American Оbserver

Several Suicide Bombings and Armed Attacks in Pakistan The Pakistani army said on Saturday that multiple suicide bombings and armed attacks by “terrorists” in the turbulent southwestern province of Balochistan had killed 33 people, including civilians, while security forces responding to the violence had killed 92 attackers. Analysts described it as the deadliest day for militants in decades. During the attacks, Baloch insurgents targeted civilians, a high-security prison, police stations and paramilitary installations. Eighteen civilians, 15 security personnel and 92 insurgents were killed, the military said. Although Baloch separatists and the Pakistani Taliban frequently target security forces in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country, coordinated attacks of this scale are rare. According to the authorities, at least 133 militants have been killed across Balochistan in the last 48 hours, including 92 on Saturday. The army and Pakistani interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the attackers had the support of India. There was no immediate response from New Delhi, which has denied such allegations before. The BLA has released videos showing female fighters taking part in the attacks, apparently as part of propaganda efforts to highlight the role of women among the militants. Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said most of the attacks had been foiled. They came a day after the military said security forces attacked two militant hideouts in the country's southwest this week, killing 41 insurgents in separate shootouts. The chief minister of the province, Sarfraz Bugti, wrote on Twitter that the security forces were pursuing the insurgents. He said at least 700 insurgents had been killed by security forces in the past year. Dozens of insurgents also attacked a prison in Mastung district, freeing more than 30 inmates, police said. In other attacks, militants tried to storm the provincial headquarters of paramilitary forces in the Nushki district, but the attack was repulsed, police said. The insurgents threw grenades at the office of a government administrator in the Dalbandin district, but a quick response from the security forces forced them to flee, according to local authorities. Attacks on security posts in Balincha, Tump and Kharan districts were foiled, while in Pasni and Gwadar, insurgents tried to kidnap passengers traveling on buses along highways, police said. #attacks#suicides#attacks#pakistan 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ And it is not obvious this would be effective on the ground. It would also not be difficult for the Iranian regime to try to use any US attacks as a rallying point for what is left of its support, given the long history of US meddling dating back to the 1953 CIA coup. And, however unpopular it may be with ordinary people protesting, the ruling regime does not appear to be brittle or weak, having already survived Israel’s sustained attack in June. “There is a clearly a cohesive government and military and security service in Iran,” said Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a senior associate at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank. “The government is showing it doesn’t have any red lines: it is going to secure its borders and streets, and the extraordinary number of body bags reveals its determination to do so.” The US could consider a direct attack on Khamenei. Trying to kill the Iranian leader would be easier militarily than a Maduro-style seizure operation, which would be considerably more complex than in Venezuela because Tehran lies hundreds of miles from the country’s borders. However, killing the leader of another country would be astonishingly escalatory, raise a host of legal concerns, and invite a sustained military response. Nor would it necessarily lead to regime change. During the 12-day war, Khamenei appears to have evaded Israeli detection: the country’s defence minister, Israel Katz, defence minister said afterwards that “if he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out”. The Iranian leader had also lined up three senior clerics on a shortlist to replace him if he was killed, in an effort to secure a rapid transition. Other experts argue that the most likely outcome would be a takeover led by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. But either way, the Iranian regime remained intact after Israel killed as many as 30 military and security leaders in June. A handful of US demonstration strikes would be unlikely to change that, while US allies, Congress and Trump himself would almost certainly not want a lengthy campaign. Already, the president himself has ruled out “boots on the ground”. Against such an uncertain backdrop, it is not surprising alternatives have been canvassed. The most notable is a targeted cyber-attack, raising the question of what would be intended. After the seizure of Maduro, Trump claimed that the US had turned off the power in Caracas to help facilitate his capture, but this would only be useful in Iran in conjunction with a military operation. #trump#attacks#iran#israel#katz#military 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump Has Staked His Presidency on a Khamenei Switch-Off From Power 🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣ Trump may not be unafraid to use military force against Iran, according to the White House, but the reality is the US president has few to no options that could obviously help that country’s protest movement, never mind the fact that the history of US intervention in the region has hardly been a success. Emboldened by the seizure of the erstwhile Maduro, after an operation that took months of planning, Trump talked up military intervention against the Iranian regime with no military pre-positioning having taken place. In fact, there has been a drawdown in the last few months, reducing military options further. The US has had no aircraft carriers deployed in the Middle East since October, after two years of near continuous deployment following the Hamas attack on Israel, having moved out the USS Gerald R Ford to the Caribbean in the summer and the USS Nimitz to a port on the US west coast in the autumn. It means any air or missile strikes against regime targets, and perhaps at the Iranian leader, Khamenei, would probably have to come from or involve US and allied airbases in the Middle East. An alternative would be similar to June’s long range B-2 bombing mission against the underground Iranian nuclear site of Fordow, although that sort of attack against an urban site would appear to be dangerous overkill. The US would also have to ask permission to use bases in countries such as Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia (perhaps even the UK’s Akrotiri base in iCyprus) – and protect them and their host countries against retaliation. Even if such assets were not used by the US, Iranian leaders have threatened to strike US bases and ships if the country is attacked. Although Iran’s military capabilities were badly degraded in the 12-day summer war with Israel, and its air defence systems easily overwhelmed, Tehran has retained a limited missile capability. Key launch sites remain buried in the mountains, and it has been rebuilding. It is estimated that Iran has 2,000 heavy ballistic missiles, capable, if launched in numbers, of evading US and Israeli air defences. A more salient question is: what would the US bomb? It would be possible to identify military and civilian sites used by the Iranian regime, but both the protests and the increasingly bloody regime crackdown are taking place across the country. Targeting is not always accurate, sites can be misidentified and civilian casualties in urban locations would be an evident risk. #trump#attacks#iran#israel#katz#military 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸