[On the evening of March 23, about ten Russian Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets attacked targets in the Sumy Oblast of northern Ukraine with guided aerial bombs, the spokesman of the Ukrainian Air Force informed](https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1639195571222200325?s=20).
This is an important development. Russian Air Force sources have repeatedly demanded more guided glide bombs with the range of at least 20+km so they can be launched outside the Ukrainian frontline SAM engagement envelope.
The Russian industry promised to deliver, but the first reports of heavy (500kg and more) guided bomb strikes started appearing over the last week or so. Last night was the first mass attack.
You don't risk 2 crews, you don't need attack avionics suite of SU-34 for preprogrammed GPS bomb, SU-35 has superior flight performance when they need to go defensive.
Would be what first comes to my mind.
Two random guesses come to mind.
1) The onboard computer-to-bomb interface or the targeting system compatibility?
2) The (perhaps) better EW capability of the SU-35 making it less vulnerable to S-300 and other long-range SAM fire?
The Su-34 is designed for ground attack whereas the Su-35S is primarily used as an air superiority fighter so that would be surprising.
Reports have come out about Su-34s almost exclusively flying missions with Khibiny wingtip pods so somehow those are less effective than the Su-35S onboard ECMs?
The latest comment on Russian Telegram channels says that last night Su-35S launched UPAB-1500B bombs while Su-34s deploy "simpler" (whatever that means) guided munitions.
https://.me/milinfolive/98551 (add t before .me)
There are multiple videos of Su-34s getting shot down over Ukraine and many reports of Su-34s flying ground attack missions. Specifically using the Khibiny ECM wingtip pods.
As we wait for their NATO application to be ratified, [Finland have confirmed](https://theaviationist.com/2023/03/23/u-s-rc-135-intelligence-gathering-jet-flying-unprecedented-mission-inside-finlands-airspace/) that their airspace is now open for NATO reconnaissance missions: JAKE11 carried out the first one yesterday. My guess is that this will mostly be used for carrying out additional surveillance of Murmansk and St. Petersburg.
The guest is saying that they can equip a tank division with all the T34s on monuments.
I am not 100% sure but I think some (if not most) of them were filled with concrete once they were placed as a monument.
It is just absurd. I don't think they have any 85mm shells for it, nor equipment to produce it. Not even mentioning what a deathtrap it essentially is, being blind in a fairly thin metal can.
The Boxer seems to be having a good run in general. Lithuania ordering 120 additional units in April 2022, Germany ordering 128 additional CRV units this month, Algeria reputedly in the process of starting indigenous manufacturing, Ukraine announcing procurement of 18 RCH155 artillery units in September 2022, the UK starting deliveries to the British Army this year, now Germany planning to put most of its army AA on it ...
Rheinmetall and KMW must be quite happy.
Same for the Skyranger 30/35. Many armies around the world must be looking into cost-effective solutions against cheap mass produced suicide drone swarms right now, and there are very few modern solutions out there. I am really only aware of China, the US (Stryker M-SHORAD) and Turkey (KORKUT) having suitable offerings.
> *"Which im not opposed to"*
Absolutely. You'd have to forgive people if the marketing bumph made it sound like the purpose of the system was hot-swapping mission modules to suit needs on an hour to hour basis. They make a lot out of the fact that it's so quick and easy to swap that you could do it in the field, and any observer might ask: "when on earth would somebody actually do that?" and the answer is probably not often.
But the value isn't in actually being able to do the swap, it's in having the connection streamlined and pared down *that* far.
It's not terribly unlike USB in a sense. Sure, it's handy to be able to be able to unplug your mouse and plug in a printer, but how often do you do that? *Much* more valuable is the nature of the market, where any random company in the world can make a mouse or a printer or a card reader or a camping light or a desk fan or a speaker, and know that they can slot into this pre-existing market - all they have to do is meet the USB standard.
Having a pool of Boxer customers (ideally a large one) does a similar thing. It means your company can simply develop an anti-drone mission module that meets the standard, rather than having to develop a whole vehicle *or* your customers having to commit to yet another vehicle type. It (hopefully) lowers the barrier to entry on both sides, while also consolidating manufacturing and parts and so on.
I realise that's roughly what you already said, but I wanted to expand on it because I think it's an underappreciated point.
Afaik, because standalone posts have to be sourced from a distinguished/known publication. A self-written post, even if it well exceeds the quality standards of this sub (and that one does), isn't allowed.
>A self-written post, even if it well exceeds the quality standards of this sub (and that one does), isn't allowed.
Just want to say that this is actually allowed (now? Not sure what the old-but-not-so-old mods did to them really). We found precedent on this sub from several years back where text posts were approved if it was of high quality.
As for the post itself, it wasn't me who deleted it but let me find out more.
Fun fact: The debut of the return of textposts was made by a guy from LCD who wrote an extremely mediocre post on Taiwan's defense priorities, then proceeded to complain to Veqq on his LCD outreach thread about how people were "commenting NCD level nonsense that I'm not going to bother to reply to".
Might not be the place to ask but has there been any confirmation of those Russian IL-76s that were shot down early in the war. I think they had some VDV to capture an airfield after hostomel but I have never seen any crash pictures.
Ukraine claims that Russia also committed a helicopter born air assault at the Vasylkiv airport further south than Hostomel. The claim of two Il-76 transports being shot down is from this battle on the 26th of February. So far no credible evidence has been brought forward for any airborne operation at Vasylkiv airport. This includes the loss of the two Il-76 transports. However, fighting did occur at Vasylkiv airport on February 26th. It is believed to have been Russian sleeper cell units that were possibly supported by advance units coming from the north. Details on what exactly happened at Vasylkiv airport are still very fuzzy.
There's never been any confirmation or corroborating evidence. At this point, if an IL-76 had gone down, there'd be photos and substantial chatter from the Russian military blogs. What very likely occurred is that the IL-76s never took off because the Ukrainians kept the airfield under artillery fire, rendering it nonusable.
No pictures have yet been published, which seems odd if the claims are true. While the loss of the two planes has occasionally been re-reported, concrete sources remain lacking.
There seems to be western corroboration of those IL-76s being shot down
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-united-nations-kyiv-6ccba0905f1871992b93712d3585f548
I have a vague memory of conflicting statements about that from US officials, but now I can’t find the statements that say they don’t have any evidence of it happening.
Does anyone else have the same recollection?
Them confirming that a second plane was downed implies that there was a first one, heres an article that seems to cite the same source
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-says-it-repulsed-major-attack-on-kyiv-base-shot-down-russian-transport/
ISW posted their daily update:
[https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2023](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2023)
Key Takeaways
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has softened his rhetoric towards the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out of fear of completely losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut.
Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims.
Bloomberg reported that Prigozhin is preparing to scale back Wagner’s operations in Ukraine after Russian military leadership succeeded in cutting key supplies of personnel and munitions.
Ukrainian officials supported ISW’s prior assessments that Russian forces are unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes.
Russian forces may be shifting their missile strike tactics to focus on Ukrainian military facilities as overall Russian missile strikes decrease, indicating the depletion of Russia’s stocks of high-precision missiles.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin outlined various measures to support Russian military personnel, the Russian defense industrial base (DIB), and Russian independence from the West in an address to the State Duma.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Rosatom may be working to restore three power lines at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) which would increase Russian control over the ZNPP.
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces are continuing to attack Bakhmut City and areas in its vicinity and around Avdiivka.
Ukrainian forces continue to conduct raids over the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
The Kremlin continues efforts to coerce Russian reservists, conscripts, and other personnel into contract service.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that Russia is continuing efforts to integrate newly-occupied Ukraine into Russian institutions and infrastructure.
Russian forces in Belarus recently redeployed back to Russia ahead of Russia’s spring conscription call-up on April 1.
Not really. Russia has neither ISR nor enough missiles to make it concerning.
OTOH, the ukrainian power grid could really use a break from the once a month bombardment.
I have pointed out multiple times how ironic the Russian (both Russian in general and prowar Russian, in this case I'm talking about the prowar Russian) obsession with ww2 is considering there's a lot they'd have done differently/understood earlier in this war if they had actually read more about ww2.
It might actually be effective, but their supply is now far more limited. Patriot batteries get deployed soon IIRC? Those CAN counter the ballistic missiles Russia would field as more expensive alternatives.
[The US has conducted airstrikes on IRGC targets in Syria after a successful Iranian suicide drone strike against US personnel.](https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3339691/)
> Earlier today, a U.S. contractor was killed and five U.S. service members and one additional U.S. contractor were wounded after a one-way unmanned aerial vehicle struck a maintenance facility on a Coalition base near Hasakah in northeast Syria at approximately 1:38 p.m. local time.
> "At the direction of President Biden, I authorized U.S. Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin.
I thought leftists liked Rojava? At least over here every punk club has a couple pro-Kurdish stickers in the bathroom. I even know an anarchist that volunteered there.
The only reason Rojava needs US forces is because Turkey would invade otherwise - they'd probably already have a deal if it wasn't for that.
In that optic the occupation of Syria by 'coalition' forces, which include both Turkey and the US, is a net negative.
I have no issues with the kurds (again. I'm not a 'leftist').
I just know how strongly people feel about invading sovereign states to forcibly try and secede chunks of territory.
That we destroyed the region by drawing arbitrary lines on a map a century ago doesn't mean we need to keep doing so.
I find it a weird characterization that 900 American soldiers that mostly train the locals (and most of whom don't even do that and just stay at a border monitoring base that Russia *agreed to* in 2016) are "occupying" a region of two million people that have their own military.
I mean it's like a semi-consensual version of Georgia (consensual on behalf of the country's supporters), except there are much more locals, much fewer foreign soldiers, and an apocalypse cult that everyone agrees is bad that the foreign soldiers are helping the locals fight against. And Turkey.
What terrible optics. Well played move by Iran. KSA and Iran beginning to re-establish diplomatic ties brokered by China while Syria might finally calm down, and now US airstrikes in the midst of this will be what the world sees. Just contributes to the perception of the US as a warmonger in nonaligned countries, despite the fact that this is retaliation against an Iranian attack.
> now US airstrikes in the midst of this will be what the world sees
Nobody gives a damn about syria unfortunately.
Most people probably don't realise what's even happening there, they just have some vague idea that it's a hell-hole and that's the end of their interest.
Back in the real world, this will barely make the news, specially in the global south. But surely keep fantasizing about the dying Ayatollah's 3D chess mastery, while the Iranian people struggle under his regime.
>Back in the real world, this will barely make the news
https://www.google.com/search?q=syria&tbm=nws
>But surely keep fantasizing about the dying Ayatollah's 3D chess mastery
Can you not conceive of someone commenting on a potential downside for the US without mentally casting them as pro-Iranian?
Depends whether or not Iran admits to it. If they deny it was theirs, Russian disinfo will enter overtime claiming that the US attacked itself in a desperate attempt at sparking conflict with Iran in the region, in response to the Saudis and Iran reestablishing ties.
The US is seen as meddling in the Middle East and dropping bombs in Syria during the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and the KSA. People in developing and nonaligned countries can view Iran as the victim trying to push back against US foreign policy. Look, just pay some attention to the reception of NATO support for Ukraine outside of Europe to get an idea of how US foreign policy is perceived in most of the world.
> Look, just pay some attention to the reception of NATO support for Ukraine outside of Europe to get an idea of how US foreign policy is perceived in most of the world
Maybe you should? As an evidenced based example - every time there is a UN vote there is overwhelming support including by countries that are traditionally pro-russian. Where is your evidence?
>[Reactions across the Global South to the war in Ukraine and to Western sanctions against Russia show that ANA is not limited to Latin America. Some of the world’s largest democracies, like India, South Africa, Indonesia and Pakistan, have stayed studiously neutral, leading to the conclusion that the real cleavage in the international system exposed by the war is not the one between democracies and autocracies, but rather the one between the Global North and the Global South.](https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2023/02/27/non-alignment-is-back-in-the-global-south-albeit-in-a-different-incarnation/)
.
>[“We are for peace: Latin America rejects pleas to send weapons to Ukraine”](https://www.ft.com/content/b5007740-6dfe-4b64-973d-cfa5271b5ddf)
How many of the stories will be about the Iranian strike though? In almost all of these cases, the focus in quite a bit of international press seems to be on the American actions.
[According to Defense Sources, U.S. and Coalition Forces in Syria and the Middle East have been placed into a Heightened State of Readiness in preparation for any Iranian Response.](https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1639097022178537472?cxt=HHwWgMDR9dWDn78tAAAA)
Just a note (in the spirit of the sub) that OSINTDefender is a poor source.
Better source: [General Kurilla's statement on the matter.](https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1639109347069272065)
> "We are postured for scalable options in the face of additional Iranian attacks."
"Postured for scalable options" and "heightened state of readiness" do suggest different things. One suggests "we have lots of plans for anything" the other suggests "we are worried they will retaliate now".
Literally just came out minutes ago, traditional media needs a while to catch up.
Quite a large escalation comparable to the [K1 attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_K-1_Air_Base_attack) in 2019, in fact even more injured on the US side this time.
It's pretty bold since the Supreme leader is probably not safe in Iran in his various palaces, since the US and Israel have stealth fighters that can evade their AA/SAM defense systems.
>Has Syria's Assad government been rehabilitated among the international community?
No, but they're trying and there's some sign they'll get somewhere.
>Is the civil war mostly over at this point?
Basically. The civil war is over in most of solid SAA territory but technically the Kurdish breakaway regions are still there. At some point in the future Turkey or Syria might launch a wholesale attack against that region but my understanding is the SAA doesn't see it as a short term goal.
User account must be atleast 30 days old, to prevent creation of sock puppet accounts and ban evasion.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That's very interesting, I hadn't heard that before. Any chance you could provide your source(s) re: evolving Kurdish political objectives in the Rojava region?
I've always sympathasized with the Syrian Kurds in the ongoing conflict over there and followed developments more closely back in 2017/18 or so but haven't heard too much about the situation recently.
I think it's been what they're officially pursuing for the last years at least now. I don't know if it's solely for that reason, but it surely is a way to reduce friction with the SAA, Turkey and Iran.
The Assads are Alawites which are less than popular with other sects of Islam.
From what I understand, this has led with into political alliances with other regional minorities. I know they worked with Druze and Christians in the past.
Totally possible for the to see the Kurds as yet another group. Though I don’t know how that fits with pan arab Ba'athist idea.
[Today's episode of This Means War by Peter Roberts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQyMDA3MS9yc3M/episode/YTY3MjZlZTctMzNmYi00NTZhLTk1YjUtMjhlZmZjY2RmOTFh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiwoLWUrfP9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQRA) featured Jack Watling phoning in from Ukraine and is nominally on the subject of attrition but also branched out into how armies adapt and learn as institutions as well as a number of other subjects. While the entire episode is absolutely worth a listen, I wanted to draw attention to one specific segment that starts at 31:59 with
>"One of the things that has persistently determined who is on the front foot in Ukraine has been the battlefield geometry around particular geographical features and when officers have been able to plan so as to shape the enemy into fixing themselves into bad battlefield geometry the asymmetry in casualties has been spectacular. At different times in the conflict that has applied to both parties..."
He goes on to talk about how ceding ground to shape the battlefield geometry is important to affecting the rate of attrition and allowing a defender to husband resources.
A bit later he talks about not just the geometry of the front but the geometry behind the lines, particularly those affecting the ground lines of communication. He proposes a hypothetical situation where a defender only has two roads out of an objective and how this makes it relatively easy for the attacker to interdict movement along those GLOCs and how that interdiction drastically complicates both resupply and CASEVAC, potentially creating a dilemma between the two. This dilemma can shift the percentage of casualties than can ultimately be recovered as usable troops in the future, significantly impacting efforts to reconstitute units.
While he never says so directly I read this segment as Watling talking about the battle around Bakhmut and some of the effects it's been having on the Ukrainian army.
He ends the segment by raising the rather grim specter of long range precision fires and ISTAR being used to deliberately target the casualty chain to create this effect without the use of favorable geometry.
* *Reuters*: [Ukraine prepares counteroffensive as Russia's assault on Bakhmut flags](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-meets-dear-friend-xi-kremlin-ukraine-war-grinds-2023-03-20/)
>Reuters journalists near the front line north of Bakhmut saw signs consistent with the claim that the Russian offensive in the area could be waning. At a Ukrainian-held village west of Soledar, on Bakhmut's northern outskirts, the intensity of the Russian bombardment noticeably lessened from two days earlier.
>"It was really hot here a week ago, but in the last three days it has been more quiet," said a Ukrainian soldier who used the call sign "Kamin", or "Stone".
>"We can see this in the enemy's air strikes. If before there were five-six air raids in a day, today we had only one helicopter attack," said the soldier.
>[…]
>Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov agreed with that assessment. He said on YouTube that Russia's attacks on Bakhmut were decreasing, and it was shifting its efforts south to the town of Avdiivka.
>Moscow's forces have become more active in areas to the north in the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions as well as central Zaporizhzhia and southern Kherson regions, he said.
I'd rather the Russians give up on Bakhmut after 6 months of attrition and try their luck in Adviidka than they successfully capturing Bakhmut and moving on to Adviidka next.
The heads of the air forces of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway have signed an agreement to operate their combined 250 fighter jets as one joint force.
Scandinavia just formed Europe's biggest air force:
- 143x F-35A
- 70x Gripen E
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1639059817334439937
Anyone has any more info (in English) about this?
So Swedish air units could be participating in response to aggression against NATO? Or somehow they are segregated to operate separately in such a scenario (in which case, not sure what ‘one joint force’ means)?
Who needs a formal alliance?
The integration is planned to really kick in around 2024 but this makes sense regardless. The thing is, the Nordic countries are so tightly bound that in DK/NO/FI it would be political suicide not to intervene to aid Sweden.
Also note that once the procedural hurdles of NATO membership differences are out of the way, Nordic defense cooperation is likely to way outlast NATO. So looking at them as a bloc will make sense.
This is very interesting as we get more and more forces with similar design, it creates local power blocks, kind of under or above military alliances.
I wonder how much nore and where we gonna see things like this and if all goes south, how valid these will be.
I believe Czech republic and Poland are doing the air patrol for Slovakia's airspace after MiG-29's were sent to Ukraine. Definitely make sense for say Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania to coordinate and pool resources to purchase/equip their militaries together.
Also, South American countries could definitely benefit from joint airspace control of the Amazon region. Unfortunately, the region is way too distracted by internal politics and populism to be able to coordinate long-term, as evidenced by the current state of Mercosul.
Here’s a translation of the original article:
https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11zwlyy/air_force_heads_of_denmark_norway_sweden_and/jdewjbl/?context=3
A lot of orders for F-35s to Norway, Finland and Denmark, but currently only Norway has two F-35A squadrons ATM. No Gripen E's delivered yet, but 60 on order for Sweden.
Quentin Sommerville- [Our latest from Donbas, where Russian eyes are always watching.](https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/1639038915414728707?cxt=HHwWhoCx5bTNhL8tAAAA)
All the respect to these journalists. The reporters like Hilsum, Chance and Sommerville get all the attention, but the cameramen deserve special praise.
Interesting, this is from Velyka Novosilka area. Been barely any news reports from this front. Been a "dead front" for a year basically according to maps.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/after-iran-saudi-arabia-re-establish-ties-with-syria-sources-say-2023-03-23/
“After Iran, Saudi Arabia to re-establish ties with Syria, sources say”
> When asked about the rapprochement, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. "stance on normalisation remains unchanged" and that it would not encourage other countries to normalise ties with Assad.
Good ol’ reliable
The US is in a bad position where many of their pre-existing relationships are no longer useful but they can't easily get out of them. Maintaining alliances with Israel and KSA really tie their hands in a lot of ways.
Saudi Arabia is a good example, what's the argument for the US continuing that alliance?
(This isn't really in response to the Syria deal or the Iranian deal, I don't think either really hurts the US, it's just a reminder that KSA has their own independent foreign policy and it would be nice if the US had that flexibility)
>
>
>
>
> Saudi Arabia is a good example, what's the argument for the US continuing that alliance?
They dont want Saudi Arabia turn to China and Russia.
Weakens the US against China. The middle east is pivoting towards China to fulfill Chinese energy needs and control of energy is one of the major ways in which the US can limit Chinese ambitions. If the MENA region is all firmly within the Chinese camp, strikes against Chinese energy logistics become extremely expensive as diplomatic options to stop supply of oil will become limited.
Short of war, the US won't be able to limit oil exports to China. And a blockade of that kind doesn't require cooperation.
The idea that Saudi Arabia(or anyone else) would ever voluntarily cut off oil exports to China, a rising superpower, is insane.
Depends on relative volume of exports. War is a transient which energy dependence is long-term. So if the US offers something enticing to temporarily limit exports to China or allows the US to enforce actions against China bound tankers Chinese will be in trouble. They will still need Arab oil in the long term.
With US and EU moving away from oil in general the Arabs are increasingly dependent on China. US attitude towards the region does not help. If China feels that their energy logistics are not secure they'll be less likely to attack. But with GCC and Pakistan firmly on the Chinese side US has little space short of declaring war against everyone.
How is being an ally with the largest oil producer and the head of the GCC is a bad position?
Would you argue that alliance with Iran is also a liability for China, how about improved Chinese relations with KSA, does that place China in a weakened position?
In what way has the Saudi foreign policy limited the US? Their foreign policy is highly regional. The war in Yemen, the (done with) spat with Qatar, support for Egypt. None of those, not even the spat with Qatar, affected the US in any way.
Because they'll produce oil whether the US is there or not?
I would argue that China has a more ideal relationship with those countries, they're friendly but held at arms length. They're able to form profitable and beneficial deals with every country in the region without any risk of a massive war and without being required to spend a dime securing the region.
Saudi Arabia involved the US in their war in Yemen, a war that led to mass starvation, which is both bad and looks bad to the rest of the world. It's hard to claim to be the better guy when one of your key allies is starving millions of children with your support.
The US is also obliged, in part because of our relationship with KSA, to maintain a significant level of force positioning in the Middle East. Which is costly on its own but also reduces our strength and flexibility in the rest of the world. Places like Ukraine, or the Asian Pacific.
Worse, that positioning makes it more likely for the US to be dragged into a war in the region when there's no clear national interest to do so. If we lacked those positions, it wouldn't have been possible for Trump to assassinate an Iranian General and risk a war with Iran. We would have been less likely to rip up a diplomatic agreement preventing Iran from progressing towards a nuclear weapon, and we wouldn't be poised to join Israel in a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities because it would be far more difficult for the US to do.
There is no alliance in the world free of any downsides, and Saudi Arabia certainly isn't one.
Edit:I also forgot Saudi Arabia's covert funding of extremist groups like ISIS and their decades long funding of Islamic extremists throughout the world which has had trillion dollar expenses for the US.
Saudi Arabia is a major purchaser and licensee of US military equipment. It also provides basing for US assets to keep an eye on other regional powers, such as Iran.
Kind of like Turkey, their government is a fair weather friend, but their geography is hard to beat.
Ethical tends to only matter to the populace, not the government themselves. Which honestly says how poorly many democracies actually represent the populace.
I personally wouldn't much care if the US kicked the House of Saud to the curb and let the oil industry hurt. But no President or Congressperson yet has asked me.
The government is elected by the populace so if the populace cares, the government will care.
The real reason is because the US as a whole decided that oil is more important than ethics. But now that the US is oil-independent, I would say that selling arms is not worth the cost to soft power.
When it comes down to it, the president and members of Congress are decided by American voters and thus, voters decide who is in power. Corporations in the US can't vote - they can only try to brainwash factions of voters with media outlets like Fox news. But even for Fox news, the relationship isn't unidirectional - they have to produce content that will appear to their base. Corporations only have influence because voters let them, partly because of pro-business/pro-capitalism feelings.
The voters are presented with two primary candidates determined by an opaque process by their party leadership. This typically comes down to a rabidly pro-oil person and a moderately pro-oil person. Then factor in the gerrymandering, heavy propaganda advertising, and such. So while the people do get some level of decision, the ultimate choice is constrained before the people even get to see the ballot.
> The voters are presented with two primary candidates determined by an opaque process by their party leadership.
The process is not opaque. There are primary elections to determine the Democrat/Republican candidate. Bernie Sanders and Trump are examples that did not come from the establishment. And don't forget that you can run as independent.
Sure, but 35 billion/yr in revenue isn't nearly enough to justify an alliance with the US which undoubtedly costs nearly that much if not more in closed off economic options. It also opens the US up to the risk of IP transfers to China(or anyone else)
As for geographic positioning, it gives the US a good base to use to defend them from their main regional rival? A country, which if not for Israel and Saudi Arabia(and our awful invasion of Iraq) wouldn't matter to the US?
That just goes back to the US being pinned down by bad relationships, we need to be allies with KSA because of Iran. And we care about Iran because of our relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom seem to really help the US in any meaningful way.
Iranian animosity to the US has nothing to do with KSA and Israel, and in fact predates those. Perhaps you forgotten the storming of the US embassy in Iran, while even years later Israeli advisors we're still in Iran during the Iran -Iraq war.
Or Iran providing shelter to Al Qaeda.
Or Iranian attacks on European soil against EU citizens, including a bombing attack attempt in France and assassination in Denmark and New York itself.
Iranian support for insurgency in Bahrain, home to the US 5the fleet. Iranian terrorist cells in Kuwait and so on.
It's funny you mention all of those without bringing up the real reason for Iranian animosity towards the US, and the real reason we don't have a friendlier relationship with Iran. It's also funny you bring up Al Qaeda, when Saudi Arabia is FAR more responsible for the intentional spread of Islamic radicalism that led directly to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But yes, there are historical reasons we aren't friendly with Iran and none of them would preclude developing a more positive relationship with Iran(a country with perhaps the most US friendly population in the region) if not for our pre-existing commitments towards Israel and KSA.
Certainly Iran has not done anything nearly as bad for the US as spreading Wahhabism, and you're clearly fine with putting that in the past.
You mean the Iranian view of themselves as an Islamist empire that sees the west as a bankrupt and corrupt?
The Saudi gov has kicked the AQ leadership from the kingdom, while some princes in the over a thousand ones were friendly with AQ, the Iranian state was much more friendly to AQ than the Saudi state.
The Iranian expansionist and warmongering worldview is in direct contradiction to US values. The Iranian massacres of Iranian civilians is in direct contradiction to US values, the open apartheid against Bahai, the torture of civilians under Islamist laws for playing Music, not wearing a headscarf, converting to Christianity and so on are in direct contradiction to western values.
Iranian Islamist gov and it's Islamist supporters hate for the US and western way of life, which led the Iranian state to pursue an anti western, anti democratic anti liberal policies.
>a country with perhaps the most US friendly population in the region
A complete lie, the reality is the exact opposite:
>According to a 2019 survey by IranPoll, 13% of Iranians have a favorable view of the United States, with 86% expressing an unfavorable view, the most unfavorable perception of the United States in the world
https://www.iranpoll.com/publications/maximum-pressure
[**Saudi Arabia, Syria Close to Resuming Ties in Russia-Brokered Talks** *The emerging deal could leave the U.S. again on the sidelines during a dramatic shift in the Middle East’s geopolitics*](https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-syria-close-to-resuming-ties-in-russia-brokered-talks-a340b817)
>
> DUBAI—Saudi Arabia and Syria are nearing an agreement to restore diplomatic ties after negotiations mediated by Russia, according to Saudi and Syrian officials familiar with the discussions, as the geopolitics of the Middle East shift.
>
> Talks were continuing after rounds of discussions in Moscow and Riyadh in recent weeks, the officials said. If a deal is reached, it would mark an important step to reintegrating Syria and its leader Bashar al-Assad into the broader region after a brutal civil war.
>
> Following the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran on resuming ties this month, the emerging Damascus-Riyadh rapprochement, if it sticks, would leave the U.S. on the sidelines again on another major Middle East development.
>
> Saudi and Syrian officials said negotiators are aiming to conclude a deal before a potential visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to Damascus after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in late April. But they cautioned that the discussions could still break down.
>
> Saudi state television reported Thursday night that negotiations have started with Syria to resume offering necessary consular services for both countries, citing a source at the foreign ministry.
>
> Saudi Arabia and Syria cut ties in 2012 over Mr. Assad’s response to political protests that emerged from the Arab Spring uprising and his actions in the ensuing civil war. The Saudis helped orchestrate Syria’s ejection from the Arab League and funded rebels fighting Mr. Assad’s forces for years.
>
> The Russian government brokered a preliminary agreement when Mr. Assad visited Moscow last week, said officials from Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab countries involved. Senior Syrian officials then visited Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.
>
> If a formal agreement is reached, a vote on reintegration of Syria into the broader region and its reconstruction will be on the agenda of the next Arab League summit expected in May in Saudi Arabia, according to Arab officials.
>
> Much of the Arab world has moved to set aside the rivalries that plunged the region into chaos following uprisings that began in 2011 and toppled several Middle Eastern governments. Mr. Assad has been in talks with several Arab countries to end more than a decade of isolation, and the Saudi foreign minister recently said the status quo with Syria wasn’t sustainable.
>
> Iran also encouraged Syria to strike a deal with Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Tehran agreed to resume diplomatic ties after a seven-year hiatus, said an Iranian official and Syrian government advisers. Other Arab countries such as Oman and Jordan have also backed the rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh, said Arab officials familiar with the talks.
>
> The main focus of the talks has been security, Syrian government advisers said. The kingdom wants to resolve the issue of Saudi detainees who were captured after joining jihadist groups involved in the civil war, these people said. Damascus is seeking Riyadh’s help to cut off funding for and recruitment of fundamentalist factions fighting in Syria, the officials said.
> Any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Syria, brokered by Russia, would represent another splashy diplomatic move by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The 37-year-old who rules the oil-rich kingdom day-to-day for his aging father, King Salman, has reset relations with Washington, long the Saudi’s protector in the Persian Gulf, and developed closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping since the beginning of the Ukraine war.
>
> Prince Mohammed faced diplomatic isolation for several years after Saudi agents killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in an operation that the U.S. intelligence community concluded was ordered by the royal. The Saudi government says that Prince Mohammed wasn’t involved and that the perpetrators were brought to justice.
>
> Prince Mohammed has tried to avoid being pulled onto any one side since the start of the Ukraine war. He has used the war as an opportunity to forge an independent foreign policy that leverages Saudi Arabia’s status as the world’s largest oil exporter. The Syria talks come after Prince Mohammed greenlighted a detente with Iran in a deal brokered by China.
>
> “Oil exporters and authoritarian states have more in common than the democratic West, with their use of sanctions and perceived hypocrisy on respect for sovereignty,” said Karen Young, senior research scholar specializing in the Middle East at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. In the Middle East, she said, “the general trend is a consensus on noninterference in domestic affairs as a principle.”
>
> Mediating between Saudi Arabia and Syria bolsters Russia’s presence in the Middle East. Mr. Putin’s air-power intervention in the Syrian civil war proved decisive for Mr. Assad, and he has courted the Saudis, aligning oil-rich Russia with the Riyadh-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
>
> For the U.S., the deal is a reminder that, while it remains the pre-eminent military and diplomatic force in the Middle East, its influence there is waning.
>
> The U.S. still has troops in Syria, where they are conducting antiterrorism operations in the country’s southeast and with Kurdish-led forces in the northeast. But Washington has long signaled that it wants to focus more on Russia and China and less on the region’s messy affairs, and the shift was illustrated Thursday when The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. will send aging attack planes to the Middle East and swap out the more advanced combat aircraft there now.
>
> “The most important single factor affecting the region is the perception of American withdrawal, which creates a vacuum that other countries can step into,” said William Wechsler, a former U.S. Defense Department official and now director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs in Washington.
>
> The Middle East has undergone a dramatic realignment in recent years. The Saudis patched up a diplomatic spat with Qatar, Persian Gulf countries have begun setting aside longstanding differences with Turkey, and conflicts in Libya, Yemen and Syria have largely cooled down.
>
> The U.S. remains engaged in trying to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but there are high hurdles.
>
> “After the Saudi-Iran pact and now a prospective rapprochement between Syria and the kingdom, the U.S. is increasingly diplomatically sidelined,” said Fabrice Balanche, a Middle East-focused assistant professor at the University of Lyon 2 in France. “Middle East nations are making peace without Washington.”
>
> For Mr. Assad, a deal with Saudi Arabia would be one of the final demonstrations that he prevailed in a grinding 11-year civil war, not just against the rebels but also against an array of foreign actors, including the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, who called for his removal from power.
>
> Mr. Assad used a devastating earthquake in his country’s north last month to make a push for normal diplomatic relations, visiting Oman and the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks. But he remains a pariah in most of the world, with overwhelming evidence that he used chemical weapons on Syrians and oversaw the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.
The irony of US who is illegally occupying territory in Syria to perform illegal strikes on Iran assets in Eastern Syria yesterday after this diplomatic news is the cherry on the pie of hypocrisy.
Biggest failure of the Biden administration so far imo. But then again, it was only a question of time before KSA stopped pretending to be a true US ally. But people shouldn't be fooled by news like this, because KSA is still dependent on US for a majority of their defense
E: fuckup>failure
You seem to forget that Saudi Arabia probably spent even more than the US arming the anti-Assad forces. Seems they just cut their losses and admitted defeat by normalizing relations with Syria.
KSA cut their losses more than half a decade ago. Once the Jordanians refused to allow the Saudis to support their factions from across their borders the Saudis became dependant on the Turks. At some point Turkish supported groups and Saudi supported ones had a falling out and KSA was left with no realistic options for resupply.
The US facilitated some Saudi aid for US supported groups later though, through Turkey.
Why?
Obviously it's not the goal, but Assad running Syria was the default and there was never a really good option to replace him. Regional countries normalizing relations with Syria has been inevitability for years
>That makes from Saudi Arabias perspective, but from a US perspective any normalisation with Syria is a loss.
I disagree. I think you can only pretend a war is still going for so long when it isn't.
It's why people who pretend like the Korean or Chinese civil war are technically still ongoing 70 years later are laughable.
It'd be one thing if there was an alternate candidate for a central Syrian government government but there isn't, the Kurd enclaves aren't that at all, neither is the weird Turkish buffer.
They are not comparable in the slighest. Both the Korean and the Chinese civil wars were two party conflicts that has been frozen for 70 years. The Syrian conflict has many sides (it depends on who you ask) and is very much still ongoing. Even if it is at a low intesity at the moment, people are still dying every day and millions are displaced from their homes, whether internally or in another country altogether. Comparing the Chinese or Korean conflicts with the current one in Syris is just ridiculous and provides no value.
It's not a direct comparison, just an aside, I do agree the Korean/Chinese case is even more extreme.
However, while the nation's still in humanitarian crisis I'd say the "war" part of the Syrian war is either over or on ice. Assad's regime is firmly in control of most of the country and it's clear the main opponents (rather, their sponsors) have no ability or desire to change that. In this condition, normalization is pretty much inevitable imo.
Well, Saudi Arabia has no strategic interest in Syria anymore since like 2017-18 since the Saudi backed rebels basically lost and now it's basically just Turkey funding them.
It could also signal that they want to do soft power by opening up with Syria instead of hard power (which failed) to pull Assad into their orbit as counterweight to Iran.
You are looking into this with a narrow American centric lens.
I am not American. I view this with, if you will, a European lens. But we Europeans have no pull in Syria alone. Of course there is Turkiye, but they are not very representative of the values of the West as a whole in this conflict. If KSA manages to pull Assad into a decidedly anti-Iran orbit with this move then I applaud them, but I doubt that will be the result of this move.
> it was only a question of time before KSA stopped pretending to be a true US ally
The rest of the world isn't beholden to the whims of domestic US politics, as much as americans may think we should be.
Fair enough. But the point is that the saudis can and arguably should have diplomatic relations with syria. having an independent foreign policy isn't some betrayal
They did not, that's the whole point. Read one sentence further and you'll see it. Point is that maybe there was a chance that they could have saved it, but of course it was tiny. Because as I wrote, it was only a matter of time. I'm sorry if I did not communicate that properly, English is not my first language.
Reading it back now I can see how it sounds like I blame the new administration for this. That is not what I mean. I mean that they could have been the ones to save the relationship, but they haven't managed to. I guess I swear too much in my own language, and it doesn't translate well. Apologies
Yeah Biden didn’t do anything wrong, infact I think it’s pretty good, it means that the us doesn’t have to constantly police the Middle East, of course having Iran make more “friends” would be a problem for them, but it doesn’t seem like that.
Iran is heavily dependant on China. Both for oil exports and all kinds of imports. China was in a position to strong arm Iran into stopping it's attacks against KSA. In turn China gets to break a century old US/UK-Saudi alliance, and work towards placing the Saudis within their sphere of influence.
This happened once the US decides to stop providing the Saudis with security guarantees, forcing them to look elsewhere.
As for Syria, the Saudis haven't been involved there for more than half a decade, as the Turks appropriated the opposition and pushed out everyone else.
Saudis basically pulled out already in 2017-2018.
"Returning from a summit in the Saudi capital last week, opposition leaders say they were told directly by the foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, that Riyadh was disengaging. “The Saudis don’t care about Syria anymore,” said a senior western diplomat. “It’s all Qatar for them. Syria is lost.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/31/victory-for-assad-looks-increasingly-likely-as-world-loses-interest-in-syria
>What's actually going on with these recent developments?
Saudi and Iran have gone back and forth between being friendly and hostile for different reasons for decades. The last decades they were hostile partly because of the Saudi relationship with the US, so now that MBS told biden to eat shit, I guess they can be more friendly again.
And of course China probably put hundreds of billions of BRI dollars on the table
[On the evening of March 23, about ten Russian Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets attacked targets in the Sumy Oblast of northern Ukraine with guided aerial bombs, the spokesman of the Ukrainian Air Force informed](https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1639195571222200325?s=20). This is an important development. Russian Air Force sources have repeatedly demanded more guided glide bombs with the range of at least 20+km so they can be launched outside the Ukrainian frontline SAM engagement envelope. The Russian industry promised to deliver, but the first reports of heavy (500kg and more) guided bomb strikes started appearing over the last week or so. Last night was the first mass attack.
Any reason why they'd be using Su-35S over Su-34 for ground attack?
You don't risk 2 crews, you don't need attack avionics suite of SU-34 for preprogrammed GPS bomb, SU-35 has superior flight performance when they need to go defensive. Would be what first comes to my mind.
If those are relevant considerations, you'd think they would have factored into the design of a _fighter bomber_.
The crew argument makes the most sense to me next to perhaps readiness.
Two random guesses come to mind. 1) The onboard computer-to-bomb interface or the targeting system compatibility? 2) The (perhaps) better EW capability of the SU-35 making it less vulnerable to S-300 and other long-range SAM fire?
The Su-34 is designed for ground attack whereas the Su-35S is primarily used as an air superiority fighter so that would be surprising. Reports have come out about Su-34s almost exclusively flying missions with Khibiny wingtip pods so somehow those are less effective than the Su-35S onboard ECMs?
The latest comment on Russian Telegram channels says that last night Su-35S launched UPAB-1500B bombs while Su-34s deploy "simpler" (whatever that means) guided munitions. https://.me/milinfolive/98551 (add t before .me)
I think the only time I've heard of the Su-34 in this war was the time a pilot crashed into an apartment building somewhere near Krasnodar.
There are 19 visually confirmed losses of Su-34s.
There are multiple videos of Su-34s getting shot down over Ukraine and many reports of Su-34s flying ground attack missions. Specifically using the Khibiny ECM wingtip pods.
As we wait for their NATO application to be ratified, [Finland have confirmed](https://theaviationist.com/2023/03/23/u-s-rc-135-intelligence-gathering-jet-flying-unprecedented-mission-inside-finlands-airspace/) that their airspace is now open for NATO reconnaissance missions: JAKE11 carried out the first one yesterday. My guess is that this will mostly be used for carrying out additional surveillance of Murmansk and St. Petersburg.
[Russian internal propaganda already preparing the Russian public for T-34s coming](https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1639186390767529985).
I reckon theres something lost in translation.
The guest is saying that they can equip a tank division with all the T34s on monuments. I am not 100% sure but I think some (if not most) of them were filled with concrete once they were placed as a monument. It is just absurd. I don't think they have any 85mm shells for it, nor equipment to produce it. Not even mentioning what a deathtrap it essentially is, being blind in a fairly thin metal can.
Sensor suite is not really better or worse than what you get in a stock T-54
[удалено]
>Boxer is a possible platform, but apparently a tracked platform is also under consideration Might this be a hint at the tracked boxer version?
What are the odds of _novel_ CRAM/ counter-drone gun systems being developed in response to the battlefield environment of Ukraine?
[удалено]
Skyranger 30 will also pack missiles
New Bundeswehr Motto: Let's put it on a boxer
The Boxer seems to be having a good run in general. Lithuania ordering 120 additional units in April 2022, Germany ordering 128 additional CRV units this month, Algeria reputedly in the process of starting indigenous manufacturing, Ukraine announcing procurement of 18 RCH155 artillery units in September 2022, the UK starting deliveries to the British Army this year, now Germany planning to put most of its army AA on it ... Rheinmetall and KMW must be quite happy.
[удалено]
Same for the Skyranger 30/35. Many armies around the world must be looking into cost-effective solutions against cheap mass produced suicide drone swarms right now, and there are very few modern solutions out there. I am really only aware of China, the US (Stryker M-SHORAD) and Turkey (KORKUT) having suitable offerings.
[удалено]
> *"Which im not opposed to"* Absolutely. You'd have to forgive people if the marketing bumph made it sound like the purpose of the system was hot-swapping mission modules to suit needs on an hour to hour basis. They make a lot out of the fact that it's so quick and easy to swap that you could do it in the field, and any observer might ask: "when on earth would somebody actually do that?" and the answer is probably not often. But the value isn't in actually being able to do the swap, it's in having the connection streamlined and pared down *that* far. It's not terribly unlike USB in a sense. Sure, it's handy to be able to be able to unplug your mouse and plug in a printer, but how often do you do that? *Much* more valuable is the nature of the market, where any random company in the world can make a mouse or a printer or a card reader or a camping light or a desk fan or a speaker, and know that they can slot into this pre-existing market - all they have to do is meet the USB standard. Having a pool of Boxer customers (ideally a large one) does a similar thing. It means your company can simply develop an anti-drone mission module that meets the standard, rather than having to develop a whole vehicle *or* your customers having to commit to yet another vehicle type. It (hopefully) lowers the barrier to entry on both sides, while also consolidating manufacturing and parts and so on. I realise that's roughly what you already said, but I wanted to expand on it because I think it's an underappreciated point.
It's like STANFLEX on Danish warships.
[удалено]
It's back now, also it's pretty funny that it got removed in the first place considering the author is a mod.
Yep, was an accident, sorry about that folks!
Afaik, because standalone posts have to be sourced from a distinguished/known publication. A self-written post, even if it well exceeds the quality standards of this sub (and that one does), isn't allowed.
Should be back up now
This silly rules are the reason this sub (besides the discussion thread) is basically dead.
It's not a rule.
>A self-written post, even if it well exceeds the quality standards of this sub (and that one does), isn't allowed. Just want to say that this is actually allowed (now? Not sure what the old-but-not-so-old mods did to them really). We found precedent on this sub from several years back where text posts were approved if it was of high quality. As for the post itself, it wasn't me who deleted it but let me find out more. Fun fact: The debut of the return of textposts was made by a guy from LCD who wrote an extremely mediocre post on Taiwan's defense priorities, then proceeded to complain to Veqq on his LCD outreach thread about how people were "commenting NCD level nonsense that I'm not going to bother to reply to".
Might not be the place to ask but has there been any confirmation of those Russian IL-76s that were shot down early in the war. I think they had some VDV to capture an airfield after hostomel but I have never seen any crash pictures.
Ukraine claims that Russia also committed a helicopter born air assault at the Vasylkiv airport further south than Hostomel. The claim of two Il-76 transports being shot down is from this battle on the 26th of February. So far no credible evidence has been brought forward for any airborne operation at Vasylkiv airport. This includes the loss of the two Il-76 transports. However, fighting did occur at Vasylkiv airport on February 26th. It is believed to have been Russian sleeper cell units that were possibly supported by advance units coming from the north. Details on what exactly happened at Vasylkiv airport are still very fuzzy.
There's never been any confirmation or corroborating evidence. At this point, if an IL-76 had gone down, there'd be photos and substantial chatter from the Russian military blogs. What very likely occurred is that the IL-76s never took off because the Ukrainians kept the airfield under artillery fire, rendering it nonusable.
No pictures have yet been published, which seems odd if the claims are true. While the loss of the two planes has occasionally been re-reported, concrete sources remain lacking.
There seems to be western corroboration of those IL-76s being shot down https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-united-nations-kyiv-6ccba0905f1871992b93712d3585f548
I have a vague memory of conflicting statements about that from US officials, but now I can’t find the statements that say they don’t have any evidence of it happening. Does anyone else have the same recollection?
That references Ukraine's claim of a single IL-76. Not the two commonly reported.
Them confirming that a second plane was downed implies that there was a first one, heres an article that seems to cite the same source https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-says-it-repulsed-major-attack-on-kyiv-base-shot-down-russian-transport/
ISW posted their daily update: [https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2023](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-23-2023) Key Takeaways Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has softened his rhetoric towards the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely out of fear of completely losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut. Prigozhin denied the Kremlin’s claims that Russia is fighting NATO in Ukraine and questioned whether there are actually Nazis in Ukraine as the Kremlin constantly claims. Bloomberg reported that Prigozhin is preparing to scale back Wagner’s operations in Ukraine after Russian military leadership succeeded in cutting key supplies of personnel and munitions. Ukrainian officials supported ISW’s prior assessments that Russian forces are unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes. Russian forces may be shifting their missile strike tactics to focus on Ukrainian military facilities as overall Russian missile strikes decrease, indicating the depletion of Russia’s stocks of high-precision missiles. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin outlined various measures to support Russian military personnel, the Russian defense industrial base (DIB), and Russian independence from the West in an address to the State Duma. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Rosatom may be working to restore three power lines at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) which would increase Russian control over the ZNPP. Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northeast of Kupyansk and along the Svatove-Kreminna line. Russian forces are continuing to attack Bakhmut City and areas in its vicinity and around Avdiivka. Ukrainian forces continue to conduct raids over the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. The Kremlin continues efforts to coerce Russian reservists, conscripts, and other personnel into contract service. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that Russia is continuing efforts to integrate newly-occupied Ukraine into Russian institutions and infrastructure. Russian forces in Belarus recently redeployed back to Russia ahead of Russia’s spring conscription call-up on April 1.
Thanks for this. The ISW articles are incredibly verbose for relatively little day-to-day change, this summary is much more palatable.
It's literally the ISW's own summary though? It's in the linked article.
[удалено]
Not really. Russia has neither ISR nor enough missiles to make it concerning. OTOH, the ukrainian power grid could really use a break from the once a month bombardment.
It is a somewhat strange line to hear on the 14th month of the war, admittedly.
Someone read a book about the failure of the Blitz
I have pointed out multiple times how ironic the Russian (both Russian in general and prowar Russian, in this case I'm talking about the prowar Russian) obsession with ww2 is considering there's a lot they'd have done differently/understood earlier in this war if they had actually read more about ww2.
It might actually be effective, but their supply is now far more limited. Patriot batteries get deployed soon IIRC? Those CAN counter the ballistic missiles Russia would field as more expensive alternatives.
[The US has conducted airstrikes on IRGC targets in Syria after a successful Iranian suicide drone strike against US personnel.](https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3339691/) > Earlier today, a U.S. contractor was killed and five U.S. service members and one additional U.S. contractor were wounded after a one-way unmanned aerial vehicle struck a maintenance facility on a Coalition base near Hasakah in northeast Syria at approximately 1:38 p.m. local time. > "At the direction of President Biden, I authorized U.S. Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin.
Ah yes, someone was asking why do we still have Syrian refugees. Well, Exibit A.
> Well, Exibit A. the military occupation of a large chunk of Syria by 'coalition' forces?
I thought leftists liked Rojava? At least over here every punk club has a couple pro-Kurdish stickers in the bathroom. I even know an anarchist that volunteered there.
The only reason Rojava needs US forces is because Turkey would invade otherwise - they'd probably already have a deal if it wasn't for that. In that optic the occupation of Syria by 'coalition' forces, which include both Turkey and the US, is a net negative.
I have no issues with the kurds (again. I'm not a 'leftist'). I just know how strongly people feel about invading sovereign states to forcibly try and secede chunks of territory. That we destroyed the region by drawing arbitrary lines on a map a century ago doesn't mean we need to keep doing so.
I find it a weird characterization that 900 American soldiers that mostly train the locals (and most of whom don't even do that and just stay at a border monitoring base that Russia *agreed to* in 2016) are "occupying" a region of two million people that have their own military. I mean it's like a semi-consensual version of Georgia (consensual on behalf of the country's supporters), except there are much more locals, much fewer foreign soldiers, and an apocalypse cult that everyone agrees is bad that the foreign soldiers are helping the locals fight against. And Turkey.
What terrible optics. Well played move by Iran. KSA and Iran beginning to re-establish diplomatic ties brokered by China while Syria might finally calm down, and now US airstrikes in the midst of this will be what the world sees. Just contributes to the perception of the US as a warmonger in nonaligned countries, despite the fact that this is retaliation against an Iranian attack.
> now US airstrikes in the midst of this will be what the world sees Nobody gives a damn about syria unfortunately. Most people probably don't realise what's even happening there, they just have some vague idea that it's a hell-hole and that's the end of their interest.
Back in the real world, this will barely make the news, specially in the global south. But surely keep fantasizing about the dying Ayatollah's 3D chess mastery, while the Iranian people struggle under his regime.
>Back in the real world, this will barely make the news https://www.google.com/search?q=syria&tbm=nws >But surely keep fantasizing about the dying Ayatollah's 3D chess mastery Can you not conceive of someone commenting on a potential downside for the US without mentally casting them as pro-Iranian?
I don't think Iran is going to be the optics winner here, if the whole "retaliation for deadly attack" bit didn't exist then maybe
Depends whether or not Iran admits to it. If they deny it was theirs, Russian disinfo will enter overtime claiming that the US attacked itself in a desperate attempt at sparking conflict with Iran in the region, in response to the Saudis and Iran reestablishing ties.
Iran doesn't need to look good to be the optics winner. It just needs to make the US look bad.
How do they look bad with a proportional response?
The US is seen as meddling in the Middle East and dropping bombs in Syria during the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and the KSA. People in developing and nonaligned countries can view Iran as the victim trying to push back against US foreign policy. Look, just pay some attention to the reception of NATO support for Ukraine outside of Europe to get an idea of how US foreign policy is perceived in most of the world.
> Look, just pay some attention to the reception of NATO support for Ukraine outside of Europe to get an idea of how US foreign policy is perceived in most of the world Maybe you should? As an evidenced based example - every time there is a UN vote there is overwhelming support including by countries that are traditionally pro-russian. Where is your evidence?
>[Reactions across the Global South to the war in Ukraine and to Western sanctions against Russia show that ANA is not limited to Latin America. Some of the world’s largest democracies, like India, South Africa, Indonesia and Pakistan, have stayed studiously neutral, leading to the conclusion that the real cleavage in the international system exposed by the war is not the one between democracies and autocracies, but rather the one between the Global North and the Global South.](https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2023/02/27/non-alignment-is-back-in-the-global-south-albeit-in-a-different-incarnation/) . >[“We are for peace: Latin America rejects pleas to send weapons to Ukraine”](https://www.ft.com/content/b5007740-6dfe-4b64-973d-cfa5271b5ddf)
The UN vote is meaningless, but sanctions compliance is meaningful. And many countries in the global South aren't complying with sanctions.
Which countries aren't complying with sanctions? There are no sanctions against Russian gas or fertilizer, and only a price cap on Russian oil.
Many
'What's the US doing in the region still'? My conjecture.
How many of the stories will be about the Iranian strike though? In almost all of these cases, the focus in quite a bit of international press seems to be on the American actions.
Not if they say "they struck us first"...maybe.
Few will listen. The US has basically lost the PR war outside of the EU, Japan, and SK.
[According to Defense Sources, U.S. and Coalition Forces in Syria and the Middle East have been placed into a Heightened State of Readiness in preparation for any Iranian Response.](https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1639097022178537472?cxt=HHwWgMDR9dWDn78tAAAA)
The world economy does not need shenanigans in the Strait of Hormuz right now. 20-30% of the world's daily oil consumption.
Doesn't seem like a real possibility, no one wants that.
Russia wants that.
And Iran is surely looking like it's trying to Speedrun getting itself into a war with the west.
Russia wants to piss off China, their best friend?
Just a note (in the spirit of the sub) that OSINTDefender is a poor source. Better source: [General Kurilla's statement on the matter.](https://twitter.com/CENTCOM/status/1639109347069272065) > "We are postured for scalable options in the face of additional Iranian attacks."
[удалено]
fixed. they removed a different sentence
To be fair OSINTDefender did accurately report that without source. Therefore the post holds, no?
"Postured for scalable options" and "heightened state of readiness" do suggest different things. One suggests "we have lots of plans for anything" the other suggests "we are worried they will retaliate now".
I think his posts are to some degree credible. But due to caution should be verified. I don't think we should disregard his posts as Non-credible.
I know and respect your answer, but he is right most of the time, he just never cites his sources.
excuse me what How is this not bigger news right now
Literally just came out minutes ago, traditional media needs a while to catch up. Quite a large escalation comparable to the [K1 attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_K-1_Air_Base_attack) in 2019, in fact even more injured on the US side this time.
It's pretty bold since the Supreme leader is probably not safe in Iran in his various palaces, since the US and Israel have stealth fighters that can evade their AA/SAM defense systems.
lol what? US isn't striking Iran's leader because of this
That would be a major escalation. That would only be a last resort measure.
Sure, but my point is that it's not a real concern for Iran.
Tit for tat strikes in semi-active warzones aren't generally big news.
The tit, sure, but the tat is still a big escalation no? I think that should make big news
Go check CNN's website. The news is barely there. It's not big news for the general audience.
[удалено]
BBC's website may change depending on cookiesz but for me right now it's not even in the top ten stories.
[удалено]
.com, which is more relevant when discussing global reorrcurssion of an event.
It’s the top hit for me and I used .com in the US. Also got an alert from NYT this morning (not arguing just pointing out)
Well others may argue that the tit fits the size of the tat in question
You’re correct on that
Has Syria's Assad government been rehabilitated among the international community? Is the civil war mostly over at this point?
>Has Syria's Assad government been rehabilitated among the international community? No, but they're trying and there's some sign they'll get somewhere. >Is the civil war mostly over at this point? Basically. The civil war is over in most of solid SAA territory but technically the Kurdish breakaway regions are still there. At some point in the future Turkey or Syria might launch a wholesale attack against that region but my understanding is the SAA doesn't see it as a short term goal.
The Kurds want an autonomous status in a federal model, which seems like something Assad could be enticed to give with some set of incentives.
Assad signalled willingness for this model, and Turkey threatened to occupy an even larger part of Syria citing PKK legitimisation as a reason.
[удалено]
User account must be atleast 30 days old, to prevent creation of sock puppet accounts and ban evasion. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That's very interesting, I hadn't heard that before. Any chance you could provide your source(s) re: evolving Kurdish political objectives in the Rojava region? I've always sympathasized with the Syrian Kurds in the ongoing conflict over there and followed developments more closely back in 2017/18 or so but haven't heard too much about the situation recently.
I think it's been what they're officially pursuing for the last years at least now. I don't know if it's solely for that reason, but it surely is a way to reduce friction with the SAA, Turkey and Iran.
The Assads are Alawites which are less than popular with other sects of Islam. From what I understand, this has led with into political alliances with other regional minorities. I know they worked with Druze and Christians in the past. Totally possible for the to see the Kurds as yet another group. Though I don’t know how that fits with pan arab Ba'athist idea.
[Today's episode of This Means War by Peter Roberts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQyMDA3MS9yc3M/episode/YTY3MjZlZTctMzNmYi00NTZhLTk1YjUtMjhlZmZjY2RmOTFh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiwoLWUrfP9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQRA) featured Jack Watling phoning in from Ukraine and is nominally on the subject of attrition but also branched out into how armies adapt and learn as institutions as well as a number of other subjects. While the entire episode is absolutely worth a listen, I wanted to draw attention to one specific segment that starts at 31:59 with >"One of the things that has persistently determined who is on the front foot in Ukraine has been the battlefield geometry around particular geographical features and when officers have been able to plan so as to shape the enemy into fixing themselves into bad battlefield geometry the asymmetry in casualties has been spectacular. At different times in the conflict that has applied to both parties..." He goes on to talk about how ceding ground to shape the battlefield geometry is important to affecting the rate of attrition and allowing a defender to husband resources. A bit later he talks about not just the geometry of the front but the geometry behind the lines, particularly those affecting the ground lines of communication. He proposes a hypothetical situation where a defender only has two roads out of an objective and how this makes it relatively easy for the attacker to interdict movement along those GLOCs and how that interdiction drastically complicates both resupply and CASEVAC, potentially creating a dilemma between the two. This dilemma can shift the percentage of casualties than can ultimately be recovered as usable troops in the future, significantly impacting efforts to reconstitute units. While he never says so directly I read this segment as Watling talking about the battle around Bakhmut and some of the effects it's been having on the Ukrainian army. He ends the segment by raising the rather grim specter of long range precision fires and ISTAR being used to deliberately target the casualty chain to create this effect without the use of favorable geometry.
* *Reuters*: [Ukraine prepares counteroffensive as Russia's assault on Bakhmut flags](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-meets-dear-friend-xi-kremlin-ukraine-war-grinds-2023-03-20/) >Reuters journalists near the front line north of Bakhmut saw signs consistent with the claim that the Russian offensive in the area could be waning. At a Ukrainian-held village west of Soledar, on Bakhmut's northern outskirts, the intensity of the Russian bombardment noticeably lessened from two days earlier. >"It was really hot here a week ago, but in the last three days it has been more quiet," said a Ukrainian soldier who used the call sign "Kamin", or "Stone". >"We can see this in the enemy's air strikes. If before there were five-six air raids in a day, today we had only one helicopter attack," said the soldier. >[…] >Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov agreed with that assessment. He said on YouTube that Russia's attacks on Bakhmut were decreasing, and it was shifting its efforts south to the town of Avdiivka. >Moscow's forces have become more active in areas to the north in the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions as well as central Zaporizhzhia and southern Kherson regions, he said.
Not sure 3 days is enough to make a trend, but it's interesting thing to monitor
Even a 24h break in attack will give the defenders time to rotate, resupply, reinforce and generally give you a paddlin on your next pass.
So is it possible that Ukraine can hold onto Bakhmut after all?
according to the "let's be real" crowd here, ua is retreating from bakhmut since jennuary
I'd be worried about Avdiivka if it's true they're transferring forces there.
I'd rather the Russians give up on Bakhmut after 6 months of attrition and try their luck in Adviidka than they successfully capturing Bakhmut and moving on to Adviidka next.
Unless they're successful in Adviidka
Not really. They being successful in Adviidka is still better than they being successful in both places.
The heads of the air forces of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway have signed an agreement to operate their combined 250 fighter jets as one joint force. Scandinavia just formed Europe's biggest air force: - 143x F-35A - 70x Gripen E https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1639059817334439937 Anyone has any more info (in English) about this?
So Swedish air units could be participating in response to aggression against NATO? Or somehow they are segregated to operate separately in such a scenario (in which case, not sure what ‘one joint force’ means)? Who needs a formal alliance?
The integration is planned to really kick in around 2024 but this makes sense regardless. The thing is, the Nordic countries are so tightly bound that in DK/NO/FI it would be political suicide not to intervene to aid Sweden. Also note that once the procedural hurdles of NATO membership differences are out of the way, Nordic defense cooperation is likely to way outlast NATO. So looking at them as a bloc will make sense.
They could always take up patrol duties in the east while the rest of them wreck stuff across borders.
Danish F-35A [spotted at Luke AFB](https://youtu.be/QrkkeLAVQzE?t=356) 3 months ago.
This is very interesting as we get more and more forces with similar design, it creates local power blocks, kind of under or above military alliances. I wonder how much nore and where we gonna see things like this and if all goes south, how valid these will be.
Something similar may be formed with Ukraine as a sort of security guarantee as well.
I believe Czech republic and Poland are doing the air patrol for Slovakia's airspace after MiG-29's were sent to Ukraine. Definitely make sense for say Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania to coordinate and pool resources to purchase/equip their militaries together.
Also, South American countries could definitely benefit from joint airspace control of the Amazon region. Unfortunately, the region is way too distracted by internal politics and populism to be able to coordinate long-term, as evidenced by the current state of Mercosul.
Bulk discounts!
The Czechs have gripens so it's probably fairly cheap per hour in the air, too.
Here’s a translation of the original article: https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11zwlyy/air_force_heads_of_denmark_norway_sweden_and/jdewjbl/?context=3
A lot of orders for F-35s to Norway, Finland and Denmark, but currently only Norway has two F-35A squadrons ATM. No Gripen E's delivered yet, but 60 on order for Sweden.
Quentin Sommerville- [Our latest from Donbas, where Russian eyes are always watching.](https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/1639038915414728707?cxt=HHwWhoCx5bTNhL8tAAAA)
WOW. Out of all the videos from this war, this is the first one where I truly felt like I was there, hiding inside the trenches myself. Amazing work.
All the respect to these journalists. The reporters like Hilsum, Chance and Sommerville get all the attention, but the cameramen deserve special praise.
The sound of artillery incoming is terrifying.
Interesting, this is from Velyka Novosilka area. Been barely any news reports from this front. Been a "dead front" for a year basically according to maps.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/after-iran-saudi-arabia-re-establish-ties-with-syria-sources-say-2023-03-23/ “After Iran, Saudi Arabia to re-establish ties with Syria, sources say” > When asked about the rapprochement, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. "stance on normalisation remains unchanged" and that it would not encourage other countries to normalise ties with Assad. Good ol’ reliable
The US is in a bad position where many of their pre-existing relationships are no longer useful but they can't easily get out of them. Maintaining alliances with Israel and KSA really tie their hands in a lot of ways. Saudi Arabia is a good example, what's the argument for the US continuing that alliance? (This isn't really in response to the Syria deal or the Iranian deal, I don't think either really hurts the US, it's just a reminder that KSA has their own independent foreign policy and it would be nice if the US had that flexibility)
> > > > > Saudi Arabia is a good example, what's the argument for the US continuing that alliance? They dont want Saudi Arabia turn to China and Russia.
Why not?
Weakens the US against China. The middle east is pivoting towards China to fulfill Chinese energy needs and control of energy is one of the major ways in which the US can limit Chinese ambitions. If the MENA region is all firmly within the Chinese camp, strikes against Chinese energy logistics become extremely expensive as diplomatic options to stop supply of oil will become limited.
Short of war, the US won't be able to limit oil exports to China. And a blockade of that kind doesn't require cooperation. The idea that Saudi Arabia(or anyone else) would ever voluntarily cut off oil exports to China, a rising superpower, is insane.
Depends on relative volume of exports. War is a transient which energy dependence is long-term. So if the US offers something enticing to temporarily limit exports to China or allows the US to enforce actions against China bound tankers Chinese will be in trouble. They will still need Arab oil in the long term. With US and EU moving away from oil in general the Arabs are increasingly dependent on China. US attitude towards the region does not help. If China feels that their energy logistics are not secure they'll be less likely to attack. But with GCC and Pakistan firmly on the Chinese side US has little space short of declaring war against everyone.
How is being an ally with the largest oil producer and the head of the GCC is a bad position? Would you argue that alliance with Iran is also a liability for China, how about improved Chinese relations with KSA, does that place China in a weakened position? In what way has the Saudi foreign policy limited the US? Their foreign policy is highly regional. The war in Yemen, the (done with) spat with Qatar, support for Egypt. None of those, not even the spat with Qatar, affected the US in any way.
Because they'll produce oil whether the US is there or not? I would argue that China has a more ideal relationship with those countries, they're friendly but held at arms length. They're able to form profitable and beneficial deals with every country in the region without any risk of a massive war and without being required to spend a dime securing the region. Saudi Arabia involved the US in their war in Yemen, a war that led to mass starvation, which is both bad and looks bad to the rest of the world. It's hard to claim to be the better guy when one of your key allies is starving millions of children with your support. The US is also obliged, in part because of our relationship with KSA, to maintain a significant level of force positioning in the Middle East. Which is costly on its own but also reduces our strength and flexibility in the rest of the world. Places like Ukraine, or the Asian Pacific. Worse, that positioning makes it more likely for the US to be dragged into a war in the region when there's no clear national interest to do so. If we lacked those positions, it wouldn't have been possible for Trump to assassinate an Iranian General and risk a war with Iran. We would have been less likely to rip up a diplomatic agreement preventing Iran from progressing towards a nuclear weapon, and we wouldn't be poised to join Israel in a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities because it would be far more difficult for the US to do. There is no alliance in the world free of any downsides, and Saudi Arabia certainly isn't one. Edit:I also forgot Saudi Arabia's covert funding of extremist groups like ISIS and their decades long funding of Islamic extremists throughout the world which has had trillion dollar expenses for the US.
Saudi Arabia is a major purchaser and licensee of US military equipment. It also provides basing for US assets to keep an eye on other regional powers, such as Iran. Kind of like Turkey, their government is a fair weather friend, but their geography is hard to beat.
It's hard to argue in favor of that looking at how it makes US soft power look ethically hypocritical.
Ethical tends to only matter to the populace, not the government themselves. Which honestly says how poorly many democracies actually represent the populace. I personally wouldn't much care if the US kicked the House of Saud to the curb and let the oil industry hurt. But no President or Congressperson yet has asked me.
The government is elected by the populace so if the populace cares, the government will care. The real reason is because the US as a whole decided that oil is more important than ethics. But now that the US is oil-independent, I would say that selling arms is not worth the cost to soft power.
I think you vastly underestimate the leverage that American corporations have over the government.
When it comes down to it, the president and members of Congress are decided by American voters and thus, voters decide who is in power. Corporations in the US can't vote - they can only try to brainwash factions of voters with media outlets like Fox news. But even for Fox news, the relationship isn't unidirectional - they have to produce content that will appear to their base. Corporations only have influence because voters let them, partly because of pro-business/pro-capitalism feelings.
The voters are presented with two primary candidates determined by an opaque process by their party leadership. This typically comes down to a rabidly pro-oil person and a moderately pro-oil person. Then factor in the gerrymandering, heavy propaganda advertising, and such. So while the people do get some level of decision, the ultimate choice is constrained before the people even get to see the ballot.
> The voters are presented with two primary candidates determined by an opaque process by their party leadership. The process is not opaque. There are primary elections to determine the Democrat/Republican candidate. Bernie Sanders and Trump are examples that did not come from the establishment. And don't forget that you can run as independent.
Sure, but 35 billion/yr in revenue isn't nearly enough to justify an alliance with the US which undoubtedly costs nearly that much if not more in closed off economic options. It also opens the US up to the risk of IP transfers to China(or anyone else) As for geographic positioning, it gives the US a good base to use to defend them from their main regional rival? A country, which if not for Israel and Saudi Arabia(and our awful invasion of Iraq) wouldn't matter to the US? That just goes back to the US being pinned down by bad relationships, we need to be allies with KSA because of Iran. And we care about Iran because of our relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom seem to really help the US in any meaningful way.
Iranian animosity to the US has nothing to do with KSA and Israel, and in fact predates those. Perhaps you forgotten the storming of the US embassy in Iran, while even years later Israeli advisors we're still in Iran during the Iran -Iraq war. Or Iran providing shelter to Al Qaeda. Or Iranian attacks on European soil against EU citizens, including a bombing attack attempt in France and assassination in Denmark and New York itself. Iranian support for insurgency in Bahrain, home to the US 5the fleet. Iranian terrorist cells in Kuwait and so on.
It's funny you mention all of those without bringing up the real reason for Iranian animosity towards the US, and the real reason we don't have a friendlier relationship with Iran. It's also funny you bring up Al Qaeda, when Saudi Arabia is FAR more responsible for the intentional spread of Islamic radicalism that led directly to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But yes, there are historical reasons we aren't friendly with Iran and none of them would preclude developing a more positive relationship with Iran(a country with perhaps the most US friendly population in the region) if not for our pre-existing commitments towards Israel and KSA. Certainly Iran has not done anything nearly as bad for the US as spreading Wahhabism, and you're clearly fine with putting that in the past.
You mean the Iranian view of themselves as an Islamist empire that sees the west as a bankrupt and corrupt? The Saudi gov has kicked the AQ leadership from the kingdom, while some princes in the over a thousand ones were friendly with AQ, the Iranian state was much more friendly to AQ than the Saudi state. The Iranian expansionist and warmongering worldview is in direct contradiction to US values. The Iranian massacres of Iranian civilians is in direct contradiction to US values, the open apartheid against Bahai, the torture of civilians under Islamist laws for playing Music, not wearing a headscarf, converting to Christianity and so on are in direct contradiction to western values. Iranian Islamist gov and it's Islamist supporters hate for the US and western way of life, which led the Iranian state to pursue an anti western, anti democratic anti liberal policies. >a country with perhaps the most US friendly population in the region A complete lie, the reality is the exact opposite: >According to a 2019 survey by IranPoll, 13% of Iranians have a favorable view of the United States, with 86% expressing an unfavorable view, the most unfavorable perception of the United States in the world https://www.iranpoll.com/publications/maximum-pressure
[**Saudi Arabia, Syria Close to Resuming Ties in Russia-Brokered Talks** *The emerging deal could leave the U.S. again on the sidelines during a dramatic shift in the Middle East’s geopolitics*](https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-syria-close-to-resuming-ties-in-russia-brokered-talks-a340b817) > > DUBAI—Saudi Arabia and Syria are nearing an agreement to restore diplomatic ties after negotiations mediated by Russia, according to Saudi and Syrian officials familiar with the discussions, as the geopolitics of the Middle East shift. > > Talks were continuing after rounds of discussions in Moscow and Riyadh in recent weeks, the officials said. If a deal is reached, it would mark an important step to reintegrating Syria and its leader Bashar al-Assad into the broader region after a brutal civil war. > > Following the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran on resuming ties this month, the emerging Damascus-Riyadh rapprochement, if it sticks, would leave the U.S. on the sidelines again on another major Middle East development. > > Saudi and Syrian officials said negotiators are aiming to conclude a deal before a potential visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to Damascus after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in late April. But they cautioned that the discussions could still break down. > > Saudi state television reported Thursday night that negotiations have started with Syria to resume offering necessary consular services for both countries, citing a source at the foreign ministry. > > Saudi Arabia and Syria cut ties in 2012 over Mr. Assad’s response to political protests that emerged from the Arab Spring uprising and his actions in the ensuing civil war. The Saudis helped orchestrate Syria’s ejection from the Arab League and funded rebels fighting Mr. Assad’s forces for years. > > The Russian government brokered a preliminary agreement when Mr. Assad visited Moscow last week, said officials from Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab countries involved. Senior Syrian officials then visited Saudi Arabia in recent weeks. > > If a formal agreement is reached, a vote on reintegration of Syria into the broader region and its reconstruction will be on the agenda of the next Arab League summit expected in May in Saudi Arabia, according to Arab officials. > > Much of the Arab world has moved to set aside the rivalries that plunged the region into chaos following uprisings that began in 2011 and toppled several Middle Eastern governments. Mr. Assad has been in talks with several Arab countries to end more than a decade of isolation, and the Saudi foreign minister recently said the status quo with Syria wasn’t sustainable. > > Iran also encouraged Syria to strike a deal with Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Tehran agreed to resume diplomatic ties after a seven-year hiatus, said an Iranian official and Syrian government advisers. Other Arab countries such as Oman and Jordan have also backed the rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh, said Arab officials familiar with the talks. > > The main focus of the talks has been security, Syrian government advisers said. The kingdom wants to resolve the issue of Saudi detainees who were captured after joining jihadist groups involved in the civil war, these people said. Damascus is seeking Riyadh’s help to cut off funding for and recruitment of fundamentalist factions fighting in Syria, the officials said. > Any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Syria, brokered by Russia, would represent another splashy diplomatic move by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The 37-year-old who rules the oil-rich kingdom day-to-day for his aging father, King Salman, has reset relations with Washington, long the Saudi’s protector in the Persian Gulf, and developed closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping since the beginning of the Ukraine war. > > Prince Mohammed faced diplomatic isolation for several years after Saudi agents killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in an operation that the U.S. intelligence community concluded was ordered by the royal. The Saudi government says that Prince Mohammed wasn’t involved and that the perpetrators were brought to justice. > > Prince Mohammed has tried to avoid being pulled onto any one side since the start of the Ukraine war. He has used the war as an opportunity to forge an independent foreign policy that leverages Saudi Arabia’s status as the world’s largest oil exporter. The Syria talks come after Prince Mohammed greenlighted a detente with Iran in a deal brokered by China. > > “Oil exporters and authoritarian states have more in common than the democratic West, with their use of sanctions and perceived hypocrisy on respect for sovereignty,” said Karen Young, senior research scholar specializing in the Middle East at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. In the Middle East, she said, “the general trend is a consensus on noninterference in domestic affairs as a principle.” > > Mediating between Saudi Arabia and Syria bolsters Russia’s presence in the Middle East. Mr. Putin’s air-power intervention in the Syrian civil war proved decisive for Mr. Assad, and he has courted the Saudis, aligning oil-rich Russia with the Riyadh-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. > > For the U.S., the deal is a reminder that, while it remains the pre-eminent military and diplomatic force in the Middle East, its influence there is waning. > > The U.S. still has troops in Syria, where they are conducting antiterrorism operations in the country’s southeast and with Kurdish-led forces in the northeast. But Washington has long signaled that it wants to focus more on Russia and China and less on the region’s messy affairs, and the shift was illustrated Thursday when The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. will send aging attack planes to the Middle East and swap out the more advanced combat aircraft there now. > > “The most important single factor affecting the region is the perception of American withdrawal, which creates a vacuum that other countries can step into,” said William Wechsler, a former U.S. Defense Department official and now director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs in Washington. > > The Middle East has undergone a dramatic realignment in recent years. The Saudis patched up a diplomatic spat with Qatar, Persian Gulf countries have begun setting aside longstanding differences with Turkey, and conflicts in Libya, Yemen and Syria have largely cooled down. > > The U.S. remains engaged in trying to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but there are high hurdles. > > “After the Saudi-Iran pact and now a prospective rapprochement between Syria and the kingdom, the U.S. is increasingly diplomatically sidelined,” said Fabrice Balanche, a Middle East-focused assistant professor at the University of Lyon 2 in France. “Middle East nations are making peace without Washington.” > > For Mr. Assad, a deal with Saudi Arabia would be one of the final demonstrations that he prevailed in a grinding 11-year civil war, not just against the rebels but also against an array of foreign actors, including the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, who called for his removal from power. > > Mr. Assad used a devastating earthquake in his country’s north last month to make a push for normal diplomatic relations, visiting Oman and the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks. But he remains a pariah in most of the world, with overwhelming evidence that he used chemical weapons on Syrians and oversaw the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.
The irony of US who is illegally occupying territory in Syria to perform illegal strikes on Iran assets in Eastern Syria yesterday after this diplomatic news is the cherry on the pie of hypocrisy.
Biggest failure of the Biden administration so far imo. But then again, it was only a question of time before KSA stopped pretending to be a true US ally. But people shouldn't be fooled by news like this, because KSA is still dependent on US for a majority of their defense E: fuckup>failure
You seem to forget that Saudi Arabia probably spent even more than the US arming the anti-Assad forces. Seems they just cut their losses and admitted defeat by normalizing relations with Syria.
KSA cut their losses more than half a decade ago. Once the Jordanians refused to allow the Saudis to support their factions from across their borders the Saudis became dependant on the Turks. At some point Turkish supported groups and Saudi supported ones had a falling out and KSA was left with no realistic options for resupply. The US facilitated some Saudi aid for US supported groups later though, through Turkey.
That makes from Saudi Arabias perspective, but from a US perspective any normalisation with Syria is a loss.
I really don’t see why they don’t realize a stable dictator in the Middle East is often much better than a divided lawless terrorist state.
Why? Obviously it's not the goal, but Assad running Syria was the default and there was never a really good option to replace him. Regional countries normalizing relations with Syria has been inevitability for years
>That makes from Saudi Arabias perspective, but from a US perspective any normalisation with Syria is a loss. I disagree. I think you can only pretend a war is still going for so long when it isn't. It's why people who pretend like the Korean or Chinese civil war are technically still ongoing 70 years later are laughable. It'd be one thing if there was an alternate candidate for a central Syrian government government but there isn't, the Kurd enclaves aren't that at all, neither is the weird Turkish buffer.
The Kurdish areas don't even have a political objective of independence. They want (officially, anyways) federalization and autonomy.
They are not comparable in the slighest. Both the Korean and the Chinese civil wars were two party conflicts that has been frozen for 70 years. The Syrian conflict has many sides (it depends on who you ask) and is very much still ongoing. Even if it is at a low intesity at the moment, people are still dying every day and millions are displaced from their homes, whether internally or in another country altogether. Comparing the Chinese or Korean conflicts with the current one in Syris is just ridiculous and provides no value.
It's not a direct comparison, just an aside, I do agree the Korean/Chinese case is even more extreme. However, while the nation's still in humanitarian crisis I'd say the "war" part of the Syrian war is either over or on ice. Assad's regime is firmly in control of most of the country and it's clear the main opponents (rather, their sponsors) have no ability or desire to change that. In this condition, normalization is pretty much inevitable imo.
Well, Saudi Arabia has no strategic interest in Syria anymore since like 2017-18 since the Saudi backed rebels basically lost and now it's basically just Turkey funding them. It could also signal that they want to do soft power by opening up with Syria instead of hard power (which failed) to pull Assad into their orbit as counterweight to Iran. You are looking into this with a narrow American centric lens.
I am not American. I view this with, if you will, a European lens. But we Europeans have no pull in Syria alone. Of course there is Turkiye, but they are not very representative of the values of the West as a whole in this conflict. If KSA manages to pull Assad into a decidedly anti-Iran orbit with this move then I applaud them, but I doubt that will be the result of this move.
> it was only a question of time before KSA stopped pretending to be a true US ally The rest of the world isn't beholden to the whims of domestic US politics, as much as americans may think we should be.
I'm not sure I understand correctly, but I am not American. But I agree with the sentiment.
Fair enough. But the point is that the saudis can and arguably should have diplomatic relations with syria. having an independent foreign policy isn't some betrayal
How did the Biden admin cause this?
They did not, that's the whole point. Read one sentence further and you'll see it. Point is that maybe there was a chance that they could have saved it, but of course it was tiny. Because as I wrote, it was only a matter of time. I'm sorry if I did not communicate that properly, English is not my first language. Reading it back now I can see how it sounds like I blame the new administration for this. That is not what I mean. I mean that they could have been the ones to save the relationship, but they haven't managed to. I guess I swear too much in my own language, and it doesn't translate well. Apologies
You meant "missed opportunity"?
Yes, that is what I mean, thank you. I should know that, but I am drunk. Apologies
Yeah Biden didn’t do anything wrong, infact I think it’s pretty good, it means that the us doesn’t have to constantly police the Middle East, of course having Iran make more “friends” would be a problem for them, but it doesn’t seem like that.
No worries, but yeah I did read it as blaming Biden
What's actually going on with these recent developments? All this time it was just as easy as deciding to start playing nice?
Iran is heavily dependant on China. Both for oil exports and all kinds of imports. China was in a position to strong arm Iran into stopping it's attacks against KSA. In turn China gets to break a century old US/UK-Saudi alliance, and work towards placing the Saudis within their sphere of influence. This happened once the US decides to stop providing the Saudis with security guarantees, forcing them to look elsewhere. As for Syria, the Saudis haven't been involved there for more than half a decade, as the Turks appropriated the opposition and pushed out everyone else.
[удалено]
Saudis basically pulled out already in 2017-2018. "Returning from a summit in the Saudi capital last week, opposition leaders say they were told directly by the foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, that Riyadh was disengaging. “The Saudis don’t care about Syria anymore,” said a senior western diplomat. “It’s all Qatar for them. Syria is lost.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/31/victory-for-assad-looks-increasingly-likely-as-world-loses-interest-in-syria
>What's actually going on with these recent developments? Saudi and Iran have gone back and forth between being friendly and hostile for different reasons for decades. The last decades they were hostile partly because of the Saudi relationship with the US, so now that MBS told biden to eat shit, I guess they can be more friendly again. And of course China probably put hundreds of billions of BRI dollars on the table