I didn't say it was a victory, I said it happened because entitled people underestimated their enemy. Every agency in Israel thought Hamas is not looking to make trouble.
I do wonder what caused Iran to have absolutely zero defense from the air threats. Surely they did not think that just using missiles were enough? They launched a lot year ago, during the 12 day war and still even if they have some I doubt their stockpiles are even matching the previous launches, considering how many platforms and launch sites were destroyed. I don't think they are that fast to replenish.
The Houthis got a missile uncomfortably close to hitting the Eisenhower a few years ago in the Red Sea. They also forced the Truman to do evasive maneuvers that lended to an incident where an F-18 fell off said carrier last year, which suggests that the missile wasn't detected until it was fairly close. As incredible as Arleigh Burke destroyers are, they aren't infallible. Radar ducting is a problem in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and while we have software and modeling to try and counter that problem, it's far from perfect.
I wonder if it is related to a thing that sometimes I do not get notifications from the updated topics.
Personally I feel like it was more due to either incompetence or being too relaxed, not taking them seriously enough. Like when you shoot some stuff and then just chill.
I think you're underplaying the threat.
Article: The combination of wide-area surveillance, close-in target shadowing, and terminal guidance has allowed the Houthis to achieve some impressive feats of marksmanship, such as an apparent near-miss on a U.S. aircraft carrier and a number of hits or very close misses by ASBMs on ships approximately 150-200 kilometers from launch points.
*snip*
By some accounts, an ASBM or other missile arrived at a very shallow trajectory, with minimal warning, without a chance for interception, and splashing down around 200 meters from the Eisenhower. Details gathered from interviews with Yemen-focused U.S. and U.K. intelligence officers for this study. Names of interviewees, and dates and places of interviews withheld at interviewees' request. The Houthis propagandized the carrier's departure. See "America's withdrawal from the Red Sea confirms the fall of the myth of Washington's great power," Sabant – Saba Agency, May 1, 2024
Um... you do know that the Israeli defense strategy is multi-layered as well, right? You do know that the Iron Dome is used for short range rockets, artillery, and drones right?
Article: The stunning revelation that part of why US President Donald Trump called off, or at least paused, any American attack on the Iranian regime was a request from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposes a gaping, relatively new hole in Israel's otherwise stellar multilayer air defense shield.
The IDF sent more than a dozen messages in a matter of days about how it was ready and how strong its air defense capabilities are, only for Netanyahu to privately tell Trump the opposite.
There were likely a variety of reasons that Trump canceled or postponed attacking the Iranian regime, and there were multiple reasons why Netanyahu also pushed him in that direction.
Tehran's ballistic missile capability is now weaker than it's been in decades. Trump had an opportunity to possibly topple Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But then, Netanyahu was so worried about Israel getting hit that he asked Trump to call off an attack.
This picture does not seem to add up, to put it mildly. The answer lies not in technology but in volume.
In shooting down around 800 Iranian ballistic missiles between 2024 and 2025, along with several hundred Yemeni Houthi and Hezbollah ballistic missiles, the IDF has done a phenomenal job.
Also, the air force succeeded in reducing the Islamic Republic's pre-war supply of 2,500 ballistic missiles and over 400 launchers by about half.
But if you think about it, when you add all of that up, it means that even if Iran has much fewer missiles with which to strike Israel, Netanyahu must feel that the IDF has not yet sufficiently replenished its supply of Arrow missile interceptors to confront even that lower volume threat.
One of the reasons Israeli officials are so excited about selling the Arrow to Germany is that it allows producing the interceptor at much larger economies of scale, meaning, over time, more Arrow interceptors can be produced at a quicker rate.
However, it still takes time to replenish a supply of interceptors. Pre-war, this came at an estimated cost of around a few million dollars. During the June 2025 Iran war alone, Israel and the US, according to one estimate, spent $1.48-$1.58 billion on missile interceptor defenses, such that the post-Germany deal boost has likely not yet fully kicked in.
Add in that the US probably had not deployed as many defenses to assist Israel with shooting down aerial threats as it had in the prior three rounds, the prime minister suddenly felt militarily vulnerable, no matter what the IDF had been saying about being ready in public.
And this even though there was a decent chance that Iran might not have hit Israel at all, since the sole attacker would have been Washington.
Are you sure you're educated on it? The Iron Dome is not what was taking out Iranian missiles inbound to Tel Aviv. It's just one of several layers of defense, with the Iron Dome focused on short range launches and threats. It was David's Sling (similar to the Patriot system), Arrow-2 missiles (comparable to THAAD), and Arrow-3 missiles (akin to AEGIS) that were doing the lifting on the Israeli side against inbound Iranian cruise and ballistic missiles.
Stay safe out there, man. Hopefully all goes well in your neck of the woods and Israel is unscathed by any strikes.
Considering Hamas has still not been wiped out after years of fighting in a territory 1/4500th the size of Iran I doubt dropping some bombs on buildings will do the trick.
Hamas hasn't been wiped out because of Israel not wanting to hurt the hostages, plus the world looking with very much higher scrutiny on Israel.
True, except Maduro wasn't a world leader anymore. He lost the previous election, so he was not a president elect, and the people of Venezuela want that distinction known. He was just another criminal, and he was accorded all the respect that a criminal is owed.
To wipe out Hamas, you need to do what turks do with kurds - basically go into Gaza and perform massacre. They just have to many operatives and as long as people don't rebel against them, the only hope is for Hamas to give up sooner or later. Hard way or soft way.
In case of IRGC, something might change but at least Trump is smart in not being ffor "regime change". With Iran, though, they will be changes butt I am not sure how deep they are going to be. Someone will take over for sure - but will IRGC disband, will their elites rename itself etc. etc. We will see.
It does not matter if he was a world leader or not. He did not need european recognition to run the country. And "world leader" or not is an irrelevant distinction.
Article: "As for Iran, everyone is waiting to see what America will do. And the world offers nothing. Europe offers nothing and doesn't want to enter this issue… But when you refuse to help people fighting for freedom, the consequences return and they are always negative. Belarus in 2020 is an example. No one helped their people and now Russian Oreshnik missiles are deployed in Belarus within range of most European capitals. That would not have happened if the Belarusian people had won in 2020," Zelenskyy added, saying he had repeatedly called on European leaders to act against the Belarusian regime.
Well, you need cheap resources to prop up the economy and the welfare state. The same reason why offshoring is happening - produce cheaply in some other place.
Russia is not the enemy of USA any longer. Power wise they are not even in the same league and the only reason why Russia was even allowed to hold anything in Venezuela, Iran etc. was because GOP/Democrats were more interested in globalist ideas and managed decline of USA over anything else. They could have kicked Russia from Syria if they wanted to, they could have done the same with Crimea (Turkey shot Russian plane and nothing happened). They could take Russian shadow fleet years ago too.
To be fair, France and UK has influence in the ME. The OG Ayatollah came from France (he was hiding there). And again you are pointing out that Europe is all hypocrisy. All its state lives on american protection, foreign resources and foreign production.
It does not matter what they are saying in the home consumption because just like North Korea, everybody likes to talk about their fight against capitalism and being a country rivaling USA as a big boogeyman. USA is the only country that matters for most of the world and whether it is Russia, China, ME, SA etc. - USA is the biggest boggeyman there.
Haha, yeah.
Oh, trust me. I am not even remotely in alignment with how Trump is fucking around on the Ukraine conflict, or the threats regarding Greenland in the first place. Or a whole slew of other subjects that we can't discuss here, as I truly believe he is slowly eroding American soft power. But let's be frank, Europe collectively didn't pull its weight when it came to defense spending as required of NATO membership. Mark Rutte made the highly unpopular statement yesterday that Trump's election was a good thing for Europe, because Europe is finally meeting the bare minimum of 2% GDP expenditure for defense. Had they been doing what they should have been doing the entire time, there would have been more capability to give Ukraine the support they needed in the earlier days of the war when it mattered most. And they'd be in a better position to assert themselves on say, moving troops or assets to protect an ally. Probably would have been able to afford more than sending 40 troops to Greenland.
It does not matter what they are saying in the home consumption because just like North Korea, everybody likes to talk about their fight against capitalism and being a country rivaling USA as a big boogeyman. USA is the only country that matters for most of the world and whether it is Russia, China, ME, SA etc. - USA is the biggest boggeyman there.
The truth is that USA has almost zero trade with Russia, Russia main forces are the threat to Europe but not to USA they don't really have fleet (their paradigm is a soviet one which are subs with missiles mainly) and most of their non-nuke missiles won't be able to reach further than Alaska at best and has to path Greenland and Canada before even reaching USA.
Just because you don't agree with something it does not make it russian propaganda. If Europe has not treated Russia as an enemy for 20+ years, why should USA who is bigger and stronger than the whole Europe combined and has no dependencies on Russia?
Those threats irrelevant because the guys in Kremlin do not want to die either. Do you really think that Putin and his cronies want to burst into flames upon the retaliation? Hell, most of them do not even want to live in Russia and their children are living in Europe, USA and other countries. They certainly like to sell Russian resources. But not living there. Not to mention the state of the nuclear arsenal is unknown and looking at what has transpired in Ukraine, I would not be surprised that a lot of it is not functional anymore (you need money to maintain and considering the scale of the corruption there...). If regular military is in such a state, what state would the more sophisticated equipment would have?
Alaska is a single region in not particularly human friendly environment. It is an enclave - sure, but just like Kaliningrad it does not mean much if Russia cannot defend it even if it takes over it. Considering the amount of aircraft carriers in the pacific and how the Russia is streched from its control center (there is one really "big" city near Urals mountain which is in the middle of the Russia even) and its fleet being either beside Japan or Kamchatka (somewhere there), together with the fact that there is no bridge between - the danger there is mininal (those area near the Bering Strait are not ship friendly). Would not be surprised if Alaska has more people with guns than any Russian force nearby. In fact having Alaska american is a bigger problem to Russia than Russia being there.
For globalists the existence of Maduro only matters in a way to demonstrate how "democratic they are" in comparison to Venezuela or to "look good" by writing a condemnation letter. They would never try to solve that specific problem ever. In fact ISIS, various terrorist groups are good for globalists because the concept of the "end of history" implied that the wars between sovereign states has become so constly that nobody would dare to do that again and the way to solve problems would be to have wars on periphery (like Syria) or Armenia against the terrorists, that do not affect the "civilized world". One of the reasons why even Russia had trouble with their military infrastructure as everybody bought into the concept of having "police force against terrorists" rather than a professional army (like Europe does not even have proper infrastructure for a draft as it requires hospitals, logistics etc). The military wing of the global elite would be USA who was one of the remaining countries with a proper army and the ability to project it, while Europe would be responsible for regulations and forcing fines against the companies that "do not follow agenda".
Not really. USA had around 20b trade with Russia. At its peak. 20b....Somali corruption was a bigger deal than the trade with Russia. The reason for low trade is the distance really as Russia sells mainly resources but there is no infrastructure towards USA at all and the northern sea passage is a bit tough for containers and such. EU had around 180b for example. USA/EU trade was around 400b, China/USA was like 600b (I take 2020 numbers). So 20b with Russia was literally nothing.
If we go Census gov we would see this
www.census.gov
So what? It is all the phantom pain of the soviet era.
You treat it as a some conspiracy, while it is not a conspiracy like some hidden set of people meeting each other in the shadows to control the world. It is just set of interests that align with each other that way. It is like the fight against nuclear - it is beneficial to organizations and corporations that promote solar energy or other alternative energy if people are against other sources of power. All while China is building all kind of energy infrastructure. Or like Al Gore constantly threatening with Hawaii or Florida or whatever being underwhater to promote his own NGOs. Various NGOs benefits from various things so for example having more illegals brings benefits to some donors. Add to that the cash benefits to churches (who are notoriously involved with immigration support). It is not some kind of a hidden agenda - it is just a set of interests. The same interests that dragged the Iraq War for so many years. Just bureaucrats. But it is easy to dismiss it if you just proclaim that it is a conspiracy.
If we go Census gov we would see this
29b in imports and 6b in exports in 2021 with Russia. On USA scale, those numbers are nothing. For comparison: EU - 670b imports/387b exports. Mexico - 382b/277b in the same 2021.International Trade
Considering the amount of corruption, expenses on the military, write offs and so on, those numbers are nothing. In fact OBBB spending on ICE until 2029 amounts to 170b, which translates to roughly 40b a year. More than the trade with Russia even at its peak.
So what? It is all the phantom pain of the soviet era.
You treat it as a some conspiracy, while it is not a conspiracy like some hidden set of people meeting each other in the shadows to control the world. It is just set of interests that align with each other that way. It is like the fight against nuclear - it is beneficial to organizations and corporations that promote solar energy or other alternative energy if people are against other sources of power. All while China is building all kind of energy infrastructure. Or like Al Gore constantly threatening with Hawaii or Florida or whatever being underwhater to promote his own NGOs. Various NGOs benefits from various things so for example having more illegals brings benefits to some donors. Add to that the cash benefits to churches (who are notoriously involved with immigration support). It is not some kind of a hidden agenda - it is just a set of interest. The same interests that dragged the Iraq War for so many years. Just bureaucrats. But it is easy to dismiss it if you just proclaim that it is a conspiracy.
Just because you dismiss something as a conspiracy it does not make it a conspiracy. I guess some states will go underwhatever soon. Everything is melting after all....
Earth's mightiest warriors, yes. Now when I talk to Western Europeans almost none of them say they'd be willing to defend their country against an existential threat. They would just "go somewhere else."
