US Mid-East forces relocate out of Iranian cruise missile range. The IDF begins overhaul

DEBKA

Oct 29, 2019 @ 7:38

The US like Israel has no adequate answer for Iran’s cruise missile and drone warfare. This was the subtext of PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s warning on Monday, Oct. 28, that Tehran is deploying those missiles against Israel in Yemen, as well as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, at a joint news conference with visiting US Secretary Treasury Steven Mnunchin.

This alarming gap in US and Israeli defenses shot into sight in the Sept. 14, Iranian attack on Saudi oil infrastructure.  It has galvanized the US armed forces into starting to remove sensitive elements out of range, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.

The Saudi operation revealed both Iran’s audacity in going for a major Saudi oil center but also the unexpected accuracy of its weapons, the hitherto unknown ability to strike targets with the precision of 5-10 m, as Netanyahu stressed on Monday.

Iran’s newfound capabilities provided the context for the US Navy’s announcement on Oct. 25 that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group had been moved out of the Gulf into the Arabian Sea. This move reduced the ability of the F/A-18 fighter-bombers on its decks to barely fly there and back for reaching an Iranian coast target only 800km away. The threat to the mighty US strike group was considered real enough for the US military command to forego keeping all parts of Iran within its sights.
The same rationale has spurred US CENTCOM to start emptying out its air force command posts at the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar for relocation at a base in central Saudi Arabia. A direct Iranian hit could cripple US command and intelligence centers in Qatar.

The soothing IDF statement on Monday night that Israel’s counter-missile defense systems were being overhauled for meeting the new menaces was timely. It was also meaningless in as far as providing any assurance that an answer had been found for Iran’s cruise missiles, either by Israel or indeed the United States. After intense cooperation with the US Missile Defense Agency for decades and spending tens of billions of dollars to develop Israel’s four-tier missile defense system, both are suddenly caught short by their vulnerability to Iran’s newest tools of war. Netanyahu’s comments on Monday connected to his earlier disclosure that Israel will have to urgently spend several billion more dollars to meet the new capabilities developed by Tehran.

October 30, 2019 | 8 Comments »

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  1. @ Adamdalgliesh:It is nice people keep groping for why Trump dumped the Kurds and trying to justify it. This rational sounds like far fetched fermented cow waste meaning what you quoted and wrote from Mark Langfen.

  2. Well the US stampede is gaining momentum , no matter how you want to paint it ( Trump profile . Trump 2020 re-election . US unable to oppose Iran agression on Saudi refinery plants etc..) . And Bolton exclusion means this stampede is going to stay . Name it strategic retreat , but the failure is blatant . Turkey is now NATO enemy and next Russia ‘s ally . Iran is no.1 power of agression in the MidEast . The current Lebanese political crisis will only prove once more ( like in may 2008 ) that the USA are not a reliable ally for liberal-democratic forces .

  3. Langdon also argues, persuasively, that there was an element of personal “damage control” in Trump’s decision. At a time when he is facing a serious threat of impeachment, he may well have concluded that retreating before the Turkish advance would make him less Congressional enemies and antagonized the American public less than if he had blundered into an armed clash with Turkey. And if the Iranian’s had taken advantage of this “diversion” to attack U.S. forces in the Gulf, his popularity would have taken an even deeper dive. The same “hypocritical” critics who are denouncing him for abandoning the Kurds would hopped on him even more loudly and angrily if American forces had come under attack by Turkey, Iran, or both. So he chose the option he believed would anger Congress and the American people least, which was to retreart in Syria. Langdon’s analysis of Trump’s motives and the likelihood that he avoidedeven worse damage to his Presidency by the option he chose may well prove to be correct.

  4. In his latest column in Arutz Sheva, Mark Langfen argues that Trump’s decision to order American troops to retreat before advancing Syrian forces was connected with the imminent threat of an Iranian attack on Saudia and the Gulf states, and American forces in the region. According to Langfen, Trump realized that the U.S. could not risk a clash with the Turks while the situation in the Gulf was “hot” and American forces in peril there. If he had resisted the Turkish invasion, Langfen argues, America might have faced a disastrous “two front war” with Turkey and Iran at the same tome

    The prescient timing of Trump’s announcement of retreat from North Syria and possibly the force redeployment,alone may have derailed a planned Iranian attack. With the attacked Iran oil tanker, there is still an extremely high possibility of some type of military engagement with Iran.

    If you were the American President, and all intelligence reports led you to believe an attack from Iran against US forces in the Persian Gulf is a strong short-term possibility, wouldn’t you avoid a preventable fight with American casualties against Turkey in North Syria to focus on a likely attack from Iran in the Persian Gulf? Iran could capture 5,000 American soldiers as hostages Anyone who says that they would would risk a two-front conflict with Turkey and Iran at the same time is certifiable.

    If the American public were polled on the reality question instead of the tear-jerker Kurdish question, I believe 90% of Americans would answer that it is better to cave to Turkey in the north in order to defend the eastern front against Iran. President Trump’s tough North Syria retreat decision may very well have saved American forces from being attacked, killed and taken hostage by the Iranians. President Trump should be lauded for his military instinct instead of being denounced by his hysterical opponents..

  5. The main question David Melech is that in the event of a real conflict (war) will it be necessary to bomb large portions of a country (i.e.: weapons of mass destruction) in order to defend your own country and will the Prime Minister of Israel have the guts (aka: betzim) to do so?

  6. Who developed Iran’s cruise missiles? They or russia? Are they fired from a static location or the back of a mobile truck?
    If Israel was able to remove from iran all sorts other bomb info how come they missed out on this?
    As ISRAEL a country without a government everyone can blame everyone.
    How much of this equipment is in both lesbenon and gaza?
    Hay donna ask moi aska him.