John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Long Range Attack on Saudi Oil Field [by a fleet of new Houthi Sammad-3 drones] Ends the War on Yemen
"There are no technological means to reasonably protect against such attacks. Poor Yemen defeated rich Saudi Arabia."
https://www.checkpointasia.net/long-range-attack-on-saudi-oil-field-ends-the-war-on-yemen/
I do hope the writer is correct in his optimism. I always cheer for the little guy, especially when the enemy is as ruthless and bloody as Saudi Arabia, a country run by an almost gothic horror character, someone with no claim on our sympathies, but embraced and praised by some of the ugliest officials of the United States and Israel.
It has been a stunning achievement just that the Houthis could come to the point of threatening, from a considerable distance, important Saudi assets. They apparently have done so by copying Iranian technology.
To force the Saudis to deal and perhaps end the war would, at least a little bit, be comparable to the stunning victory of third-world Vietnam over the United States after its decade of bombing the hell out of their country and killing literally millions.
“The arrogance of power” is the phrase that comes to mind, and it is so fitting since it was the title of a book by Senator William Fulbright, a war critic, in the Vietnam era.
The Iranians have achieved, on limited means, some remarkable things in military technology. A while back, they sent a missile to accurately strike some terrorists far away in Syria without hurting American troops based nearby who were undoubtedly covertly assisting them. We saw the world’s most costly and sophisticated drone (America’s RQ-4A) brought down this year from a high altitude at night, and without harming an accompanying manned American spy plane.
Those were demonstrations which had to impress the arrogant people in the Pentagon and perhaps even some of Trump’s fanatics with the fact that pressuring Iran militarily was not without genuine risks.
And of course, there was a hi-tech drone (America’s RQ-170) that Iran managed to hi-jack in 2011, using cyberwarfare to take control and land it. That gave them the opportunity to do some reverse engineering. At the time, America refused even to acknowledge the embarrassing truth, insisting the drone had been shot down, which would have damaged it beyond being useful.
But the Iranian claim was accurate. And now we have this simpler, but very effective drone technology from Iran which may just end the ugly Saudi War in Yemen.
I am reminded of the time of the Iranian Revolution, when United States’ embassy staff, before fleeing, shredded huge volumes of secret and incriminating documents, as is standard practice, documents covering Iranian affairs during the era of the Shah.
Teams of old sharp-eyed Iranian rug weavers were called in to do the seemingly impossible task of reassembling the documents from a gigantic pile of finely shredded trash. And they did it. So, Iran gained hard proof of America’s dirty dealings with the Shah.
Iran’s advances in missile and drone technology reflect something similar, determination and perseverance plus of course a big helping of native, sharp-eyed intelligence.
I just can’t help cheering for the little guy, and it is always satisfying to see arrogance and bullying brought low.
