U.S. Space Commander Says Iranian Intel Satellite Tumbling in Orbit
33 responses to “U.S. Space Commander Says Iranian Intel Satellite Tumbling in Orbit”
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Confusion to the enemy.
this could be something or nothing. it all depends on what the sat is suppose to do. if it has magnetic stab, it would tumble for a bit…there were some hints earlier when it came over the Istanbul ground station and just in range of Iran that it was transmitting in the UHF and VHF bands
in a week or two we should now
amazing how afraid a super power is of the country…as we near 60K dead
Thanks for the heads-up, Robert, I looked it up;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
I assume you meant to type; in a week or two we should know.
Stay safe, Paul.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c… sorry yes. 10 hours ago I was still having my morning coffee after a pretty hard workout here in Istanbul…in the house since we are on lockdown 🙂 but the plane spotters are watching still. my friend sent it to me
what it is like flying these days 🙂 stay safe and healthy good friend
There’s lots of reasons want to bottle up Iran. They are furthering an empire predicated on Islamic rule. That energizes the rest of the Islamic world to a large degree. That they are functional society with as broad a middle class as a Middle Eastern islamic nation can have, and with a functional science and engineering sector, they should not be ignored. Not to mention what they’ve done in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Their foreign policy is very effective. I understand wanting to see the Islamic Republic implode and even helping that process out. What I’m not convinced of is the American ability to deal with the aftermath of that. If I were in a position to do anything about it. I’d be backing as many civil movements as I could have an active program to revive Zoroastrianism with a heavy linkage to Persian heritage, and Persian superiority over Arab imposed islam. You’d have to make a new Zoroastrianism that takes converts, but we have time and resources. Losing Turkey to the islamic forces that came in from the ‘Stans was a real loss. A secular Turkey would be a real help in the area right now.
Andrew if you spend any time in the mideast on the ground AND you can speak the language…you learn very quickly that of all the countries in the region the two countries that have almost universal street creds…even in Iraq…are both Turkey and Iran…AFter the coup that failed in Turkey (CIA was behind that) Turkeys status went up even higher in the region
why? both have effectively resisted the US involvement in their governments…and both have had the US try that. The US had one status in the region in the 90’s but today since 9/11 and particularly with the failure in Iraq and the near buying of the trump administration by the Saudis the average person on the street really does not like the US fracken in their governmental system.
the future of the region, in the next 20-30 years is Turkey and Iran running the area…with the local governments dealing with those two as they now deal with the US….and the US is not doing anything to help that
Iran is no more a threat to the US then Cuba was or is…
an aside..Turkey is very secular. the current leader embraces the religious right, much as Trump does the US religious right. but his day (I think like Trumps) is coming to an end…in many ways.
the Iranians are struggling with a democracy which was made very difficult with the Shah and our involvement with him. he is to this day mostly hated in Iran…
but they will I think work their way out of it. I am actually pretty optimistic…as soon as the US gives up and goes home
They’lll never live in isolation. As soon as we leave, China will come in right in back of us. They’ll be invited in. Islam does not impress me as a religion. Societies that are strongly predicated on it are going to have problems with the rest of the world as long as its modern. With respect, I’ll disagree with you. But keep your observations in mind as history plays out. It’s my observation that as the old colonial institutions go away and the US retreats the situation in the region only gets worse.
“
they are handling it well here in Turkey…the country is modern (we serve great booze on our planes) and the issues I see (here 7 years as of the 23rd) are no different then what I see back home…
o.
” It’s my observation that as the old colonial institutions go away and
the US retreats the situation in the region only gets worse.”
only because there has not been enough time. another 20 years the place will be doing much better. particularly as the US shrinks its presence here…
this is to me pretty normal stuff.
That’s what I thought back in the 80’s. For a while in the 90’s I thought it was coming true. I always wondered if Islam won in Anatolia because Byzantium was too …. Byzantine. Islam today is byzantine. Turkey and Lebanon have hope in my view. Maybe even one day Egypt. That said, I do need to travel to the region to ask the locals how they see things and take in the local scene.
In the 80’s I knew we were in trouble because we had hung on to the Shah to long and we did not help ease the path to democracy in Iran. instead well we backed a dictator who started the Iran Iraq war, because we though he could knock them off. when he didnt …we still backed him even when he was gassing them
my first time in Iran, in the 90’s it was a surprise to me…how badly we had erred in backing Sadam …then it became clear in the 00’s how badly we had repeated the mistake by taking him down
problem is that the people in the US who are making the decisions in the mideast are not making them with the best interest of the people there in mind…but the interest in a four year term
as for |china..see what happens…both the US and the PRC are going to come out of this virus thingdifferent
Are the excesses of the Iranian shah that bad in comparison to the excesses of the islamic republic? I’d say by magnitude and depth, the islamic republic is far more oppressive than the shah was. The difference is the people are willing to take the punishment in the name of islam vs taking it for a man.
What’s interesting to me is how grass roots islam keeps taking control of revolutions in Middle East even when they start as legit civil minded uprisings. Iran, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Yemen …. Everywhere. The Kurds are a fascinating counter-culture in the region. Heck they’re such rebels when they went ‘islamic’ they took to treating Satan as prophet. What a group. My overall point is there’s no civil society there that’s not co-opted by the mosque, so they can’t evolve beyond the scope of their religion. When they try, like the Kurds, it’s so far out there it can’t survive.
Are the excesses of the Iranian shah that bad in comparison to the
excesses of the islamic republic? I’d say by magnitude and depth, the
islamic republic is far more oppressive than the shah was. The
difference is the people are willing to take the punishment in the name
of islam vs taking it for a man.”
its hard to judge the injustice or excess level. but one thing I do know is that of all the Iranians I do know over a wide swatch of the population (although primarily expat workers and living in Tehran…they all hate the Shah…they will go into detail about how he had no popular support in the country when the Brits and Americans put him into power…and that when he was kicked out the US took him in (not totally fair but…) and how the entire country was ready to see him go
the difference is that today this is “their” government with functioning though not entirely free elections…and its ‘none of America’s business” what kind of government they have
“What’s interesting to me is how grass roots islam keeps taking control
of revolutions in Middle East even when they start as legit civil minded
uprisings. Iran, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Yemen .”
revolutionary groups (and the US has examples of this as well) always tend to try and embrace “the god factor” of their religion because it helps them have legitimacy. you can see this in our revolution and the “souths” rebellion. you can see it today in the militia movements of the right…they all have a god component
Turkey is a very secular state. extremly so. the only god here is KM Ataturk
as for the Kurds…which areyou talking about? the thugs of the PKK or the ones in northern Iraq…they are different
Oh you have to consume some PKK media. They’re a hoot. They’re like old English ASPCA ultra lefties who squatted on Greenham Common Air Base back in the Cold War, except they have machine guns and fight. They are what the Red Army Faction in West Germany wanted to be. I would not want to be on the receiving end of their ire, but from a distance it has a humorous quality and makes sense as a total backlash against the politics of the region.
Andrew. my favorite PKK story well I will leave her name out of it. I am told she is now dead and thats a good thing. When I was in Iraq we bagged a PKK “Major” who was organizing school bombings in Turkey and Iraq. She and her gang would go to schools, mostly “elementary” and spend sometime there as a supposed resource officer and in the process leave a car which had a car bomb in it.
the death toll in Iraq and Turkey was pretty high, small children and it came in the midst of AQ being annoying…we first thought it was AQ but it was the PKK we found out (how I will pass telling you)
anyway we finally got the person in charge. she was in the process of carrying out her own “bombing” ..her car was loaded with explosives …she was getting in another car to leave the school when we bagged her. she would not tell us how to disarm the bomb until I had her put in the car handcuffed and closed the door…then she talked
anyway latter we had a chat. She was Turkish really from Hatay and we called the Turkish IRSU to come get her. She didnt like that but was unwilling to give us any information…however she did explain to me why they were doing this. I told her that Hatay, Batman eetc were never going to be Kurdish and she admitted that…she told me “this is why we have to terrorize them into submission”
I was looking at pictures of the kids in the school at Hatay (turkey) that they had bombed. when I told her that the IRSU was here for her. she lectured me a bit on the Constitution and how I could not turn her over to them..my response was “you are not American and this is not America”
she told me that they would kill her. I smiled nd said “As my great grandmother once said “some people need killing”, when you get to hell, and you will go there, tell the devil i SENT YOU. remember my name”
I was at the Istanbul airport, the old one when the PKK killed people there…I was in Diy when they launched mortars into the airport
the only thing I regret is that I did not pop her myself. See we are better off without some people. this is why rightwingers who die of the virus. I kind of smile about
the PKK is a bunch of terrorist. the Kurds in Northern Iraq are different.
be safe and healthy
On the contrary, it’s quite easy to judge the mullahs vs. the Shah. Both kill(ed) and torture(d) their political opponents. It’s even apparently the case that many of the very same secret police and torturers were employed by both regimes, though I suspect the ex-SAVAK OGs are all gone by now.
What the mullahs do in addition that the Shah did not is:
1) Throw gays off buildings.
2) Kill a lot of women for Sharia-defined “crimes.”
3) Send thousands of Praetorian bully-boys abroad to commit merry mayhem in other countries.
4) Shower missiles on their neighbors.
This is not an exhaustive list but it’s more than enough to make the call.
From present-day Iranians you will, of course, hear a lot about how bad the Shah was and how bad the Brits and U.S. were to foist him on them, how they have free elections and how it’s none of our business what kind of government they have. That’s because this is all Party-line boilerplate and, as in all totalitarian states, there are spies and stooges everywhere and the natives have to live there after any arrogant and credulous Westerner they might talk to has left.
In truth, there are no free elections in Iran as all the candidates are vetted by the regime before being allowed to run. One’s choices are always Stooge for the mullahs A or Stooge for the mullahs B.
What Iranians really think of their government only comes out raw once in a great while as during the Green uprising a decade ago. Their timing was fatally bad because Obama was in the White House and he was also Stooge for the mullahs B.
The taking of control by Islamists of domestic rebellions in the Middle East is hardly an accident. Except in Iran, it’s mainly the doing of the Islamic Brotherhood and its various offshoots who’ve spent decades organizing in secret to do just that.
Turkey used to be a very secular state. But, as I previously noted, Kemalism is mainly an urban and coastal thing these days. The interior of Turkey is full of throwbacks. They elected Erdogan and he has killed most of the old-line Kemalists.
1) Throw gays off buildings.
2) Kill a lot of women for Sharia-defined “crimes.”
3) Send thousands of Praetorian bully-boys abroad to commit merry mayhem in other countries.
4) Shower missiles on their neighbors.
I probably see more people from Iran and have been in Iran more this year …then you been in your life
the Shah loved torturing women. he had videos made of them
look Iranians dont like some other country and group picking their leaders…
when you recognize that no one likes that…you will have learned something
“Turkey used to be a very secular state”
as I wake up here in Istanbul I laugh at this
Bingo. The Kurds are a sort of existence proof of the proposition that Islam doesn’t absolutely have to equal endemic insanity. That is, for example, why I think the U.S. needs to both see to it that the Kurds get their richly deserved own country and that the so-called “Palestinians” never do. We’ll have to dismember and abbreviate Syria, Turkey and Iran, plus revise Iraq, to do a proper job of that, of course, but that’s a feature, not a bug.
The long-term solution to the Islam problem is three-fold. The first part is to, as you have, in part, suggested already, give it some competition. A resurgent Zoroastrianism would be good in both Iran and Iraq, but the Ba’hai Faith could also play a role as could any of several varieties of Christianity. Christianity has middle eastern origin credentials as good as those of Zoroastrianism, Ba’hai and Islam.
This presupposes, of course, that the U.S. can, at least for a time, exercise sovereignty in the places most in need of reform. After we settle Iran’s hash, we’ll be in a position to lean pretty hard on at least some of the other places in the area with retrograde social orders. One has to start somewhere. Having stupidly squandered the opportunity for said somewhere to be Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ll have to avoid being equally inept once we take down Iran.
Second, encourage an Islamic Reformation – certain parts of which deserve to be done by force in any event. The imperial British, in India, made a number of key deletions from Hinduism – particularly suttee – that have not subsequently returned in the wake of British departure. There are some significant areas of Sharia that should get the same treatment.
Third, do everything possible to stand up modern social orders that make it possible for the Average Jamal to do without the favor of tribal chieftains. The U.S. needs to adopt a conscious policy, worldwide, of tribalism abatement anyway. Tribalism had a good run before the invention of agriculture, but it’s long outlived it’s usefulness and needs to be put behind us.
I think I can say that we both agree that islam’s monopoly in the region has to end. Islam in the presence of other religions has some hope. The rest ….. And you say the political left has impossible goals …. dude, your list is thermodynamically impossible.
You did answer my question. So I owe you mine. What would I have done? Containment. Continue to contain Saddam until they collapse from within. When civilization ends, you take the refugee streams and form new statelets under colonial influence. Then use those statelets to re-establish the interior. That way the forces of collapse are used in your favor instead of turning into a migration disaster.
“Thermodynamically impossible.” Heh. Nice turn of phrase.
Not true, though. What’s mainly required is a U.S. President who comprehends grand strategy, has the best long-term interests of the U.S. as his first priority and doesn’t cringe when being smack-talked by leftists, foreign or domestic. Trump checks the last two boxes, but not, unfortunately, the first. I don’t expect him to settle Iran’s hash on his watch.
Pence doesn’t seem a likely prospect either. But then it’s hardly a lock that he’ll be Trump’s successor.
I’m inclined, at least thus far, to think that perhaps the real man for the job is ex-SEAL Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen of him. But I need to learn more.
Turning to your proposed solution, I think the human cost of that approach seems pretty high. It’s also open-endedly lengthy. If fixing something is going to take a long time in any case, it’s best to take possession of said thing quickly, then fix it at your comparative leisure. At least, that way, the time you put in is spent making actual progress and not just being a bystanding voyeur to mayhem porn. The body count would be kept a lot lower, even for ourselves, by just marching in and shooting the troublemakers.
I’m a bit unclear about what “migration disaster” you referred to. The only recent such with origins in the Middle East were those anent Syria and Libya. Both of those could have been averted if the U.S. had simply marched into both places and taken over. Turns out “containment” isn’t all that easy to arrange as even our own southern border should amply demonstrate.
But perhaps I misunderstand you.
Don’t bother. These are all very authoritarian places. No native in his right mind is going to tell even his bothers what he really thinks about anything remotely political if it deviates even minutely from the official government line – and certainly not some here-today-and-gone-tomorrow Yankee tourist.
That applies to Bob, too, of course – he’s just too full of himself to realize that.
The Middle East did quiet down a bit in the 90’s. You weren’t imagining that. It happened for two main reasons:
1) The Soviet Union, which used to support a lot of middle eastern bad guys, collapsed.
2) The U.S. kicked Saddam Hussein’s ass.
Even the Iranians and Gadaffi were keeping their heads down after that. It didn’t last because Bush badly fumbled the aftermath of both the wars we won in the early 2000s. Then Obama fumbled them even worse.
Really? How would the Eagleton Plan ™ have been different? What would you have done differently?
It’s Eagleson, actually. Don’t be too chagrined. I’ve been dealing with that particular confusion ever since George McGovern dumped his first running mate back in ’72.
What I would have done differently is not be in a huge hurry to put the conquered territories back in the hands of native governments. In both Iraq and Afghanistan that has proven disastrous. Instead we should have done what we did – successfully – with both Germany and Japan after WW2. That is, have run Iraq and Afghanistan for a time under U.S. military governments of occupation while working to evolve local government from the hamlet level up.
We didn’t give either the Germans or the Japanese back full sovereignty for a decade after WW2. Iraq and Afghanistan would likely have required at least three times as long, maybe more. But – hey – we’ve been in Afghanistan for close to 20 years already with essentially nothing to show for it. Since we didn’t keep the pink slip, now we can’t remodel it like we should have. Ditto Iraq, whose parochial, sectarian and corrupt native political class couldn’t stop the rise of ISIS and are now pretty much yes-men for Iran.
This was all entirely due to Dubya being, in many ways, as big a panty-waist as his late father. He simply had no core ideology that would have braced him to stand up against the inevitable leftist cries of “Imperialism!”
Having a name like mine, I can understand others getting your name wrong. So noted, sorry, and thanks.
I’ll paraphrase your statement into something we can both agree on. The Bush admin had no plan. The only plan was crack skulls that caused problems. The forces of American occupation executed policy, and that policy had no real central goal that was closely tied to the local reality. As such there could be no marriage between that local reality and the use of military power to make it come true.
I think that’s incomplete, but not incorrect.
The American military really wasn’t well-trained, at that point in history, as occupation troops. And Bush not actually setting out to conduct an occupation certainly didn’t help.
Occupations really need people who think more like cops than like conventional soldiers.
The only two American commanders in Iraq who got this were Petraeus and Odierno. They – literally – wrote the book on counter-insurgency which, as I noted, has a lot more in common with policing than with soldiering in many ways. Even before Petraeus quieted down the whole of Iraq with the surge he had done likewise earlier with Mosul and environs before he was given the top job in-country. Things would have gone very differently had Petraeus or Odierno been made top dog after Tommy Franks finished his thunder run. So it goes.
Hey, just wanted to say. Space X had a good day in Texas today. Congrats. I’m glad to see you Starship Troopers have a day for yourselves. 🙂
Yes, it did. Not unexpected, at least to me, but still good to see. Thanks for the acknowledgement. SpaceX, though, is the entity deserving the congrats. I’m just a superannuated fan-boy spectator in the cheap seats. But I have a feeling we Starship Troopers will be having a lot more good than bad days as things play out.
You Starship Troopers will fly one day. We just disagree on when and what will mean once it happens.
When first Gulf happened, I was talking to my machinist at the time about it. He’s a first generation Syrian christian who’s family has been metalworkers for so many generations that his last name comes from the sound made when a blacksmith hammers metal. He immigrated here as a child and served in the US Navy. He went on to become an instrument-maker class machinist. He just worked part time for us in retirement because it was fun for him. That’s a history.
As we were talking about first Gulf, he got this far away look in his eyes and said “Lee, those people have been fighting each other for over 2000 years. Nothing, absolutely nothing we do will ever change that. It’s why my family came here. They cannot culturally even understand living like Americans. We’re just wasting our time trying to make them democratic like us.”
So, no, nothing we did in Germany or Japan after WWII would have worked. Or will work.
Western and coastal Turkey are still fairly Kemalist – hence the losses of the ruling party in at least the first rounds of municipal elections last year. Not that that was allowed to stick. But it also has a seriously sub-replacement-level fertility rate. The much more medieval-minded eastern interior of Turkey is out-reproducing its more cosmopolitan part by a huge margin.
Afghanistan as recently as the 60’s and 70’s looked pretty modern and cosmopolitan too, at least in the big cities. That, needless to say, didn’t last. It won’t last in Turkey either and for a lot of the same reasons.
Turkey is a NATO ally that has, effectively, been acting as an opponent in increasing ways for at least two decades now. In another decade I expect it to no longer be in NATO or to be even “officially” a friend of the U.S.
Not that I find that especially worrisome over the long haul. The U.S. will inevitably come to blows with Iran – assuming no regime collapse for indigenous reasons in the interim. That may not happen until Turkey has already jumped ship and joined the Russo-Iranian defacto axis. If so, that will greatly simplify matters when the U.S. crushes and dismembers Iran as part of standing up an independent Kurdistan. With Turkey on the wrong side, we get to take its Kurdish provinces, as well as Iran’s and Syria’s, when drawing up the borders of the new nation.
“Afraid” is not an accurately descriptive word for the U.S. stance anent Iran. “Pissed-off” is more the ticket.
right wingers scared of their shadow
Sure, Bob. What’s not to like about a nation ruled by homicidal religious fanatics trying out their shiny new ICBM?
It has long been emblematic of leftists that they are scared pissless by things that are either good or are at least not dangerous while airily dismissing any concerns expressed about things that are dangerous.
update. I have now gotten three passes in Istanbul and six in Texas…and without a doubt the satellite is alive. its pumping out typical cubesat packets… they have a ground station somewhere in Central America…that is interrogating it… spin rate is slowing.
this is all in all a pretty impressive effort…the first stage is clearly a heavily improved SCUD (Iranian TV was showing extensive pictures of first stage hardware that fell to earth in southern Iran) …the second stage is a filament wound solid rocket with thrust vectoring (this is the ICBM part…that should worry us) dont know what the third stage is
its probably not a 3 cube but a 6 cube cubesat…
for a home grown effort…as I said Turkey and Iran are the real societies in this region 🙂