Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 6, 2024

The Bashar al Assad regime faces an existential threat given the widespread collapse of regime forces and lack of sufficient external backing to bolster these forces.

Syrian Rebels Closing In On Homs, Cutting Off Damascus From Coast An Imminent Possibility

Syrian rebel commander urges Israel to support uprising, strike Iran-backed forces

So this “Iran sent into space on Friday its heaviest-ever payload using the Simorgh carrier rocket including an advanced module for transferring satellites to higher-altitude orbits, state television reported. The Samān-1 transfer module, along with a CubeSat and a research payload “were successfully placed in an elliptical orbit with a high point of 410 km (255 miles) and a low point of 300 km,” said the broadcast.” made me think of this “The geographic area exposed to varying levels of E1 EMP fields can be quite large, as the area of coverage is characterized by the line of sight from where the weapon is exploded to the horizon. For example, a detonation at 200 km can affect a circular area of on the order of 3 million square miles.” I don’t really think they are planning on doing this but they are never going to be able to build a Russian style arsenal. So if they ever wanted to hurt all of the US this would be the only possible way. However, it carries a lot of risks (the science is far from settled and the results are not certain) and not a lot of rewards (sure you take out the US economy but that does not prevent them from turning you to glass). But I can’t help thinking that the last few years have shown that rationality does not have a lot predictive value for what people will actually do.

Related to the above. Iran has ‘dramatically’ increased enrichment to near bomb grade -IAEA

The body responsible for keeping the lights on in Australia’s biggest electricity grids wants emergency powers to switch off or throttle rooftop solar in every state to help cope with the daily flood of output from millions of systems. And it warned that unless it had the power to reduce — or curtail — the amount of rooftop solar times, more drastic and damaging measures would need to be taken. These could include increasing the voltage levels in parts of the poles-and-wires network to “deliberately” trip or curtail small-scale solar in some areas.

Breakthrough in Spinal Cord Injury Recovery: New Brain Stimulation Restores Movement