Ahnaf Ibn Qais on “Escalation and Prelude to Total War”

Ahnaf Ibn Qais discusses “Escalation & Prelude to Total War.” It begins:

“The World is on the Brink of Total War.

“While it is uncertain what particular sequence will play out to get us all there, it is clear that we are on the cusp of a Nuclear Exchange & are waiting to see how it will manifest soon. If anything, even the ‘Normies’ understand that the DOOM cometh:

“The United States of America, that Evil Empire of Lies & Great Satan, has all but ensured that it will be entering the coming War at a grave disadvantage.

“Not only will it fight the Sinic, Russian & Islamic worlds simultaneously, but it will also try to do all this ( & more ) while its Industry, Manufacturing & overall Military Prowess are at an all-time low…”

Excerpt from the interview:

So let's talk about this article from Ahnaf entitled Escalation and Prelude to Total War. Hey, welcome, Ahnaf Ibn Qais. How are you, good sir?

Doing well. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Thank you for having me on, good sir.

Good to have you back. So, you wrote this a couple of weeks ago, that the world is on the brink of total war. And it isn't any less on the brink now than it was then, is it?

Yes, yes. What has happened is that after the assassination of Brother Haniyeh, a lot of rumors were circulating with regard to how exactly it happened. Some were saying it was like a bomb in a guest house. Other people were saying that it was poison. So for the first 72 to about 96 hours or so, I had no clue what was happening.

Later on, multiple telegram channels of the geopolitics people that I follow were saying that they got confirmation that actually it was

an ATGM type weapon with a seven kilogram TNT load. So they basically disassembled it, took it inside the country, put it together and shot it right through his window. And that's basically how they took him out.

But the reason I bring this up and the reason why it's relevant to our conversation is that this is basically a hostile act on Iranian soil. And the Iranian envoy at the UN Assembly invoked Article 51, which is the article saying that if you're attacked on your home soil, you have the right to self-defense.

And that's basically what the Iranian mindset on this thing: look, you've crossed all red lines. You've crossed all boundaries. You've slapped us in the face. You leave us with no choice.

And that's basically what's happening in terms of the essay I wrote about two weeks ago. I was writing that right before the assassination, right? So there's a lot of stuff, unfortunately, that happened after it. That being said, I think it's still relevant in the sense that there are a lot of trends I cover in that essay. But in terms of what's pertinent right now on August 9th is that you've got this situation where the Russians have all this military cargo—they've got the IL-76 and all these jets. Basically if you want to carry electronic warfare equipment, the heavy stuff like that, or the S-400 or other related systems, that's the plane you use.

And multiple sorties are already happening from Moscow to Tehran and nearby areas. According to one of the OSINT people—these are people who basically spend hours a day looking at air traffic and looking at the skies—there have already been more than 20 sorties back and forth.

So just to give our dear listeners an idea of what that actually means, in November to December of 2021, the Russians were doing a similar number of sorties towards the border areas with Ukraine. Now, back then, when people pointed this out—the technology people, the OSINT people—the normies were saying, “oh, well, nothing's going to happen. Russia is just bluffing. Nothing's going to happen.” I think that's wrongheaded and very, very naive. My view always is that you look at what a person does, not what they say. And then you figure out what they're about to do.

It's very, very clear what's about to happen. Iran is going to launch a counterattack and it's going to be extremely brutal, based on all these sorties and all the data we're seeing thus far. It might not happen today. It might not happen tomorrow. It might not even happen a few weeks from now, but it is going to happen. And the reason I know this for certain is because of this mass number of sorties.

Interesting. So what exactly is being brought into Iran for this purpose?

So the Russians have given them the S-400 system. The S-400 is—some people would say, it is the best anti-air system in the world. So if the Americans actually deployed their F-400s to the Israelis or whatnot, the Iranians can actually shoot them down if it comes down to it. Let's say that the Israelis are going to use a bunch of tankers and going to do this really reckless 2000 plus kilometer charge, a mad rush into Iran. If they do something like that…maybe let's say they decide, “okay, we're going to hit Iraq or Lebanon or any of these other places.”

You can use the S-400 to actually shoot down the F-16s very easily. The F-22 and F-35 as well.

I know that the America bros are going to say stuff like, “oh, well, you know, the S-400 is outdated. Our stuff is much better.” The problem with the newer jets, especially the F-22 and the F-35, is that their ratio for maintenance to flight time is very, very high. What I mean by that is for every one hour of airtime, you need about nine hours plus for maintenance.

Now, why is that relevant? I'm throwing out a bunch of numbers. What does that mean? If you're flying for, let's say, four hours in the air, that means that you need about 36 hours on the ground. And you can use this data point to figure out where the guy is taking off from, where he's flying to, and so forth.

And so when you're picking your targets, you can actually figure this out, right? We have to understand something. Anti-air systems can be easily modified. If you've got an anti-air system, you can easily modify it into an offensive system, right? dsfSo the Russians actually sending the Iranians this stuff is a very, very big escalation.

When I was in Iran, I went to the Aerospace Museum, And among the various things shown there were some anti-aircraft systems. And I was told that Iran has the equivalent already of the S-400 systems. They have their own indigenous version. They basically got the S-300 already from Russia, and then they ended up building their own S-400 equivalent. One of the missiles is actually quite large. It takes up this huge room. The whole thing takes up a gigantic room there at the Aerospace Museum. So I think they already had some pretty advanced air defenses. And probably this will just be icing on the cake.

Yes. What you're I think what you're talking about is the core dot core dot. It operates with like the SIA tree missiles. OK, I guess maybe I'm like nerding out here with like military stuff. But I guess the way I would describe it is you've got basically an effective range of about 120 miles. And so you can knock out quite a few different things. It can detect like stealth, quote unquote.

The Americans say, OK, our jets are stealth. But even if you're stealth, what that really means is the radar signature that you give off is very, very small. But it does not disappear, which is the point. Stealth is actually a misnomer. It's actually an incorrect concept. When people tell you “my jet has stealth,”

what they're really telling you is, the radar signature, the cross-sectional area or what have you, that's very, very small. But that doesn't matter because like, okay, the SIAT trees and the Core.15, right? The Core.15 can do up to, like I said, 120 kilometers. But if you've got stealth it kind of narrows it down a bit. Let's say from 120 kilometers, you go down to about, I don't know, 50 or 60 kilometers, or maybe a bit higher than that. But if you've got like a networked array of these guys, and the other guy is(sending) only two or three jets at a time, you can actually knock them out pretty easily.

And this is actually what is making the Americans have second thoughts. They're telling their Qatari and Egyptian vassals “maybe now we should go for a ceasefire.” And I think that's what the joint statement was about, which was very, very shameful. I think from the Egyptians and the Qataris were saying, “Oh, you know, Iran, please show restraint. Oh, please, please sign the truce now. Don't be the better man, Iran.”

So they're doing all this like song and dance, this dog and pony show, because they know what's about to happen, right? The Iranians are about to take the gloves off.

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