More NewsX World (India) yesterday, 19 June

Uncategorized 1 Minute

I bring to the attention of the Community my 3 minutes on air in one of NewsX World’s hourly news wrap-ups, not only for what I said about the latest Russia-Ukraine exchange of injured POWs (minutes 17 – 20) but also for the sake of the comments just prior to my coming on air by another panelist, Andrew Leung, speaking about the Iran-Israel conflict. In passing, Leung mentioned a factor in the considerations of Trump presently whether to participate in the Middle East conflict by sending B2s to bomb the best protected Iranian nuclear installations: the reality that in such bombing raids these extremely costly planes could come under fire from Iranian air defenses and be brought down. Such an eventuality would not just be a huge financial loss for the USA but a huge humiliation and loss of credibility as a global power.

The very same point was made yesteday afternoon by a panelist on the Russian news and commentary show Sixty Minutes: to be effective in destroying Iran’s most important and best protected nuclear site, which is situated 90 meters below the surface of a rocky mountainside and is well guarded by Iranian anti-aircraft missiles, an American bomber would have to make 4 bombing raids dropping their heaviest bombs on target sequentially. The chance of the bomber being blown to bits would be substantial.

This is something you will not find discussed in The Financial Times or hear on CNN.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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