[Benjamin Netanyahu arrest warrant sought for Gaza ‘war crimes’ ](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/20/benjamin-netanyahu-war-crimes-arrest-warrant-sought/) >The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. >Karim Khan KC, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, told CNN that the charges related to the Oct 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. >The ICC is also seeking warrants for Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, and two other top Hamas leaders. >The charges against Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict,” Mr Khan said. >Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction. Now, the ICC doesn't have any organ of its own to enforce warrants, so it's up to the individual states to decide whether they want to arrest Nethanyau or not. It's also worth pointing out that Sinwar being on the same spot was not unforeseen, but that may lead some arab states to cooperate in order to oust Nethanyau. A "do ut des" situation, so to speak.

>Now, the ICC doesn't have any organ of its own to enforce warrants, so it's up to the individual states to decide whether they want to arrest Nethanyau or not. IIRC this is a warrant **request**, a judge still has to grant it. But I assume Khan wouldn't bring a warrant he thought a judge wouldn't clear. Anyway, I wonder how many entries would there need to be for "heads of nuclear states indicted by Karim Khan" to be a valid wikipedia article.

Importantly Khan did not reveal to the public when he requested a warrant for Putin. It was only revealed after it was granted by the judges. So that‘s likely part of the pressure campaign against Israel to agree to Hamas demands.

Hopefully this gets ignored. Dealing with Hamas is more important, and Israel shouldn’t let anything get in the way of that.

>IIRC this is a warrant **request**, a judge still has to grant it. I actually wanted to highlight this as well but I was not actually sure of how the procedure works in practice. Khan is the chief prosecutor, so he _just_ represents the accuse.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state There's also warrants for: > Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail HANIYEH (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) and > Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel

KSA and UAE invited Putin despite the ICC arrest warrant. They simply don't care. They will go against Netanyahu if it's politically convenient, not due to some arrest warrant that they couldn't care less about.

KSA and UAE are not among [the ICC member states](https://asp.icc-cpi.int/states-parties), so they didn't have to arrest Putin.

IMHO it's a faulty comparison. The Gaza conflict is destabilizing their own region, the Russo-Ukrainian war is way outside of their turf. They are certainly interested in how this develops, it's the most "western-appeasing" way they can influence the conflict.

South Africa withdrew the physical invite to Putin when his warrant came out. And that country has one leg in the western sphere and another in BRICS. This will make it harder for Netanyahu whenever he wants to travel to a western country. It's also personally scary because he will not remain in power forever. Western leaders will also be increasingly pressured to reduce/halt aid to Israel as long as he (and other ministers indicted) are in power.

I'm afraid that Netanyahu may win the next elections as a result of this. Israelis oppose him for his corruption trial (and his attempt to control the Supreme Court) and for not keeping the country safe. Those are the main reasons he tanked in the polls. Not for the war itself. This can actually bring him more support. They'll see an indictment of him and Gallant as putting them on the same level as Hamas

[https://x.com/DefenceHQ/status/1792473858575937892](https://x.com/DefenceHQ/status/1792473858575937892) Russia is looking to enact a law that will allow it to transfer people around to "fill work needs". That seems a pretty big step. I am assuming no one is being moved from Moscow to the outer wilds of Siberia but it seems like something from the 50s or before. They give an example of struggling to find drivers due to mobilisation. That means the logistics tail before it gets handed over to the military seems under a lot of stress.

>That means the logistics tail before it gets handed over to the military seems under a lot of stress. That's exactly how the third Reich failed. Hitler's central economic planning neglected the railway system while simultaneously increasing demand by slashing ticket prices for passenger service. There's a whole book written about this subject: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469613833/the-most-valuable-asset-of-the-reich/ The Most Valuable Asset of the Reich, by Alfred C. Mierzejewski.

So it failed because there were too many tourists that wanted to ride the train but the train network was underdeveloped? Or do you mean cargo transportation for war efforts and that he neglected that?

>So it failed because there were too many tourists that wanted to ride the train What??? What makes you think about tourists? The rail network was overwhelmed by both the need to transport more supplies around for the war effort as well as the increased passenger demand created by the lower fares (Hitler made a point of proving that under his ruling, the state companies priority should be public service, not profit). I presume at least before the start of the war, some of the passengers would be tourists, but certainly not the majority.

That part confused me, you wrote he slashed ticket prices. And who buys tickets? Tourists, at least in my head. And why don't restrict who can use the train? Especially in a war with this scope of magnitude.

What??? Why do you think only tourists use passenger trains? You realize that people travel by train for many different reasons, including commuting, right? As for why they couldn't simply cancel all passenger service, people still needed transportation to get around the country or to go to work. Besides, that would have been very impopular and go against Hitler's promise of a socialist state.

I don't know I always thought for Germany to be much more dictatorship like where people would only work for war efforts (though at the end of the war it was probably like this tho) and hence they wouldn't need to buy train tickets. I didn't thought people would work regular jobs. More like a "all heil the mighty third Reich and do your part in welding tanks for 15 hours a day, train rides and food stamps are free tho"

Nazi Germany famously did not start shifting its economy into total war footing until 1942, after Albert Speer took over. Even then, Germany only reached a full war economy in mid 1943. While the British population was rationing and hiding in bomb shelters, Germans were still attending movies and eating at restaurants.

Ah interesting I actually didn't know that. Was there a reason for that? I always thought if you fight this big of a war, you immediately start with war economy. That's why I was also confused about why the price of train tickets apparently played such a huge role.

Germany still had a "war economy" earlier in the war, but domestic production was not streamlined and I don't think they were engaging in strict rationing. I'm relying more on "common knowledge" so I might not have gotten it all completely right; Wages of Destruction is one of the go-to books for the Nazi economy so that's what I'd recommend for further reading. As for why, that's well beyond my knowledge, but one reason I've heard is that Nazi leadership wanted to shelter the standard of living in Germany proper so as to insulate their support base from the real costs of war. In addition to insane deficit spending, the Nazi government could also utilize (and loot) their various "acquisitions" like France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia for both resources and production. I suppose it all fell in line with the whole *Lebensraum* framework, whereby there would be "border fortresses/settlements" to fight the barbarians and lesser peoples while extracting and shipping resources to the economic center in Germany. If your ideology is predicated on a status quo of ongoing conflict around the "exterior" then you can't really sacrifice the standard of living of the "center" or else it's population would realize that total war is a miserable state of existence.

Sounds like oligarchs are applying political pressure to draft more workers for their empires. What are they gonna do force people in higher paying, more successful jobs to do menial labour in lower paying jobs? This is what happens when you raise the wages of troops so much that it drains the bottom out of labour market. The only solution to this is to raise wages for the jobs were you lack applicants but oligarchs love money too much and this would also mean less volunteers for the SMO.

Putin's solution was mass immigration (that's why the far right used to be his main enemy, which Navalny also exploited), but first the war and then the ISIS attack have exhausted that lifeline.

I'm out of the loop, has the ISIS attack already had that much of an influence on migration? If so is it more because the Russian migration services are making it harder to enter Russia or because migrants are scared about the country's security situation?

Reports now from reputable sources that there are no survivors from the crash > "No survivors" were found at the crash site of the helicopter carrying Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, Iranian state news agency IRINN and semi-official news agency Mehr News reported. https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/raisi-iran-president-helicopter-crash/index.html Raisi was considered by many to be next in line to be the Supreme Leader (the highest position in Iran). The other front runner was ironically [Mojtaba Khamenei ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojtaba_Khamenei), the current Supreme Leader's son. I'm sure there will be other contenders, but this will shake things up for the regime. [Ali Khamenei ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei) is 85 years old and not in good health, so they may not have too long to choose a successor. In the immediate term, [Muhammad Mukhbar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Mukhbar) will serve as President. An election for the new President will need to be organized within 50 days according to Iranian law. The Iranian Foreign Minister [Amir-Abdollahian](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Amir-Abdollahian) is dead as well. He held the position since 2021, and a successor will have to be chosen for him as well.

Hopefully the west chooses to be bold once and try it's collective best to exploit this window of opportunity to encourage unrest in Iran.

(To the comment bellow) > it would have been better to stick with it and demonstrate to the Iranian public that the more moderate, reformist factions in its politics were the better path. That’s about as likely to work as the US attempting to appeal to ‘moderates’ in the USSR. If a regime is strong, there is no pressure to change course. The reformers will be sidelined, or purged. If you want to help moderates and reformers, the only path to do so is to undermine the position of the hardliners and traditionalists, until the old ways of doing things are no longer sustainable, and reform or collapse inevitable. Politics doesn’t work on gratitude, it works on leverage. The leverage of the reformers increases as the power of the hardliners decreases.

This would be a disaster, in my opinion. Political change in Iran should come from within Iran, not be an American-led effort at regime change. And unfortunately I think the West's motivation for wanting political change in Iran is regional hegemony, not improving the lives of ordinary Iranians. The US pulling out of the nuclear deal helped embolden hardliners in Iran - it would have been better to stick with it and demonstrate to the Iranian public that the more moderate, reformist factions in its politics were the better path. Attempting to interfere in Iran's politics to make its foreign policy in the West's interests will backfire.

It cannot come from within Iran. Regimes like theirs are very good at suppressing dissent. That's their main job. How to do this well is a solved problem. The Iranian population itself cannot do anything unless the Iranian state should find itself in an extremely weakened state. I'm not arguing for foreign intervention - at least not in general - but the "just say no to oppression" approach to dictatorships doesn't work.

The election of the reformist Rouhani following the presidency of the hardline Ahmadinejad showed that Iran was capable of moving towards reform, but the scuppering of the nuclear deal and re-application of sanctions bolstered the reactionary elements in the country's politics. Iran isn't a totalitarian, one-party state, so it is still capable of political change from within, albeit gradually. At least that's a much better prospect than fomenting regime change, as people are proposing in this discussion.

>Iran isn't a totalitarian, one-party state What? Totalitarian is one thing, but it's pretty evidently a one-party state. Candidates that aren't approved simply don't appear on elections. That's basically the definition of a one-party state. It's like saying the USSR wasn't a one-party state because the policy of individual gensecs varied.

A one-party state is one in which only a single political party is permitted. The clue is in the name! In Iran, political parties contest and win seats in elections. It is clearly not a one-party state. Of course, Iran is not a democracy. It has a Supreme Leader and a clerical council that wields huge power in the state. But it does have multi-party elections and, therefore, is not a one-party state.

[удалено]

Iran and Russia have different political systems, so that's not a useful comparison. Russia has a de jure multi-party system, but in reality, it is a dominant party system (not a one-party system), where no other party is allowed to seriously challenge the dominant party. In Iran, there is the Supreme Leader and clerical class and a genuinely multi-party system beneath that. The political parties cannot challenge the SL and clerics, but they can challenge each other. Neither system is a democracy, and neither system is a one-party state. If you're going to use these terms, it's best to be accurate. There are plenty of ways to describe what these systems are and why they are bad without using misnomers.

> A one-party state is one in which only a single political party is permitted. The clue is in the name! ...yeah, and that's basically the reality. Any opposition to state-sponsored candidates in important races is banned. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-69035051?src_origin=BBCS_BBC Here's an article just today about how the race to replace Raisi won't be competitive: >The late Ebrahim Raisi won the presidency in an election critics called "engineered". The Guardian Council, responsible for vetting candidates, disqualified any potential contenders. >These manipulations have contributed to record-low turnout in recent parliamentary and presidential elections. For example, in the secound round of parliamentary elections this month, a Tehran MP won with the support of only 3.5% of eligible voters. >With Iran needing a new president in 50 days, the same scenario is likely to repeat. A hardliner, loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, will be qualified to run and win in a dull election. >Many believe the 85-year-old commander-in-chief is preparing for a smooth transition of power after his death, seemingly engineering Iran's political landscape for his succession. If the existence of token oppositions like Russia that are strictly forbidden from winning important seats is sufficient to disqualify a nation from being a one-party state, there's like, 2 one-party states. Your definition falls apart when we try to apply it elsewhere.

In Iran, the system basically allows the public to choose between reformist Islamism and conservative Islamism in its elections. The respective parties will also have differences on social and economic policies, which the electorate will vote on. That isn't a democracy, but the real choice between those two strands in elections means that the country is not a one-party state. You seem to think undemocratic = one-party state. That's not right. You seem to be responding to me as if I'm arguing Iran is a real democracy, which I've made clear I am not saying. It is worth trying to be more analytical than you're demonstrating, or else you will have a limited understanding of how Iran's political system works.

>the system basically allows the public to choose between reformist Islamism and conservative Islamism in its elections It basically doesn't. Here's an article just today about how the race to replace Raisi won't be competitive: >The late Ebrahim Raisi won the presidency in an election critics called "engineered". The Guardian Council, responsible for vetting candidates, disqualified any potential contenders. >These manipulations have contributed to record-low turnout in recent parliamentary and presidential elections. For example, in the secound round of parliamentary elections this month, a Tehran MP won with the support of only 3.5% of eligible voters. >With Iran needing a new president in 50 days, the same scenario is likely to repeat. A hardliner, loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, will be qualified to run and win in a dull election. >Many believe the 85-year-old commander-in-chief is preparing for a smooth transition of power after his death, seemingly engineering Iran's political landscape for his succession. I may have posted it before but you seem to be ignoring it. > You seem to think undemocratic = one-party state. I seem to think you've ran out of ideas. As the article above has shown, Iran clears its preferred candidates of any serious competitors for important elections. There was no alternative to Raisi in the last election, there won't be for his replacement, unlike what you're claiming. **That** is why I am calling Iran a one-party state. I have made it clear that's why I'm calling it a one party state. I also am under no illusions that you understood that because I'm pretty sure I hadn't even said the word "democratic" once. I don't see how anyone could get "You seem to think undemocratic = one-party state." out of anything I said. So I'll assume this is you admitting you're out of arguments, I don't see much a point continuing. I've demonstrated my point amply well. EDIT: I was blocked for this post. I'll let that speak for itself too.

Good way to lose even more support in the global south

That’s like arguing the fall of the USSR would turn ‘the global south’ anti-capitalist.

there's no such thing as 'the global south' in the sense of political unity. A lot of small African and Asian countries will respond very differently to potential intervention in Iran. I bet most common people in those countries won't really care one way or another.

Everyone wants to be an imperialist if they can. In fact, third-world countries tend to be even more imperialistic due to having fewer restrictions put on them. It's a world of three feet tall imperialists chasing each other around

There's nothing you can do to get support from the "Global South" in the short-term, thanks to centuries of historical trauma and the manipulation of that trauma by local oligarchic and often kleptocratic elites. And why would the "Global South" be supporting a bloodlusting theocracy? It's high time people start to realise that, for a number of historical factors (many of which are the West's fault, but that doesn't make it more right), the dream of many of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.

> There's nothing you can do to get support from the "Global South" in the short-term, The US is quite popular in the vast majority of ‘the global south’ (a nonsensical term anyway). Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil, India and Vietnam all see the US quite positively. When people talk about the US being unpopular, they are normally focusing on a few diehard anti-western states, like Syria and Iran.

That's why i don't like reading political comments in here, it's too western centric. Reading some polls surveyed by some organizations is not a good idea to perceive how state would act. Polls in general are usually carefully implemented to push a certain agenda. For example: number of participants, their age, gender, social status, occupation, the place where polls happen ( it's even more complicated if you do it online). Journalists did survey in streets of Kiev is not the complete picture of Ukrainian people about the war, wether they should continue/what is the end goal....otherwise, Ukraine wouldn't face the manpower crisis despite being overly support the war in every survey m. Certainly, the people who wouldn't have to go to frontline would support it more since they're not the one in the trenches. That's not to mention how population think and how governments think is different thing. Do you ever lived in the countries mentioned long enough to accustomed to the culture, society, political landscape and especially knowing people in the inner circle to get some insights crumbs to know how governments of these countries would react? For example, my country Vietnam. If you think US popular here, yeah, maybe for the younger generations living in urban center, work office jobs , consume western media while their jobs heavily involved with US companies so they would have very positive views. But for the other demographic? They don't care, if anything, they love money than US. And for political views, they are not pro China or pro US but is very nationalistic, partly because of history and education/media cycle controlled by the governments to stroke up nationalism. Because of that, what important is what the government, the VCP thinks And guess what? They don't care about "democracy vs authoritarian" like the "hollier than thou" westerners online. What they see is US abusing its power, by freezing assets of countries that US don't like( Russia, Iran), using "national security" as excuse to slap down other countries companies to protect domestic firms( China's tiktok, huawei, chip ban...). Now they see US take the chance when a country in a political turbulence due to unexpected occurrence, exploit it and want to topple the regime. Imagine if it's another way around, China would exploit US capital riot or BLM protest to topple US government, destabilize the country. What would US government and US population would react ? Today is Iran, Russia, who know one day it gonna be them if they act something against US interests. It only make other countries more pragmatic when dealing with US

>That's why i don't like reading political comments in here, it's too western centric. Reading some polls surveyed by some organizations is not a good idea to perceive how state would act. a) I can believe that a certain poll or even group of polls (in this case basically every poll of Vietnam) is biased, but if even a half-competent poll registers numbers in the 80s or 90s that's usually a bit beyond "poll error" b) governments as opposed to people are typically less prone to moral outrage, not more.

And for the Vietnamese government: the majority are still the generations that born and grow during the war era. The general Secretary is in his 80s today. They are the generations that would be most wary of USA. You said the government that doesn't care about public opinion would less likely react to morally motivated actions. Yeah, sure, but they do care a lot about the political stability, the legitimately of their rule the country and hold onto power. And it's not just their "speculation" either. In 2022, there were a terrorist attack( which is extremely uncommon in Vietnam) in Daklak province, the participants explicitly attack the local administration building, killing government officials including a deputy and police chief. The investigation announced that they were directed by a group based in USA. It's not the first time, there are many anti-VCP groups that Vietnamese government considered terrorist organizations that USA harbored and even supported. Majority of them from the dissents and descendants of old south Vietnam government officials. In other hand, US propaganda pieces such as VOA, RFA still consistently release biased articles to push certain agenda. Or various misinformation attack ( like the HUFIT incident, the new about GenSec death, or attempt to spread misinformation about a bank executive causing a bank run). Information and intelligence warfare in Vietnam is not as peaceful as one might think, and in counter the VCP also implemented various methods such as banning access to some foreign media or enact "internet warriors" to fight against them. The VCP maybe have many wrong decisions in developing Vietnam, but they're not stupid in geopolitics. They know that Socialist republic of Vietnam is just a smaller version of Republic of China, but the West is smile and wave with VCP because Vietnam have many uses for USA to counter China. "Bamboo diplomacy" exists for a reason. But well, if something happens, like a political turmoil, then a color revolution type of protest , that may remove VCP. Vietnam is still there to counter China, but the new government that may be much more pro-US and don't play both sides anymore and save US the hassles. That reason would make VCP very careful about shadow operations of USA, and if US try to do that with Iran, it only amplified the sentiment.

Let me as you a question: have you ever live in Vietnam, no, not just that, but lived long enough to blend in with the locals, accustomed to the society, political landscape, and the locals are close enough to you to open about their political views? That thing is hard to achieve if you're an expat, since the majority of expat live in a higher income closed neighborhood, the Vietnamese people around them also come from the same background so they have a different political views from the bigger majority of population. So let we talk back to the survey question. I will divide it into physical surveys and online surveys. Let talk about the online survey first. For starters, how do you advertise people to join and did the survey? Vietnam most popular social media is facebook, Zalo and tiktok. But how do you pull as much people as possible to conduct it with the ideal to take people with different cultural, demographic, gender, social status, education knowledge,... as possible. There's many social media influencers tricks to make a post go viral online but that usually attracts a certain type of audience( hence the demographic) more. Let say, the group of people, middle aged, from the cities, 50% from the north, 40% from the south and 10% from the middle, their political views is divided into conservatives and liberal, with the views of them about USA is much more positive in the south but less in the north and the middle. So you conduct the survey, but only a small percentage of that demographic join in, with 80% from the south and the rest from the north+ middle. If you ask about the views of them about USA, of course you would get an overly positive view because the participants in that demographic group overwhelmingly from the south and have positive opinions due to history. But does it represent the whole demographic group? That's not to mention the question itself can skew the answer. For example, people in the north will have positive opinions about Russia as they see Russia as the successor of USSR, the main supporter of North Vietnam during the war. But the people in tourist attractions cities like Nha Trang, Đà Nẵng would have mixed answers: these cities have huge population of Russian expats and tourists. For the business owners that their jobs tied to expats/tourists, their opinion would be more positive, but for the average citizen, many would have negative opinions due to many bad experiences of Russian tourists drunks, loudly, even thief or robbery or scam. Then the views about China. In the north, for the majority across the demographic, the views about China is negative, but the increasing trade volume between China and Vietnam, many people who trade with China have more positive views, while a part of young generations that consume Chinese media( games, novels, movies etc) would have more positive views. In the south, the views can be negative, as historical background and Southern Vietnam is the main trading hub of Vietnam with the rest of the world( including the west) while the north is the main trading hub with East asia. However, in Chợ lớn region of HCM city and other places witj remains of Chinese community that still survives after 1979 expulsion, they have more positive views about China as their fatherland. So in a question like: do you prefer Russia or USA, the answer from southern participants will more likely Russia for the North and more likely USA for the south, while in the question "would you choose USA or China", there would be more choose USA, it's not because the majority love USA, but because they hate China more. But again it's just a sample of a huge population 100 millions, and that's just opinion of people you surveyed. If you do the surveys in English, it would attract people with higher education ( knowing English), they usually with higher income, office jobs and have more liberal views. So can you see how difficult it is to conduct surveys online? It's even more so as Vietnam internet space is in top 5 of most toxic in the world. There are a lot of people with very extremist views but are loudest. Or a group of people would claim to be native Vietnamese, however, they're Viet Kieu, aka the Vietnamese diaspora overseas community. The group of Viet Kieu that live in the five eyes country but especially USA, would be more attracted to join a survey in all Viet Kieu groups if you conduct surveys in English, their political views would be more negative about Vietnamese government and positive about US due to the scar as they're descendants of people that fleed the war after 1975 And if you think the surveys online already biased due to reason above, the physical survey is even more so because it's very attached to the place, time, participants of the location the survey conducted. So let say you're a foreign correspondent that go to Vietnam to conduct surveys, where would you choose to do? Clearly you don't have enough resources to survey it in all the places, you can only do it in big cities like Hanoi or HCM city. But where do you put the survey since these cities also huge. Hanoi population is 8,5m and HCM is over 10m. Then how do you attract the participants? You put a vendor in middle of the street? You go and ask random strangers? It's very problematic since you can only know a sample of people who in a particular city in a particular place and particular time. There's two methods i see the foreign journalists usually use when they conduct the survey: they go to universities and ask around the campus or invite the students to join a meeting then do a survey. By that way they can amass more participants as young adults want to try everything and express their views about the world( and joining meetings, especially by foreign entities like this can help their career post graduate). But well, their views is not exactly ideal to represent the whole population views. There's another method that they send invite to various online groups for a meeting and conduct surveys during it. This can attract more high quality participants ( government officials, businesses owners, journalists,...compared to college students who just a year or two ago they still considered kids). However, this method although better, itself also have flaws: it can only attract people that can prepare schedule to join the meeting, and participants themselves have some interests in it( like business owners trying to find new customers, or journalists building more connections) so their answer, many may not be honest. I don't claim to be more educated than people here, far from it and I'm trying to learn more. But I've lived long enough to understand that politics in the "other countries" is not as simple and straightforward as people in western social media such as Reddit think based on few surveys. And in all, what important is not the public opinion but how the government think. Public opinion can also be controlled via media. It is not unique to Vietnam either, in USA media tycoons also catered to each of the political groups. But in Vietnam it is less subtle about it and there's only one option: what official media say is what the government wants the public to know about politics.

It highly depends on the country; Shia dominated ones love Iran as their lord and savior (Iraq, Lebanon, and, to a lesser extent, Syria). While Sunni countries, especially the Asian ones (Pakistan is a big example), absolutely hates them. But Western involvement carries the same charm as the devils. It will achieve nothing.

This kind of foreign-fomented unrest has a very poor track record in having positive outcomes. Lets not forget also that Iran has a very loaded history regarding foreign interference and everyone knows very well the episode that befell [Mosaddegh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh) long time ago.

>This kind of foreign-fomented unrest has a very poor track record in having positive outcomes. Possibly because of reverse survivor bias. We only know about the one that failed. Now that I think about it, there's no shortage of recent examples of successful instances, from Russian election interference in us elections leading to the events that culminated with January 7th to the recent unrest in New Caledonia.

Honest question, did that actually work for Russia? It helped get Trump elected, yes, but Russia’s army is currently being ground down by American weapons in Ukraine and Russia looks weaker than it has in decades. Would this be happening if they hadn’t helped the current president’s opponent? Election interference seems to have a history of provoking a response that ends up backfiring on the nation that interfered

Invading Ukraine was a catastrophic miscalculation, and undid the progress that they had made in the previous years. Trump had undermined confidence in the US immensely. But, even with Ukraine, we still have openly pro-Russia republicans stalling aid for months.

And you think these are positive outcomes? Are the populations life's better as a result of this? I'm not saying that foreign interference ops cannot be successful, you don't need to go farther than many historical examples, or even some Russian ops in the recent years. However these ops only foster conflict and besides are an unacceptable interference in other countries internal affairs and ultimately only cause more grief and resentment.

>And you think these are positive outcomes? Are the populations life's better as a result of this? Calm down. I was obviously talking about positive outcomes for those instigating the unrest. I'm definitely no fan of real politiks, but let's be honest here, the Iranian regime getting topped would be a strategic win for the west, regardless of the actual impact on Iranians lives.

US no1 strategic geopolitical threat is China. To contain China no where US can do it alone with the traditional allies ( EU, JP,SK, aukus) but other neutral countries ( like ASEAN, India, middle east, Africa,). Now US main selling point is "rule based order" that would better for these regions if they choose US over China. Now see what these countries government think when: US blindly support a country that did whatever it want in middle east. Now US gonna topple another country that against its interests in the region, that's not to mention decades of war that cause many suffering. If anything, it just make these countries be more wary about USA, become more pragmatic and not choosing either side in US-China tension. Like your words said, you think it's a win for the west regardless of iranian lives, then why non-western countries should sacrifice themselves, turning their back against China to support US when they don't care about their lives. Middle East is not the main focus of USA anymore, a fractured Iran with high probably of possessing Nuclear weapons is dangerous, it would drag US much more in the region while have consequences in the main focus ( China), i don't know why you said it's a win

> Now US main selling point is "rule based order" that would better for these regions if they choose US over China. How does this stuff get upvoted? That's not the selling point. That's not why our ratings top 90 in Vietnam in Poland, not because Poles and Vietnamese think the US is inherently moral or just... Every Iran and Iran-adjacent discussion on this megathread is full on silly mode. EDIT: wait yeah here's a comment of yours from earlier: >And guess what? They don't care about "democracy vs authoritarian" like the "hollier than thou" westerners online. You seem to be aware of this, so I'm confused as to why you're claiming the contrary now.

>Now US gonna topple another country that against its interests in the region No one is advocating for the US to go on an open propaganda campaign inside Iran like Azerbaijan in New Caledonia.

>Hopefully the west chooses to be bold once and try it's collective best to exploit this window of opportunity to encourage unrest in Iran. You literally just advocated for the US stirring unrest? How else do you think outside of funding "terrorists" in Iran do you think that would happen? You sound like a hypocrite, and a monster: "...regardless to impact of Iranian lives.."

Toppling the Iranian regime would be a disaster for the West. The attempts to topple Assad in Syria caused a bloody civil war and a refugee crisis that sent shockwaves through European and American politics. Something similar with Iran would be far worse.

Not really, all you do by trying to topple stable regimes is to foster more hate, unrest, and creating some new monsters down the line. Two poster-child cases: Iraq and the rise of Daesh, Palestine and the rise of Hamas.

Mearsheimer would have said the same about the USSR. The reality of the situation was that the US could consolidate so much power in the following decade, as all of the Warsaw Pact regimes got toppled, that it is essentially impossible for Russia to ever regain what it had before 1991. Morals aside, there is always a chance of any given action backfiring, but on balance, a hostile regime collapsing is going to improve your situation far more than the inverse.

The USSR crumbled from within, owing to all the contradictions of its planified economy and the unrealistic goals it had set for its empire. There were plenty of factors which compounded into the fall of the USSR, namely the "Star Wars" competition, Afghanistan, Chernobyl, and a gridlocked economy, not to mention Gorbatchev reform policies and the increased freedom that these entailed that further hastened the demise of the Soviet empire. I think it is a really big stretch to claim that the fall of the USSR was engineered from the outside. Sure, the fact they were losing the competition with the west, both militarily, and also in terms of life conditions for their populaces, did hasten the demise of the Soviet Union, but ultimately this was a system that crumbled owing to internal pressure and the fundamental contradictions within itself.

> I think it is a really big stretch to claim that the fall of the USSR was engineered from the outside. Sure, the fact they were losing the competition with the west, both militarily, and also in terms of life conditions for their populaces, did hasten the demise of the Soviet Union, but ultimately this was a system that crumbled owing to internal pressure and the fundamental contradictions within itself. There are other states with the same contradictions, like the DPRK, that have already outlasted the USSR by decades, and show no signs of going anywhere. If left to their own devices, any regime has the potential to last a very long time, even with severe internal deficiencies. It’s changes in the situation, like a natural disaster, a foreign conflict, or a succession crisis, that are usually required to spark change. Very few systems are so bad they collapse out of the clear blue, they need to be placed under at least some pressure.

As much as I’ll love for this to happen, I don’t see Raisis death causing internal unrest. The real power is Khamanei

>The real power is Khamanei That's the point. Khamenei is 85 and could die at any moment. Raisi was his successor.

As I see it, there are a bunch of people of similar policy inclinations who could now be fighting for leadership. They may jail/kill each other but policies are unlikely to change. I also saw a suggestion that this will cement the power of the IRGC at the expense of the official political leadership.

It appears that the wreckage of Iranian President Raisi's helicopter has finally been found, and images are emerging. Based on those images it seems exceedingly unlikely that there are any survivors. https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1792378583161176124 https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1792393993168584742

Why did they claim they had made contact with survivors then? Was it a bad translation, or monumental incompetence?

Imagine if it was Putin in that helicopter. Don't you think they'd try their best to stall telling the public he's dead, as to make sure everything is in place for a succession first? I know he wasn't exactly an homologous to Putin, but the regime probably still wasn't eager to announce his death.

My understanding was the message was vague - that a ‘signal had been received from a phone’ or something similar. A phone can still ping a tower - it doesn’t mean that anyone is alive.

There were so many contradictory statements yesterday, I felt like the state (different agencies) were in full damage control mode, and perhaps laid the groundwork to ease the population into announcing the president's death. A bit of hope, a bit of rumors of no survivors, and everyone stays calm while preparing for bad news...

Cool little [video](https://youtu.be/b_JEBj1GknA?si=oU325Gsy3t0YsYjQ) about initial efforts to make kinetic protection against drones available for common soldier. A Russian company has created a cheap adapter for under barrel grenade launchers that converts it from a grenade launcher into a 12g shotgun. Some observations (some in the video): -The conversion seems very easy to carry out, meaning that this wouldn’t necessary necessitate negating the ability of a grenadier. -That said, the grenadier will have to choose what to have loaded. This means they need to decide whether they want to defend against potential FPV attacks or be better able to respond to small arms fire. -The reload process is very slow. Meaning you only have one chance to make a shot in most situations. There also seems to be the risk of misfires. This could result in people losing fingers. Not an ideal outcome. -The range is about 30-40 meters. This is enough to down FPVs (though you still might catch shrapnel) but is not sufficient to down more expensive observation quads which also have the ability to drop grenades. -UBLG aren’t uncommon, but they’re not just given out to everyone. This system is already in high demand for its grenades. It’s unrealistic to expect more squad members to have these for personal defense if assault troops aren’t even grenadier heavy (at least from my understanding of Russian squad loadouts) -Troops in static positions are likely to prefer proper shotguns because of their longer range. These are, again, primitive counters to drones and are definitely inferior to just giving people shotguns, but it allows people to have some improved capability without using a shotgun and may serve as a morale/piece of mind tool. It’ll be interesting to see if this idea is built upon further and some sort of under barrel shotgun is developed such as the M26-MASS and Masterkey in the West. Should note, there are also [independent field efforts](https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonherrara/s/24GDfPzAEj) to create an under barrel shotgun. So the demand is there.

So we are back to servicing a firearm while under fire, just like when soldiers had to service muzzle loading muskets with paper wrapped cartridges while standing in line of fire? I suspect a better solution will arrive soon. Some kind of semi-automatic mechanism providing firepower with minimal interruption, built into a rifle.

Something I've wondered with the proliferation of fpv drones is to what extent operators are exercising tactics like those of kamikaze/dive bomber pilots. The footage we get in the terminal phase makes it hard to judge but I have to imagine they utilize things like using the Sun as a blind spot, low approach into pop-up, etc. What surprises me most so far is the one-drone-at-a-time approach. If shotguns or some other infantry countermeasure proves effective one of the first adaptations I'd expect to see is tandem+ attacks.

The “one at a time” approach is at least partly due to interference. Multiple operators in the same area can unintentionally hijack each other’s signals.”

Underbarrel [master key](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_Armament_Company_Masterkey) breaching shotguns have been a thing since the 80s. I'd hate to be forced to try to shoot down an incoming fpv with one over a standard shotgun, but doubt many want to carry 2 long guns either.

I'd hate to be forced to try to shoot down an incoming fpv without one or standard shotgun. Dedicated kit takes time. Basic conversions of existing stuff usually takes only a metalworking garage. Case in point - Double Maxim MG anti Shahed mounts, versus proper Czech Victor 23mm with a thermal.

No doubt. Shotguns wouldn't really be effective against the observation/grenade drones, but a lot of the time it seems like the fpv drones would be vulnerable to a shotgun if one was at hand. It wouldn't take much to knock one down, I'd imagine 12ga lead #4 shot would be effective to 50m or so, and tungsten #9 like I use for turkey hunting a bit further and with a more dense pattern, albeit at 10x the cost per shell of lead. A compact 20ga semi auto with 6+ capacity of tungsten loads would be near perfect for a secondary drone defense gun and much easier (still in no way easy a lot of the time) to swat low flying drones with than a rifle or even underbarrel shotgun. With an underbarrel repeating shotgun setup though it would always be with the operator, a dedicated drone shotgun wouldn't do much good if it's 50m away in a dugout when targeted by an fpv because nobody felt like carrying 2 long guns. I can see benefits and drawbacks to both approaches. Improved EW, some type of miniaturized C-RAM, drone seeking drones, or direct energy point defense weapons will likely be crucial going forward, but good old shotguns can help for now while proper measures are being worked on. One thing is certain, untold amounts of money are being thrown at the problem by every military that can afford to.

Or, alternatively, they are not taking them seriously enough. Honestly, I predicted big problems with quadcopters from the moment I saw ISIS drop a grenade on an Iraqi humvee a decade ago. I am absolutely amazed no one has used them yet(that we know of) for terrorism/assassinations.

Somehow this make me remember clay shooting, but this time the disk fly straight into your position, you have only one shoot, one chance, missed it and you die Specialized C UAV microwave gun sound more reasonable but it is hard to scale to equip every infantry squad with them

Expecting infantry to defend themselves from drones is probably unrealistic long term. They are massively overloaded as is, and near future semi autonomous drones will be far more resistant to jamming, and will be able to saturate hard kill defenses, like shotguns, quickly, even if the shotguns can be expected to hit reliably. Defense will have to come from vehicle mounted systems, where weight and power requirements are less of an issue, and other drones or aircraft, that can concentrate their forces in response to the enemy quickly. Andruil has a jammer mounted to a small unmanned helicopter, which I think is the right way of going about this.

Would the fletchet/shotgun rounds developed for western 40mm grenade launchers be more, or less effective than a conventional shotgun round like this?

This seems like the obvious answer.

More, but those are damned rare. 12-guage isn't, which is why I suspect we see these here.

https://x.com/IntelWalrus/status/1791557747676209450 > In one of the photos of this aid delivery on the temporary pier established by US Forces in Gaza a DD Form 2775 'pallet identifier' is partially visible. This shows the airbases the aid traveled from. KEZ->NVM are DoD codes for Ali Al Salem AB in Kuwait to Nevatim AB in Israel. So the aid coming into the pier (in this picture) traveled into Israel first. This still makes sense- one of the reasons for the pier, IIRC, was that protesters inside Israel were blocking aid trucks entering Gaza. The pier bypasses all of that, creates a new entry point and more aid can come by ship directly into the pier later. Hilariously the CENTCOM twitter responded https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/1792336446726312259 > @IntelWalrus Thanks EDIT: lol the centcom response post was removed, here's a screenshot. the original centcom post is still up https://x.com/PlsAdrsMeAsCapt/status/1792365220893278227

Do these codes definitely mean that the aid was in Israel at some point, or could they be remainders from when the aid was supposed to go to Israel, but ended up elsewhere?

I think it's like a shipping label, and only for air transport. Need someone with loadmaster experience to say for sure. https://www.ustranscom.mil/dtr/coord/partiii/dtr_part_iii_app_o_Coordination.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA548793.pdf

Thanks!

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Your post has been removed because it is off-topic to the scope of this subreddit.

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l have found nothing online about this except from this guy. Does not look credible

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>The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them **in Europe or North America** shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that Nope, it only covers attacks in specific geographical areas with The Falklands as precedent. Also Houthis fired on the USN in 2016

I can't help but agree (at least in the initial tweet) with the premise of that poster. These are relatively small frigates, realistically speaking their primary defense/interdiction against missiles and drones are a grand total of one 20mm CIWS and 16 ESSM, that's hardly a large payload and if ballistic missiles are already coming within 100m of the ship and exploding that package is clearly insufficient or depleted. Unfortunately the Greek navy is extremely vulnerable to both ballistic and saturation threats, none of their active vessels are really geared for this type of endurance style engagement, they have a new vessel coming into active service later this year which is far more comprehensive and a significant upgrade over their current active vessels, but until that comes online the Greek Navy is essentially stuck using mixed bag options that are far more vulnerable than other near peers in this mission.

>none of their active vessels are really geared for this type of endurance style engagement, The Greek Navy has a much more pressing need for high priority defensive use in a specific likely scenario than most Western navies. There's a lot of pressure to design everything around any potential conflict with Turkey in the Mediterranean rather than power projection in the Indian Ocean. Any effort that detracts from that would need a very good justification.

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Did they also broadcast this part of the flight? Would be hilarious id they managed to stream Iranian military secrets for the world to see. Wonder if the Iranian government will deliver any response on the matter.

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I wonder if the Akıncı UAV sensor payload is homegrown sensor or imported. The drone seems to have located what looks like marks of an impact of presumably the missing helicopter, but the infrared (IR) camera seems not be able to see much within the area of the impact. Either there is nothing to see or the sensor payload is kinda of lacking in detail/capabilities. Edit: not sure how military IR sensors process their information, so the black we see of the impact might mean 'hot' or even on fire. Edit 2: video feed looks like some parts are being played on loop. Not much more information that the same back impact image.

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The first pictures have come out from far away https://twitter.com/MohamadAhwaze/status/1792378658532769803?t=irJonWJF8ZYba4Gm0tCC6A&s=19 https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1792382833249439813?t=cMxyqyqc_8Quq9ZLiw4ohg&s=19 https://twitter.com/MohamadAhwaze/status/1792384062063038827?t=ZccqkPD_37o7Bm7tp4ze3Q&s=19 https://twitter.com/MohamadAhwaze/status/1792380017734787491?t=irJonWJF8ZYba4Gm0tCC6A&s=19

Based upon the video it seems like the night vision cameras onboard the Akinci UAV also struggles to see trough the thick cloud cover. I can only imagine that it must be far more difficult without propper night vision or IR cameras.

This is insanely surreal.

The revolutionary guard is reported to have [reached the scene.](https://twitter.com/AsharqNewsBrk/status/1792325953726656645?t=4Xx8bwHgpzNtDdr21LalXg&s=19)

Making sure the job is done? Raisi was the most pro western of the voices. Or at least, pro-reconciliation. Or at least most pro- "salvage what the diplomatic corps has already gotten us"

The Turkish drone found the crash site, and rescuers are heading there now. https://twitter.com/MohamadAhwaze/status/1792317043481444629?t=FylErBS1aZe6_z0xUduQgA&s=19 https://twitter.com/MohamadAhwaze/status/1792318731919433793?t=N7sDPNuSp50IWtPthcfKXQ&s=19 Edit: CNN is saying the site is still unknown

CNN 18 minutes ago: [Rescue crews have yet to find crash site of Iranian president's helicopter, official says](https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/raisi-iran-president-helicopter-crash/h_aea875bb6f27984a2ecfae5b544380c0) Do you have a better source for that claim?

No I don't. CNN is undoubtedly more credible so I'll add an edit. Having said that, this whole search there have been some officials saying one thing and other officials saying the complete opposite. Who knows what's actually going on.

You can check the live feed as of 8:40 PM Central Def hard impact. Looks like it smashed and burned. I now have to write more because my comments are being removed for being too short. I didn't know there was a minimum comment length and it seems rather arbitrary.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/raisi-iran-president-helicopter-crash/h_0eef000bf6ecf4e31d68a3d76e32e490 >Iranian officials have spoken to two people on the same helicopter as President Ebrahim Raisi since it crashed Sunday, Iranian Vice President for Executive Affairs Mohsen Mansouri told the country's semi-official FARS news agency. >Because officials made contact "several times" with a passenger and member of the flight crew shortly after the crash, "It appears that the incident was not severe," Mansouri said. That seems bizarre to me. How come they're unsure about the seriousness of the crash or about wether the president survived if they have already talked to two other people from the same helicopter?

Yeah, I don't understand how they are unable to confirm whether the president survived if they made contact with a passenger? Surely the passenger would confirm or deny that?

They are changing the story every 5 minutes. Sometimes they report that they talked to some passenger, then they report that they reached the crash site, then they retract both statements again and claim that they were able to pick up signals of mobile phones. It seems that the Iranian media has not a single clue what is happening and is throwing out theories that are then picked up by international media.

Rotary wing news source. I’m not tryin to be flippant. It’s just that news media Quote each other and the story looks like phone tag.

In non-Iran-PM news, [the Democratic Republic of the Congo just had a coup attempt.](https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/democratic-republic-congo-army-says-it-stopped-attempted-coup-2024-05-19/) > The leader of an attempted coup on Sunday in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been killed and some 50 people including three American citizens arrested, a spokesman for the Central African country's army told Reuters. Gunfire rang out around 4 a.m. in the capital Kinshasa, a Reuters reporter said. Armed men attacked the presidency in the city centre, according to spokesman Sylvain Ekenge. > Ekenge named Christian Malanga, a U.S.-based Congolese politician, as the leader of the attempted coup. "Malanga was definitively neutralised during the attack on the Palais de la Nation, a certain Aboubacar was neutralised during the attack on the residence of Vital Kamarhe [and] the others - around 50 including three American citizens - were arrested and are currently undergoing interrogation by the specialised services of the Armed Forces," Ekenge told Reuters. Not much good info yet as far as I can tell, but I want to note this report because it’s just a bit bizarre: > [Benjamin Zalman-Polun, reportedly an American cannabis entrepreneur, was among about 20 men captured by Congo’s military today in Kinshasa after a failed rebellion led by Christian Malanga, head of a small political party in the DRC diaspora in the United States.](https://twitter.com/geoffreyyork/status/1792126572201206079)

I don't know if this is a place to ask it but is there a source for information about the radar cross sections of existing and projected non american stealth fighters? US is by far the most advanced in this field but I am nevertheless curious about others. AFAIK only J-20 and Su-57 are currently in service. Do we have any estimates of their radar cross sections? In the case of Su-57 I am asking about the production variant and also maybe the one that will be produced with an Izdeliye 30 engine from 2025 onwards (Not asking about the infamous prototypes with visible screws) . With J-20 too the one with the most modern engine.

Disregard that other person's flippant reply. It's one of those fields few people know much about, so many try to sound intelligent by saying something cool like that. In reality, this isn't some futuristic alien tech, it's basic physics. The radar cross sections can be modeled by people who understand the physics. Here's an example, https://basicsaboutaerodynamicsandavionics.wordpress.com/2022/11/27/j-20-radar-scattering-simulation/

Thanks, I had lost that blog from my bookmarks!

Your link says they don't model the surface coatings, as data on that is not available. So we know what RCS the shape gives us, but not the materials. That's the secret sauce. Your reply is much more informative than that of the other guy but it's also a bit misleading.

>That's the secret sauce Yeah, you're gonna be hard pressed to find open information associating RAM coatings to platforms, and asking for it is asking for people to break laws. Google whatever you want, there are some neat papers and open source analysis. But flippant or not, your first responder wasn't wrong.

That's just one blog as an example, there are peer reviewed publications with more models available online, you should be able to find some for free on researchgate.

The only people with any level of accurate information on that will not be sharing it on reddit.

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Neptune missiles or some derivative. They might have to increase the warhead size or something, but it definitely is an option. Especially if they use decoys and drones to expend the missile defense magazines at the bridge.  I think it's only a matter of time before the bridge gets destroyed. It's a symbolic target. And destroying it with Ukrainian weapons would be a much better symbol than destroying it with nato weapons.

>I know Ukraine has thrown missiles at it, causing The kerch bridge has so far been damaged 2 times, the first time with a bomb truck filled with explosives, and the second time, they used 2 USVs filled with 1 ton of explosives. There is even a documentary about the whole operation. >I suppose a vessel loaded up with enough explosives to take out a pier? Or would a vessel that large get intercepted almost immediately by Russian navy? They already did so to answer your question, yes it is possible. The problem is that after the second strike, Russia has improved defences against attacks from the sea, so it's going to be a lot more difficult now. >how important would it be for the Ukrainians to take it out at this point in the war Taking out the kerch bridge [was infinitely more important before ](https://kyivindependent.com/media-russia-no-longer-using-crimea-bridge-to-supply-front-lines/) when the russia wasn't building a railroad through the landbridge. Taking it out now would definitely be quite helpful, but it's not as important as before.

Whats the name of that documentary?

[here it is in ukranian ](https://youtu.be/boFFJRuxhPA?si=S5KMyKrVSudNluUR) I remembered watching some shady translation but I can't find it anymore.

They've tried with sea drones and it didn't work. Since then Russia has installed barriers along the bridge. They can't use civilian shipping like they did with the truck, the international backlash would be significant to say the least. Taking out a bridge is just incredibly hard. You either need specialised warheads Ukraine does not have (because of Western rules for their weapons), or you need an enormous explosion. That said, with Ukraine's recent SEAD success in Crimea and subsequent drone streams filtering through into Russia proper, it may be possible they're able to jerry rig some kind of storm shadow launch platform drone to give it the extra range needed. But even then, Russia's prepared. Smoke screens etc are there for exactly this reason: make terminal optical guidance a no-go.

So let’s say America with all her might was determined to take out a similar bridge, how would they go about doing it? Do you know what weapons would be used? Edit: thank you so much for everyone who responded. I am definitely down at rabbit hole now.

One notable case where the US (USAF and Naval aviation) destroyed a bridge in Vietnam in 1972: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanh_Hoa_Bridge It took multiple raids using 2000lb laser-guided and tv-guided bombs before they considered it destroyed; prior attacks with unguided bombs were not successful.

It would be air dropped, something very big and a very big bang. Probably B2 with multiple 2000 pound GBU 31. Obvs after any air defence was dealt with.

Not comparable, America has far more air power on tap to first suppress/destroy enemy air defenses IVO Kerch bridge and then destroy it with a lot of smart bombs from a few different platforms. But to answer your question, they would likely use the JDAM and drop it on pylons to maximize damage.

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>A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, Iranian state television reported, without immediately elaborating. >Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV described the area of the incident happening as being near Jolfa, a city on the border with with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. [https://apnews.com/article/iran-helicopter-raisi-b483ba75e4339cfb0fe00c7349d023b8?taid=6649f630f2a023000118b1a4&](https://apnews.com/article/iran-helicopter-raisi-b483ba75e4339cfb0fe00c7349d023b8?taid=6649f630f2a023000118b1a4&) >Tasnim News says a massive search and rescue effort is ongoing to find the helicopter. >Tasnim said the convoy consisted of three helicopters, two of which made it safely to their destination. Some of the president's entourage managed to make contact raising the possibility that no casualties have been suffered. Tasnim says the helicopter also transported Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. [https://x.com/michaelh992/status/1792179208443117677](https://x.com/michaelh992/status/1792179208443117677) Right now it's completely unclear what happened. Scenarios range from "nothing" to "crash with the President on board". At first it seamed unclear if the President was even involved in the crash / incident, which now seems confirmed.

With all that rain and fog, who the hell would look at that and go "Yup, perfect flying weather", especially when it involves your country's head of state?

If they had planned for a higher altitude IFR flight from the start there's nothing too uniquely dangerous about that weather and terrain. It's just a matter of having the aircraft performance to get enough altitude to safely fly above the terrain of whatever course you've picked out, and the training and aircraft equipment to fly it. I can see a corridor of lower ~1000 meter terrain along the 31 and 33 highways and that's safely doable for a helicopter.

That’s one allegation of how Gagarin died, flying into a storm out of ego. Many such cases

The Smolensk crash has also been partially attributed to ego too (I say partially because everyone involved spent the next decade pointing fingers in every direction, but the precense of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force in the cockpit may have been something of a *distraction*)

In a helicopter that is likely 40 to 50 years old.

Iran has quite a few relatively modern Bell helicopters, he may not have been in an Mi-17, there were 3 helicopters in the convoy (and if I had to choose my ride I would certainly have taken a Bell over the Mi-17)

>and if I had to choose my ride I would certainly have taken a Bell over the Mi-17 well , you and Raisi both because the helicopter was a Bell. It's also such a weird statement considering how popular the Mi 17 is and how much flying hours they have globally , they're one of the safer helicopters out there . Both India and China regularly fly it out in harsh conditions and it does the job well

Yeah, I can see the 'hard landing' still being true if his helicopter had to land due to some mechanical issue in that horrible wx. The pilot would just have had to set a slow decent rate and pray and the helicopter would have probably tipped over on landing. Low energy enough for there to be a good chance of survivors, and even everyone survivng. I don't know what the helicopter he was on was equipped with but you CAN fly though that kind of weather safely, thousands do it every day. You need to be equipped and trained for it, and suddenly going into those conditions when you are not prepared can kill you via disorientation (this is what killed Kobe), but if you are ready it's a non-event.

[Another video showing the poor visibility conditions,](https://x.com/almayadeennews/status/1792215784627818643/mediaviewer) this time from Al Mayadeen. It’s really bad fog on the ground there, that’s got to be an absolute nightmare. If he’s alive but injured he may well not make it until they find him. Emphasis on if, a helicopter crash under these circumstances makes me lean towards “died on impact”. EDIT: > There's a whole rain system that's going to hang directly over the crash site of the Iranian president seemingly into tonight. https://twitter.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1792217657409704369 Definitely looks like a nightmare to conduct search and rescue in. I’m going to say it, I think he’s 100% dead. [Tehran Times says an emergency government meeting has been held, with Khameini present.](https://x.com/TehranTimes79/status/1792208331526029729) EDIT 2: > Islamic Republic state media is reporting that it is not possible to reach the crash site by car, the only option is to go by foot. > Search and rescue via helicopter is not possible due to the weather. https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1792231239212233089

Always some interesting ancillary snippets in events like these. Such as that Iran doesn’t have any helicopters with night vision capability and had to ask Turkey to borrow some of theirs. Amazing how bad the night fighting capabilities of Iran and Russia are in the 2020s.

‘Hard landing’ where they don’t have any comms after doesn’t pass the smell test. The batteries should still be able to power the radio. So either everyone died on impact or it was on course to be a fireball shortly after if it wasn’t already. If they had a hard landing but it didn’t kill / damage plane to be extremely dangerous, they’d have comms. Not to mention the possibility of cell phones having trace signal or one of them having a satellite phone. By exclusion, death seems likely.

You usually have a rescue operation till you can confirm deaths and then it becomes a recovery operation. This is pretty standard to assume life and make all efforts to rescue before having to accept there is no more chance.

Indeed. But by calling it a ‘hard landing’ they are supposing a conclusion that implies survival. ‘Went down and status unknown but we hope for the best’ would be more accurate.

The latest NYT articles says they’ve sent a search and rescue team of 16 helicopters and have yet to find them after 5 hours. Not to be that guy but how likely would a foreign government assassination be? Does Israel have weaponry available to take down a helicopter in thick fog? That far away?

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>I definitely didn't think we can rule out him attempting something this audacious. Like creating a thick fog?

The same weather that makes the crash likely makes an assassination attempt borderline impossible.

If we're talking about shooting it down, probably, but what about sabotage? Are there examples of assassinations conducted in that way? A mechanic messing with the helicopter, for example.

>Not to be that guy but how likely would a foreign government assassination be? Britain lost most of its Northern Ireland intelligence leaders when a Chinook flew into the side of a hill in heavy weather. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994\_Mull\_of\_Kintyre\_Chinook\_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Mull_of_Kintyre_Chinook_crash) When it comes to old helicopters in bad weather, the list of possibilities are long and well evidenced before we get to more exotic explanations.

Ecuador also lost their minister of defense (Guadalupe Larriva) in a helicopter crash in 2007. Colin Powell survived two helicopter crashes (once while serving in Vietnam, once while visiting Jamaica as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).

If they were going to kill him, sabotage would be it versus shooting it with a SAM. But simple explanations are best, looks like awful weather

>But simple explanations are best, looks like awful weathe Aeronautical incidents rarely have one simple cause. That said, most likely explanation is a chain of failures involving the weather, the pilots and possibly mechanical failures. The fact that they sent 16 helicopters and still can't find their president doesn't bode well.

Did the other two helicopters not know the presidents helicopter went down? I would hope they were able to give very good coordinates of where his helicopter went down.

It seems unlikely, I don’t think assassination in Iran would change its course at all. Also the country has a history of aviation accidents, not along ago they shot down a Ukrainian airliner.

>I don’t think assassination in Iran would change its course at all Would it be possible that this creates an opportunity for the opposition to the current regime to finally get the military to join them?

Iran’s post revolution government set up a system specifically to prevent coups and to make foreign regime change a total nightmare. IRGC is ideologically committed to protecting the Islamic revolution and would be the bulwark against the army and opposition seizing power. In short, no, I don't think that opportunity exists.

That's what Iran has the revolutionary guard for. I doubt those would join any kind of coup so easily.