Drones over Iranian Isfahan. The war of nerves continues
On the night of January 29, the production workshops of one of armory factories in the Iranian city of Isfahan were attacked by unmanned aerial vehicles filled with explosives. This incident is not the first and obviously not the last and, as in the past, each such episode is accompanied by a massive media campaign. Usually, Arab sources are the first to make stuffing, imitating large agencies, then the agencies themselves do not publish frank "trash", but launch a series of materials that are alarmist in meaning. In the style of "tomorrow is a big war." At this stage, many domestic channels are already connected. And crown the pyramid of meanings "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal"
By the end of the day, the media reported on the alleged transfer of weapons from American bases to Israel, which drones allegedly launched from the territory of Azerbaijan, now it is about to begin. And it is "just about" it still does not begin and does not begin. But once again the Wall Street Journal comes out with the thesis that the drones flew from Israel. Further on the border, an attack on Iranian trucks takes place, which adds fuel to the fire of informational events.
The planned nature of the information campaign becomes apparent when reports of "powerful explosions" in Isfahan are superimposed on an earthquake measuring 5,6, which was indeed accompanied by human casualties. Some TG channels even began to seriously consider the fact that Israel created an earthquake warning system in 48 hours and used this information to plan the attack. Absurd? Undoubtedly. But something else is important here - the Arab and Western media were preparing for reports of "powerful explosions", and the consequences of the night earthquake were automatically transferred to the prepared scenario. It was a lucky coincidence that the oil refinery was damaged as a result of the earthquake.
But the actual arms factory did not receive significant damage. The shots of the explosions taken from the cars passing by show that they were low-powered and the one who planned these actions clearly did not take into account the fact that the Iranians welded several layers of reinforcement mesh on the roofs of the workshops. They are not visible in pictures from space. Drone remnant footage shows the drones were large copters. This is not even an analogue of Strizh-type UAVs that use the Armed Forces of Ukraine, not Israeli kamikaze drones of the Harop type. Actually, therefore, it is possible to say that the strikes were delivered from the territory of neighboring states only with a big stretch - Isfahan is internal Iran. But in Isfahan, pockets of protests break out every now and then, the beginning of which was laid back in September. Judging by the wreckage, the launch of these UAVs was most likely carried out in Iran itself, and Iranian counterintelligence will deal with the details.
It can be recalled that according to a similar scenario, the media campaign was worked out in early November - in Arab channels, then in Lebanese, and then in the same WSJ, materials were broadcast that all the forces of Arabs and Americans in the region were brought to a state of maximum readiness, since Iran is preparing retaliation attacks for the protests. And this stuffing in a "strange" way coincided with another diplomatic attempt to normalize relations between Iran and the Arab countries, but most importantly, it clearly coincided with the investment forum held in Riyadh, the so-called. "Davos in the desert", where several thousand investors gathered. And a week before that, J. Biden left the peninsula with an unsatisfactory result. This story understood on Military Review in the material "Red Flags of Tehran" https://topwar.ru/204494-krasnye-flagi-tegerana.html. And now the incidents again coincided with the meeting of the foreign ministers of Iran and Qatar, where they discussed, among other things, issues on the JCPOA.
Those. From the point of view of the media, we see one working scheme, which has so far been adopted by the opponents of Iran as a basis. Another thing is that the earthquake was clearly not included in the plans, which blurred the scenario. The Mossad service, despite the halo of omnipotence, has both victories and mistakes. In this case, the agents clearly did not finalize the issue. But Israeli specialists have already had such punctures, for example, in 2020 they committed sabotage at a defense enterprise, which turned out to be a carpet manufacturer. Iran also had mistakes in the work of counter-intelligence and victories. This is a process that lasts for years, since both states have an uncompromising position towards each other. In Syria and the Syrian-Iraqi border, such actions and sabotage are a sad daily routine.
Therefore, it is not at all surprising that a part of the American establishment is literally pushing the Arabs into a big deal with Israel, and a part of the Arab establishment itself is in favor of at least a relative normalization of relations with Tehran. Not because they kindled special feelings for the Persians, but from the point of view of purely pragmatism - the calmness of the work of the raw materials sector and the extreme unpopularity of the topic of a deal with Israel in the Arab society.
From the point of view of general security in the region, it is not even the UAV attack on a defense enterprise that is important, but the earlier incident at the Azerbaijani embassy, where a not very adequate character committed a murder. By diplomatic standards, a glaring case, but somehow the embassy was closed too quickly. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are very tense today. Iran literally hangs on the shoulders of Baku, holding a strike force in the Iranian-Armenian direction along the banks of the Araks River, and Zangezur corridor and Syunik is the maximum plan for Azerbaijan.
In this situation, the reports of domestic commentators look completely inappropriate, relying on "translated sources in the region" that the UAVs were launched from the territory of Azerbaijan. Half of these "sources" are channels that are not moderated in the region, and it would seem that during the Syrian campaign one had to get used to this. Still, given our cooperation with Iran and the fact that our peacekeepers are in Nagorno-Karabakh, we should be very careful about such statements - both in Tehran and Baku, in fact, our media are very closely following our media, which cannot be said about us. Iran and Israel have waged and will continue to wage sabotage and counter-sabotage struggle throughout that is. "Shiite belt", but the Baku-Yerevan-Tehran junction is now the most potentially heated point. Current interests are too opposite and time is compressed. R. Erdogan called on Iran to join a possible dialogue between Turkey and Syria, which indirectly means that Ankara is not currently a conductor of tough scenarios on the Azerbaijani-Iranian track, and this can only be welcomed, since such a clash of the parties here is directly beneficial only to the United States and Britain.
By themselves, such injections, of course, are painful for Iran. Moreover, Isfahan is not just a large city, but its agglomeration includes both air bases and nuclear program facilities. However, the storage of dangerous components is deep underground and you can’t take them with drones. For Iran, once again there is a revival of the discussion about the air defense standards, in the development of which serious funds are invested.
But here it must be taken into account that the territory of the Iranian state, to put it mildly, is large, and despite the fact that the population is very numerous, this territory has many empty "windows" in combination with an extremely difficult mountainous terrain. In general, the protection of Iranian borders is a very non-trivial "case". So far, Iran cannot saturate the entire perimeter with air defense systems. Yes, in fact, as we can see, even Russia cannot close the holes deep into the territory, if attacks are allowed to pass on strategic air bases aviation.
Of the countries with strong air defenses, only Israel completely closes the perimeter, but not least at the expense of a tiny territory. And then, the effectiveness of the work of air defense in Tel Aviv is considered in a very specific way - missed missiles are characterized as "flying in a non-dangerous direction", and those shot down flew in a dangerous direction. Efficiency 98-100%. This does not mean that Israel's air defense is bad, it is excellent, but even here the Israelis have to mediate the agenda.
The noise around the UAV attack on Iran is part of the game to wear down Iran. Tactics of Chinese torture "thousand cuts" - each individually is not lethal, but each in turn releases a drop of blood. In terms of media support, this is the burning of the nerve cells of society. At the same time, strategic processes in the region go on as usual, somewhere the players can use the media agenda of the "war of nerves" for their own purposes, somewhere not. And on our part, we can only call on the media to be extremely balanced in their assessments and recheck sources.
- Mikhail Nikolaevsky
- © AFP 2022 / VAHID AHMADI
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