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Page added on April 19, 2018
Are Iran and Israel Headed for Their First Direct War?
SYRIA-ISRAEL BORDER, Golan Heights — Ever since the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran and Israel have been fighting each other in the shadows — through proxies, assassination squads and cyber-virus attacks, but never as rival armies meeting on the field of battle. That may be about to change, and if it does, it will have vast implications for Syria, Lebanon and the whole Middle East.
I’m sure neither side really wants a war. It could be devastating for Israel’s flourishing high-tech economy and for Iran’s already collapsing currency. But Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force seems determined to try to turn Syria into a base from which to pressure Israel, and Israel seems determined to prevent that. And in the past few weeks — for the first time ever — Israel and Iran have begun quietly trading blows directly, not through proxies, in Syria.
They have already gone through two rounds, and Round 3, now pending, could blow Syria sky-high.
Round 1 occurred on Feb. 10, when an Iranian drone launched by a Quds Force unit operating out of Syria’s T4 air base, in central Syria, was shot down with a missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter that was following it after it penetrated northern Israel airspace.
Initial reports were that the drone was purely on a reconnaissance mission. But the Israeli Army’s spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, said Friday that the flight path and Israel’s analysis of the drone indicated that “the aircraft was carrying explosives” and that its mission was “an act of sabotage in Israeli territory.”
If true, that suggests that the Quds Force — commanded by Iran’s military mastermind Qassem Suleimani — was trying to launch an actual military strike on Israel.
“This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel — not by proxy,” a senior Israeli military source told me. “This opened a new period.”
It certainly did, because in Round 2, on April 9, Israeli jets launched a missile strike on T4, the drone’s home base — directly targeting, for the first time, an Iranian facility and personnel in Syria. Seven Quds Force members were killed, including Col. Mehdi Dehghan, who led the drone unit.
While the Israeli Army spokesman refused to confirm or deny the Israeli raid, Iran’s government unusually highlighted it — and Iran’s casualties — and vowed to take revenge.
“The Zionist entity will sooner or later receive the necessary response and will regret its misdeeds,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qasemi, said Monday.
So now the whole neighborhood is holding its breath: Will there be a Round 3? Israeli defense officials let it be known that if the Iranians strike back, Israel may use the opportunity to mount a massive counterstrike on Iran’s entire military infrastructure in Syria, where Iran is attempting to establish forward air bases and factories for GPS-guided missiles that could hit targets inside Israel with much greater accuracy — inside a 50-meter radius. Iran also plans to provide the missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
These Israeli defense officials say there is zero chance Israel will make the same mistake it made in Lebanon — letting Hezbollah establish a large missile threat there — by letting Iran do so in Syria.
On Tuesday, to drive home that point, the Israeli government reportedly distributed maps to Israeli news organizations showing five Iranian-controlled bases in Syria. All that was missing on them were bull’s-eyes of exactly where Israel will drop its bombs if the Iranians carry out their threats. The message from Israel to the Quds Force was hard to miss: “Beware. We know exactly where to find you.”
As Israel’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, put it to a gathering of Israeli soldiers on Monday: “We are facing a new reality — the Lebanese Army, in cooperation with Hezbollah, the Syrian Army, the Shiite militias in Syria and above them Iran — are all becoming a single front against the state of Israel.”
Iran has legitimate security concerns in the gulf; it faces a number of hostile, pro-American Sunni Arab powers trying to contain its influence and undermine its Islamic regime. From Iran’s perspective, these are a threat. I get that.
But what is Iran doing in Syria?
Tehran’s building of bases and missile factories in Syria, after having helped President Bashar al-Assad largely crush the uprising against him, appears to be a move by the Quds Force’s Suleimani to extend Iran’s grip on key parts of the Sunni Arab world and advance his position at home in his struggle for power with Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president. The Quds Force now more or less controls — through proxies — four Arab capitals: Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad and Sana.
Indeed, Iran has become the biggest “occupying power” in the Arab world today. But Suleimani may be overplaying his hand.
Even before the recent clashes with Israel, many average Iranians were publicly asking: What is Iran doing spending billions of dollars — which were supposed to go to Iranians as a result of the lifting of sanctions from the Iran nuclear deal — fighting wars in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen?
That concern is surely one reason Iran, for all its fist-shaking — has not retaliated — yet. The Israeli airstrike on T4, along with the U.S.-British-French airstrike on the Syrian regime’s suspected chemical weapons facilities, have actually exposed the strategic vulnerabilities of both Russia and Iran in Syria. Their forces are very powerful versus the rebels there, but not so powerful versus the Western forces and Israel. Iran, which has to depend largely on Syria’s air defense system, is particularly exposed to Israel’s Air Force.
“Russia’s appearance of omnipotence in the Syrian arena has been shattered,” military writer Anshel Pfeffer noted in Haaretz on Monday. “Appearances of power count for a lot in this region.” Russia’s “forces there are insufficient to take on any of the other nations who have operated, and may operate again, in Syria. … The United States, Britain and France, as well as Israel and Turkey, can all deploy larger and more capable forces to the region much faster than Russia can.”
Suleimani could opt to strike back at Israel through proxies, either in the Middle East or against Israeli targets globally. But he now has to think twice about that, both because his forces in Syria are exposed — and for another reason: Iran is exposed financially. Iran’s currency is collapsing back home. The Iranian rial has lost one-third of its value just this year, which a wider confrontation with Israel would only exacerbate.
It would seem, in other words, that Suleimani is at odds with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s President Rouhani. Putin and Rouhani share an interest in Syria quieting down now, and not becoming a financial drain or a military quagmire — by Suleimani turning it into an arena for a direct war with Israel.
But economic restraints have never stopped Suleimani and his Quds Force before and may not now. Their ambitions are big — to create a base to pressure Israel directly, to dominate the Arab states around them and to maintain the fervor of the Islamic Revolution. Everyone is basically awaiting Suleimani’s next move. Does he back down, lose a little face, and wait until he is stronger? Does Israel let him?
These are momentous days for both countries. One thing I know for sure. The status quo is not sustainable.
158 Comments on "Are Iran and Israel Headed for Their First Direct War?"
Davy on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 8:40 am
Excellent comment Antius. I will save it to my notes
Antius on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 9:03 am
“A kWh is a kWh.
With electricity you can do almost everything, including turning it into H2 or NH3 for storage purposes and combust it in a retrofitted fossil fuel power station.”
This is actually a very inefficient way of using an expensive energy source. It means getting 1 unit of electricity back for about 5 units that you put in. And the equipment needed to do this is complex, has its own embodied energy and capital cost. I have shown in the past that attempting to store energy in any type of electricity-electricity loop, at least triples the final cost of power and wastes at least half of the original energy. In this case it will be more, because of the inefficiencies involved. Except for a few niche applications, this sort of thing will never make sense.
Storage will be needed, but the embodied energy and cost of the equipment involved needs to be as low as possible, whereas to avoid loss of exergy, the number of energy transitions needs to be minimised. Hence, we can store excess wind power in hot and cold. But we will use the heat as heat, i.e. hot water storage for domestic and industrial use; high-temperature heat stored in hot rock for cooking and industrial use; cold storage for refrigeration and freezing. If we do make ammonia using intermittent power, it will be because we want ammonia as an end use product, i.e. a fertiliser or chemical feedstock. If we produce hydrogen, it will be used to reduce metal ores or provide feedstock for some other end-use chemical product. It will rarely be acceptable to burn something so expensive as a back-up power source.
We can use back-up power sources to a limited extent. We can use a reduced level of fossil fuels, biomass and stored heat to provide back-up power without attempting to use electricity as the original input for energy storage. But generally, living on renewable energy will require using it when it is there and curtailing its use when it is not. Applications that require continuous power or power available at will; need to be cut back and made as energy efficient as possible.
When we accept these limitations, it gives us a better idea of what a renewable energy economy will look like:
1. Keeping warm in winter will mean living close to a source of stored heat. This only works well at a large scale, because heat losses from stored heat decline with increasing volume, so we will need to live more collectively. That means blocks of flats with thermal stores built into them, or lots of terrace houses closely clustered around a thermal store. It may mean communal shower and bathing areas.
2. High temperature stored heat is even more scale dependant, since thermal gradients are greater. Expect communal cooking and multiple users to cluster around a single large heat store.
3. Food storage will take place in large freezer units. The more intermittent the power, the more thermal inertia these will need and hence the larger and more communal they need to be. Also, bigger means more efficient, since heat losses per unit volume decrease with size and heat engine efficiency also increases with scale. Expect food storage to be communal as well as food cooking.
4. Transport will focus on direct electric power (trains, trolley buses, trams) and stored energy. It will be relatively expensive and will focus more on moving goods than people. It will be better suited to moving people and goods between nodes, rather than discrete points. This is because transport needs to be dependable and available at all times. To be affordable in a renewable energy economy, it will need to be collective. Rail and water-based transport will be the best options. Road based transport will be relatively expensive. Few people will have access to cars for day to day travel. They will need to walk or bike to work, or maybe get the train.
5. Power supply is intermittent. Sometimes there will be long periods where it is available for performing energy intensive tasks. Other times, those processes will be cut back. Working patterns may be less predictable than they are now and people will need to respond more quickly. You may find yourself working 20 hour shifts for a couple of weeks and then have long lull periods, where you are either off work or maintaining equipment. You will need to live quite close to work to respond to changes to energy availability. Holiday arrangements will be different.
The use of intermittent renewable energy as our main energy source will ultimately affect our culture. It will be more focused on the local with more of a village culture. Tribal affiliations will be more important, since people will generally interact with the same local group a lot more. Long-term planning and collective action will be needed. Expect communities to be conservative, suspicious of outsiders and more rooted in their ways. Maybe this is exactly what we need. But the point is, that way of living, culture and social attitudes will be very different in a society adapted to intermittent energy.
Cloggie on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 11:42 am
Wow Meathead lets himself being lured into a discussion he is not up to.
WTF does that have to do with all the cities the Nazi’ bombed and the civilians killed. Deflection of the a nederliar is all that is.
Yeah what about them? Getting things out of context, are we? This sentence proves that you have no f* clue what you are talking about as you are walking straight into you own knife. Did you ever realize, you planetary scurge, that the Anglos dropped 20 times as much on Germany as the other way around? And did you realize that between British and Germans it were the British/Americans and not the Germans who began with hitting each others civilian targets? During the first hours of Churchill’s take over of government from Chamberlain, he ordered the bombing of civilian targets in Germany. It took the Germans three months until they no longer could afford not to retaliate in a war with Britain they never wanted in the first place. Retaliation for German bombing was never a motive for the Americans, let alone the nuking of two Japanese cities. The horny motive to destroy Europe and colonize it was the only motive. But nothing is forgotten, you f*head. And in 2018 your cards are very weak.
Screw your personal word press BS nederliar
That’s not a very smart argument, dummy. My “WordPress” doesn’t change a jota to the fact that I am quoting from the Forrestal diaries as published by Time-Life after the war. James Forrestal was the US defense secretary who “committed suicide” under very suspicious circumstances (in reality he was thrown out of a hospital window). And it is from him that we know that Chamberlain admitted to Joseph Kennedy that he had been forced into the war with Germany by the US and “world Jews”. Not that it was a surprise to Joseph Kennedy. He was in 1939 US ambassador to Britain and witnessed first hand how Roosevelt and Churchill, behind the back of Chamberlain, were plotting for war against Germany. It was Kennedy’s clark Tyler Kent who had to transcribe all the transatlantic messages between the two conspirators. Here you have one of the best proof you can ever get that it were Churchill and Roosevelt (and Stalin) and not Hitler plotting for a major war, nota bene from the f* BBC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppVzp-Mtq0E
“Germans never invaded America, Americans and their Soviet palls invaded Europe in order to colonize it.”
STFU nederliar, stay on topic and explain about all the people the Nazi killed and invaded.
That is very much on topic, you insufferable fool. Germany was never a threat to the US, but hey, the US and its ruling Jews, who had taken over government in 1933, thought it was time to begin to set up a US Century and empire and they realized they could exploit the Versailles situation in Europe to create exactly the war they needed by sicking the Europeans against each other. It was America, not Chamberlain-Britain or France, let alone Germany, that was keen on a war, because they could anticipate how that would turn out.
There is no defeat because the situation is not the 20th century with winners and losers. Americans are still in Iraq and Syria is a quagmire for all involved including your Eurotards.
Dream on, the US failed to colonize both Iraq and Syria, these few hundred American troops don’t mean anything. Trump tried to withdraw from the US empire, a very sensible move, but the deep state is fighting tooth and nail to prevent him from doing that. And as soon as Trump is gone (killed, not reelected or after 2 terms) the deep state will return with a vengeance and try to restore from the US empire what can be restored and begin with expanding again. And that is when WW3 will break out in earnest. And there is not a chance in hell that you will get Europe with you, populist or not. And Russia, China and Iran are simply too much resistance for that to succeed. And then there is US populism brewing with the potential for secession. America won’t exist in its present shape after 2025.
Davy on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 11:54 am
Shut up nedernazi and go find a Nazi site to play at. We are here to discuss current events and energy not promote Nazism.
Cloggie on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 12:14 pm
Hence, we can store excess wind power in hot and cold.
The modelling of the Fraunhofer Institute says that in the optimal case most storage will come from power-to-gas and to a lesser extent pumped hydro.
Cost power-to-gas: currently 45 million per 100 MW
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/700-mw-renewable-hydrogen-plant-to-be-built-in-france/
Applying hydrolysis to high temperature water/steam can lead to H2-O2 splitting efficiencies of larger than 100%:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/high-temperature-electrolysis/
Hot industrial waste water is an excellent feed stock for hydrolysis.
If we do make ammonia using intermittent power, it will be because we want ammonia as an end use product, i.e. a fertiliser or chemical feedstock.
Yes, or burn it in a retrofitted fossil fuel power station, like here:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/first-climate-neutral-power-station-in-the-netherlands/
It will rarely be acceptable to burn something so expensive as a back-up power source.
If every other application (fertilizer, reducing metal oxides, fuel cells, etc) have been exhausted, it will be burned. See Eemshaven example in previous link.
But generally, living on renewable energy will require using it when it is there and curtailing its use when it is not.
Yes we need demand management. The advent of Internet-of-things (IoT) will offer interesting applications if an appliance like washing machine, fridge, freezer, dryer, heat-pump, e-vehicle charger, etc. will decide for itself when to acquire electricity based on actual electricity price information.
Keeping warm in winter will mean living close to a source of stored heat.
First we should change to heat pumps, reducing the energy bill for space heating with 75% or more for temperate climate like UK/NL. We can always apply heat storage afterwards with solar collectors and a simple storage vessel to be used as the “cold side” of the heat pump. Perhaps we can add seasonal storage of heat in a later stage:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/merits-seasonal-heat-storage-breakthrough/
Food storage will take place in large freezer units.
I currently run my own vegetable garden and have discovered late in life the great value of a freezer.
Road based transport will be relatively expensive. Few people will have access to cars for day to day travel. They will need to walk or bike to work, or maybe get the train.
I don’t believe in the car either, but in autonomous small vans a la Ford Transit with a capacity for 9 persons or so. Current average occupation rate car is 1.25. That is absurd. If you can increase that to 6p or more you reduce the required energy with a factor of 5. That is gigantic. If additionally you can keep such a robo-taxi on the road for 20% of the time or longer rather than the current 3% you reduce enormously the embedded energy of the entire car fleet. And the car fleet itself. Occupancy rate + operation time together could reduce the total global car fleet from 1 billion now to one that is 7 x 5 = 35 times smaller or 30 millions vehicles. It is not for nothing that this British study predicts the death of the global car manufacturing industry if robo-cars become reality:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/by-2030-you-wont-own-a-car/
Cloggie on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 12:18 pm
Shut up nedernazi and go find a Nazi site to play at. We are here to discuss current events and energy not promote Nazism.
Then stop lying about WW2, you intellectual impotent fool and mass murder apologist.
https://tinyurl.com/yb8fjgyt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wxWNAM8Cso
After the end of US empire the full truth will come out. Decades worth of movies, this time not made by Steven Spielberg.
Davy on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 12:38 pm
translation: Davy swatted me on the noggin. oooch says the nedernazi
Cloggie on Sun, 22nd Apr 2018 2:42 pm
“translation: Davy swatted me on the noggin. oooch says the nedernazi”
Translation: I have no response of substance to post 11:42. I’m fleeing from debat, as usual, through namecalling.