Israel uses hospitals as human shields for their military targets, which is what they claimed Hamas did.

#Soroka Hospital is located between two major Israeli military sites: the IDF’s main intelligence headquarters and a central command facility, both of which are situated in the Gav-Yam Technology Park. These installations reportedly serve as critical hubs for Israel’s cyber operations, digital command systems, and military intelligence infrastructure (including IDF C4I and C4ISR systems). While the hospital sustained shockwave damage from nearby blasts, it was not directly hit, Iranian reports emphasize.

Sororka is the primary hospital for military casualties, I understand, but it wasn’t targeted. It got hit in the blast.

Now, of course, Israel complaining about a hospital attack is ludicrous. Wikipedia has a list of Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals. There are dozens.

My post on the initial attack on Iran noted how serious Mossad penetration was. What’s interesting about Iran’s missile attacks is that they seem to be prioritizing intelligence sites even more than strict military ones. They know their weakness and are working on it.

Iran has been mainly going after Israeli intelligence in the last couple of days: Mossad and 8200 bases throughout the country, from north through center to south. This seems to be their main focus now. I have no way to assess hits and damages, but these are large, extremely expensive, highly prized targets. They know where everything is – and if you remember the Hezbollah drone videos from a year ago, you can guess how accurate their information is.

And they have high-resolution satellites in space – this is Israel’s first war against an enemy with such capabilities. Israel did not report a single IDF casualty since this war began, but tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians work in those places, and in the other big bases that have been attacked.

Meanwhile, estimates are that Israel has less than two weeks left of interceptor missiles. If the US sends everything it can spare, well, that’s maybe two more weeks.

As I said previously

This is entirely a race between Israel’s ability to destroy missile launchers with its aircraft, and Iran’s ability to keep launching missiles. The math is that simple. As an aside, Iran should be priority targeting Israeli air fields alongside air defense.

And Iran has only begun to use its better missiles.

I don’t know how the math is working. Israel is sending its cops after Israelis posting video or pictures of attacks. Iran has shut down most outgoing internet. This makes sense for both sides, no reason to let enemies know how successful their attacks are.

Iran has also told its citizens to get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, as both are easily hacked. Going forward I’d suggest that all countries need their own OS and their own social networks, hosted in their own countries, at a minimum. China has this. Android and IOS are extremely vulnerable, no matter what apps you’re using. As I’ve been writing for years, carrying a cell phone is carrying a bug, tracking device and surveillance camera with you at all times. (The best OS for privacy right now appears to be Graphene, which only runs on the most recent Google Pixel phones, I believe.)

As you’ve probably heard, the US is moving three aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East. It’s not clear if the US will join the war. In fact I doubt anyone knows if it will. Even Trump couldn’t tell you, because he changes his mind so often.

Absent the US getting involved, I put the odds in Iran’s favor, but it’s not a strong bet. It’s simply too hard to tell the actual situation. Some claim Israel has complete air dominance over Iran, others say that’s not true, and I don’t know. Likewise, lots of claims are made about how many launchers have been destroyed, but there’s no reason to believe either side on this. Attack volumes from Iran are way down, but is that because of strategy or capability? If it’s capability, they’re sunk. If its strategy, maybe not. It’s quite conceivable they’re holding back a lot as they degrade AD and force the Israelis to run thru their AD missiles.

Do bear in mind that Iran has the simplest advantage: it’s much larger than Israel and has a much larger population and it is an industrial state which has the ability to build its own weapons. China is not going to intervene militarily, but I’m sure they’ll sell Iran as much cheap materials it needs to build more missiles and drones, and China has the cheapest and most extensive supply network for both.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that if Israel decides it is losing, it does have nukes and if any country in the world other than US is psychotic enough to use nuclear weapons, it’s Israel.

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