OF THE
TIMES
"A sale of something like the S-400 would be catastrophic for us," Cooper told Shaheen. "We do not want a NATO ally to be dependent upon the servicing and supply of equipment that is provided by Russia. That is for me an operational standpoint. The strategic standpoint is we don't want a NATO ally to have a weapon system supplied by Russia."He conceded that if the long-standing cooperation between Turkey and the US were to be broken apart, it would be catastrophic too.
The US and Israel will surely avoid a massive, costly land campaign against Iran, a vast, mountainous nation that was willing to suffer a million battle casualties in its eight-year war with Iraq that started in 1980. This gruesome war was instigated by the US, Britain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Iran's new popular Islamic government.
The Pentagon has planned a high-intensity air war against Iran that Israel and the Saudis might very well join. The plan calls for over 2,300 air strikes against Iranian strategic targets: airfields and naval bases, arms and petroleum, oil and lubricant depots, telecommunication nodes, radar, factories, military headquarters, ports, waterworks, airports, missile bases and units of the Revolutionary Guards.
Iran's air defenses range from feeble to non-existent. Decades of US-led military and commercial embargos against Iran have left it as decrepit and enfeebled as was Iraq when the US invaded in 2003. The gun barrels of Iran's 70's vintage tanks are warped and can't shoot straight, its old British and Soviet AA missiles are mostly unusable, and its ancient MiG and Chinese fighters ready for the museum, notably its antique US-built F-14 Tomcats, Chinese copies of obsolete MiG-21's, and a handful of barely working F-4 Phantoms of Vietnam War vintage.
Air combat command is no better. Everything electronic that Iran has will be fried or blown up in the first hours of a US attack. Iran's little navy will be sunk in the opening attacks. Its oil industry may be destroyed or partially preserved depending on US post-war plans for Iran.
The only way Tehran can riposte is by staging isolated commando attacks on US installations in the Mideast of no decisive value, and, of course, blocking the narrow Strait of Hormuz that carries two-thirds of Mideast oil exports. The US Navy, based nearby in Bahrain, has been practicing for decades to combat this threat.There is a lot of interesting material in this description and I think that it is worth looking into it segment by segment.
Comment: So how would nominee Cooper resolve the military equipment snag, given Turkey does not follow the US script? Is he any brighter than Pompeo? (It wouldn't take much.)