each side may calculate that it is possible to win a war with their new and amazing toys. This is probably the greatest danger of all, which we cannot assess and cannot predict, since all of it is so secret.
Thank you for reading this comment. - LG
As for us having "alice in wonderland" optimism, I can assure you we are not optimistic, but we are realistic, and disinclined to freak out at the words of the press or politicians. As always, we look 'behind the headlines' and we haven't gone far wrong yet.
In fact, since I wrote the article above, most of the main points and inferences I made have been confirmed by various 'high level' sources and reported in the media.
And HFL is correct, I've never had a British Prime Minister.
But yes, on the geopolitical plane, viewed in isolation , "the Wicked Witch Of The West is melting in the rain." There are other planes to take into account though - cosmic ('Grand Solar Minimum', aka Ice Age), biological (epidemics, up to and including mass death, globally, from the return of the 'Black Death'), social (the changes are causing large numbers of people to 'lose it' globally, and not just Westerners)...
So don't you worry; I still forecast PLENTY OF DEATH! It's just that nukes won't be the delivery agents. As you can hopefully tell from my previous paragraph, you're misguided if you think we're blissfully optimistic that all's gonna be 'fine'. Indeed, but the nature of our globalized, interconnected, mediatized world means that it has to be covert. So a one-off, plausibly deniable 'dirty nuke' is far more likely than launching nuke-tipped ICBMs. It's all about how to hit your opponent asymmetrically. Stay tuned for some kind of attempt at biological warfare, a la 'ethnic-specific weapons'.
Harold MacMillan is Joe's Prime Minister???
WIBF.
LOL.
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. Please, if you are not familiar with the story, Google the name "Vassily Arkopov." During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was aboard a Russian nuclear submarine which was monitoring the goings-on on the surface around Cuba. The sub was detected by an American destroyer, which began dropping depth charges. The sub had no communication with Moscow, and for all they knew, a war was in progress. Arkopov was one of three men on board the sub who all had to input their codes to fire its nuclear torpedoes and/or nuclear missiles. The other two wanted to fire, but Arkopov refused adamantly to launch the missiles. One man - ONE MAN - averted a nuclear war. He was later awarded every one of the highest decorations of the Soviet Union, for having saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
This was only one of several such close calls, not only then but at other times. There was the event of 1983, during which NATO was conducting an immense war game in the Baltic, which made the Russians very nervous as it would be the perfect pretext to launch a real strike, so they had their nuclear forces on high alert. A computer chip in their early warning system malfunctioned, and again, one man - ONE MAN - whose name I do not know, but it is out there in the record, had FIVE MINUTES to warn Moscow to launch a counter-strike. Two minutes passed, then three, and his radar still said the missiles were incoming. He did not pick up the phone and call Moscow. After five minutes, it was clear there were no missiles - it was a computer malfunction. Had he been less cool and more excitable, Russia would have launched a massive strike by mistake.
And the same thing has happened on the US side. Fortunately, in every case the people involved have been reluctant to take the irrevocable step of calling for a wholesale launch, and we have dodged the bullets every time. However, consider the case of the USS Vincennes, which in about 1981 detected an Iranian plane taking off from Bandar Abbas with its transponder switched off, and some gung-ho sailor excitedly launched a missile, which shot down an Iranian passenger plane with some 280 people on board, all of whom perished. There is an actual videotape of the bridge of the Vincennes during this incident, and there is a lot of joyous celebration, happy shouted congratulations and high-fives, after they had just killed 280 men, women and children.
Who is to say, in this day and age, with Americans becoming more and more violent, and the educational system getting worse and worse, and the MSM propaganda getting more and more extreme, that some moron with his finger on the nuclear button (so to speak - it requires two men to insert and turn their keys simultaneously from a distance apart which prevents one person from doing so,) might not get over excited and launch a strike. Video war games have become so pervasive that "war" for the younger generation has become pure make-believe, far divorced from the blood, severed limbs, spilled guts, screams, and gore of the reality of war. The media does not help - it carefully shields the public from the sight of that gory reality, but you can find it up on the Web if you look - I have even seen live beheadings by ISIS, not staged by Israel or the UK for propaganda purposes - but very few people want to see those things. Our lives are far too comfortable and we do not want them disturbed.
Then you have the weapons I mentioned. Nikola Tesla lived in America, and all his papers were seized by the FBI when he died. Also, America was the place where the first atom bomb was detonated, which attracted the attention of ETs, many of whose craft were shot down in the US, and whose technology was partly reverse-engineered, and partly given to the US by the ETs. Since the 1950s, the US has had antigravity craft, scalar weapons, time travel, interdimensional travel, and so on. This is not bullshit - it is true. None of this is known to the President or the Congress or even to the highest people in the military. It is kept exceedingly secret by the MIC corporations who have developed the technologies, because releasing it would destroy the entire fossil fuel energy system which runs the entire world and makes trillions of profits for those corporations every year.
On the Russian side, the Russians are making huge strides in electromagnetic weapons which can disable guidance and communications systems in the best Western weapons and planes. They have revealed some of their technology, but a lot remains secret from the West.
Joel Skousen, who is extremely well connected, posits that the MIC agenda is to get sanctions applied more and more severely on Russia, and to harass them more and more, to provoke them to make the first strike. America will be destroyed by the Russian strike, he says, but then the MIC will unveil their wonder-weapons and totally destroy Russia, leaving the corporations free to plunder its immense resources. (I guess they have not asked the question, who will need and buy all those resources when 90% of the world's population is dead, and the planet becomes radioactive for the next 25,000 years. (Inconvenient question which has not occurred to the psychopaths.)
This tactic of getting the other side to strike first is an American specialty. Sanctions on Japan is how Roosevelt got the Japanese to hit Pearl Harbor, because Hitler would not rise to his baiting, a blockade of Southern ports was how the North got the South to fire on Fort Sumter and start the Civil War, the Maine in Havana Harbor (false flag) was how they got into the war to seize the Spanish possessions in the Americas and the Pacific, and when the other side did NOT rise to the bait, they simply made the whole thing up, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident which began the war in Vietnam. Making it all up seems to be the common theme these days - the Skripal poisoning, The Ghouta chemical attack, the Iranian missiles on the Golan, and so on. Who is to say whether the crazies in Washington would not shoot down one of their own planes or sink one of their own ships, (like the Maine,) and claim the Russians (or the Iranians, or the Syrians, which would eventually suck Russia into it,) did so?
You really believe, with a bombastic bully in the White house, crooked as a dog's hind leg, totally corrupt, and beholden to those who finance him and those who hold the evidence of his homosexual tendencies, and a man suffering from pre-Alzheimer's dementia, would not do such a thing? You believe because you and me and 95% of the public is (relatively) sane that we are safe from the crazies in power?
Joel Skousen tells a story of being at a White House dinner with G.W. Bush, and he was seated next to the Secretary of State. (He did not say if it was Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell.) David Rockefeller (your equivalent would be Evelyn Rothschild) crashed the party without an invitation - just walked into the White House - and a place was made for him on the other side of the Secretary, so Skousen could overhear their conversation. Rockefeller proceeded to instruct - yes, instruct - the Secretary what to do and what to say in the events of the day. A man who can crash a White House dinner and give instructions to the second most powerful person in America, instructions which would overrule the wishes of the President, is a powerful man.
The wealth of the Rockefeller family - one thousand trusts, corporations, foundations, and institutes - was estimated at $11 trillion a few years ago. Their trick is not to own any of it, for tax reasons, (Taxes? What idiot would pay taxes?) but to control the use and disposition of all that wealth. Some head of state crosses them and refuses to allow his country to be plundered by the Rockefeller interests, they get the CIA to assassinate him or foment a coup in that country.
I need to wrap this up. The bottom line is that there are people who are so rich and powerful they think they cannot be touched, not even by nuclear fallout, and if the planet becomes uninhabitable they can hop one of their flying saucers to Alpha Centauri. Others think God will protect them as He has chosen them above all of humanity. Others think God will raise them up on a beam of light like Jesus ascending into Heaven. We are not dealing with sane people. So, I do believe a nuclear war is entirely possible, because insane people are running this show. Thanks for listening.
Over and out.
L.G.
I know 'ALIENS!' isn't really an answer, so I don't mention the pattern of nuke silos suddenly 'going dark' as if to say 'case closed'. It's just that 'high strangeness' stuff like that DOES happen, and it is apparently taken seriously enough by at least some within 'deep state structures'.
However, while I have some hope that the aliens visiting our planet (perhaps a hundred different species - see that video) would not allow us to destroy ourselves and the planet we inhabit, It makes me nervous to rely solely on the possible intervention of a benevolent race of observers. One wonders why they have not revealed themselves. Perhaps it is because their moral code is that we humans ultimately have to decide for ourselves what our fate will be. The secrecy and lies of those who have set themselves up as having the right to run the lives of the rest of us, tends to make it possible for them to exercise their insanity and kill us all.
Albert Pike?
"Israel" not Judea, to be the Final Solution?
Solution to money control?
Eric Zuesse, writing in Strategic-Culture.org:
"Under President Donald Trump, the US has basically eliminated the only real international authority the UN used to have. Here is how this was done: The equivalent, in international law, to a domestic-law crime involving murder, rape, and theft, is an international invasion that’s purely for aggressive purposes and not at all authentically a defensive act against an authentic foreign threat that was coming from the invaded foreign country. Consequently, for the US Government now to have removed the UN from any authority over international invasions, is, in domestic-law equivalency, like removing a national government from authority regarding murders, rapes, and thefts, which occur inside that nation. Such a ‘government’ is no government at all. But, tragically, this is what has happened; and, so, we are now careening into World War III, in this international “Wild West” world, which we live in (and may soon die in, as things thus head into WW III.)" [Link]
He continues: "If the reader wants to know why a web-search for the title of this article “How US Has Virtually Destroyed UN” probably turns up no mainstream ‘news’ media in the US-allied world, and even very few “alternative news” sites, then the reason isn’t that they weren’t offered the article, because they all routinely receive the submission of each of my articles, but routinely turn them down. The reason is instead that the most important truths are prohibited from publication in the US-allied world — it’s a world dominated by lies."
BTW, that is an excellent site, with excellent articles. You SOTT editors should check it out and se if you can reprint some of them here.
"The de-escalation agreement, brokered by Russia, the US, and Jordan, was reached in the summer of 2017. The region has been quiet since then. Now it is on the verge of a security breakdown. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell claimed on April 18 during a congressional hearing that the US was ready for an armed clash with Russia in Syria. The American forces stationed at al-Tanf, a US-controlled base in the east, could be involved. They’ll need air cover to increase the possibility of an incident between Russian and US planes. The assistant secretary did not elaborate but the message is clear.... It has been reported recently that the US has moved nuclear weapons onto Greece’s Araxos Air Base. Its military has also deployed drones to the Larissa airfield." (My emphasis added.)
So you still maintain nobody is crazy enough to start WWIII???
I also pointed out what factor the crazies had overlooked - the world's 444 nuclear power stations which, if only 50-100 of them melted down as the result of a nuclear war, would release radioactivity equivalent to 5 MILLION to 10 MILLION nuclear bombs, radioactivity with an average half-life of 25,000 years. I do not think the crazies could live underground that long. I also do not think that amount of radioactivity is survivable by any mammalian species. After the Trinity test in 1945, it was found that the only species which had survived proximity to the blast site was the cockroaches. Perhaps, given another 65 million years, they will become an intelligent species dominating the planet. If they do, let us hope they end up wiser than us human beings.
@Lemuel Gulliver
Keep talking.
The comments (at Sott) are free!
At least, I think they must be.
ned,
out
I can back up everything I say. Just that my comments are long enough already, so I make statements without going into proofs. Joe, regarding aliens & weapons systems, here is a YouTube video, which I strongly recommend, out of the hundreds of videos I've watched. There are many others, but this one covers a range of knowledge that you would have to watch several other videos to get it all. (BTW, Niall, sorry for not realizing you folks repost Strategic-Culture articles. My error.) Why I like YouTube is that I can watch the faces and body language of the speakers, and judge whether they are self-promoting blowhards or speaking the truth, and this guy is genuine. He is, as he says, and I believe him, violating his oath of secrecy to make this speech. It will blow your pants off. [Link]
Enjoy! - LG.