Is Raf OK? -- Installment #240

2026-03-04 -- Jerusalem

Mar 04, 2026

Prior Post | Next Post | Read This Entry, #240, in Web Browser

First Time Here? Readers suggest starting with the expanded Gaza Explainer in #133 and #120.
Top Eleven IsRafOK Entries: All Time Most Viral: #234; #85; #123; #128; #140; #144; #154; #161; #164; #171; #196

Update: On March 5, the translation of Iran’s denial RE attack on Oman was improved.

Tags: 8 Min Read

It is Purim day in Jerusalem. By ancient tradition, Purim is held a day later within “walled cities,” and all of Jerusalem is considered such. So the rest of the world (and the rest of Israel) celebrated Purim Monday evening and Tuesday while here it is Tuesday evening and Wednesday (today).

There is music blasting outside. As far as I can tell, the Chabad next door has been ignoring the ban on gatherings, which has been in place since about 8:00 AM on Saturday (9:30 AM Tehran time):

As you may notice above, there was an alert this morning at around 6AM.

I stayed in bed.

Not my usual approach, but I did.

This war, all aspects of it, are life.

And life is a marathon, not a sprint.

Gatherings may be banned, but plenty of small gatherings are going on (like ten of us gathered last night for a Megillat Esther reading in friends’ living room). The party of Purim is happening anyway, given the music I hear blasting wherever I walk. (I even saw a picture of a wedding in an underground parking garage.)

Do you take precautions?

Yes.

The bedroom is reasonably protected, in a stone building with only a small window that is well offset from the bed.

But did I wrench out of bed for the third day in a row?

No. (And the alerts the last two mornings were at 7 and 8 AM...)

For the rest of the day, I got a tour of Jerusalem bomb shelters. We were at a plant nursery and followed the staff across the street (where a possibly neurotic woman asked us not to sit in any of the chairs as residents of the building would soon arrive... they never showed). Then at the Purim meal alarms sent me across the street, twice, to a large shelter that is a lecture hall during the week (super spacious with cushy seating but the wifi password was known to no one).

But with every day that goes by, Iran has fewer launchers (yet seemingly more countries it wants to attack).

Mail

A Text Thread This Morning

In #239 you said Iran has no airforce, then the headline today is that an Israeli F-35 shot down an Iranian jet. Hello?

The news includes the line: “It marks the first-ever downing of a manned aircraft by an F-35.”

Yes, reportedly an F-35 shot down a Yak-130.

What is a Yak-130? It’s a training plane. Iran has a few of them, and they can be armed for air-to-air combat.

And Iran is flying a few MiG-29s.

This all indicates that Iran’s air force is:

Operational
Possibly limited to the airspace over Tehran (due to limited number of limited-capability aircraft)
Not ready for air-to-air combat vis-a-vis the IAF or USAF
Unable to challenge banders

...you said “the Brits should know all about the tribes, etc.”. Actually, the fact that they don’t, and didn’t when they divided up the region after WWI, is part of the reason it’s been such a fricking mess since then. No understanding of tribal boundaries, clans, or geography, just lines on a map along with the French, which have left a lasting legacy of hatred, war and destruction. I don’t know if things would be any better had they really understood the region when they pulled out their sharpies and carved up the region, but they had no idea what they were doing, and everybody else is now paying the price. -S.D.

You are right.

I am wrong.

I apologize.

Many people in the region (in Israel and across the region) blame the issues of today on poor decisions, ~100 years ago, by the British and French .

At the Purim Seuda table this afternoon, an Israeli woman said her mother feels the northern border of Israel should be the Litani river -- that historically, this was the northern border of the Palestine province in Ottoman and earlier times (I have not verified this). It is a historical and natural border (unlike the current northern border of Israel).

In #239, I loved your section...

I loved your section about taking Israel, the US and the Palestinians out of the equation and still seeing all the problems of the region. -S.D.

One of the ways to sniff out ideological extremism, of all kinds, left and right, is when it becomes categorical and/or based on labels. Some examples:

All problems are because of the Jews
Zionism is the root of all evil
Everything would be solved if Israel were gone
Capitalism is evil
etc.

Share Zimber Dvar

Timing -- Why Is This War Happening Now?

In #239 I discussed the long term forces at work leading to the current war, and that these forces would pressure any Prime Minister or President--regardless of party--toward war.

Iran’s development of evasive missiles is one of them.

Such weapons can evade all existing anti-missile systems. Russia has been using them (in small quantities) against Ukraine for some time.

I read an American politician’s statement that before attacking Iran, the U.S. should apply sanctions and seek a negotiated agreement.

Those things already happened.

To quote Nahum Barnea from #239:

Don’t fall in love with your hating... Sometimes bad politicians come to a good decision; sometimes good politicians come to a bad decision. A significant move like the war on Iran should be examined on its own.

The fact that positions are taken that negate American sanctions and negotiations. Efforts made by multiple administrations over many years. Far too much of the discussion seems to be based on dislike of the actors.

How soon we forget that back in the 1990’s President Clinton had to threaten North Korea with bombs to get them to agree to controls (which fell apart by 2006, largely because the Bush Jr. administration backed out of it).

Fun Distraction

Our fun this week is the Israeli Netflix series: The Good Cop - Hashoter Hatov (השוטר הטוב). Only has one season. Recommended!

Dept of The Invisible

Items invisible/less-visible in the Western media. (Starts to the north of Israel and goes, clockwise, around the region, ending up in Gaza and then Israel. Not all countries appear in every entry.)

Lebanon

Map of the villages in southern Lebanon that received evacuation instructions from the IDF Spokesperson yesterday and today.

Note that these are all Shia villages.

Which expanded today to:

The IDF spokesperson in Arabic has just issued a directive to all Lebanese south of the Litani River to head north – otherwise, their lives will be in danger.

Syrians in Lebanon are fleeing… back to Syria. The Lebanese army is trying to prevent Hezbollah from bringing people and materiel from Iraq and Syria into Lebanon.

Syria

Syrian and Iraqi airspace are getting a lot of traffic.

Share Zimber Dvar

Iran

Attack Oman and Deny Doing It

Such a strategy, no?

How to understand official lies? I suggest adopting a Soviet mindset. The kind when you read the official newspaper [now long gone] Pravda: What is denied is true. The stronger the denial, the bigger the lie.

Iran Has No Home Front Command?

Or chooses not to follow its directives.

Available data indicates that Iranian officials continue to meet in groups.

Do they follow or transmit public directives from the IDF spokesperson in Persian?

The IDF Spokesperson in Persion: It is time to evacuate industrial zones and an airport in the Karaj and Tehran area.

Iran doesn’t bother issuing evacuation notices to Israel.

Ask why.

Gulf: UAE

OSINT sources report that a Boeing 737 plane from the United Arab Emirates, used by senior government and military officials from the United Arab Emirates, landed in Tel Aviv.

We can only imagine the tectonic shifts that may be occurring under our feet.

War Footprint

Now that Iran has attacked every country in the region and triggered France to dispatch an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, we can ask: What is going on?

The context is bigger than the Middle East.

When the Ukraine war didn’t wrap up quickly, I thought: Is this WWIII?

It is 2022. Iran, Syria and Russia are a bloc. Iran a key weapons supplier to Russia and the backer of Hezbollah (which is propping up Assad in Syria). In 2022, the war is The West vs. the Russian Bloc.

Syria falls in 2024 and Assad flees to where? Moscow! Iran is suddenly exposed, directly, to the Middle East conflict it had been stoking at a distance for 30+ years. And Russia, bogged down in Ukraine, can’t help.

Iran. Russia. Signing agreements. Arming each other. And what do they both have and control? Oil.

Ukraine. The Middle East: All the same war. In 2022-2024, the Iranian axis supports Russia: Syria provides a port for the Russian Navy and is a key Russian ally; Iran provides Russia weapons, UAV designs, and its only foothold in the Gulf. But now in late 2024, Assad is a refugee in Moscow and Iran is exposed.

While the Trump administration waffled on supporting Ukraine, it always--correctly--identified Iran as a top line problem. How it addressed that problem might not have been “Raf’s way” but it did not shy away from the reality of Iran being a top shelf problem.

Thought Exercise: Imagine there had been no 2003 Iraq invasion and Obama enters office in 2008. What is his top shelf foreign policy and proliferation problem? Iran.
In 2014, even with the reality of the Iraq war in the rear view mirror, Obama committed American ground forces and massive air power to fight ISIS in Syria. Had he entered office in 2008 with no ISIS (because of no 2003 Iraq invasion), he might well have made the same offers to Iran that the Trump administration did and come to the same conclusion: Iran will never bend. The world can’t have an autocratic, “sign of God” regime [the Ayatollahs] developing advanced ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, while simultaneously sitting on the globe’s energy supply at the Straits of Hormuz.
We know Obama was fine going to war in the Middle East. Every American president does, to some degree, in some form.
While this is a thought exercise, the landscape is still the landscape. After Iraq, the American polity and public are unlikely to support military action of any scale. Trump, effectively a lame duck President, can act independently of public opinion. Whether we end up with an improved Iran is yet unknown.
But the possibility is higher today than it was a week ago.
And there has not been a path to that devoid of bombs.

Gaza

Way off the radar right now.

I would like to take this moment to say that Israel has done two things in the past several months that it never permitted in its history.

Well, maybe it’s the same thing, twice.

As part of the ceasefire with Hamas in October, 2025, a coordination center was established in the Israeli city of Kiryat Gat. This center has a couple hundred American troops based in it. This is the first time, in Israeli history, that foreign troops are operationally based in Israel.

And then comes the conflict with Iran. The USAF stationed dozens of its planes on Israeli airfields. Again, never in history has any non-Israeli combat aircraft been based on an Israeli airfield.

I can’t say if this is a positive development. But it is a first.

Relief Area

Alef - Can I Shower?

An app that tells you the likelihood of completing a shower before a red alert sounds (click EN at the top to see in English).

Wait, there is a competitor! bestshowertime.com says this is a good time to shower in Jerusalem:

But a risky time in Tel Aviv

Bet - And the tree was happy....

The stump says: “Only Bibi!” (slogan of the Israeli Right)

(Reference to the children’s book: The Giving Tree)

Gimmel - Go wild!

Dalet - Eliminated

[Popular snacks... everyone overeating due to war stress. Spoof on the IDF’s infographics showing eliminated enemy leaders.]

The airport will allegedly open in coming days for incoming flights. A sailboat to Cypress is of limited use, as Iranian attacks on Cypress have closed its airport (there are hundreds of Israelis camped out in Cypress waiting out the war). Some folks are heading to Taba and Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to fly out. There are a few charter buses from major Israeli cities to those airports.

Missile attacks from Iran are declining, a lot. But today Hezbollah started rocketing deep into Israel (all the way to Tel Aviv). So the overall number of alerts went up. This is why the IDF is moving aggressively into Lebanon.

The fun never stops.

To peace! And progress for Iran.

Raf