https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/poli...le-strike-not-kill-americans-cnntv/index.html
- "I'm not a military man, I cannot tell you exactly what was going on. But what I can tell you is that the target was chosen in order to show that we are capable of hitting the target where the plan to kill Soleimani was organized," he said, adding that "we are not interested, we are not looking after killing Americans within this operation."
Iran's own UN ambassador is saying that killing US personnel wasn't the intended goal, and I believe him.
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You're right, not only would I have, but I did actually say that.
But I was wrong.
I was also wrong about this being a failure on Iran's part. This was exactly what Iran intended, and they succeeded.
Unlike you, I'm more than willing to admit when I'm wrong. It's all a part of learning and fact checking, as well as forming theories and opinions.
Just a few notes...
- Iran gave a prior warning to the Iraqi government about the strikes, who have close relations with the US, thus Iraq probably warned the US about the strikes. Iran knows that Iraq and the US have a close military and government relationship.
- In this digital age, there is no way you can hide your casualties. It's impossible.
- Iran's government actually never claimed to have killed US personnel. As far as I know, it was a singular Iranian news agency.
- Iran has proven that while its BMs may not been 100 reliable, they are extremely accurate, with many of the missiles hitting dead center of the targets.
- Iran was openly preparing for the attack immediately after the Soleimani assassination. Khamanei openly said Iran would respond militarily. The US was likely keeping an eye out due to that, and already knew the attack was coming, just not when, which they probably learned from the Iraqi government.
- If the Iranians actually intended to cause casualties, they would have used far more missiles than they did. They also would have kept quiet about a military response, until it was too late to do anything. They likely missed on purpose to both save face, and warn the US that it is more than capable of hitting US personnel if it wants to.
Also, some further read...
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-51042156
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/08/middleeast/iran-base-strikes-logic-intl/index.html
So, 75% is actually a pretty decent rate, and yes, you're right that a missile defense shield would have lowered the rate even further, which is something everyone knows, both the US and Iran. But even with a 10% hit rates, that is still dangerous. Even then, if Iran was serious, they would have launched a lot more missiles, in order to overwhelm any sort of defense system.
I'm convinced that the Iranians did this to de-escalate, by only targeting infrastructure. Iran isnt stupid, their military planners know all this, and the fact that they only used a couple dozen missiles, instead of, say a hundred, tells me that they weren't looking to flatten the bases, or kill personnel.
Funnily enough, this does give Iran more data on it's own missile capabilities, as they've finally been used in a big enough scale, against actual military facilities, in a real world scenario. They'll likely learn a lot from this, and improve their missile capabilities.