Like many others, I followed the most recent Trump Administration’s idiotic action in the Middle East where Iran and the US (with its NATO slaves) came to the brink of a conventional war that would have cost thousands of lives. I have no doubt that many words will be written about the assassination of Iranian General Soleimani in the future. The man turned out to be popular - there was no rejoicing for his death and no less than 244,000,000 results come up when his name is Googled. How the US advisers could have thought that his death would have no consequences is beyond me. A classic US Intelligence failure as always. They will though get away with it, as always. I also know that if Mr Trump was a liberal president (which he is not, just a bad one), a blockbuster Hollywood film would have been made about his “calm, wise and fearless” behavior. Ah, yes, it would have been super American patriotic rubbish like “13 Days in October” for the equally fake Cuban Missile Crisis – see Code Name Dawn.
It all just so much nonsense. Most analysts I spoke to said that Mr Trump’s body language showed a man exceptionally tense. His voice was quavering at times and he came over as being on the edge. He knew how close a run this was if perhaps not exactly how stupid it will turn out since this is in no way the end of the matter. Will he learn from this mistake, no, probably not. He is a man that can be swayed easily by those around him. For a man in power that is exceptionally bad as a human trait. And those around him are all NeoCon war mongrels that ran away from actual wars. It does not take much insight to see where this will lead to, eventually. The USA will get the war that it wants and will pay the price for it. What is worse, it will not benefit anyone except those making money from war. Yes, those that Dwight D Eisenhower warned against.
As it is, Iran struck back as threatened and launched 22 old but improved ballistic missiles on two Iraqi US military bases as a token force/show of retaliation. Token, because it could have been so much worse. The missiles were launched at the same time as the strike against Soleimani took place, exactly, 01:20 am. The US and Iraqi Forces were warned – some say two hours before. There was no intention to kill but to prove that it can be done. Perhaps we should ask now what no one else seems to be worried about – almost all of the Iranian missiles got through and hit what they were aimed at. Contrast this to where the US, UK and France (sort of, they missed their firing sequence) launched Tomahawks (cruise missiles, not the same as what the Iranians used) on Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018 where almost all were jammed or shot down. Only where the targets were not defended did they hit and they solved nothing. It was a show of weakness, not military strength. Dr Assad is still there, popular among his own. Russia captured two Tomahawks which they are now studying. What they learn will be shared with China and the other BRICS countries. I don’t even want to go into the fake reasons for the US, UK, and France (sort of) cruise missile attacks based on nothing but rumors disproved afterwards. It came out that Facebook and other Social Media were used by the CIA as justification. I dealt with the attacks in several books, condemning them as ineffective and useless. It was revealed that the official UN-mandated report, released long after the attacks took place, was changed to reflect more positively towards the West. In other words, it lied, suppressed evidence and was faked. Yet, another scandal ignored in the Western mainstream media.
What is important with the January 2020 Iranian attack is that the missiles got through to explode on defended US/Iraqi bases even after being warned that the attack was taking place. That is shocking and frightening to those stationed there. It means that those bases and all like them cannot be defended properly. Do I need to say what happened to Saudi’s oilfields last year? You know, the catastrophic failure of the US Patriot missile batteries placed around them. As we know, the “Yemeni” missiles got through with pinpoint accuracy. Granted, a ballistic missile is much harder to shoot down than cruise missiles which are slow and entirely predictable to counter fire. The West, and by this I mean the US, is behind in military technology, lacking badly despite Mr Trump’s claims which can be dismissed as nonsense. The latest Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles, even those not hyper-sonic (against which no defense exists even on paper) will get through and sink even big ships like aircraft carriers. I wrote about them in Code Name Unbutton and other books on how they change course. How they can dodge incoming fire. How they accelerate and that the Chinese versions having three times the explosive power than anything that the US can field. There is a reason for this - to keep the US carriers out of striking distance and it works.
I don’t say these things to annoy but as a warning to wake up to realities.
The US was extremely lucky not to suffer human casualties. Let me predict something, start building up the forces to invade Iran or any other country able to fight back, hundreds of thousands of men, and see how they are decimated in missile strikes using cluster warheads. This was but a test run from which much can be learned but will not be by the "exceptional ones." Don’t think this is the end or that the US won this round. Nah, this is the beginning only. It was a major defeat for the US Military. Mr Trump backed down.
What is also remarkable is that nothing is being said about the Kenyan attack taking place last week. There the US was exposed once again as weak and inefficient in the extreme. I warned against that in Code Name Mélisse. Strange how my predictions turn out or are confirmed in the media sometime after the book is published. Shrug.