Laith Marouf on Iran’s Escalatory Path and Its Expectations of a Long War

Yves here. Your humble blogger is typically sparing about featuring YouTube interviews as posts. However, this Rachel Bevin interview with Lebonon-based Laith Marouf, host of Free Palestine TV, gives a good overview of the initial Iranian failure to anticipate the Israeli attack, the pacing and focus of Iranian strikes on Israel, and what Iran’s targeting priorities are likely to be when the US formally enters the fray (Marouf is dismissive of the idea that the US is not already deeply involved).

This account is from 18 hours ago, and so reasonably current. It contains some on-the-ground details that I have not heard elsewhere, such as that as a result of Iranian damage to Israel’s electricity generation, Jordan and Egypt provided additional power. Marouf clearly is on the Axis of Resistance side, but I don’t think it’s hard to parse that out from his recap.

The transcript is machine generated. I cleaned it up but please forgive any errors or omissions.

By Rachel Blevins. Originally published at her channel

Blevins: It is June 16th 2025 and Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes for a fourth day. As you have Israel coming out and claiming that it has air superiority over Iran, I would argue that Israel has superiority over the media coverage here in the US because they are certainly spinning it any way they want to talking about regime change in Iran and all of these things that they’re going to do.

But what is Iran going to do? Because that is the question that we are now starting to see the answer to as they continue to respond with strikes on Israel as we continue to see damage reported in Israel, as we continue to see casualties reported on both sides. And as you have these reports of course that the US is getting ready and making moves to directly enter this war, instead of just the support that they’ve had for Israel this entire time. So what could that mean for where tensions are headed?

Well we got into all of the latest with a special guest earlier so let’s take a listen to that conversation. Now joining me now to discuss is Leith Marouf a Palestinian Syrian journalist and host
of Free Palestine TV based in Lebanon. Leith, thanks so much for taking the time to join me

Marouf: Great to be with you Rachel.

Blevins: Now I want to get your take on the latest here as Israel and really now the US are engaged in an all-out war against Iran as Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes for a fourth day. We’re seeing casualties reported on both sides. But now Israel is claiming that it has destroyed more than 100 surface-to-surface missile launchers in central Iran and therefore achieved air superiority over
Iran.

What do you make of this claim? Is this about Israel trying to almost kind of tell the media to look over here to distract from the damage that Iran has been able to carry out in Israel?

Marouf: Yeah iI mean from day one part of the Israeli/American attack has been this psychological warfare. If people remember, within the first hours of the beginnings of the attacks on Iran the American leadership was telling the Ayatollah to just surrender, that we killed everyone around you just give up now. And we’ve heard this claim of full control of the airspace over Iran by the Zionists repeated over and over.

But the what we know now from the reality and the truth on the ground in Iran is that the vast majority of attacks, over 80 somewhat percent of the attacks that are happening, are being conducted by infiltration and spies that have been planted on the ground, Over the last 24 hours, the Iranian television have showed at least three factories of drones and hideouts of uh these infiltrators that include ATGMs.

And this is what has been really happening: all the attacks that we see inside Tehran and the deeper cities that are not on the border with Iraq have been conducted by these ATGM attacks including the assassinations on the first night. It was somebody with a a shoulder-mounted ATGM firing within the neighborhood on the buildings where these generals and scientists were sleeping with their families. This is why Iran wasn’t expecting.

I know a lot of people are wondering why these assassinations happened, why were these people not hidden somewhere. Because they were in Tehran they were not on the border, there’s no way for Israel to assassinate them through an air strike as it did in Lebanon. And now we have even proof that the assassination of Haniyeg inside, the leader of Hamas, a year ago was actually conducted again by one of these attacks from somebody on the ground.

So Iran has managed to capture all these infiltration, majority of them squads and captured most of their assets and weapons and this is accelerating.

So the first minutes of shock that we saw and the maneuverability of Israel on the ground in Iran is now becoming very limited. And given that their air strikes are happening from Iraqi airspace with these Golden Horizon missiles ballistic missiles fired from a jet. They have a very short limit of where they can hit inside Iran.

Then this is why the US is having to enter the battle now because all of that propaganda and fantasy of that the chosen people have the ability to hit you anywhere they want to has now been debunked.

Blevins: Yeah and I think that that’s a great point. And it’s also interesting to see that psychological warfare right, this idea that Iran is having to fight this dual war of you can’t trust anyone in your country or anyone outside of your country.

And it has been notable I know that there’s been a lot of footage on social media showing the destruction that we’ve seen in Israel from Iranian attacks. I guess suddenly the Israelis.

But how do you view the damage that Iran has been able to inflict so far and kind of what that tells us about their broader capabilities but also what Israel is doing?

Marouf: On its end yeah, the Iranian strategy up until now has been to escalate in stages and to deplete the uh resources that Israel has. So what we saw on the first day for instance, first night the Iranians used a couple hundred old ballistic missiles that forced the air defenses of the whole West combined, that is stationed in the region, as well as the Israeli air defenses to reveal themselves.

And so we had that wave of slow drones that forced every radar and every battery of air defense to activate and with them those hyper sonic ballistic missiles and that painted everything in red. basically all the targets and we saw the first night just maybe around five hypersonic missiles hit very important air defense batteries and radars in this pathway. And then the second night we saw an increase of the number of hypersonic missiles and while the you know increase also in the waves of drones and ballistic missiles. That again forced the activation of more important assets that they, the whole West had in the path of these drones and missiles. And that led to the vast destruction of all of the air defenses that the Israelis rolled from the Golan Heights all the way to Tel Aviv. A highway was opened.

And this is why by the end of the night, by the third wave of missiles last night, there was practically nothing to stop the missiles that are coming and we saw the destruction of the majority of the port of Haifa, the electric plant just north of Haifa also. The Israelis have only two electricity plants in the whole country, and the major transformers in Hayra [sp?] in the north of Palestine that distribute electricity to the Golan Heights in the north of Palestine.

So last night since last night, the Israelis lost half of their capability of electricity generation. They’ve had to activate the electricity plant south of Tel Aviv on 24 hours and the Jordanians and the Egyptians, the treacherous regimes of Jordan and Egypt, increased their electricity pumping into the grid inside the Zionist colony, cutting electricity from their own population. You know so now there’s electricity, you know blackouts, in both Egypt and Jordan just to keep the Israelis in under, you know, light.

And so tonight we should expect that the other electricity plant that the Israelis have and the high transforming transformer lines that come from Jordan and Egypt to be hit.

And look I think right now already the the Zionists are defeated in their battle with Iran and this is why we see a rush of American air fuelers coming with waves of NATO jets to the region. We saw since last night 25 air refuelers from fly out from the US towards the region. These are the ones that we see their transponders turned on so the we will find ourselves in a direct American, Western attack on Iran momentarily.

And I think the the biggest fear right now that the Israelis have is the possibility of infiltration from uh other forces. I know everybody watched those videos in Tel Aviv and Haifa and the mass destruction. But more than 60% of Iran’s attacks last night were on Israeli bases on the border with Lebanon and in the Golan Heights. And uh people in South Lebanon around 20 kilometers, you know 15 miles away from the border, their homes were shaking and they could see the explosions on the border.

So right now uh you know the Israelis have to worry about more than just Iran’s missiles their whole frontline defenses in the Golan Heights and South Lebanon, Palestine are very vulnerable right now

Blevins: Wow that is that’s really interesting. And I’m glad that you bring that up because that’s another thing that I was thinking about: the fact that you know Israel has been in this position, has carried out, it has really implemented this regional war.

Marouf: Right it’s carried out genocide against the Palestinians. It has been bombing Lebanon. And all of that has kind of been this glass house that has stood for so long but then they’ve gone to Iran. And they’ve said “Okay we want direct war.”

And Iran is like “Okay well we can target you here here and here.” And guess what, we still have this
overall Axis of Resistance that can target you from all of these different areas right around your border. And this is the fight that you pick.

Blevins: And now when it comes to the reports that we’re seeing that Iran is keeping its most
modern ballistic missiles for a wider war. Is that about the US potentially getting involved and some of these other, you know, American, British, French bases in the region that Iran could be targeting. How do you see kind of the position that Iran is in right now? And how it’s choosing to escalate based on how Israel and the West respond ?

Marouf: You know, I watched a few interviews of the new command within the Iranian military on Iranian television and a few things that we should note from what they said. One is that they already knew that the United States is trying to fool them during these negotiations and that the attack was going to happen. What they didn’t realize is that there’s those infiltration squads on the ground, that they’re going to commit those assassinations they and that’s a mistake on their behalf. But they knew that this is what’s going to happen, that they were going to go to war with the Zionist colony

And also these same generals in these interviews said that they already know that they are going to go to war against the United States and the whole might of NATO from that moment and that they are thus uh preparing for this long war. And part of this ability to have this long war with the West is making sure that not all of your assets are exposed from day one. You know, they could have thrown a couple of 10,000 missiles all at the same time on the Zionist colony and blasted it from the first day. But that would have mean that all their, you know, warehouses and their hideouts and, you know, launchers would have been exposed for the Americans to target them

So what we will see is once the Americans openly attack Iran, because by the way in my opinion the Americans and the West are already attacking Iran. Israel only has 250 jets. They cannot be conducting
all those bombardments on Iran on Syria on Lebanon on Gaza and Yemen all at the same time. They’re not, they’re not, they don’t have the hand of God with them although we were supposed to believe
that. Right. So they’re already involved, the Americans in the West but they’re going to now have to openly say that they’re involved as the Zionists are totally destroyed and unable to even lie about their involvement in attacks on Iran.

And once that happens I think the Iranians will first and foremost attack all the airfields in the region. They will not be attacking American bases at the first stage. And they will be attacking all the, you know, refineries for jet fuel and the holding facilities for jet fuel in the region. We saw the the Iranians do that on the first day in Israel by the way, sorry the second night, on the second night uh before the destruction of the Haifa port.

Yesterday on the second night. the Iranians destroyed the refinery that specialized in jet fuel in the Haifa port and the facilities all across the colony of distribution and storage of jet fuel.

Okay so that gives us an indication of what the Iranians are going to do in their first stage of responding to any direct Western attack on it.

And thus I would say the the airfields in Cyprus that the British have in their occupied territories inside Cyprus there’s two parts of Cypress that are occupied by the Brits and where the majority of the command and control of the air operations right now is happening from there. Those will be the first airfields and jet fuel storage locations that will be attacked

And then uh if that the US dares to uh openly fly out of airfields in Qatar or Saudi or Bahraib or the Emirates, then they will be attacked also. And that’s going to drag us of course into a full oil crisis in the world even before attacking the oil fields uh of the Gulf.

Blevins: Yeah that is something that I would think that those kingdoms that have been very supportive of the US and of genocide have that they should be keeping in mind as they’re watching this play out.

And I’m also curious too when it comes to the political element here because I know that when I talked to you just a couple of weeks ago we were talking here about the Knesset being on the verge of being dissolved altogether right netanyahu being in political trouble. And one thing about Netanyahu
anytime he gets into any kind of political trouble he’s like “All right what war can I start?” And here we are with war on Iran and kind of what you were talking about earlier with you know
Israel’s electricity being impacted.

I know that there are reports out there saying that Israelis are being forced to stay and that they are going to be forced to stay, now being used as human shields, ironically. How do you view the
position that Israel is in and kind of how long they are going to be able to stand with everything that is happening really the consequences of their actions starting to come back home?

Marouf: Yeah I’m glad you brought that up the Haaretz newspaper is saying the Israeli authorities have banned any airlines from carrying, allowing Israelis on board to depart under any reason. So we saw a rush of 2 million Israelis trying to buy tickets to leave. And that’s why the Zionist authorities are freaking out. They already have lost like a million and a half settlers over the last two years that ran away to the West and another two million would mean more than 50% have left and there’s no more state at that point. And so right now we see a rush of these colonists to the ferries that take people to Cyprus so there’s all booked ferries. There’s a rush to the borders with Jordan and Egypt and the treacherous Jordanian and Egyptian regime are helping these Zionists leave. I mean, I would like them to leave I’m happy.

But obviously those two regimes never cared for the Palestinians and in fact the Jordanian regime who took a few hundred uh Palestinian children from Gaza for medical treatment returned them to their death in Gaza after right and nobody talks about that. Those same supposedly, you know children that that Jordan prided itself about saving and helping in medical terms are dead now because the Jordanian
regime returned them to the death camp.

So, you know the the exit of the Zionists is happening um there is in all practical uh sense no more Zionist colony. The collapse that we were talking about in our last interview in terms of their political cohesion has happened. Netanyahu isn’t you know just using this to distract. He had no choice. This was the strategy from the beginning October 7th. There was a rag tag militia of 2,000
fighters that defeated the Israeli military that captured 12 Israeli bases and killed or captured 12 Israeli generals.

The Americans had to send generals to the command and control to actually run the war from day one. The Israeli ground forces are a bunch of pedophiles and transvestites that like to put on women’s underwear. Okay and they were defeated in Gaza since then they haven’t been able to win this war against this ragtag militia.

They were defeated in Lebanon they were not able to enter one Lebanese village without the ceasefire. They were defeated as the whole the United States by Yemen. And now they’re going they have no
choice because of if they stop at any moment this defeat becomes a reality. They have no choice but to escalate, to try to win something okay.

And now as we see the whole uh you know mythology of air superiority of the Zionist is being popped up as the balloon. We’re at this moment that if the United States doesn’t come to save this Zionist colony from full collapse, they, the United States itself, will start losing its prestige as a military power. And this is why the US is risking everything and the whole West is risking everything on the golden calf of Zionism.

One last thing I would say here on this point is that up until now Iran didn’t target the water infrastructure. And the Israelis were stupid enough to attack one of the main water pipelines into Tehran last night or stupid enough because in the Zionist colony close to 90% of the people live in the area between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And this area is not fed by water from the aquifers of
the West Bank or the water of the Jordan River . It’s fed by eight desalination plants on the Mediterranean. And if those disselination plants are hit, even just half of them are out of service, they Zionist colonists will go thirsty immediately. There’s no there’s no other water source for them.

And this is I think what we will be seeing in the next 24 hour: attacks on the water infrastructure that feeds the colony

Blevins: Yeah and it’ll be interesting to see. I’m curious what the US is going to do and
how it’s going to really well I say get involved they’re already involved right as we were noting earlier everything that Israel is doing and has done in this ongoing genocide in this regional
war it’s made possible by the US and we’ve watched as President Trump has
kind of gone back and forth right on one hand he claims that oh yeah Israel used
the weapons that were provided by the US And then on the other hand he’s like “We didn’t have anything to do in with tonight’s attacks.”

Talking about what transpired on Saturday night and so on and so forth the last thing I want to bring up. Is just kind of how far the US is willing to go because I know that that the think tanks in Washington DC have wanted war against Iran for a while.

Now right they have wanted an allout war that is going to weaken Iran. But as they’re seeing Iran’s response as they’re as we’re seeing the fact that it didn’t just crumble after the string of
assassinations and say “Okay we’ll agree to whatever nuclear deal that Trump is throwing at us.”

How do you see the position that the US is in and kind of how far it’s willing to go because Israel the Zionists seem to be willing to go to the bitter end for this war?

Malouf: Yeah I think it’s starting to make sense more to me the strategy of the Axis of Resistance of not going all in on October 7th. For one reason is that I think the Axis of Resistance
leadership understood that this is an existential war in the sense of not only the colony but of western hegemony and that the Western elite will hinge everything. They have to make sure that the Zionist colony is not defeated.

Thus if the response of the Axis of Resistance was coordinated simultaneous attack on October 8th to glass the Zionist colony we would have have a nuclear response immediately from the United States and the West and we would already be living a nuclear holocaust and a nuclear winter all of us as humanity.

So at a great sacrifice in blood the Axis of Resistance slowed the development of this war in order
to saturate the Western populace in real knowledge of what things are happening in order to give a breather for people between the stages of this war, for the populations to start moving against the craziness of their elite in the West. And maybe maybe just maybe that the elite in the West will uh you know back down from the edge of the abyss. Okay and this is where we at you know so
uh you know we’re at the last stages here and I think uh the there is nobody anywhere in the Western uh domains that actually believes the lies that they are hearing from the Zionists and the elite in the west and the vast majority of the population in the West overwhelmingly is anti-Zionist now.

And that’s all because of this strategy and as we see the pressure is building so heavily inside western societies that we got to a point of armed resistance like that assassination of the two Israeli embassy officials by Elias Rodriguez in Washington DC. Those are indicators of, you know,
pent up right now the feelings are in the populace in the West.

And that’s the United States which is a country that doesn’t have many Muslims or Arabs uh like France or Europe for instance. So we can understand that if the West right now takes takes us to this war which it will happen, I expect uh violent resistance to rise inside Western societies. It’s not what I want but this is what’s going to happen. And that is wouldn’t have happened if Iran and the Axis of resistance went all in uh two years ago 20 months ago.

And so there is still a chance for us to uh return from the abyss. And that is now dependent on how serious the populace in the West are to make sure that their elite follow their will.

Otherwise once this war rolls out and if the West either nukes Iran and or bombs a nuclear reactor in Iran that results in nuclear fallout, within minutes Pakistan which will be the biggest victim of this nuclear fallout, this has a very thin country that’s right on the border of Iran, they
and there as the Pakistani military promised will retaliate with a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv. If there is nuclear fallout that falls on China we should be expecting China to also move accordingly

This is not a joke anymore right so even if there’s a Pakistan is a country that’s captured by the West and the Saudi money those Pakistani generals have children and they’re going to die from nuclear poisoning okay so there is a limit to how much they’ll collaborate okay. And that’s why we’re seeing Pakistan take this position and the fact that Pakistan is the only nuclear Muslim country they know that they’re on the cutting board right after Iran if Iran falls. Even if they kiss the feet of Zionist they will be attacked. Right now anyone that wants to avoid a nuclear holocaust in the West, they have a very short window to move, take serious action to stop their governments from dragging us into a nuclear holocaust.

Blevins: Yeah there is certainly a lot at stake here. I think that that is an understatement at this point.And I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today to really educate the audience on where things stand with all of these moving parts. Here Laith Marouf, a Palestinian Syrian
journalist and host of Free Palestine TV. Thank you so much for your time and insight.

Morouf: Good to be with you Rachel see you soon

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As always thank you all so much for all of your support and I’ll see you next time.