U.S., Not Israel, Shot Down Most Iran Drones and Missiles
U.S., Not Israel, Shot Down Most Iran Drones and Missiles
American forces did most of the heavy lifting responding to Iran’s retaliation for the attack on its embassy in Damascus.
The United States shot down more drones and missiles than Israel did on Saturday night during Iran’s attack, The Intercept can report.
More than half of Iran’s weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, by commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph.
The extent of the U.S. military operation is unbeknownst to the American public, but the Pentagon coordinated a multination, regionwide defense extending from northern Iraq to the southern Persian Gulf on Saturday. During the operation, the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan all shot down the majority of Iranian drones and missiles. In fact, where U.S. aircraft originated from has not been officially announced, an omission that has been repeated by the mainstream media. Additionally, the role of Saudi Arabia is unclear, both as a base for the United States and in terms of any actions by the Saudi military.
“U.S. intelligence estimates that half of the weapons fired by Iran failed upon launch or in flight due to technical issues,” a U.S. Air Force senior officer told The Intercept. Of the remaining 160 or so, the U.S. shot down the majority, the officer said. The officer was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive operational matters.
I don’t know if this ventures into conspiracy theory territory or not but in real time, I thought the Iranians had essentially told the U.S. what was coming and to prepare for it because Iran wanted a show and to test Israel’s air defense systems without provoking a war.
When it happened, one of my friends was like, “Great. World War III.” And I said I didn’t think so because Iran announced that they had launched it all as they launched it all. You don’t announce, “Here come some bombs!” to the media when your goal is having them actually land.
That's not conspiratorial thinking at all, that's just geopolitical literacy. Your assessment is correct: Iran planned this carefully to avoid causing any major damage. This was pro wrestling.
Which honestly makes it sad to consider that Iran has become the more restrained, rational actor here. The US needs to put Netanyahu on a short leash. He is not worth this.
The main point to announce it was so they would get shot down. If they had reached their targets that would be a war they would lose very quickly. This way no harm was done. But now the people in charge in Iran can tell everyone in the country look how we attacked the bad people. Kind of like when north Korea talks a bunch of shit to everyone then launches a missile to no where. They can brag about it in country how they almost fucked up Japan and no one is the wiser because the only news coming in is things they ban see internally. Iranians saw the missles and drones leave their airspace then get told lies about what happened.
They did the same thing back when you guys turned Qassem "Kotlett" Soleimani into a fine paste. Announcing an air strike, notifying the target in advance and declare victory. Noone was killed in their retaliatory attack.
While the Mullahs have fucked up Iran beyond recognition, their handling of crises like this is pretty good.
That's a lot of money we're spending because of Netanyahu's crazed bloodlust.
You could be spending it in Ukraine.
Hell, we may even be able to make Americans life better at home. Would be an easy way to get votes, but both parties know only a small handful of swing states decide the election, so why bother making things better when we can just spend billions in ads in five states.
Lmfao. I didn’t expect to get a full laugh outta the comments today. Thanks.
...aight so fuck Israel in a "your genocide is abhorrent and you don't deserve any support from anyone" kind of way, but if we're going to support a genocidal ethnostate anyway, at least we're doing it in a way that stops civilians from betting blown up, as opposed to handing them half a military's worth of bombs for them to drop on other civilians.
Now that that's taken care of, could we maybe take the we're planning on sending over to Israel for them to do even more genocide with, and send them to Ukraine or something so they can fight against genocide instead?
Jordan shot down a lot. Jordan has roughly as many Palestinians as Gaza.
Jordan directly not really. The American bases in Jordan shot down the drones.
The Jordanian monarchy is heavily corrupt and bribed by America. They receive billions in weapons and bribes to suppress their population and turn the country into an American outpost near Syria and Iraq. Last year they got $1,619,118,868
A prime example was the Tower22 base that got bombed in the beginning of this year
Currently there are massive protests in Jordan against their regime.
Apparently the drones were aimed at military targets only, unlike Israel’s attack on the embassy.
Slava Ukraini indeed. Israeli citizens do, however have some valid problems with how they're treated by the Islamic nations :| killing a bunch of people where the population demographics is half children is indeed a bit ermh, uh questionable. Feel like having a war criminals trial would be suitable for Hamas and the IDF. What was the name of that unit? 8 something something 👁️👁️👁️📿📿📿🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Israeli citizens do, however have some valid problems with how they're treated by the Islamic nations
Largely as a reaction to the previous actions of the government of Israel towards Muslims.
Most of the citizen-to-citizen issues (in both directions) stem back to decades of government-to-government mistreatment and abuse. All the way back to the creation of Isreal and resulting displacement of Arab/Muslim people who were already there.
And, actually, it ultimately goes back centuries before that, but 1947 was a signifigant increase in hostility and mistrust.
Israel: bombs a diplomatic target without warning
Iran: bombs 2 military targets with warning
USA: shoots down most of the assets that made it even close to Israel
Biden: Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange”
I wonder what game they're playing.
Netanyahu is trying to stay out of prison, like Trump, so he needs conflict but not too much (losing support from his right wing coalition wounds end him) to seem strong and as a distraction and for political points. Iran doesn't want war but doesn't want to look weak and want to make a point to not let Israel think there won't be consequences, they can't just do nothing at all. Biden doesn't want war in the region and he's focused on negotiations to calm everybody down, preventing escalation. If Iran had hit something important it almost certainly would've escalated to war.
Not happy paying taxes to support this.
Shooting down Iranian dron3s and misses should not be your breaking point lol. This was the most justifiable action that has taken place since this shitshow started shitting.
It's not the breaking point (that was long ago), but it's not justifiable either. Protecting Israel no matter what crimes they commit has led us into a genocide. This merely demonstrates that the US could have protected Gazans from Israeli bombs but chose not to.
Tax dollars hard at work.
Saving lives is one of the few things I support our tax dollars being used for.
Avoid those freedom potholes with pride, citizen.
The Iron Dome is looking pretty rusty... I wonder how much Likud diverted to private accounts in the Caymans.
That's the real story at the bottom of this mess.
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Israel was warned about the attack a month before it happened.
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4 billion dollars in US funding that was supposed to go to Israeli defense somehow didn't work.
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US is having to privately ship weapons to Israel behind congress and senate approval.
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The Iron Dome only protects against short-range rockets. Israel's Arrow and Arrow II Endospheric and Exospheric anti-missile defense systems are what most of the missiles that were intercepted by Israel were shot down with.
mfw Israel is so well situated with the USA that they had an entire coalition force come to their aid for a tit for tat return strike
What is more likely?
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UK, France and Jordan want to protect Israel (who has the most capable air defense systems in the region)
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UK, France and Jordan hate Iran and want to counter an Iranian military operation that could destabilize the region further; and also gain momentum for pressuring Israel for concessions
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I guess if they didn't do that, Israel would have needed to counter with 90000 missles considering the 300x response from Iran?
Do Houthi missiles count as Yemen or Iranian?
Yemeni. Else we could extrapolate into America bombing the Iranian consulate or directly committing the Genocide in Gaza.
The implication is that without US assistance, Israel wouldn't have been able to knock out all these missiles. That is unfounded, especially considering that Israel has one of the most advanced high-altitude SAM systems in the world, the Arrow and the Arrow II missile systems.
All defence systems can be saturated. Drones allow unprecedented swarm attacks that the old maxim "the bombers will always come through" have become relevant again.
Biden won't put US military members in the way to deter an actual fucking genocide...
But he's scrambling jets to protect uninhabited areas in Israel?
This isn't just him supporting a genocide anymore, he's not making logical decisions. He's said for literal decades that nothing will ever make him lower his complete support of Israel, and he keeps showing us that's true
Someone with that kind of loyalty to any foreign government for any reason should disqualify them from holding at least the presidential office.
It was bad when Trump was like this with Russia, and the whole Dem party agreed.
Then Biden does the same shit and suddenly it's ok?
Fuck that noise.
Iran hurting almost nobody is in everyone's best interests.
We don't need Israel vs Iran lobbing missiles at each other or marching to attack each other. Shooting down every single Iranian rocket was the fastest and simplest way to peace.
Shooting down every single Iranian rocket was the fastest and simplest way to peace.
Not really. This wasn't America acting with a strategic strike. They simply shot down a few missiles to "support" Israel ... because to do otherwise could have opened the door to other Arab nations lobbing bombs at Israel where over 1 million Palestinians are still living.
Peace wasn't any part of this strategy.
Iran hurting almost nobody is in everyone’s best interests.
The only mention of any injury from this was something that was shot down landed on someone...
If all the "attack" hit the target, there would have been zero injury.
I don’t like that Biden is supporting Israel, but I’m not going to put him and Trump on the same level. Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Biden has allowed a lot of shit I hate and don’t want us to be a part of, but acting like they’re one and the same is not helpful. Especially when we would have had boots on the ground helping Israel if Trump was in office.
If someone kicked you in the balls, would it be ok for everyone you meet after that to punch you in the face?
Or do you keep the same social standards regardless of meeting one exceptionality shitty person?
Would you get mad at the guy who just punched you? It was as bad as the kick in the nuts, so you can't complain right?
Logically speaking, you're saying you'd accept the punch with a smile because it was worse before.
This is a dumb take - I definitely want us to cut off military aide to Isreal that's used for offensive purposes.. but there's no reason to let Iran bomb Isreal just because we're pissed off about Palestine. Isreal being forced into a defensive war is only likely to accelerate deaths in Gaza.
but there’s no reason to let Iran bomb Isreal just because we’re pissed off about Palestine
So why aren't we shooting down Israel's attacks on Gaza?
You can't claim we shot these down just to avoid casualties out of respect for life when we're actively helping commit a genocide.
At least not if you want to convince anyone of anything logically.
The US is a puppet state of Isreal. Our entire Congress and presodent is AIPAC-approved.
Iran’s government with its tail between its legs. I hope the people of Iran one day get better leadership.
Good job on the USA and its partners in making sure there isn’t any more victims.
To those of you doing that Whataboutisms, fuck off.
How could the leadership have handled this better? Actually hitting Israel hard and escalating the war? Do nothing and set a precedent that Iranian embassies can be bombed with impunity?
Iranian leadership sucks in a lot of other ways but they played this about as well as they could. They had to ride a fine line between a response tough enough to match the aggression of Israel and save face, but not enough that the u.s. would give Israel a blank check in escalation.
Maybe not backing Hamas, a terrorist organization, to begin with.