99% success rate in intercepting the Iranian missiles is what Israel, western governments and their lapdog media are claiming happened on Saturday. Is that true? Always be skeptical of the claims made by either side in a war situation.
Let’s take a quick review of Iran’s stated goals for this operation that they called Operation True Promise. According to Iran, the operation was to strike back at the bases from which Israel launched their unprecedented attack against Iran’s consulate in Damascus. That would be Ramon and Nevatim airbases and a “secret” intelligence base on the Golan Heights where the attack on the consulate was planned.
Israel in conjunction with the United States, the UK, France and others coordinated to protect Israeli assets by intercepting these missiles.
Western media have displayed numerous pictures that claimed to show successful interceptions of ballistic missiles.
There are dozens of such images floating around the Internet. The problem? Those are the ejected booster stages of two stage rockets. These images do not show any evidence that these rockets were shot down.
There is video footage of interceptions of the slow-moving drones that has ben released by the Israelis. I guess they did this to buttress their claims of a 99% interception rate. And it may be truethat most of those weapons were intercepted.
However, when it comes to the ballistic missiles, many of them appear to have gotten through. There are many videos showing red hot missiles striking the ground and detonating.
These are just a few of the videos circulating on the internet showing the impotence of the air defense of Israel and its allies. Of course, you will not find these on YouTube who is engaged in keeping up the charade that the West is all powerful.
What can be concluded about the Iranian attack on Israel last weekend? There cannot be any final words on this subject at this point in time. Why? Two reasons. First, the exact nature of Iran’s targets is not known. Even if we knew that exact nature, we do not know how accurate their targeting systems were. Second, we do not know what Iran’s intentions were with this strike.
Despite this there are some clear takeaways. Israel’s “secret” base in the Golan Heights was destroyed.
Simplicius notes:
Iran demonstrated the capacity to bypass the most powerful and advanced anti-missile systems in the world—ones that have no built-in excuse as is the case in Ukraine. In Ukraine, the excuse is that the Patriots and other systems are manned by under-trained Ukrainians, and are not reinforced and integrated as wholly into layered Western systems as they would be in Western hands.
But last night, Iran penetrated every missile shield manned and operated by NATO itself, with all the trappings and advanced C4ISR and SIGINT capabilities inherent to the entire Western alliance; from THAAD, to Patriot, David’s Sling, Arrow-3, SM-3, Iron Dome, and even ‘C-Dome’ from Israeli corvettes—not to mention the entire complement of the West’s most advanced A2A defenses flown from F-35s, Typhoons, Eurofighters, and likely much more.
The geopolitical equation has changed in the Middle East. If Israel wants to survive, they need to understand this.
I am sure we will see more maneuvering in the Middle East over the weeks ahead. Can the neocons in Washington and Tel Aviv be suppressed enough to give peace a chance? I doubt it.