re: Official US/Israel vs Iran war thread

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Why is the United States so concerned about any military activities not impacting the ceasefire? It very clearly does.

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Gvir is a bit of a loose cannon

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During the peace negotiations today Iran figured again that it was a good idea to go ahead and attempt a missile strike and send out a drone strike on a US ship.

Just another typical day of negotiations that are going nicely?

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Iran’s claimed drone interception has renewed attention on Tehran’s military capabilities after months of bombardment.

Iran has said it used a new air defence system to shoot down a United States MQ-9 Reaper drone near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, an incident analysts say shows that Tehran has retained its capacity to repel US and Israeli attacks despite months of strikes on its military sites.

Iranian media said the drone was brought down near Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that the interception marked the first combat use of a locally developed system called Arash-e Kamangir.

There has been no independent corroboration of Iran’s claim of a new interception system.

The US’s loss of a drone close to one of the world’s most sensitive shipping routes comes as it has reportedly carried out new attacks on an Iranian military site near Bandar Abbas. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) later said it had attacked an “American airbase” in retaliation.

As tensions between Iran and the US continue to rise despite a fragile ceasefire, Tehran’s claim that it intercepted a US drone has renewed questions about how much of Iran’s air defence capability survived months of Israeli and US attacks – and whether Iran retains the resilience to withstand another round of attacks should negotiations collapse.

Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency said the Arash-e Kamangir system was used to intercept a “hostile” reconnaissance drone over the Strait of Hormuz. It described the system as having stealth-detection capabilities, but gave few technical details.

Iranian media said it was a warning to hostile aircraft operating near Iranian airspace and maritime borders, particularly at a time when Iran seeks to leverage its partial control of the strait in any ceasefire negotiations with the US.

“This operation, which was carried out using a system with hidden capabilities, is a clear and decisive message from Iran,” Fars quoted unnamed officials as saying.

The new interceptor system announced by Fars translates, in Farsi, to “Arash the archer”, and is named after the eponymous hero from Persian mythology who is described in folklore as having fired an arrow to draw the border between Iran and Central Asia. More broadly, Arash is venerated in poems and other literature as a hero who helped Iran fight foreign domination.

How credible is Iran’s claim?

The claim should be treated carefully, analysts say. Iranian officials have a long history of publicising military advances that are difficult to independently verify.

But experts also say the broad idea behind the claim is plausible, with Iran investing heavily in cheaper, mobile and domestically produced defence systems designed to threaten drones and aircraft without relying on large fixed radar sites that are easier to detect.

Mark Hilborne, a senior lecturer in the school of security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that while there was “very little independently verified information” about Arash-e Kamangir, the attack would “fit a wider pattern”.

“Iran has become quite self-sufficient in various forms of missile design and, like Ukraine, has been clever at changing the economics of warfare. Cheap, simple systems can hold much more complex systems at risk.”

The reported shooting down of the Reaper drone could also force the US to rely more on expensive missiles rather than drones when attacking Iran.

Meanwhile, Tehran can continue using comparatively cheap-to-produce Shahed drones, potentially giving Tehran a longer-term economic advantage in any prolonged conflict.

What might Arash-e Kamangir be?

Analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera said the Arash-e Kamangir interception may be less a revolutionary new weapon than another step in Iran’s wider shift towards mobile, lower-cost air defence.

Alex Almeida, a security analyst at Horizon Engage, a New York-based strategic intelligence platform, told Al Jazeera the system may be related to other Iranian short-range or loitering surface-to-air weapons.

“I suspect it’s a further development of one of those systems,” he said. “It doesn’t rely on fixed guidance from a traditional air defence radar site. It’s probably using some kind of electro-optical or heat-seeking guidance – essentially a pop-up SAM [surface-to-air missile] system that is easy to set up and launch.”

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General Dan Caine stated several weeks ago that there is a "threshold" that Iran must reach before we retaliate.

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