Iran

COVID-19/SARS-CoV2 Update 2-23-2020 — When the “New Versailles Class” Meets Reality Without Privilege

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The themes of this update will be on issues of COVID-19 spread, testing, public health institutional credibility, some e-mails evaluating the CDC and our elites, and my personal analysis of same after the top line infection numbers and headlines.

The SARS-CoV2 virus and it’s COVID-19 virgin fields infection seems to have a top line R(0) of between three and 6.7 — that is one person infects near seven people on average — because there are repeated “super spreader” events where one person slimed an institution with a lot of close contact and then the fomite contamination of that institutional setting causes everyone present to get the disease. Examples thus far include the Diamond Princess Cruise ship, a pair of prisons in China, and multiple hospitals in China and now South Korea. The rate of growth of the COVID-19 pandemic is such that we will be fighting it on a very large scale in a few weeks (no more than 10) in every nation world wide with the public and private medical institutions, societal resources, and people we have right now, with all their flaws. And not what we wish they were, but will never have. There simply isn’t going to be time and energy for blame games when issues of daily survival break upon us all.

Top line, there are currently 78,986 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including 2,468 fatalities as of 23 February 2020 at 11:52 a.m. ET on the BNO News corona virus traking site (https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/) China, Taiwan Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, and Iran all appear to have local, or endemic, spread of the disease. See multiple charts attached and headline summary

Bar Chart of World COVID-19 Infections as of 23 Feb 2020
Bar Chart of World COVID-19 Infections as of 23 Feb 2020
Bar Chart of World Qide COVID-19 Infections Without China and the Diamond Princess Cruise Liner
Bar Chart of World Wide COVID-19 Infections Without China and the Diamond Princess Cruise Liner

World Headline Summary:

o Italy confirms 3rd death and cancels last 2 days of carnivale in Venice as cases soar above 100
o 4 more cases confirmed in UK
o 200 Israelis quarantined
o Japan confirms more cases
o Japanese Emperor expresses hope for Tokyo Games (fat chance)
o ROK Gov’t total cases above 600
o Trump says US has everything ‘under control’ as he asks Congress for more money (I call B.S. below)
o EU’s Gentiloni says he has ‘full confidence’ In Italian health officials
o Turkey, Pakistan close borders with Iran as confirmed cases soar
o Global Times (Chinese Gov’t news source) says virus may not have originated at Hunan seafood market
o Axios reports shortages of 150 essential drugs likely. (Most source in China)

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When Doom Comes a’ Calling

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(I started this post last weekend – but real life and a new book project intervened. Consider this a footnote to Trent T.’s post, here.)

Well, it certainly came a’calling for Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani last week, Middle Eastern time. Nothing left but bits of scrap metal and meat, and a bruised hand with a large ring on it. Kind of fitting for the guy who perfected the fine art of IEDs, and brought so much business to the developers of artificial limbs for those survivors of that deadly art. As the satirist Tom Leher noted, so many decades ago, and in a slightly different context,

“Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun.”

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Pres. Trump Sends Iran’s “Red Napoleon” to Meet The Reaper

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On Friday night Jan 3, 2020, President Trump directed a successful strike killing IRGC Commander Gen. Qassem Soleiman at the Baghdad International Airport.   Four AGM-114N Metal Augmented Charge (MAC) Thermobaric Hellfire missiles launched from an General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper turned Soleiman’s SUV and his accompanying   security SUV into funeral pyres. [1]

IRGC Commander Gen. Qassem Soleiman meets three AGM-114N Metal Augmented Charge (MAC) Thermobaric Hellfire missiles launched from a a MQ-9 Reaper Drone
IRGC Commander Gen. Qassem Soleiman meets three AGM-114N Metal Augmented Charge (MAC) Thermobaric Hellfire missiles launched from an MQ-9 Reaper Drone.   Graphic Source: UK Daily Mail

See full story at this Daily Mail link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7848729/Trump-taunts-Iran-saying-never-won-war-ordering-strike-killed-Soleimani.html

Some in the media have compared this strike to Operation Vengeance, the American military operation to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy on April 18, 1943.

The Trump Administration drone strike was in fact far more consequential than Operation Vengeance. If only because of how much more of the IRGC Quds force senior chain of command were eliminated compared to the Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto strike.   And how much more important Gen. Qassem Soleiman was to Iran than Yamamoto was to Imperial Japan.

Also killed in the strike were Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis also known as Jamal Jafaar Mohammed Ali Ä€l Ebrahim, the commander of the Iraqi Shia Kata’ib Hezbollah militia and mastermind behind the December 1983 bomb attacks on U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait.

In additional to Soleiman and al-Muhandis/Ä€l Ebrahim, also killed were IRGC Brigadier General Hussein Jafari Nia, Major-General Hadi Taremi, LTC. Shahroud Mozaffari Nia and Captain Waheed Zamanian. Nor does the list end there as senior pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia PMF militia leaders Heydar Ali, Muhammed Reza al-Jaberi and Hassan Abdul Hadi, were in the second SUV struck by one of four AGM-114N Hellfire guided missiles fired by the MQ-9 Reaper.

IRAN’S RED NAPOLEON

IRGC Commander Gen. Qassem Soleiman was to Iran what Heinrich Himmler, Gen Oberst Kurt Daluege, Gen Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Gen Sepp Dietrich were to Nazi Germany, all rolled into one.

In many ways Gen. Qassem Soleiman ran Iran’s foreign policy and strategy as principal adviser to the theocratic leadership. Soleiman made his bones in the 1990’s suppressing Iranian student riots in the style of Belisarius and the Nika riots. Post 9/11/2001, he has been orchestrating the killings of US service personnel, is the architect Iran’s proxy forces in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yeman and ran covert ops forces world wide.

In fact, Gen. Qassem Soleiman was Iran’s “Red Napoleon.”

The idea of “The Red Napoleon” came from the 1929 novel of that name by Floyd Gibbons predicting a Soviet conquest of Europe and invasion of America by The Red Napoleon’s massive multi-racial army. Written as a screed against white racial supremacy, the concept in the Western Left of a 3rd World military leader who could routinely defeat the West over and over again the same way that General and later French Emperor Bonaparte Napoleon did to the leaders of Western Europe in the late 18th and early 19th century has hung on in the Left’s Noosphere [2] in the decades since.

If anyone was a “Red Napoleon” in the 21st century,   Gen. Qassem Soleiman was that man.

On January 12, 2016, two United States Navy riverine command boats were seized by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy after they entered Iranian territorial waters near Iran's Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. The subsiquent release was hailed by the Obama administration as an unintended benefit of the new diplomatic relationship.
On January 12, 2016, two United States Navy riverine command boats were seized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy after they entered Iranian territorial waters near Iran’s Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. The subsequent release was hailed by the Obama administration as an unintended benefit of the new diplomatic relationship. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_U.S.%E2%80%93Iran_naval_incident

Gen. Qassem Soleiman was a man from the 3rd World. One who had created and lead a team in the form of the Quds Force that had killed American servicemen in their hundreds, for decades, got a pair of US Navy riverine command  boat crews to surrender in humiliation to support Pres. Obama’s “Opening to Iran” and executed   both the Benghazi, Libya and Baghdad, Iraq embassy assaults.

And Pres. Trump just sent Iran’s “Red Napoleon” to “…meet the Reaper.”

IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. He was the Iranian government’s “Red Napoleon” and was killed by a thermobaric Hellfire missile launched from a MQ-9 Reaper at the orders of President Trump on 3 Jan 2020.

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Rerun–The Perfect Enemy

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(9/11 seems an appropriate date for a rerun of this post)

Suppose you wanted to create a perfect enemy. An enemy so vile that its evil would be recognized by almost everyone. An enemy that would inspire people to come together in order to ensure its defeat.

To be more specific: suppose you were a screenwriter with the assignment of creating a suitable villain-organization for a major motion picture. The marketing plan for this movie suggests that it will be marketed primarily to a certain demographic and that, hence, your villain-organization should be particularly appalling to members of that demographic. The demographic in question consists of people who are affluent, highly educated (college with at least some postgraduate education), not particularly religious, and who consider themselves politically liberal or “progressive.” The plot of the movie demands that the audience must see the necessity for Americansof many beliefs, occupations, and social backgroundsto come together in order to defeat the enemy.

Oh, and one other thing. The year in which you are given this assignment is 1999.

You will clearly want your enemy to share many of the characteristics of the Nazisdisrespect for human life, wanton cruelty, a love of apocalyptic violence. But to make the enemy particularly awful from the standpoint of your target demographic, you will want to emphasize certain aspects of its belief system.

Members of your demographic usually have strong beliefs about women’s rights. So, your enemy must have a particularly disrespectful belief set, and a violent behavior pattern, towards women. Similarly, your demographic is generally favorable toward gay rights…so the enemy must advocate and practice the suppression, torture, and killing of gays. Your demographic is generally nonreligious and often hostile toward religion…so, make sure the enemy includes a large element of religious fanaticism. Members of your demographic talk a lot about “the children”so make sure your enemy uses children in particularly cruel ways.

Had you created such an enemy for your screenplay in 1999, you would have surely felt justified in assuming that it would achieve its intended reaction with your target demographic.

It didn’t work out that way, though.

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The Secret War between Russia and Iran’s Quds Force in Syria

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There appears to be an on-going, unofficial, and secret war in Syria between Putin’s Russia and the Iranian Republican Guard Corps’ Quds Force involving do it yourself drones in the hands of   Syrian Islamic Rebel “deniable assets” attacking Russian interests, particularly at the Khmeimim airbase.
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First, look at this photo:
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It comes from this 7-6-2019 www.aljazeera -dot- com story:
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Saudi-UAE coalition says it intercepted Houthi drones
The Houthi drones were destroyed in Saudi Arabia’s airspace according to the military coalition.

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Now look at this BBC photo, which comes from my Chicagoboyz post here:

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The DIY ‘Assault Drone’ Siege of Russian Bases in Syria
Trent Telenko on August 26th, 2018

This is the bootleg 3D printed version of the Russian Elevon drone used by Syrian Rebels

Both are identically produced drones made via a 3D laser scanned and 3D plastic body printed copy of a Russian Elevon Drone.    The top drone photo was involved in the just reported attack on Saudi interests by Houthi rebels on 7-6-2019. The bottom photo is from my report on D-I-Y drone attack on Russia’s the Khmeimim airbase in Syria during January 2018.
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By way of comparison, the photo below is of a Russian Elevon drone downed over Syria by the rebels there.   There is no 3D printing or duct tape on this drone:
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The common denominator for both D-I-Y drones is the presence of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps’ Quds Force in Syria and Yemen.   And the Quds Force has launched drone attacks on Israel from Syria and on Saudi Arabia from Yemen.
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Strategypage is currently reporting from IDF sources that Russian GPS jamming in Syria is aimed at “Syrian Rebel” D-I-Y drones to defend Khmeimim airbase, and from anything else that might be in Syrian skies.
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See:
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Israel has been accusing Russia of causing GPS signal disruption in northern Israel since early June. Russia denies any responsibility but it appears that Russian EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment in Syria causes intermittent disruption of commercial aircraft GPS navigation systems over Israel. While Russia has EW gear specifically for GPS jamming or spoofing (create false signals), that does not appear to be what is happening here.Israel believes the GPS disruption is an unintended side effect of Russia using EW equipment heavily to protect their bases from Islamic terrorists attack using explosives equipped commercial UAVs, as well as other EW equipment being tested against the American F-22 and Israeli F-35 stealth aircraft that regularly operate over Syria.  Russia EW gear, even the impressive new stuff, still relies a lot on “brute force” solutions. That means sending out powerful, multi-frequency jamming signals rather than less intense but more focused signals (which Western EW gear favors). Russia depends on export sales of these new EW systems to pay for developing them. “Unfortunate side effects” are not what they want to be associated with their new EW equipment and would, as is their custom, prefer to believe the bad news does not exist or is propaganda spread by jealous Western rivals. Israel maintains good relations with Russia in Syria by not revealing flaws found in new Russian EW gear or any of the new systems Russia has used in Syria. But this Russian systems flaw is impossible to ignore or explain without going into detail about how Russian EW equipment works. Russian and Israeli negotiators are trying to work out a mutually acceptable solution, as they have done so many times before.    

Using Occam’s razor regards the origin of these drones, the simplest explanation is the Quds Force provided the same drone to both the Syrian Rebels that are fighting Assad and Russia and to the Yemen’s Houthi Rebels fighting the American supported Saudi Arabian Coalition in Yemen.
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It appears that Iran’s Quds Force and Russia are fighting a secret war in Syria and all the reports of heavy GPS jamming by Russia in Syria -ARE NOT- aimed primarily at Israel or the USA. It is aimed at IRGC facilities/forces in Syria.
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Photographic evidence says some of the D-I-Y drones attacking Khmeimim airbase are Iranian.
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QED.
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VALIDATING THE QED OF A QUDS FORCE/RUSSIA SECRET WAR
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There are two tests that Western and particularly Israeli intelligence agencies can do to validate there is in fact a secret war between Russia and Iran’s Quds Force, and both involve electronic intelligence (ELINT).
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The first test is to determine if the Russians in Syria are jamming &   spoofing their own GLOSNASS satellite navigation system as well as GPS.     The Russians jamming their own system is a solid indication they think someone with knowledge of how to weaponize GLOSNASS satellite navigation signals is behind the D-I-Y drones in Syria.

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While this is a possible intelligence indicator for Iran, since the Russians have sold Glonass guided weapons to Iran.   It is not proof positive.   A lot of commodity GPS receivers are “dual mode” i.e. they have embedded GLOSNASS capability.   Cheap Taiwanese made GPS receivers have had dual capability for years and some of the more expensive models also attempt to get a best solution by using both GPS/GLOSNASS C/A codes.   So jamming/spoofing against GLOSNASS exploitation by D-I-Y drone might simply be a case of through due diligence by the Russian Armed Forces in Syria.

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The second and definitive test involves mapping the jamming and spoofing signal strength of Russian anti-drone electronic warfare and then geo-locate Iranian Quds Force within that signal pattern.   If there is a close match of the strongest jamming/spoofing signal patterns to Quds Force.   It’s definitive.

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Invasive ELINT platforms — IDF F-35 and USAF F-22 mentioned in the Strategy page piece plus drones — can do this inside Syrian air space. However, it will not be as easy as a few flights in and out.   Mapping Russian radiated signal patterns will be tricky as radio signal ground bounce distorts what you see from an airborne platform.
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The Israeli Defense Forces are in the best position to accomplish this second ELINT test as their suite of drone capability likely includes more than a few multi-copter drones that can land disposable radio listening devices and other sensors near IRGC Quds Force facilities in Syria.
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