Yves here. Yours truly had another post in the works, but high odds of war with Iran takes precedence. Trump has approved a US strike package for Iran but is allegedly holding off to see how Tehran responds to his latest ultimatum, which is to give up not just nuclear enrichment but also ballistic missiles, that is, render itself defenseless,. Trump has put pedal to the metal and has also thrown the steering wheel out the window. He’s created too much in the way of expectation of action to reverse course. TACO is prevailing: Trump is unwilling and/or unable to stand up to the Israel lobby and neocons.
Even though we put up a short post on open question, will the Strait of Hormuz close to traffic due to Iran action or insurer/shipper cautiousness, we thought it would be useful to highlight some other issues while waiting to see if, which now looks to be when, Trump pulls the trigger.
One is an important bit of information hygiene, since the propaganda seems to have distorted the risk assessment of not just members of the great unwashed public but also decision-makers. Israel has repeatedly claimed to have achieved air superiority in Iran. That’s nonsense. Other analysts have disputed this claim. For one stop shopping, we’ll turn the mike over to Simplicius:
Israel’s own claims of establishing total ‘air superiority’ over Iran are fraudulent: Israeli planes are not flying over Iran—there is zero evidence to support this claim.
Israel has been utilizing a combination of drone strikes—for which there is a mountain of evidence. UCAV drones are less detectable and expendable, which allows Israel to push them towards Tehran while suffering losses to shoot downs that don’t affect their public standing.
Every single strike video released thus far from Israel shows footage from a UCAV or surveillance recon drone cam, like in this case:
IAI Heron, Harop, and Hermes drones have been spotted in Iranian airspace numerous times:
And not a single video exists of any Israeli aircraft in Iranian airspace, but tons of video showing Israeli missile booster stages recovered in Syria and Iraq, indicating that Israel continues to fire missiles like the Blue Sparrow from outside Iran’s borders.
Other strike videos show the cam from the Delilah missile, which has a range of 250km+ and can reach many western Iranian sites even when fired outside the border.
🇮🇷 Israeli Drone Shot Down Near Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Facility
The deputy governor of Isfahan has confirmed that the IRGC’s Khordad-3 air defense system intercepted and destroyed an Israeli drone near the Natanz nuclear facility, close to the city of Kashan.
Earlier, at least two of the flagship Israeli Hermes UCAV drones were shot down over Iran:
The images proved that Israel is utilizing laser-guided drone bombs to hit all the Iranian vehicles seen in strike videos, while long distance cruise and ballistic missiles like the Air LORA are used to hit larger infrastructural targets:
An Israeli Air Force Hermes 900 attack UAV shot down by the Iranians.
The suspension nodes of the intercepted Hermes-900 reconnaissance and strike UAV of the Israeli Air Force were equipped with small-sized guided aerial bombs ‘Miholit’, which are analogous to the Russian KAB-20S and Turkish MAM-L.
The weapons are equipped with semi-active laser (or thermal imaging) guidance systems and have a range of 12-15 km when dropped from altitudes of 5,500+ m.
It is obvious that this UAV was used directly to engage mobile anti-aircraft artillery systems of the Iranian Air Defence Forces.
There has only been one single piece of footage I’ve personally seen that could indicate Israeli jets just barely skirted Iranian territory, wherein it looked like possible JDAMS were dropped on Kermanshah, which is just barely over 100km+ from the Iranian border:
JDAMS typically have a range of 25-50km, though the JDAM-ER can do 75km+ but it’s uncertain if Israel possesses it. This strike could have represented Israeli jets getting a few miles over the border, but that’s about as far as they’re willing to go.
The big question is: why?
Because Israel has not yet degraded Iranian long range air defense whatsoever.
As many readers know, the Washington Post reported a couple of days ago that if Iran kept up its attacks on Israel at its current tempo for ten to twelve more days, that Israel would find its air defenses depleted. Israeli media claimed yesterday (and this was picked by Aljazeera) that Iran had launched fewer missiles that day, which Israel presented as the usual “they are about to run out of missiles” tale.
If the US bought Israel, erm, intel, the two claims above would translate into the US having an easy go of finishing off Iran.
I think the the Iranians are playing mind games with the Israeli regime and that they are
changing tactics but also the . S so this is not just Israelis. The Americans are carrying the real weight here. They’re doing the heavy lifting right now. And so the Americans and the Israelis, they’re firing everything they have and soon they’ll run out of ammunition. So the Iranians are trying to push them to keep spending that that ammunition and at the same time, Iran is completely prepared for a potential American strike.
The bit of bravura does not mean that Mirandi is incorrect. Recall that Iran executed a similar strategy in a pre-negotiated retaliation on Israel last fall, sending a huge wave of slow-moving drones to deplete and confuse Israeli air defenses before sending in ballistic missiles that hit their targets precisely.
John Helmer independently came to a similar view. From a different Dialogue Works interview:
I’m not in a position to confirm that um Iran has not lost its air defenses. They’re being held in reserve.They’re being held in reserve in such a way that the advisers to President Trump are advising him that they’re being held in reserve, that there’s a serious risk of the kind of air attack that’s
being prepared, US tankers F-35s, F-15s, you can all read the way these being these are being redeployed, AC from the United States across Europe down to the Middle East
It’s…the first thing is that unless the United States demonstrates escalation control here and dominance, Trump isn’t a paper tiger he’s reduced to a level he can’t bear and that would encourage even more violence but even more loss. Second on the Iranian side there’s only one way to understand what they’re doing not withstanding all the confusion. And all Americans know it it’s
called rope a dope, rope a doe, the tactic of one of the greatest of all Americans Muhammad Ali used to fight by having his body against the ropes allowing the elasticity of the ropes to allow him to withstand massive amounts of punching by his enemy until his enemy got tired. When his enemy got tired watch what Muhammad Ali does it’s a beautiful brilliant display of counterviolence and he simply tears the adversary apart, having opened up um the vulnerability of exhaustion.
Now exhaustion is what Israel faces if it can’t continue to supply its anti-aircraft defenses with new missiles and it can’t refuel its missile offenses and it can’t get close enough to the Russian air defense system the S400s and others in Iran. If it can’t get close enough and it runs out of supply and
it’s desperate for US intervention both to resupply Israel and to take on the burden of escalation and attack. if the US doesn’t Iran absirb the punishment for another 7 to 10 14 days, the rope a dope will reverse
A key point is Helmer’s sources say that Trump has been briefed that Iran has air defense strike capacity in reserve. Yet the Israelis are now so needy and so many in the military-intel space are incapable of believing that any foreign power can contest the US that they are very likely to dismiss this information as inconsequential to battle plans.
So what happens if the US sends fighter jets and bombers into Iranian air space and Iran downs a decent number of them, or say even worse, most? What happens next?
By Jake Johnson, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
President Donald Trump is set to meet with top advisers in the White House Situation Room Thursday morning in the wake of reports that he has privately approved plans for a U.S. attack on Iran, a development that comes after days of pressure from Israeli officials and Republican war hawks in Congress to intervene in the war that Israel launched last week.
The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Trump told senior aides that he “approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off on giving the final order to see if Tehran will abandon its nuclear program.”
“While Trump weighed his decision, the U.S. military continued to move forces to Europe and toward the Middle East, including tanker planes to refuel aircraft in flight, warships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, an aircraft carrier battle group, and advanced F-22 air-to-air fighters, which flew Wednesday to a base in Britain,” the Journalobserved.
CBS News also reported that Trump “approved attack plans on Iran Tuesday night.”
Trump’s belligerent rhetoric and demand for “unconditional surrender” ahead of a possible U.S. attack have drawn sharp rebukes from Iranian officials, who said Wednesday that the country “does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance.”
The U.S. possesses 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs within striking distance of Iran, and Israel claims it needs such explosives to hit Iran’s heavily entrenched Fordow nuclear site.
“We are the only ones who have the capability to do it, but that doesn’t mean I am going to do it,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
With a final decision from the president expected at any moment, anti-war members of Congress are moving with urgency to build support for legislative efforts to avert an unauthorized U.S. attack on Iran.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is co-leading a House war powers resolution with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), has called on Democrats to unify against U.S. involvement in Israel’s war.
“This is now defining for the Democratic Party,” Khanna toldHuffPost on Wednesday. “Are we going to criticize the offensive weapons for Netanyahu and the blank check? Are we going to stand up with clarity against the strikes on Iran? Are we going to actually be the party of peace, or are we going to be just another party of war?”
Just 37 members of Congress, according to one tally, have backed anti-war resolutions currently before the House and Senate, even as new polling shows that a majority of the American public opposes U.S. military action in Iran.
The two top Democrats in Congress—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)—have been mostly quiet this week about the Trump administration’s march to war, and Schumer has declined to back legislation introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would bar the president from using federal funds for an unauthorized attack on Iran.
But Schumer was among the top Democratic senators who signed a joint statement Wednesday declaring that “we will not rubberstamp military intervention that puts the United States at risk.”
“Intensifying military actions between Israel and Iran represent a dangerous escalation that risks igniting a broader regional war,” reads the statement. “As President Trump reportedly considers expanding U.S. engagement in the war, we are deeply concerned about a lack of preparation, strategy, and clearly defined objectives, and the enormous risk to Americans and civilians in the region.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) unveiled a war powers resolution earlier this week in the Republican-controlled Senate, but he must wait 10 days before he can force a vote on the measure.
“The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war,” Kaine wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “That’s why I filed a resolution to require a debate and vote in Congress before we send our nation’s men and women in uniform into harm’s way.”
Senators are set to receive a classified briefing on Iran from the Trump administration next week—but the president could order a military strike before then.
Politico reported Wednesday that “Trump, who criticized his predecessor for allowing new wars to break out on his watch, is increasingly listening to a small group of Iran hawks who have been pushing to go tougher on Tehran.”
“Trump has become more receptive to arguments by those advocating more military engagement, including Gen. Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla, who leads Central Command, as well as Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas,” the outlet noted.
Can’t find it now but I was reading an article just the other day about Gen. Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla. He seems to be best buds with the Israelis but one reason that they are pushing for this war is because Kurilla is supposed to be leaving his job in the coming months and the Israelis want ‘their’ general in charge for this war-
Re exhaustion–don’t forget that the Israeli pubic have been spending every night in shelters and stair wells.
and
Re pressure–it increasingly seems possible if not likely that war with Iran was the plan all along and things just aren’t going the way that they expected. Recall during the Signal chat Vance objected that going after Yemen wasn’t ‘part of the plan.’ But he was fine with blowing up an apartment building.
Has the entire Trump presidency been a con that instead of what was promised will bring us inflation at home and war abroad? Stay tuned…..
Unironic Pangloss
it is a reasonable hypotbesis that Kurilla isan American maximalist (who will get trapped by the sunk cost fallacy)
Not good news if you are a America First circumspect realist.
stickNmud
TRK, I always appreciate your spot on comments! Nima’s video with Col. Laurence Wilkerson yesterday is very enlightening, and Wilkerson talks at length about Gen. Kurilla and Centcom:
First, even if Iran were to be “holding back”, they simply do not possess the kind of long-range air defense and radar systems to compare with, say, the Russians. They have “some” amount of S-300s or their domestically developed equivalents, some of them recently upgraded to effectively be S-300+. These are fine for what they are, but a) do not have the range to reach much beyond Iran’s geographic borders; b) are not very many in number; and c) would have to play hide and seek with American anti-radar missiles.
As well, I am not sure what sort of long-range radar systems Iran still has operational – again, ones that can reach beyond its borders – and their AWACs force seems pretty weak.
With that in mind, if I were planning any American strikes, I’d just have my air groups sit 100-200 kilometers outside of Iran’s borders, covered by EW and anti-radar escorts, just in case, and lob long-ranged missiles into the place. Basically some version of how the Russian air force has been operating after the first few months in 2022, I mean the whole glide-bomb thing was developed in part so that they wouldn’t have to come closer than a few dozen kilometers of their side of the line of contact. And I doubt the Iranians could do much about that.
You will notice that Israeli aircraft, at least according to Russian and Iranian news sources, have basically approached Iran’s borders (maybe flown a few miles in), launched their ordnance, and backed off immediately. All of the stuff inside Iran is either aircraft-type drones, launched from, err, the complete emptiness of space and not at all prepared bases in Azerbaijan or Iraqi Kurdistan or wherever, or FPV drones and ATGMs set up literally within a few miles of their targets. Yes, I know the Iranians claim to have shot down a bunch of F-16s and F-35s, but I’ve yet to see any physical proof of said, even from the gung-ho Pars Today.
Back to standoff attacks, this is where air-launched cruise missiles like Storm Shadow/Scalp and Taurus would be most useful. Remember, it took the Russians some time to adapt their, better, systems to intercepting these, in part because they are so fast – in and out of the covered sector of a Tor or a Pantsyr system in literally 5-6-7 seconds. So you have to set up layered networked defenses to pass targets to one another, and train the operators to mash that button in record time. I have no idea whether the Iranians have had the practice.
On the other hand, Iran has been investing quite a bit into short- and medium-ranged air defenses, at least so far as I can tell without learning how to read Persian. As well, if I had a limited number of S-300s or their equivalents, I would not sit most of them at the border looking out, I’d sit most of them near a few key facilities on the inside. So when we get to the part where B-2 bombers are supposed to fly directly over Natanz to drop their bunker busters, I have no idea what will happen. Maybe the B-2s are stealthy enough to beat Iranian air defenses; maybe they are not; maybe the strike will be timed to coincide with a massive drone attack, so that the local air defenses are overwhelmed, which is what I would do. We have literally never tested the concept of flying a low-observable bomber directly over a protected area, and I do not count the two wars against Iraq, since Iraqi air defenses were a) pitiful and b) quickly neutralized. And that one F-117 shot down in Serbia, that was more of an ambush to take advantage of lackadaisical mission planning than anything else.
It would be fun to test such a concept, not the least since the whole sales pitch for the B-25 is its alleged ability to fly over (!) northwestern China and then come back. But that’s another story.
Bottom line, I can totally see scenarios where the US, provided some sane and careful planning is done, avoids any aircraft losses at all while pounding surface-level targets across Iran. It will do nothing to Natanz, but that’s never been the point. The point has been to inflict pain on the soft fleshy parts, if you will, to – hypothetically – either force the Iranians to unconditionally capitulate, or to destabilize the regime enough to install your own puppet. I say hypothetically, because I am yet to see any strategic bombing campaign, at any time in history, that has achieved this, and remember that Serbia capitulated not because of the bombs, but because a pliant Russian government threatened to cut off its natural gas. As I dimly recall the events of over a quarter century ago. But that’s the theory, at least…
…as to Iran’s options, none of them are really good ones, other than to grin and bear it. Yes, you can hit American bases in the area, but if I were the Americans, I’d already be pulling personnel and equipment out of those (and in at least one case, this appears to have actually happened). Yes, you can close the Straits, but I might actually NOT do this, because some proportion – I am not sure how much – of Iranian oil still goes out by tanker. Sinking an American carrier would be nice, if American admirals were so stupid as to actually bring one close in. But that’s really a gesture. Outlast the Americans, not give them a quick victory, and keep striking at targets of opportunity (and Israel), and then hope that TACO will TACO, as he had just done in Yemen? I guess…
Tj
Iran can make it interesting by taking out the 8 desalination plants.
Raymond Carter
As well as Israel’s electricity supply.
ambrit
Don’t forget the Dimona nuclear complex down in the Negev. Plus, wherever Israel stores most of its atomic warheads.
Wukchumni
…are those the warheads with enriched chutzpah?
mrsyk
Yup, there will be a price. It appears that Iran can hit what they want, more or less. I read there’s 150K US citizens (that seems low to me) stuck in Israel. Perhaps they will become the equivalent of a “false flag” for the purposes of united domestic public opinion if the “human shield” strategy doesn’t pay.
Acacia
At least some of them are probably in submarines.
yarpos
Why “as well”? no electricity no desal. Depends I guess if you have plans to occupy and dont want to destroy all
Carolinian
Alastair Crooke claimed from sources that the previous Israeli attack months ago was stopped when their planes were painted by a new Iranian developed over the horizon radar–stopped outside Iranian airspace. If Simplicius is right then that is evidence that Crooke was also right.
alfred venison
Now the Chinese navy has arrived in the Persian Gulf, in the form of two electronic surveillance ships, nos 855 & 815A (from OSINT Updates on X today). Read in conjunction with the recent arrival in Tehran of a couple of Chinese heavy air transports, with secret cargoes, it looks like China has come to assist Russia in providing advanced air defences.
The Rev Kev
Wait, are they even allowed to do that?
Disaffected
By whom?
Wisker
I think this is wishful thinking–and frankly I’m increasingly skeptical of Crooke’s earlier radar story. Iran’s air defense is barely capable of downing Israeli heavy UAV’s flying over Iran in broad daylight. Maybe they’re keeping their powder dry or maybe they’re just not up to the task.
China and Russia appear to be doing little to nothing, and Putin was even covering his behind yesterday(?) effectively saying ‘Iran didn’t ask for military help, so don’t blame me’. His offer of mediation–as if Russia was diplomatically equidistant from Iran and Israel–was grotesque.
Russia and China almost certainly can’t provide meaningful air defense unless they send their own crews, and even then… More importantly there’s not much indication that they are so inclined. Rather the opposite, in fact.
China is presumably sending those ships to glean useful EW data for their own purposes. Pretty common practice.
Gregorio
How far can a 30,000 lb ‘bunker buster’ glide?
I’m guessing not too far.
They [GBU-57 “bunker-buster”]can be lobbed towards the target, from what distance I know not. This was a commonly practiced scenario for bomber crews during Cold War. As far as I can tell, the B2 is the only aircraft we have that is capable of doing this.*
*It is not far-fetched to imagine deployment from a C130 or C17, but allowances would need to be made for configuration and extraction, and both would make for big, slow targets.
Thuto
In other words, unless if i’m reading you wrong, this will all be a cakewalk and the Americans will hardly break a sweat. I bet the Israelis were this confident going in, but war never quite goes the way the planners, in their zeal to strike the enemy, convince themselves it will go. Sure Israel isn’t America but Iran isn’t Iraq either. You make no mention of the implications of a wider regional war that sets the Middle East on fire. I don’t claim to know how things will pan out if the US joins this war in an offensive capacity and the dominos start falling in all sorts of unpredictable directions, I suspect very much that despite what is clearly impressive technical know how on weapon systems and tactical formations on your part, you don’t either.
Unironic Pangloss
no, he is giving a reasonable, realistic, best-case scenario in which a nominally “rational” POTUS can attack but (relatively) minimize another round of escalation.
Trump and Kurilla are the wild cards.
good think the media and Dems. relentlessly mocked TACO all June and May. surely tump has nothing to prove
The Heretic
Perhaps the Dem’s are part of the Octopus that manipulates Trump, knowing that he cannot tolerate being percieved and mocked as weak… hence the Octopus gets the war it wants
NakedEmperor
I don’t think Russia and China can afford a defeated Iran. If the US attacks Iran things might get very interesting. Russia and China’s presidents tend to be cautious, so I don’t expect them to join the battle immediately. If Iran can hold its own they will stand pat, but if it looks like Iran will fall both Russia and China may intervene in some manner militarily.
Polar Socialist
Mr. Putin just said in a meeting with foreign correspondents that Russia is not giving S-400 system to Iran because Iran has not asked for any. I assume the message here is that Russia is ready to give material help to Iran if and when Iran needs and asks for any such help.
But for now Russia is providing diplomatic support as agreed between the two countries.
amfortas the hippie
i expect R and C(especially C) to engage really, really asymmetrically…and im leaning towards what others have said on various threads…economically.
they could cut usa off from so many things that we cant make any more, and cant really get anywhere else.
and that would have a certain delicious symmetry to it…that the very same bunch who sent the plant to china(so they wouldnt hafta pay americans) are the same ones instigating this global war now that their earlier decisions have come back to haunt them.
as i said the other day, my nearest walmart appears to be out of clothing,lol…and arent expecting resupply, because they removed all the racks and shelves, etc from that whole area.
i also wonder how many R and C subs are lurking off the coasts of USA, right now.
and one totally accidental exoatmos EMP above CONUS, and thats it…we’re in 1912.
i am the only person i know in real life who could(and has, and sometimes does) live like that.
Rui
China has been quite happy to deepen economic ties with Israel during the last 2 years of genocide and despite Israel previous attacks on Iran.
amfortas the hippie
the most patient and long term thinking government on the planet, right now.
WJ
The Iran hawks do not have a reverse gear, as Mercouris says. If the initial US bombing campaign proves ineffective and/or results in significant American losses, the US will eventually either have to escalate to tactical nuclear attacks or withdraw, as they are not positioned logistically for a deployment longer than a couple weeks.
Kouros
What is the longest range of this air delivered missiles? Up to 500 km? So 500-200 is 300km inside Iran. How far a reach is that? Are there many objectives in reach? Not Teheran.
Offtrail
“sane and careful planning” would rule out an attack on Iran altogether.
ambrit
Include in Iran’s air defenses the Pakistani Chinese made J series of air interceptors. The results from the recent dust up between Pakistan and India over Kashmir showed the J’s as having excellent capabilities. As far back as the 1980s, Japan squeezed a phased array radar into the nose cone of some of their air interceptors. Those radars were able to “paint” ‘stealth’ aircraft. Surely the Chinese can do the same. I would say that true “stealth” technology is a chimera.
See: https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/iran-and-pakistan-are-stepping-up-their-military-cooperation
Another question here is the extent to which Russia will share their best anti-air technology with Iran in the near future, if not at once.
Add to all this the possibility that if England enters the fray on the side of Israel, Iran could “degrade” the UKs airfields on Cyprus. Then where could the Israeli jets escape to when Israel’s military airfields are disabled? Incirlik in Turkey? I can well imagine Turkey declaring neutrality and impounding any Israeli air assets that land at Turkish airfields in extremis. That would truly be a “Game Over” moment for Israel.
Finally, as noted elsewhere in this thread, were Iran to blow up the Israeli desalination plants, the country would very soon become unlivable for a large part of its population.
Stay safe.
amfortas the hippie
re: true stealth.
yeah. the only actually stealthy plane is the one that aint actually there, at all.
that said, the 2 B52’s ive seen over my place…i could hear and feel the damned things for 30 minutes…but i could only actually see them when they were directly overhead. and both these incidents were on clear, mostly cloudless, days.
something to do with the paint, i suppose.
and the altitude….so high that they appeared no bigger than my thumb on my outstrecthed hand.
ive heard them several times since, but never seen them(one never forgets that sound)
regardless, i wouldnt be in any of these airframes that are apparently fixin to enter Iranian airspace for any amount of money.
no one has any idea what they have…nor what theyve obtained on the downlow from china or russia…perhaps months, or even years, ago.
the situational awareness of all 3 seem far better than what obtains in the usa…i mean china flew an enormous balloon over most of the northern tier of conus(where a bunch of our strategic stuff is, btw) and we had to scramble to intercept.
i hope our own incompetence and ineptitude saves the world, once again.
Polar Socialist
For over two decades Iran has developed an integrated air defense system, consisting of about 3,600 defense zones in 9 air-defense regions connected to the central command center that unifies the army and revolutionary guard branches.
Each of the defense zones can act independently, even if they are networked even with the civil aviation systems (the IRGC Tor-battery that shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane was not connected to the central network).
Iran has multiple static and mobile radar stations operating at multiple frequencies and connected trough the air-defense regions to the central air-defense network. 7 of them are supposed to be Russian Resonance-NE radars with 1,200 km range. Iran is also manufacturing domestic mobile C&C nodes especially for air-defense to connect any AA battery, section or division into the nation-wide network.
All that said, Iran is a big country, so it’s practically impossible to defend every direction and every place. Even now the Ukrainians manage to stuff trough the Russian defenses, even though they can only hit from predictable directions. Also, Iranian missiles are obviously getting trough the layered and very concentrated Israeli air-defenses 40-60% of the time.
In my mind the simple truth is that Iran still has strategic depth to learn the ropes (like Russia has) of good air-defense, while Israel hardly does – it’s running out of domestic interceptors and can’t soak up as many hits.
amfortas the hippie
israel also appeared to be in ruins, just before they cut the feed.
im fixin to reopen the window with the fifty x feeds and see what i can glean.(havent done this, so far, today)
last two are the more meaty bits to chew on…the first is just the fat.
DJG, Reality Czar
Oh, come on. So now we are at another “American loses its innocence” moment. One million dead in Project Ukraine, mainly Ukrainian soldiers. A minimum of 200,000 dead in Gaza — I will no longer accept that figleaf estimate of oh, it’s only 40,000. Must not be a genocide. Thousands dead and arrested on the West Bank — no one is keeping count.
And the party of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and the egregious Tammy Duckworth, who is so stupid that she had two feet shot out from under her in Iraq, is now disabled, and supports every war imaginable, is seeking moral authority? What moral authority?
To wit:
“This is now defining for the Democratic Party,” Khanna told HuffPost on Wednesday. “Are we going to criticize the offensive weapons for Netanyahu and the blank check? Are we going to stand up with clarity against the strikes on Iran? Are we going to actually be the party of peace, or are we going to be just another party of war?”
Please. This is the party that hates its own base, that is corrupt down to its liberal underpants, and hasn’t delivered on any concrete material benefits for the populace in years.
The future is very murky, and the US of A is relying on crackpots and moral zeroes like Starmer, Merz, Zelensky, and Kaja Kallas.
Yet I also recall the oracle of Delphi: A great empire will fall.
Yes, more “all hat, no cattle” Ro Khanna, yet another Dem who at best bloviates when it is way too late to stop a runaway freight train.
NakedEmperor
Ro Khanna is a perfect representative of the American people. As a whole, the American public is “all hat, no cattle”. There is no fight in the American people. None whatsoever. Look how the vast majority are pushed around and shoved around, with nary a peep and certainly not anything that would directly threaten the powers that be.
jobs
It’s worse. Many USians glorify and cheer on people like Trump and Musk who are actively pillaging and destroying their country.
No doubt all the Second Amendment folks are carefully keeping their powder dry.
The stupid, it burns. And it might get us all killed.
Ashu
But at least he is trying right. I think Ro realizes that his party is run by war mongers so this is the farthest he feels he can stick his neck out.
Not saying he is amazing but better than most democrats, which I agree is not saying much.
hk
Remember that one of the empires in the Delphic Oracle was Persia–y’know, the one that didn’t fall–and the other empire, the one that fell, was ruled by a billionaire?
amfortas the hippie
Asinus ad Lyram, all the way down.
Antifa
imperitia usquequaque
ChrisPacific
About 25 years too late for Democrats to start trying to be the party of peace.
Ro Khanna should pray that Trump doesn’t call his bluff, or we’d all be treated to the spectacle of Democrats lining up obediently to vote near-unanimously in support.
Late Introvert
I would take it all the way back to the McGovern loss to Nixon, that’s when the peaceniks* were shown the door and it’s been two parties who act as one ever since.
*they even had a snarky name, Dem’rats have form as they say around here
JonnyJames
As is typical, the D faction in Congress display full-blown hypocrisy and cynical manipulation of public opinion. They must appear to oppose this to mobilize the disgruntled D “base” in order to get a “blue wave” in the midterms.
Almost to a person, they have voted to support Israel, fund Israel, and arm Israel (in flagrant violation of the AECA and other legislation). They vote to expand DoD budgets and additional military appropriation bills. Most voted to (illegally) arm Ukraine. Almost all of the Congress critters in both houses, in both “parties” fully support genocide. As Rob Urie noted yesterday, there is no electoral solution to oligarchy and institutional corruption. Congress, as an institution could be considered a criminal organization.
Glen
One wonders what Russia and China will do. Here’s one thing done:
Plus, sometime in the future, historians will note that it was somewhere between W and Trump 2 that America passed from a functional republic to an empire. DOGE could save some serious coin firing the whole Legislative branch, and turning the Capitol and legislative buildings into a tourist attraction. But the National Park Service will have to modify some of the displays:
–Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
JonnyJames
That is more interesting news, we”ll have to see if China and Russia will come to the aid of Iran in a more significant way.
Depending on definitions, we could say the US has been an empire for well over 100 years, since the “Spanish American” war.. In an abstract way, the US was an imperial project from the very beginning, an offspring of the British Empire. Now we can say it is the dying Anglo-American empire
The US is not a “res publica” but rather a “res privatae”
It is run by a private oligarchy. The public have little say in the matter. With the last few US regimes, it should be obvious.
Glen
The Spanish American war was certainly an expansion of empire, but Congress had its part, it declared war:
Especially since the AUMF and the Patriot Act, and the whole “War on Terror”, Congress has been acceding it’s role to the Executive branch to the point now where Trump just ignores it. By what authority granted to the President by Congress is America going to war in Iran?
Henriux Miller
[Replying to JonnyJames
June 19, 2025 at 11:02 am]
Indeed, V.I. Lenin called the American intervention in Cuba’s Independence War (second of such wars initiated by Cubans who were fighting for independence from Spain, in the 19 century) the “first imperialist war” of modern capitalism. The American 1898 intervention in Cuba, by the way, also known as the Spanish-Cuban-American war and fully supported and encouraged by some of the most prominent US press at the time, is at the root of all the friction, disagreements, and historically problematic relationship between Cuba and the USA, an animosity that is still well and alive today.
amfortas the hippie
ive thought about this question for a long time…and there have been numerous arguments and discussions about it out here for almost as long.
i landed on spanish/american war=>WW1, as a pre-imperial phase…nacent imperium, perhaps.
but the real deal didnt get going until the last days of WW2, esp with the OSS/CIA activity during that time.
we’ve been an empire, with an awesome PR Division, ever since.
and now we’re going down into perdition like just about every empire before us.
(with enough squinting, and maybe standing on one leg, china and persia might be considered the exceptions..with a lot of local caveats and idiosyncrasies…due to their(as in current parlance) civilisational state status.
…as well as their largely independent early development, and how thats manifested in how people think/believe/emote/etc.
(suddenly possessed by the spirits of jos. campbell, with a bit of wallerstein whispering around the edges))
Es s Ce Tera
I’ve already started to think about what the world might look like with the US and Israel defeated militarily, diplomatically, economically, etc., which seems to be the likely outcome here.
It feels like it would be a much more peaceful world, but at what price.
WJ
I think that is very premature. The US retains the most powerful Air Force / Navy in the world by a large margin, and is capable of inflicting significantly more damage on Iran than Israel. If US involvement was *always* in the works, moreover, (and I think it was), the US will already have planned a guerilla insurgency timed to coincide with their air campaign. I assume the MEK and Sunni Mercenary sleeper cells are being prepped as we speak. The aim will be to cause as much damage and chaos and death among the Iranian populace as quickly as possible. Iran *might* withstand such a campaign, but it might not—especially if the US decides to escalate to tactical nuclear attacks.
Can the Iranians inflict enough damage upon Israeli and American assets and personnel quickly enough to deter the Americans from further escalation and push them to declare a “symbolic” victory while deescalating behind the scenes? I think that is the Iranians only way out.
Es s Ce Tera
I agree the US and Israel will resort to all of these. This is what defeat looks like. Especially when they use the nuclear option.
Kouros
The initial attack on Iran was coordinated with the Americans and very likely CIA was involved. So all the activation of MEK cells has likely been exhausted already. There isn’t another wave of inside moves, this time better coordinated by the US. What we have seen was likely the combined effort.
As for the far superior US Air Forces and Navy, compared with Israel, do you think who has superior forces, Iran or Yemen?
WJ
Look, obviously Iran. But we didn’t put the weight of two carrier strike groups, hundreds of fighters, and the full bombing arsenal against Yemen. We are logistically positioned for 1-2 weeks of constant aerial assault. I just think it is naive to believe that we cannot do real damage to Iranian population centers and military structures.
juno mas
“We”, of course, is not we as a nation, but a select group of elites who believe they will only be affected tangentially by war with Iran. Unfortunately, any attack on Iran is going to motivate Russia and China to participate. It is going to disrupt commerce around the world and likely impact North America ($10/gal gasoline?).
Soon enough warlords will emerge across the USA to manage the chaos. What’s not to like.
amfortas the hippie
“Soon enough warlords will emerge across the USA to manage the chaos. What’s not to like.”
aye. sadly, that remains the core of my Preps.
be in a position, materially, organisationally, and even socially, to be the “Good Warlord”….or at least the Merlin/Gandalf.
because thats where weve been headed for as long as ive been paying close attention.
if all that fails, there is of course the Old Man in the Mountain/Hashashishem road…in order to level the field, as it were.
but regardless.
its pure hopium to keep insisting that its 1995…which is where much of our “Betters”…as well as WK…seem to be stuck.
eg
Of the Tolkeinesque options available to you, Amfortas, I recommend Bombadil …
Es s Ce Tera
In this case, what good is doing damage, even real damage, to Iranian population centers and military structures?
US power was in the ominous threat of using and wielding its power. If in using and wielding it the US demonstrates incapacity, what is currently happening with Ukraine and will happen in Iran, then that power is no longer. World belief in that power, real or imagined, was necessary to sustain it.
The buck truly stops with Trump on this one.
mrsyk
Maybe this is where the eschatological part begins in earnest..
amfortas the hippie
aye.
belief matters.
“no one can beat the amurkin legions”
or
“the dollar will of course remain the gold standard”
or
“america is a democratic republic, not a flailing empire”
or
” that dollar has intrinsic value that has nothing to do with belief”
Can we make a strategic achievement like getting Iran to surrender?
Less clear.
mrsyk
How about the Libyan model? That might be the goal.
vao
and Syria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan…
Endless strife, chaos, and misery, wherever the democratic nation builders with a responsibility to protect intervene.
tawal
Palestine
eg
This has ever been the method of the “maritime offshore balancer,” eh?
Kouros
“We are logistically positioned for 1-2 weeks of constant aerial assault”.
Some people can take more than 1-2 weeks of aerial assaults. The US is not equipped for long attritional warfare, materially and psychologically. Especially not when the target can hit back.
mrsyk
It’s “Shock and Awe”. I’m not convinced that’s going to work either. That Iran will take some intense punishment is a given. Can US/Israel make Libya out of Iran in a short window? What is the price?
It looks like they are going to try.
hk
What I wonder is 1) how much US can do without additional “staging,” that is, without sending large stocks of supplies to support all those airplanes, 2) Even if CentCom has all those stuff, can they be readily used? The Gulf Arabs will have isdues with US military using bades in their soil freely to attack Iran–especially since that means Iran will do something about their oil exports (close the Hormuz, attack terminals?) If US just overruled the sheikhs and kept flyong out airplanes, medium to long term political damage will be wvem bigger than it alreasy is.
ilsm
I entered USAF as a lieutenant in 1972.
Vietnam was a school, no one passed the final exam.
US had air superiority over the whole region! Bomb anywhere we wanted took some losses, but acceptable. US lost that war.
Bombing effect are spectacular and make good tv! They did not contribute to strategic goals.
US will have no more success against Iran than it did to the Houthi.
For US and Israel Iran is a huge tar baby that will absorb all their jabs and not be slowed.
I have not heard anyone talking about sending USAF USMC fighters into the mountains hunting TELs a plan more dangerous and less likely to work than penetrators.
Carolinian
Others of us are old enough to remember that war and you are so very right. Trump the new Lyndon? Kurilla the new Westmoreland? Pacification and body counts ahead?
Even the Israeli/Trump dream of killing the Supreme Leader won’t stop this. Trump probably figures he can somehow declare victory and leave. He’s a boob.
Michaelmas
Carolinian: Trump the new Lyndon?
Lyndon Johnson, revealing that he’d concealed his true political agenda from all his fellow senators in the South for his entire political and that he intended to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite the loss of their support, responded: “What’s the presidency for?”
So, quite likely,, he went along with escalation in Vietnam as part of that. The world is what it is, and Corbyn and Sanders types achieve nothing. Conversely, very occasionally some presumed political hack who spent decades concealing their true agenda so as to be judged a ‘safe set of hands’ and achieve power, may then have a chance of changing things. The CIA and MI6 both vetted and approved of Putin’s ascent as Yeltsin’s heir, for instance.
As for Trump, by contrast, you can say only say he is indeed a self-made man if the saying is true that God doesn’t make trash.
tawal
LBJ went along with Vietnam, because if he didn’t, he knew what happened to JFK was his end too
Michaelmas
That, too, of course.
Trees&Trunks
This one is beautiful starting at 12:30
Iran hits the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange because they want the rich to suffer, not the ordinary people. Hopefully they do this to the US and EU too.
Something to learn for all real left-wing warriors out there.
What an obvious piece of AI generated crap. Nothing to see here, folks.
RA
Oh, on second thought AI would have done a better job. Might have used different voices for the two people for example.
This Tree&Trunks provided link is just nonsensical from the first few seconds.
Lefty Godot
Now would be a good time for soldiers to collectively refuse to follow an attack order. But that won’t happen. And we’ll get the usual media coverage of bombs dropping and buildings exploding with patriotic bunting surrounding the anchor person’s desk. I keep searching for news headlines that describe this (accurately) as “Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran” but, gee, nowhere to be found!
NakedEmperor
Russia’s attack on Ukraine was unprovoked. Israel’s attack on Iran was self-defense. Get with the program!!
Tim N
Wrong. Russia was most certainly provoked by the US and NATO. There are mountains of evidence for this fact, much of it from the people who did the provoking. You have no right or reason to not know these things, to be ignorant of this. The US, the main belligerent in both the Iranian and Ukraine wars, wanted war, provoked it in Ukraine, and got it. Get with program, sonny.
LaRuse
I believe NakedEmperor simply forgot to add the /sarc tag.
mahna
“Get with the program!!” looks lke the /sarc tag to me.
David in Friday Harbor
The only constitutional purpose for a declaration of war is a threat to the United States. That baby got thrown out with the bathwater 75 years ago in Korea. Iran poses no threat to the U.S. but American presidents have been murdering foreigners by the millions for years now. A racist like Trump doesn’t even see Persians as human.
There are many moving pieces. Yesterday Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir dropped by the White House to dine with El Caudillo, an unprecedented meeting. India’s PM Modi declined a similar invitation after the G7 meeting in Canada last week. The civilian government of Pakistan has recently been cozying up to Iran and speaking-out against the unprovoked Israeli attack, but the country is in effect a military dictatorship.
Blogger Ian Welsh and UK-based Policy-Wire are claiming that the Mossad’s infiltration of Iran has been facilitated by the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) — the Indian CIA — relying on the rabidly anti-Muslim BJP government of India and the thousands of Indian tech workers and students who have been allowed to work and study in Iran for over a decade.
Of course the Pakistanis have nukes but lack good ways of delivering them; the Iranians have hyper-sonic missiles but no nukes. Iran and Pakistan also have a long land border. The recent conflict in Kashmir may be pushing the Pakistani civilian government into the Iranian camp but the Pakistani Army has a long and sordid history of being bought-off by the Americans. The question will be whether the right people are being bribed.
hk
I wondered about the Pakistani general’s visit. Has anyone been commenting on what the story might be? I just saw it mentioned briefly on AJ and nowhere else (but I wasn’t watching too carefully).
mrsyk
Trump hosts Pakistani army chief, disagrees with India over India-Pakistan war mediation, Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir at the White House on Wednesday in an unprecedented meeting that risked worsening a disagreement with India over the president’s claim that he stopped last month’s conflict between the nuclear-armed South Asian foes.
I think Trump is trying to keep Pakistan out of the fray. The motivation for that is up for debate. I’m certain we will hear “Trying to stop World War 3”. I think Trump does not want encounters with Chinese made fighter jets.
Maybe the J-35 is ahead of schedule. Pakistan says China offered 40 J-35 stealth aircraft, among others, Breaking Defense, June 10. The development was noted Friday by the Pakistani government’s twitter account, in a list of diplomat achievements credited to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, saying Islamabad had been offered “40 fifth-generation Shenyang J-35 stealth aircraft, Shaanxi KJ-500 Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C), and HQ-19 air defense systems from China,” according to an online translation.
Michaelmas
David in French Harbor: the Pakistanis have nukes but lack good ways of delivering them; the Iranians have hyper-sonic missiles but no nukes.
Nukes are not some generic weapons class. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is widely believed to consist exclusively of some 170 A-bombs — fission bombs — which is to say, versions of the same technology, however further advanced, that the US used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Conversely, no credible public evidence exists that Pakistan has successfully developed or tested modern thermonuclear weapons (fusion-boosted aka hydrogen/H-bombs). These enable much greater variation in the design, type, yield, and — what’s relevant here — physical size of the device. Only with the appearance of thermonuclear weapons could warheads be sufficiently ‘miniaturized’ to be placed on the then-new ICBMs in the latter 1950s.
So Pakistan’s nukes are A-bombs which are big enough they must likely be delivered from sufficiently large aircraft or — conceivably in 2025, I suppose — large drones. Therefore, your hypothetical Axis of Resistance synergy of Pakistani A-bombs with Iranian hypersonic missiles is almost certainly not remotely feasible in reality.
David in Friday Harbor
Several sources suggest that the Pakistanis have produced a couple of dozen tritium-enhanced fusion-boosted compact battlefield thermonuclear warheads that can be air launched using the Ra’ad and Ra’ad II cruise missile platforms.
The Federation of American Scientists is on record that Pakistani nuclear capabilities are being underestimated. The Pakistanis kept secret that Bin-Laden was living in Abbottabad for years. As the saying goes, F-around and find out!
Michaelmas
Interesting. Sources?
David in Friday Harbor
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for one. Search term: “tritium”
Perhaps the Revisionist Zionist fear factor is due to Mossad’s RAW assets detecting Pakistan moving some of these warheads to a “safe haven” during the most recent unpleasantness in Kashmir. Who knows?
We can only speculate why the head of the Pakistan military dropped by for lunch at the White House in the middle of a crisis so close to Islamabad. Maybe he was just out for some air…
Michaelmas
Thanks.
Yarpos
Goodness how hoŕrible. I’d hate to be vaporized by old technology.
Tom Stone
If there was any question about Trump’s sanity…
Has anyone mentioned to Trump that there won’t be anywhere to play Golf after a Nuclear exchange?
Lee
In replacing Biden with Trump we have successfully transitioned from dementia to demented.
Martin Oline
Ah, sanity and dementia seem to be a common affliction. Today on Judge Napolitano his guest Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer made the remark that the Ukraine’s military leadership had lost it’s grip on reality. When influential people are off their rockers, you can bet the small fry that follow them are in the same boat.
Many months ago many people were bemoaning how Military Summary’s Dima was appearing biased in his treatment of that conflict. He had remarked once over a year previously that his in-laws were Ukrainian. I assumed that he was being coerced at that time by Ukraine through his relatives. I think yesterday he opined that Russian and Iranian saboteurs were behind the tanker collision. In the same broadcast he predicts that Iran will surrender in (checks watch) a day.
I think that my programmer sister-in-law was correct, “Garbage in, garbage out.” I no longer watch his videos as he has poor information and no judgement.
HH
I think it likely that the U.S. will strike Fordow and claim that it has destroyed the centrifuges. It will then call off the Israeli attacks, and Netanyahu will declare victory. The non-existent Iranian nuclear bomb program will cease to exist, and Iran will resume building missiles to prepare for the next war. This is the way Trump declared success in his campaign against the Houthis. Absent the internal collapse of Iran’s regime, the U.S. can’t defeat Iran.
hk
I think that’s the best case scenario, so to speak. Israel seems intent on escalating things further, though, that US can’t get away so eadily.
Such “friends” we have…
NakedEmperor
Trump isn’t the “decider”. Jewish billionaires are the deciders. They want Israeli hegemony throughout the entire region. For the US, it wants to stymie China. That is the Holy Grail. In order to accomplish that, Iran must be removed from the picture as far as BRICS and the Belt & Road Initiative are concerned. Iran was always going to be targeted. The non-existent nuclear weapons program is just the excuse as there must be an excuse to attack Iran. Will Russia and China defend BRICS? Will China defend its BRI? This war on Iran poses important tests for both Putin and Xi. Will they rise to the occasion, or will they wilt in the summer sun? We shall see.
disillusionized
The problem is that this would not be a victory for Israel – Indeed it would be a loss, since that was already an option (since almost a decade in fact), meanwhile this war has shattered the Israeli sense of invulnerability. As long as the Iranian regime remains in power, that will remain the case.
Netanyahu has no option to back down, and no interest in doing so – There won’t be another bite of the nuclear apple.
HH
Netanyahu was gambling on collapse of the Iranian regime and/or its overthrow by a full-scale U.S. invasion. Neither is likely. He rolled the dice knowing it was his last chance, just like the Japanese in WWII. The shattered buildings in Tel Aviv mark the end of Israel’s military invulnerability. How many missiles will Turkiye, Egypt, and the Gulf States build in the next few years, now that they know Israel can’t stop them. Unless Israel makes peace, it will face eventual military defeat.
Wukchumni
Torah, Torah, Torah!
amfortas the hippie
looks to me like theyre already defeated(“a mere flesh wound!!”…comes to mind)
bibi and the rest of those guys are done…even with their own people.
ive never been in a bomb shelter under attack…but ive been beaten and buried alive, twice…once by cops.
such moments of extremis focus the mind, and prompt a review of ones choices leading up to such an event.
i find i can still feel compassion for the israeli people…and i reckon they are going through that exact mental/emotional process right now.
vao
“looks to me like theyre already defeated(“a mere flesh wound!!”…comes to mind)
bibi and the rest of those guys are done…even with their own people.”
It is not over till the fat lady sings.
Plenty of things may happen, and there is that 1% (or perhaps even 5%) chance that can turn upset the best laid plans — especially those from frenzied maniacs (Israel), rigid ideologists out of their depth (USA), and calcified, diffident apparatchiks (Iran).
RA
We have a track record for putting a stop, militarily, to things that don’t exist. Look at WMDs and how we stopped their non-existence from spreading by invading Iraq.
This time I hope we can quickly destroy a non-existent nuclear enrichment site (because – near a bomb for 30 yrs or so) and avoid the Israel-Iran war that might drag on.
Imagine a thing that doesn’t exist not needing bombing. Nope, with past history, that seems unlikely, I guess.
Updating Condoleezza Rice’s words, Let’s make a smoking hole before they can make a mushroom cloud.
Kouros
So, Hail Trump?
But Caesar conquered Gaul and won a civil war (including from the grave via his adopted son).
The mustachio man also had some victories under the belt…
hk
Caesar also punished Pompey’s murderers: if you mess with Romans, even Caesar’s enemies, you are still dissing Rome and you will pay. I think, without that, he could never have become the Roman leader. Our so-called leaders, otoh, eagerly call on foreigners to do their dirty job, includibg against donestic foes. That’s bo way ti build an empire.
MicaT
IMO he will bomb Iran sooner than later due to the damage Israel is taking and from what hes saying.
And as if that isn’t scary enough, I guess he really admires Truman and what he did with Japan and ending the war meaning nuclear weapons.
It seams he wants his own war, not ones that Biden started, cue up Iran.
Terrifying beyond comprehension
Anthony Martin
Bibi orders Trump to put US boots on the ground in Iran. Faster than Biden, Trump jumps up and says: Yes, sir!!
Israel First….MAGA…hah!
marku52
MAGA…..Miriam Adelson Governs America
Rip Van Winkle
100,000,000 reasons why. A lot before that, too.
LawnDart
Awesome.
Lefty Godot
More American Genocide Abetting
stickNmud
MIT Prof Ted Postol speaking with Lt. Col. Daniel Davis deflates the GBU-57 bunker buster myth. Postal: “bunker busters are likely to have very low rates of success”.
The deep bunker of Iran’s Fordow facility is reportedly 800 meters below the surface– or 2600 feet. With maximum of 200 feet penetration by GBU-57, that leaves 2400 feet of rock and subsoil to absorb the blast, plus the structure of the bunker ceiling is likely designed to resist a massive blast. So why would the USAF risk the shoot down of a precious B-2, and consequent PR disaster?
Samuel Conner
If they have information about location and depth of access tunnels, they might be able to temporarily cut off the deep galleries from the surface by collapsing those.
It might be enough to declare “mission accomplished”, at least with respect to that site.
Michaelmas
stickNmud: …the GBU-57 bunker buster myth. Postal: “bunker busters are likely to have very low rates of success”.
Thank you.
Samuel Conner: ...if they have information about location and depth of access tunnels, they might be able to temporarily cut off the deep galleries from the surface by collapsing those. It might be enough to declare “mission accomplished”
It seems improbable that the Iranians won’t have built with precisely this possibility in mind, so their preparations will include, forex tunnels — underground roadways — opening on the surface many miles away.
Socal Rhino
It’s not just depth. Anyone building such a complex would include offsets (bunker is not below entrance) and deflection features that likely cause the bomb to “skim” along shallow depths or get bent and tumble, similar to how reactive armor works. Postel walked Danny Davis through an explanation of this. Per Postel, Iranians are far from stupid.
Seems clear the nuclear capability is a pretext for region change.
stickNmud
I don’t remember where I got the 800M depth, but I assumed it was a fact and did not think to verify. Today, June 19, Southfront wrote that the Fordow “plant lies some 80-90 meters underground, making it completely immune to strikes with regular bunker buster bombs.”. Yes, 80-90m is at least 260 feet, so still deeper than the 200 feet that the GBU-57 can penetrate, and the plant doubtless has a thick concrete angled ceiling, but it may be more vulnerable than I thought. First sentence of Southfront post:
President Donald Trump told his defense officials the United States should only strike Iran if its massive “bunker buster” bomb could definitely destroy the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, The Telegraph reported on June 19.
This questioning by Trump of the claims by the bomb-Iran hawks on the efficacy of the bunker busting bombs may give Trump an ‘out’, and he has now given himself two weeks to decide. So this could be yet another TACO event, even after he humiliated DNI Gabbard with his answer to reporters question “I don’t care what she said”. If Trump had the presence of mind to stick to Netanyahu’s ‘immanent nuclear threat’ narrative, he could have said that the facts have changed since Gabbard’s March (sworn) statement at her confirmation hearing. Not sure if this shows Trump is just dumb, or that he really was ‘out of the loop’ on Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, and has not been properly briefed/rehearsed on the official narrative.
Podvig:
I’m wondering if this would qualify as a “chatter” about a possibility that the US using nuclear weapons (if you understand what I mean):
Lewis:
References to “tactical” nuclear weapons in this otherwise great @guardian story by @hugolowell are misleading. The US would drop a strategic B61-11 nuclear earth penetrator with a yield of 300 or 400 kilotons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 21 kt.
theguardian.com/world/2025/j… Jun 19, 2025 · 4:48 PM UTC
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
W.H. Auden
Michaelmas
Nice one.
Samuel Conner
I have an uneasy sense that many elected Ds might be OK with a war that turns out badly for US — think of the implications for the midterms.
Not attempting to restrain DJT in the current adventure would be just more of the same in the face of executive overreach since 1/20.
mrsyk
That’s forward thinking, lol. What are the odds of elections in the wake of WW3 I wonder.
There’s a palpable lack of urgency here in the states.
Jason Boxman
Temporary delay (two weeks?), but can this ultimatum be met?
White House says deal with Iran must include “no enrichment of uranium”
From CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said today that a deal with Iran must include “no enrichment of a uranium.”
She reiterated President Donald Trump’s stance that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
Leavitt’s comments about a deal came after she announced in the White House briefing room that Trump would decide whether to launch a strike on Iran within the next two weeks, because he felt there was a “substantial chance of negotiations.”
Within the next two weeks could mean tomorrow, or in two weeks, or anywhere in between.
Meanwhile Israel wants Iran’s ballistic missile program terminated, so it seems the strikes will continue regardless of what Trump does.
Israel will not last two weeks at this level of punishment.
Sushi
Prior to the attack on Iran there were reports of conflict within Israeli society to the effect there were citizens objecting to the ongoing Gaza conflict. This included reports of citizens not reporting for military service.
Since the start of the Iranian conflict there is reported to have been imposed a strict censorship. Have not seen any further reports of internal social conflict. Citizens who welcomed the leveling of Gaza and be unlikely to welcome a similar leveling within Israel.
What is the possibility of regime change in states other than Iran?
hk
I concur. I have this nagging suspicion that the “two weeks” is really Trump (or whoever) wanting to see if Israel can keep it together that long and decide what to do then.
WobblyTelomeres
“Israel will not last two weeks at this level of punishment.”
Bibi has a lot of faith in his handling of Trump. Guess he, too, has a copy of the Epstein tapes.
NakedEmperor
That’s all for show and typical Trump bluster. Trump knows that Iran will not accept “zero enrichment” so making that the heart of his “deal” is a non-starter from the get go. He knows this. He says what he says for domestic consumption. The only real reason Trump may delay attacking Iran is because he fears things may go very badly and so he is likely requesting strong assurances from the Pentagon that things will go “very well”.
Michaelmas
NakedEmperor: … he (Trump) is likely requesting strong assurances from the Pentagon that things will go “very well”.
Yup. Whoever gives him those assurances, though, will then have their heads on the line if/when it all goes wrong.
disillusionized
Israel is pushing for both no enrichment and no missiles, primarily to scupper the agreement.
I can’t believe even they think Iran would agree (particularly the missiles).
GramSci
Two weeks! Yves is right. TACO!
I’m desperately clutching at unfounded hope for the political acumen of Donald Trump: He’s given his racist base an increasingly costly labor force his Chamber of Commerce supporters won’t allow. Through threat of tariffs, he’s given his NATO frenemies free reign to fund their own war on Russia– enough rope to hang themselves, just as now with Miriam Adelson’s down payment on war against Iran.
TACO makes a lot of sense to any politician with an instinct for survival. Survival trumps intelligence every time.
Lefty Godot
Right. I bet the US is dropping its first bombs as soon as the stock market closes tomorrow. The one thing you can count on now is that whenever one of “our” leaders opens they/their mouth, a lie comes out.
Randall Flagg
Or, the US waits until Monday, allowing Trump”s buddies, Congresscritters and other assorted Grifters to position on Friday for a Monday market dive, oil rising etc., you get the picture.
Wisker
I think Israel can keep this up for a while unless Iran escalates to something like power (or water) infrastructure. Israeli leadership has spoken of ‘bracing for 5000 civilian deaths’. Sounds optimistic and yet Israel has suffered nowhere near that because Iran is restrained and loathe to escalate.
99.9% of Israelis are not directly affected by the current strikes other than running to bomb shelters–which they are used to doing at this point. Ukraine has suffered such strikes for years and the citizenry seems pretty indifferent to them. What “reaches out and touches” every civilian is the power and/or water going out. This has caused rare public protests in Ukraine–Odessa springs to mind.
Israeli hubris may force Iran’s hand if Israel starts in on major infrastructure strikes. Iran would have to respond in kind, I imagine. Whose civilian population will cry uncle first in such a situation?
raspberry jam
Unlike most commenting here I have direct and daily interaction with dozens of Israelis (I am neither Zionist nor Israeli) and I concur with all you’ve written. I’m surprised by the degree of ‘Israel is in ruins’ and ‘Israelis have been cowering in stairwells for a week now they’re about to break’ commentary here. It isn’t and they are not (they spent months at a time last year running for the shelters and so far the alerts have been far less frequent although larger munitions). They’re not cowering, they’re pissed off and truly believe they have no choice but to fight back to end this ‘once and for all’. Whether we believe that to be self-serving given what they’ve been doing to Gaza and Lebanon is irrelevant. Whether we believe Netanyahu/Ben Gvir are cynically playing this to their advantage is irrelevant. Enough Israelis below them have been convinced they have been backed into a corner and their lives, families, futures, finances etc in Israel are at stake. They will tolerate a lot more than this if they think there is a light at the end of the tunnel and right now that is being dangled in front of them.
Yes there is military censorship. Yes it is likely the full scope of the severity of strikes – especially on strategic and military sites – is not known to the public. Yes it is likely Iran still has some undisplayed options and is holding them in reserve until the US enters the fray. This does not mean Israel has only a little time left.
Then please tell me why were Israelis trying to leave in large numbers? Why did Israel have to bar their exit by airport? Why are there many reports of Israelis with dual passports leaving on packed full ferries and yachts?
At a minimum, there seems to be sample bias among your interlocutors. The ones who are trying to flee are busy getting out and figuring where to wind up.
Some in the queue below are doubtless people who were visiting and stranded. Still:
Isralies leaving Israel now
More than 30 thousands already left to Cyprus via ship .
Israelis are fleeing by land to Sinai, then to Cairo, and continuing on to foreign countries as a result of the Iranian attacks. pic.twitter.com/k3PZJg3ypK
Sad to see 1,500 diaspora @birthright Israel participants leave the Jewish state today.
Here’s them partying it up as they celebrate returning to NYC and other dangerous western cities as they are dancing on a cruise ship, Cyprus bound evacuating from israel.
See Haaretz, only tourists will be allowed to depart. Those with dual citizenship will have to go through an approval process, which means at best delay and odds of denial:
While requests from foreigners and tourists to leave Israel on rescue flights will be approved almost automatically, Israelis, including dual citizens, will need to provide detailed reasons for leaving amid the ongoing war with Iran…
The committee will prioritize and approve the requests according to a predetermined ranking. For example, priority will be given to people in need of urgent medical treatment outside of Israel, or to people who are leaving the country to attend a funeral.
I’m not denying there are many who are fleeing. Most of the people I interact with are sabra (multi-gen born in Israel) and have dual or triple citizenship with European countries. These are senior tech/startup people, not diaspora, not returnees. They have aging parents to take care of and kids in school in addition to property, and these are the stated reasons why they’ve mentioned they wouldn’t leave. The obvious corollary is they are also ex-IDF and in many cases ex-intelligence officers. These are true believers although more on the secular end than the messianic end (not a lot of beards on the men or support for the current government). Yes, this is going to skew my sample and what anecdata I share here. My point is that this is a society that has proven they’re willing to do heinous shit to keep what they have and as they continue to be hyped up to believe they are being backed into a corner and at risk of annihilation, quite a lot will bristle, endure and fight back. And this is going to have a bigger outcome than currently projected by those commenting/discussing and linked here.
To be clear and to restate something I said a few days ago, I think we’re going to step back from the abyss this time via negotiation over the next week. But this will resume again at some point in the next 6-9 months and I think then it is more likely to escalate to some of the more dramatic scenarios currently being projected. I think this is especially true if the daily strikes/alerts continue at the reduced rate but high impact pace they’ve held this week and Netanyahu continues to remain in dire straits. If dual nationals truly are blocked from leaving a month from now in that scenario then I can also see the need for Netanyahu to continue to manufacture crises of this nature. And I do believe eventually his luck will run out; whether that coincides with the destruction of Israel or not remains to be seen.
Iran has learned, as Russia has, that Israel and the US are completely dishonest.
And Israel has rejected negotiation. I saw a subhead to a Guardian piece on the European attempts at negotiation (as if they are authorized by the US or Israel? Trump went out of his way to be rude to Macron at the G-7) where the Israel defense minister was still calling for regime change in Iran. So they aren’t even remotely on board with diplomacy.
Iran has said they will stop attacking Israel if Israel stops attacking them.
raspberry jam
I don’t think this round will be resolved by direct diplomacy especially by the Europeans, although Iran’s FM is meeting with European FM’s today. I think it is more likely to be back channel messaging through Qatar or another semi-neutral Arab actor directly to the US. And to be clear I don’t think it will be a full ceasefire or cessation of hostilities, there may even be some US-assisted strikes, but I don’t think they are going to break out the MOPs at this time or do full regime change, whatever that means without the full Iraq-style preparation.
If Israel stops attacking Iran now before Trump officially says “No US assistance, you’re on your own”, Netanyahu’s fragile coalition will collapse and he goes to jail. If, as Wisker suggests above, Iran begins targeting civilian infrastructure and even the sorts I interact with begin moving their children out of Israel for safety then I will believe things are about to get eschatological.
AG
fwiw:
Andrei Martyanov had posted this 30 sec video exchange between head of Mossad and Ben Gvir as proof for Israeli worries. (I was sceptical since this kind of serious discussion on Iran I wouldn´t expect in public). He had it translated since he doesn´t speak Hebrew.
I haven’t been able to find how many are dual citizenship or not, that never seems to get mentioned.
mizzenmast
It is interesting to note that according to Louis René Beresn, “No state, including Israel, is under a legal obligation to renounce access to nuclear weapons.”
What is also interesting is the special case that is Israel operating as the de facto regional enforcer working for the imperial global enforcer and the unlawful development of their own nuclear capability. See for example,
Where a certain hypocrisy is necessary to assume that Iran, as a partner in ‘an axis of evil’ and its nuclear ambitions, whatever they might be, threatens hegemonic dominance and is therefore going to made an example of; where, the imperial policy appears to be, “If you do not do what we want, when we want it done, and how we want it done, very bad things are going to happen”.
Finally, to end on an ‘optimistic’ note regarding nuclear survivability, “some humans would survive, eventually to repopulate the planet, and that a species-level extinction of Homo sapiens is unlikely even after a full-scale nuclear war.” That observation might be a bit of encouraging news for first strike advocates and all those individuals who seem to dislike the situation of having nuclear weapons and not using them.
LawnDart
Re; Ali rope-a-dope
Boxing is a science, and not just a couple of meatheads pounding the crap out of each other in a ring. In meathead vs thinker, a thinker in reasonable condition will most always prevail.
Ali, god bless the man (and Foreman too– good man), was an expert in the ring and out-thought a stronger and more brutal Foreman in this legendary bout: https://youtu.be/nCOvjkbEn3c?si=YTaSLEtu10g6hC5B
So when we’re talking “rope-a-dope” as strategy, that 5-minute video will help to provide context (and I don’t disagree with the analogy– it fits).
JCC
Seymore Hersh’s inside sources say that Trump is going all in with strikes this weekend.
For non-subscribers, he finishes with this:
“Donald Trump clearly wants an international win he can market. To accomplish that, he and Netanyahu are taking America to places it has never been.”
Places we may never get out of.
Sushi
Iran may help Trump get to places it has never been:
The distance between Chabahar, Iran, and Diego Garcia is approximately 3,600 to 3,800 kilometers (2,237 to 2,361 miles).
The Shahab-6 is expected to have a range of 5,470-5,500 and 5,632-6,200 kilometers with a 1,000-750-500 kilogram warhead. This range capability will depend on the number of stages used in the launch vehicle and their performance. December 1996 news reports claimed that Iran is developing a 3,500-mile (5,632 kilometers) range missile called Shahab-6 that would be capable of reaching Europe.
Reportedly the missile would become operational by the year 2,000, though others reports claim that Iran intends to complete the development of this system within five to ten years.
2010 was 15 years ago. TACO may be in for a suprise.
Howard
Sy Hersh is out with his latest Substack release today. His sources have informed him that Trump will begin a heavy bombing campaign coupled with the destruction of the Fordow facility, all leading to the overthrow of the Iranian government. This will start soon after the close of the US markets tomorrow so as to have the whole weekend to digest the attack before US stock markets open on Monday.
Is it written in the US constitution that every President must lead a regime change operation?
Carolinian
Well if he is right then thanks to Si for the heads up.
After his quick victory Trump can move on to taking over Greenland and Panama. Canada look out.
Samuel Conner
Me thinks that it is likely that at some not too distant future time, this will in retrospect be seen to have been such a bad idea (bad even prospectively) that not even JRB would have gone for it.
What a legacy.
nyleta
Does he say whether nuclear weapons are authorised because that is what will be needed ? Filling up our jerry cans here in Australia today, 10 weeks supply in country.
NakedEmperor
Empires must continually expand or they will die. Same with capitalism. Zionism too must continually expand because Zionist billionaires must continually expand their fortunes. It is so written.
Mikel
“This will start soon after the close of the US markets tomorrow so as to have the whole weekend to digest the attack before US stock markets open on Monday.”
It’s almost too predictable.
AG
Hm, I tend to go the other way. That sounds too definitive and detailed. When Hersh still worked for the New Yorker he was predicting a war with Iran too (around 2008 I think). It didn´t happen. If his report was one reason for preventing it, I don´t know. Hersh predicted WWIII over Ukraine 2 years ago and a few other huge events. Which fortunately never happened. After all he is an investigative journalist not the Delphian oracle.
We´ll see.
ArvidMartensen
Trump made the decision long ago. The USA will attack Iran. Wilkerson said as much weeks ago.
Trump’s delays and talk of negotiations are another ploy for a surprise attack. Maybe the old 1, 2.
1. A decapitation strike when US intel sees a weakness/opportunity for maximum damage. Decapitation of personnel and technology.
2. US missiles rain everywhere over Iran straight after
The question is, how have the Israeli’s spies infiltrated the defences of Iran? They have been planning this op for decades.
Tom Stone
Once Greenland bombed Pearl Harbor War with Iran became inevitable, according to White House sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter. .
he’s apparently looking at very different vids than i am
ambrit
Yo amfortas. I definitely want some of the meds this cat is taking. The complete erasure of “Reality”(TM) is quite a trick, even with the help of serious psychotropic substances. It would help me get through the seriously hard times looming on our horizons.
Please don’t tell me that this person is under the “care” of a religious worldview tending towards Millennialism or Eschatology. I cannot go that extra stadia.
Be safe out there in your “Own Private Alamo.”
Hey amfortas, thanks for the heads up re Jacques Cheminade. His video is here, and for those whose French is rusty, turning captions (CC) on and switching autotranslate to English gives you usable subtitles.
I’m curious to know what benefits accrued to the US and Israel during the 30 years or so of the Shah’s rule in Iran. It seems to me that regime changes are overrated. Whatever benefits there are to the regime changer are minimal in the grand scheme of things, and the costs are quite high. Trump and his whisperers aren’t smart enough to recognize a powder keg while they are playing with matches.
(Ludwig, Ludwig
Ludwig, du bist so wunderbar
Ach Ludwig, du machst mich wahnsinnig)
Donald
Where did you lose your smile
Your blue eyes
Are dark from sadness
Your graven-face
Is still orange from madness
Donald
Thatthingonyourhead fascinates me
Sensitive Dandy
Knight of the moonlight
Your kiss-proof make-up
Is melting at midnight
Prince of desire
Hypnotized by candlelight
You are so
Impudent unreal
Churlish King
Chaos is your possession
And also daily policy
Crawl ’round the NeoCon Grotto
Arm in arm with Netanyahoe
Zion-stoned Donald
You missed your flight to Zionland
Where all your fantasies
Came to a flaming end
Zion-stoned Donald
You failed to find your princess
Playing with countries like roaches
Ends in distress
Your
Carrier Strike Groups are watching the pleasure-ground
Dreamer of a self-made Atlantis
It was denied, to you to slay
Old Bibi’s mighty dragon
To join Saint Ronnie’s conference-table
Go down and meet, Melania
On her swimming bed of roses
She’s the one to hold your hands
Sailing away, sailing away, sailing away
On velvet gloves and silky legends
To the Empire-Skyscraper-castle
You Royal-fairy-tale-rebel
Exclusive: Iran delivers response to new US proposal
The Iranian response was sent to the White House just before noon EDT on June 18. The high-ranking source with insight into proceedings described the document to Amwaj.media as “a polite no, but with a good explanation.”
A second senior source described the communication as “long” and in essence stating that Iran, in principle, does not object to negotiations to “discuss possible ways forward.” However, the source stated, it is not politically feasible to do so “while our people are under bombardment.”
The source declined to get into specifics on the substance of the response, but Iran has in the past indicated that it would be open to the idea of a multilateral consortium—as long as such a facility is built on Iranian soil.
The exchanges over June 17-18, which are believed to be direct, come as President Trump has publicly demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” while hinting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be Israel’s next target.
* * * * * *
Andrei Martyanov will be on with Garland Nixon in 30 minutes. No idea what they will talk about in particular. I assume missiles and AD will be among the topics.
Just looking at basics. Israel is a small country, with limited infrastructure in energy, airports, sea ports, petroleum(refine and store) and water(desal)
It seems a somewhat courageous decision to attack a near peer , much larger, enemy and expect it to end well. I guess hubris, expectation of US cavalry and a huke in the back pocket have skewed logic.
I have a nervous feeling this is going to result in a blinding flash over Tehran, and a rethink on who should or shouldnt have the big toys.
Can’t find it now but I was reading an article just the other day about Gen. Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla. He seems to be best buds with the Israelis but one reason that they are pushing for this war is because Kurilla is supposed to be leaving his job in the coming months and the Israelis want ‘their’ general in charge for this war-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kurilla
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/kurilla-israel-iran/
Re exhaustion–don’t forget that the Israeli pubic have been spending every night in shelters and stair wells.
and
Re pressure–it increasingly seems possible if not likely that war with Iran was the plan all along and things just aren’t going the way that they expected. Recall during the Signal chat Vance objected that going after Yemen wasn’t ‘part of the plan.’ But he was fine with blowing up an apartment building.
Has the entire Trump presidency been a con that instead of what was promised will bring us inflation at home and war abroad? Stay tuned…..
it is a reasonable hypotbesis that Kurilla isan American maximalist (who will get trapped by the sunk cost fallacy)
Not good news if you are a America First circumspect realist.
TRK, I always appreciate your spot on comments! Nima’s video with Col. Laurence Wilkerson yesterday is very enlightening, and Wilkerson talks at length about Gen. Kurilla and Centcom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiYieN38leo&t=3117s
The Wilkerson-Nima video referenced above is indispensable. Wilkerson takes no prisoners and his reasoning is impeccable.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/erik-kurilla-donald-trump-israel-iran_n_6851d0d0e4b038d013e288d9
So unpacking the Iranian air defense issue.
First, even if Iran were to be “holding back”, they simply do not possess the kind of long-range air defense and radar systems to compare with, say, the Russians. They have “some” amount of S-300s or their domestically developed equivalents, some of them recently upgraded to effectively be S-300+. These are fine for what they are, but a) do not have the range to reach much beyond Iran’s geographic borders; b) are not very many in number; and c) would have to play hide and seek with American anti-radar missiles.
As well, I am not sure what sort of long-range radar systems Iran still has operational – again, ones that can reach beyond its borders – and their AWACs force seems pretty weak.
With that in mind, if I were planning any American strikes, I’d just have my air groups sit 100-200 kilometers outside of Iran’s borders, covered by EW and anti-radar escorts, just in case, and lob long-ranged missiles into the place. Basically some version of how the Russian air force has been operating after the first few months in 2022, I mean the whole glide-bomb thing was developed in part so that they wouldn’t have to come closer than a few dozen kilometers of their side of the line of contact. And I doubt the Iranians could do much about that.
You will notice that Israeli aircraft, at least according to Russian and Iranian news sources, have basically approached Iran’s borders (maybe flown a few miles in), launched their ordnance, and backed off immediately. All of the stuff inside Iran is either aircraft-type drones, launched from, err, the complete emptiness of space and not at all prepared bases in Azerbaijan or Iraqi Kurdistan or wherever, or FPV drones and ATGMs set up literally within a few miles of their targets. Yes, I know the Iranians claim to have shot down a bunch of F-16s and F-35s, but I’ve yet to see any physical proof of said, even from the gung-ho Pars Today.
Back to standoff attacks, this is where air-launched cruise missiles like Storm Shadow/Scalp and Taurus would be most useful. Remember, it took the Russians some time to adapt their, better, systems to intercepting these, in part because they are so fast – in and out of the covered sector of a Tor or a Pantsyr system in literally 5-6-7 seconds. So you have to set up layered networked defenses to pass targets to one another, and train the operators to mash that button in record time. I have no idea whether the Iranians have had the practice.
On the other hand, Iran has been investing quite a bit into short- and medium-ranged air defenses, at least so far as I can tell without learning how to read Persian. As well, if I had a limited number of S-300s or their equivalents, I would not sit most of them at the border looking out, I’d sit most of them near a few key facilities on the inside. So when we get to the part where B-2 bombers are supposed to fly directly over Natanz to drop their bunker busters, I have no idea what will happen. Maybe the B-2s are stealthy enough to beat Iranian air defenses; maybe they are not; maybe the strike will be timed to coincide with a massive drone attack, so that the local air defenses are overwhelmed, which is what I would do. We have literally never tested the concept of flying a low-observable bomber directly over a protected area, and I do not count the two wars against Iraq, since Iraqi air defenses were a) pitiful and b) quickly neutralized. And that one F-117 shot down in Serbia, that was more of an ambush to take advantage of lackadaisical mission planning than anything else.
It would be fun to test such a concept, not the least since the whole sales pitch for the B-25 is its alleged ability to fly over (!) northwestern China and then come back. But that’s another story.
Bottom line, I can totally see scenarios where the US, provided some sane and careful planning is done, avoids any aircraft losses at all while pounding surface-level targets across Iran. It will do nothing to Natanz, but that’s never been the point. The point has been to inflict pain on the soft fleshy parts, if you will, to – hypothetically – either force the Iranians to unconditionally capitulate, or to destabilize the regime enough to install your own puppet. I say hypothetically, because I am yet to see any strategic bombing campaign, at any time in history, that has achieved this, and remember that Serbia capitulated not because of the bombs, but because a pliant Russian government threatened to cut off its natural gas. As I dimly recall the events of over a quarter century ago. But that’s the theory, at least…
…as to Iran’s options, none of them are really good ones, other than to grin and bear it. Yes, you can hit American bases in the area, but if I were the Americans, I’d already be pulling personnel and equipment out of those (and in at least one case, this appears to have actually happened). Yes, you can close the Straits, but I might actually NOT do this, because some proportion – I am not sure how much – of Iranian oil still goes out by tanker. Sinking an American carrier would be nice, if American admirals were so stupid as to actually bring one close in. But that’s really a gesture. Outlast the Americans, not give them a quick victory, and keep striking at targets of opportunity (and Israel), and then hope that TACO will TACO, as he had just done in Yemen? I guess…
Iran can make it interesting by taking out the 8 desalination plants.
As well as Israel’s electricity supply.
Don’t forget the Dimona nuclear complex down in the Negev. Plus, wherever Israel stores most of its atomic warheads.
…are those the warheads with enriched chutzpah?
Yup, there will be a price. It appears that Iran can hit what they want, more or less. I read there’s 150K US citizens (that seems low to me) stuck in Israel. Perhaps they will become the equivalent of a “false flag” for the purposes of united domestic public opinion if the “human shield” strategy doesn’t pay.
At least some of them are probably in submarines.
Why “as well”? no electricity no desal. Depends I guess if you have plans to occupy and dont want to destroy all
Alastair Crooke claimed from sources that the previous Israeli attack months ago was stopped when their planes were painted by a new Iranian developed over the horizon radar–stopped outside Iranian airspace. If Simplicius is right then that is evidence that Crooke was also right.
Now the Chinese navy has arrived in the Persian Gulf, in the form of two electronic surveillance ships, nos 855 & 815A (from OSINT Updates on X today). Read in conjunction with the recent arrival in Tehran of a couple of Chinese heavy air transports, with secret cargoes, it looks like China has come to assist Russia in providing advanced air defences.
Wait, are they even allowed to do that?
By whom?
I think this is wishful thinking–and frankly I’m increasingly skeptical of Crooke’s earlier radar story. Iran’s air defense is barely capable of downing Israeli heavy UAV’s flying over Iran in broad daylight. Maybe they’re keeping their powder dry or maybe they’re just not up to the task.
China and Russia appear to be doing little to nothing, and Putin was even covering his behind yesterday(?) effectively saying ‘Iran didn’t ask for military help, so don’t blame me’. His offer of mediation–as if Russia was diplomatically equidistant from Iran and Israel–was grotesque.
Russia and China almost certainly can’t provide meaningful air defense unless they send their own crews, and even then… More importantly there’s not much indication that they are so inclined. Rather the opposite, in fact.
China is presumably sending those ships to glean useful EW data for their own purposes. Pretty common practice.
How far can a 30,000 lb ‘bunker buster’ glide?
I’m guessing not too far.
They have to be dropped right over the target.
10-20 km
They [GBU-57 “bunker-buster”]can be lobbed towards the target, from what distance I know not. This was a commonly practiced scenario for bomber crews during Cold War. As far as I can tell, the B2 is the only aircraft we have that is capable of doing this.*
*It is not far-fetched to imagine deployment from a C130 or C17, but allowances would need to be made for configuration and extraction, and both would make for big, slow targets.
In other words, unless if i’m reading you wrong, this will all be a cakewalk and the Americans will hardly break a sweat. I bet the Israelis were this confident going in, but war never quite goes the way the planners, in their zeal to strike the enemy, convince themselves it will go. Sure Israel isn’t America but Iran isn’t Iraq either. You make no mention of the implications of a wider regional war that sets the Middle East on fire. I don’t claim to know how things will pan out if the US joins this war in an offensive capacity and the dominos start falling in all sorts of unpredictable directions, I suspect very much that despite what is clearly impressive technical know how on weapon systems and tactical formations on your part, you don’t either.
no, he is giving a reasonable, realistic, best-case scenario in which a nominally “rational” POTUS can attack but (relatively) minimize another round of escalation.
Trump and Kurilla are the wild cards.
good think the media and Dems. relentlessly mocked TACO all June and May. surely tump has nothing to prove
Perhaps the Dem’s are part of the Octopus that manipulates Trump, knowing that he cannot tolerate being percieved and mocked as weak… hence the Octopus gets the war it wants
I don’t think Russia and China can afford a defeated Iran. If the US attacks Iran things might get very interesting. Russia and China’s presidents tend to be cautious, so I don’t expect them to join the battle immediately. If Iran can hold its own they will stand pat, but if it looks like Iran will fall both Russia and China may intervene in some manner militarily.
Mr. Putin just said in a meeting with foreign correspondents that Russia is not giving S-400 system to Iran because Iran has not asked for any. I assume the message here is that Russia is ready to give material help to Iran if and when Iran needs and asks for any such help.
But for now Russia is providing diplomatic support as agreed between the two countries.
i expect R and C(especially C) to engage really, really asymmetrically…and im leaning towards what others have said on various threads…economically.
they could cut usa off from so many things that we cant make any more, and cant really get anywhere else.
and that would have a certain delicious symmetry to it…that the very same bunch who sent the plant to china(so they wouldnt hafta pay americans) are the same ones instigating this global war now that their earlier decisions have come back to haunt them.
as i said the other day, my nearest walmart appears to be out of clothing,lol…and arent expecting resupply, because they removed all the racks and shelves, etc from that whole area.
i also wonder how many R and C subs are lurking off the coasts of USA, right now.
and one totally accidental exoatmos EMP above CONUS, and thats it…we’re in 1912.
i am the only person i know in real life who could(and has, and sometimes does) live like that.
China has been quite happy to deepen economic ties with Israel during the last 2 years of genocide and despite Israel previous attacks on Iran.
the most patient and long term thinking government on the planet, right now.
The Iran hawks do not have a reverse gear, as Mercouris says. If the initial US bombing campaign proves ineffective and/or results in significant American losses, the US will eventually either have to escalate to tactical nuclear attacks or withdraw, as they are not positioned logistically for a deployment longer than a couple weeks.
What is the longest range of this air delivered missiles? Up to 500 km? So 500-200 is 300km inside Iran. How far a reach is that? Are there many objectives in reach? Not Teheran.
“sane and careful planning” would rule out an attack on Iran altogether.
Include in Iran’s air defenses the Pakistani Chinese made J series of air interceptors. The results from the recent dust up between Pakistan and India over Kashmir showed the J’s as having excellent capabilities. As far back as the 1980s, Japan squeezed a phased array radar into the nose cone of some of their air interceptors. Those radars were able to “paint” ‘stealth’ aircraft. Surely the Chinese can do the same. I would say that true “stealth” technology is a chimera.
See: https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/iran-and-pakistan-are-stepping-up-their-military-cooperation
Another question here is the extent to which Russia will share their best anti-air technology with Iran in the near future, if not at once.
Add to all this the possibility that if England enters the fray on the side of Israel, Iran could “degrade” the UKs airfields on Cyprus. Then where could the Israeli jets escape to when Israel’s military airfields are disabled? Incirlik in Turkey? I can well imagine Turkey declaring neutrality and impounding any Israeli air assets that land at Turkish airfields in extremis. That would truly be a “Game Over” moment for Israel.
Finally, as noted elsewhere in this thread, were Iran to blow up the Israeli desalination plants, the country would very soon become unlivable for a large part of its population.
Stay safe.
re: true stealth.
yeah. the only actually stealthy plane is the one that aint actually there, at all.
that said, the 2 B52’s ive seen over my place…i could hear and feel the damned things for 30 minutes…but i could only actually see them when they were directly overhead. and both these incidents were on clear, mostly cloudless, days.
something to do with the paint, i suppose.
and the altitude….so high that they appeared no bigger than my thumb on my outstrecthed hand.
ive heard them several times since, but never seen them(one never forgets that sound)
regardless, i wouldnt be in any of these airframes that are apparently fixin to enter Iranian airspace for any amount of money.
no one has any idea what they have…nor what theyve obtained on the downlow from china or russia…perhaps months, or even years, ago.
the situational awareness of all 3 seem far better than what obtains in the usa…i mean china flew an enormous balloon over most of the northern tier of conus(where a bunch of our strategic stuff is, btw) and we had to scramble to intercept.
i hope our own incompetence and ineptitude saves the world, once again.
For over two decades Iran has developed an integrated air defense system, consisting of about 3,600 defense zones in 9 air-defense regions connected to the central command center that unifies the army and revolutionary guard branches.
Each of the defense zones can act independently, even if they are networked even with the civil aviation systems (the IRGC Tor-battery that shot down the Ukrainian passenger plane was not connected to the central network).
Iran has multiple static and mobile radar stations operating at multiple frequencies and connected trough the air-defense regions to the central air-defense network. 7 of them are supposed to be Russian Resonance-NE radars with 1,200 km range. Iran is also manufacturing domestic mobile C&C nodes especially for air-defense to connect any AA battery, section or division into the nation-wide network.
All that said, Iran is a big country, so it’s practically impossible to defend every direction and every place. Even now the Ukrainians manage to stuff trough the Russian defenses, even though they can only hit from predictable directions. Also, Iranian missiles are obviously getting trough the layered and very concentrated Israeli air-defenses 40-60% of the time.
In my mind the simple truth is that Iran still has strategic depth to learn the ropes (like Russia has) of good air-defense, while Israel hardly does – it’s running out of domestic interceptors and can’t soak up as many hits.
israel also appeared to be in ruins, just before they cut the feed.
im fixin to reopen the window with the fifty x feeds and see what i can glean.(havent done this, so far, today)
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1935614145350488210
https://x.com/Megatron_ron/status/1935695405523542160
https://x.com/Megatron_ron/status/1935686990999220651
last two are the more meaty bits to chew on…the first is just the fat.
Oh, come on. So now we are at another “American loses its innocence” moment. One million dead in Project Ukraine, mainly Ukrainian soldiers. A minimum of 200,000 dead in Gaza — I will no longer accept that figleaf estimate of oh, it’s only 40,000. Must not be a genocide. Thousands dead and arrested on the West Bank — no one is keeping count.
And the party of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and the egregious Tammy Duckworth, who is so stupid that she had two feet shot out from under her in Iraq, is now disabled, and supports every war imaginable, is seeking moral authority? What moral authority?
To wit:
Please. This is the party that hates its own base, that is corrupt down to its liberal underpants, and hasn’t delivered on any concrete material benefits for the populace in years.
The future is very murky, and the US of A is relying on crackpots and moral zeroes like Starmer, Merz, Zelensky, and Kaja Kallas.
Yet I also recall the oracle of Delphi: A great empire will fall.
Yes, more “all hat, no cattle” Ro Khanna, yet another Dem who at best bloviates when it is way too late to stop a runaway freight train.
Ro Khanna is a perfect representative of the American people. As a whole, the American public is “all hat, no cattle”. There is no fight in the American people. None whatsoever. Look how the vast majority are pushed around and shoved around, with nary a peep and certainly not anything that would directly threaten the powers that be.
It’s worse. Many USians glorify and cheer on people like Trump and Musk who are actively pillaging and destroying their country.
No doubt all the Second Amendment folks are carefully keeping their powder dry.
The stupid, it burns. And it might get us all killed.
But at least he is trying right. I think Ro realizes that his party is run by war mongers so this is the farthest he feels he can stick his neck out.
Not saying he is amazing but better than most democrats, which I agree is not saying much.
Remember that one of the empires in the Delphic Oracle was Persia–y’know, the one that didn’t fall–and the other empire, the one that fell, was ruled by a billionaire?
Asinus ad Lyram, all the way down.
imperitia usquequaque
About 25 years too late for Democrats to start trying to be the party of peace.
Ro Khanna should pray that Trump doesn’t call his bluff, or we’d all be treated to the spectacle of Democrats lining up obediently to vote near-unanimously in support.
I would take it all the way back to the McGovern loss to Nixon, that’s when the peaceniks* were shown the door and it’s been two parties who act as one ever since.
*they even had a snarky name, Dem’rats have form as they say around here
As is typical, the D faction in Congress display full-blown hypocrisy and cynical manipulation of public opinion. They must appear to oppose this to mobilize the disgruntled D “base” in order to get a “blue wave” in the midterms.
Almost to a person, they have voted to support Israel, fund Israel, and arm Israel (in flagrant violation of the AECA and other legislation). They vote to expand DoD budgets and additional military appropriation bills. Most voted to (illegally) arm Ukraine. Almost all of the Congress critters in both houses, in both “parties” fully support genocide. As Rob Urie noted yesterday, there is no electoral solution to oligarchy and institutional corruption. Congress, as an institution could be considered a criminal organization.
One wonders what Russia and China will do. Here’s one thing done:
HISTORIC! First Freight Train From China Wheels Into Iran, Flying In The Face Of American Sanctions
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/first-freight-train-from-china-wheels-into-iran/
Plus, sometime in the future, historians will note that it was somewhere between W and Trump 2 that America passed from a functional republic to an empire. DOGE could save some serious coin firing the whole Legislative branch, and turning the Capitol and legislative buildings into a tourist attraction. But the National Park Service will have to modify some of the displays:
September 17, 1787: A Republic, If You Can Keep It
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september17.htm
That is more interesting news, we”ll have to see if China and Russia will come to the aid of Iran in a more significant way.
Depending on definitions, we could say the US has been an empire for well over 100 years, since the “Spanish American” war.. In an abstract way, the US was an imperial project from the very beginning, an offspring of the British Empire. Now we can say it is the dying Anglo-American empire
The US is not a “res publica” but rather a “res privatae”
It is run by a private oligarchy. The public have little say in the matter. With the last few US regimes, it should be obvious.
The Spanish American war was certainly an expansion of empire, but Congress had its part, it declared war:
United States declaration of war on Spain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_declaration_of_war_on_Spain
Especially since the AUMF and the Patriot Act, and the whole “War on Terror”, Congress has been acceding it’s role to the Executive branch to the point now where Trump just ignores it. By what authority granted to the President by Congress is America going to war in Iran?
[Replying to JonnyJames
June 19, 2025 at 11:02 am]
Indeed, V.I. Lenin called the American intervention in Cuba’s Independence War (second of such wars initiated by Cubans who were fighting for independence from Spain, in the 19 century) the “first imperialist war” of modern capitalism. The American 1898 intervention in Cuba, by the way, also known as the Spanish-Cuban-American war and fully supported and encouraged by some of the most prominent US press at the time, is at the root of all the friction, disagreements, and historically problematic relationship between Cuba and the USA, an animosity that is still well and alive today.
ive thought about this question for a long time…and there have been numerous arguments and discussions about it out here for almost as long.
i landed on spanish/american war=>WW1, as a pre-imperial phase…nacent imperium, perhaps.
but the real deal didnt get going until the last days of WW2, esp with the OSS/CIA activity during that time.
we’ve been an empire, with an awesome PR Division, ever since.
and now we’re going down into perdition like just about every empire before us.
(with enough squinting, and maybe standing on one leg, china and persia might be considered the exceptions..with a lot of local caveats and idiosyncrasies…due to their(as in current parlance) civilisational state status.
…as well as their largely independent early development, and how thats manifested in how people think/believe/emote/etc.
(suddenly possessed by the spirits of jos. campbell, with a bit of wallerstein whispering around the edges))
I’ve already started to think about what the world might look like with the US and Israel defeated militarily, diplomatically, economically, etc., which seems to be the likely outcome here.
It feels like it would be a much more peaceful world, but at what price.
I think that is very premature. The US retains the most powerful Air Force / Navy in the world by a large margin, and is capable of inflicting significantly more damage on Iran than Israel. If US involvement was *always* in the works, moreover, (and I think it was), the US will already have planned a guerilla insurgency timed to coincide with their air campaign. I assume the MEK and Sunni Mercenary sleeper cells are being prepped as we speak. The aim will be to cause as much damage and chaos and death among the Iranian populace as quickly as possible. Iran *might* withstand such a campaign, but it might not—especially if the US decides to escalate to tactical nuclear attacks.
Can the Iranians inflict enough damage upon Israeli and American assets and personnel quickly enough to deter the Americans from further escalation and push them to declare a “symbolic” victory while deescalating behind the scenes? I think that is the Iranians only way out.
I agree the US and Israel will resort to all of these. This is what defeat looks like. Especially when they use the nuclear option.
The initial attack on Iran was coordinated with the Americans and very likely CIA was involved. So all the activation of MEK cells has likely been exhausted already. There isn’t another wave of inside moves, this time better coordinated by the US. What we have seen was likely the combined effort.
As for the far superior US Air Forces and Navy, compared with Israel, do you think who has superior forces, Iran or Yemen?
Look, obviously Iran. But we didn’t put the weight of two carrier strike groups, hundreds of fighters, and the full bombing arsenal against Yemen. We are logistically positioned for 1-2 weeks of constant aerial assault. I just think it is naive to believe that we cannot do real damage to Iranian population centers and military structures.
“We”, of course, is not we as a nation, but a select group of elites who believe they will only be affected tangentially by war with Iran. Unfortunately, any attack on Iran is going to motivate Russia and China to participate. It is going to disrupt commerce around the world and likely impact North America ($10/gal gasoline?).
Soon enough warlords will emerge across the USA to manage the chaos. What’s not to like.
“Soon enough warlords will emerge across the USA to manage the chaos. What’s not to like.”
aye. sadly, that remains the core of my Preps.
be in a position, materially, organisationally, and even socially, to be the “Good Warlord”….or at least the Merlin/Gandalf.
because thats where weve been headed for as long as ive been paying close attention.
if all that fails, there is of course the Old Man in the Mountain/Hashashishem road…in order to level the field, as it were.
but regardless.
its pure hopium to keep insisting that its 1995…which is where much of our “Betters”…as well as WK…seem to be stuck.
Of the Tolkeinesque options available to you, Amfortas, I recommend Bombadil …
In this case, what good is doing damage, even real damage, to Iranian population centers and military structures?
US power was in the ominous threat of using and wielding its power. If in using and wielding it the US demonstrates incapacity, what is currently happening with Ukraine and will happen in Iran, then that power is no longer. World belief in that power, real or imagined, was necessary to sustain it.
The buck truly stops with Trump on this one.
Maybe this is where the eschatological part begins in earnest..
aye.
belief matters.
“no one can beat the amurkin legions”
or
“the dollar will of course remain the gold standard”
or
“america is a democratic republic, not a flailing empire”
or
” that dollar has intrinsic value that has nothing to do with belief”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxIxwakF85s
Jimi. If I could time travel…
Can we kill a ton of innocents? Well sure.
Can we make a strategic achievement like getting Iran to surrender?
Less clear.
How about the Libyan model? That might be the goal.
and Syria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan…
Endless strife, chaos, and misery, wherever the democratic nation builders with a responsibility to protect intervene.
Palestine
This has ever been the method of the “maritime offshore balancer,” eh?
“We are logistically positioned for 1-2 weeks of constant aerial assault”.
Some people can take more than 1-2 weeks of aerial assaults. The US is not equipped for long attritional warfare, materially and psychologically. Especially not when the target can hit back.
It’s “Shock and Awe”. I’m not convinced that’s going to work either. That Iran will take some intense punishment is a given. Can US/Israel make Libya out of Iran in a short window? What is the price?
It looks like they are going to try.
What I wonder is 1) how much US can do without additional “staging,” that is, without sending large stocks of supplies to support all those airplanes, 2) Even if CentCom has all those stuff, can they be readily used? The Gulf Arabs will have isdues with US military using bades in their soil freely to attack Iran–especially since that means Iran will do something about their oil exports (close the Hormuz, attack terminals?) If US just overruled the sheikhs and kept flyong out airplanes, medium to long term political damage will be wvem bigger than it alreasy is.
I entered USAF as a lieutenant in 1972.
Vietnam was a school, no one passed the final exam.
US had air superiority over the whole region! Bomb anywhere we wanted took some losses, but acceptable. US lost that war.
Bombing effect are spectacular and make good tv! They did not contribute to strategic goals.
US will have no more success against Iran than it did to the Houthi.
For US and Israel Iran is a huge tar baby that will absorb all their jabs and not be slowed.
I have not heard anyone talking about sending USAF USMC fighters into the mountains hunting TELs a plan more dangerous and less likely to work than penetrators.
Others of us are old enough to remember that war and you are so very right. Trump the new Lyndon? Kurilla the new Westmoreland? Pacification and body counts ahead?
Even the Israeli/Trump dream of killing the Supreme Leader won’t stop this. Trump probably figures he can somehow declare victory and leave. He’s a boob.
Carolinian: Trump the new Lyndon?
Lyndon Johnson, revealing that he’d concealed his true political agenda from all his fellow senators in the South for his entire political and that he intended to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite the loss of their support, responded: “What’s the presidency for?”
So, quite likely,, he went along with escalation in Vietnam as part of that. The world is what it is, and Corbyn and Sanders types achieve nothing. Conversely, very occasionally some presumed political hack who spent decades concealing their true agenda so as to be judged a ‘safe set of hands’ and achieve power, may then have a chance of changing things. The CIA and MI6 both vetted and approved of Putin’s ascent as Yeltsin’s heir, for instance.
As for Trump, by contrast, you can say only say he is indeed a self-made man if the saying is true that God doesn’t make trash.
LBJ went along with Vietnam, because if he didn’t, he knew what happened to JFK was his end too
That, too, of course.
This one is beautiful starting at 12:30
Iran hits the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange because they want the rich to suffer, not the ordinary people. Hopefully they do this to the US and EU too.
Something to learn for all real left-wing warriors out there.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKk2PoHtk4Y
What an obvious piece of AI generated crap. Nothing to see here, folks.
Oh, on second thought AI would have done a better job. Might have used different voices for the two people for example.
This Tree&Trunks provided link is just nonsensical from the first few seconds.
Now would be a good time for soldiers to collectively refuse to follow an attack order. But that won’t happen. And we’ll get the usual media coverage of bombs dropping and buildings exploding with patriotic bunting surrounding the anchor person’s desk. I keep searching for news headlines that describe this (accurately) as “Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran” but, gee, nowhere to be found!
Russia’s attack on Ukraine was unprovoked. Israel’s attack on Iran was self-defense. Get with the program!!
Wrong. Russia was most certainly provoked by the US and NATO. There are mountains of evidence for this fact, much of it from the people who did the provoking. You have no right or reason to not know these things, to be ignorant of this. The US, the main belligerent in both the Iranian and Ukraine wars, wanted war, provoked it in Ukraine, and got it. Get with program, sonny.
I believe NakedEmperor simply forgot to add the /sarc tag.
“Get with the program!!” looks lke the /sarc tag to me.
The only constitutional purpose for a declaration of war is a threat to the United States. That baby got thrown out with the bathwater 75 years ago in Korea. Iran poses no threat to the U.S. but American presidents have been murdering foreigners by the millions for years now. A racist like Trump doesn’t even see Persians as human.
There are many moving pieces. Yesterday Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir dropped by the White House to dine with El Caudillo, an unprecedented meeting. India’s PM Modi declined a similar invitation after the G7 meeting in Canada last week. The civilian government of Pakistan has recently been cozying up to Iran and speaking-out against the unprovoked Israeli attack, but the country is in effect a military dictatorship.
Blogger Ian Welsh and UK-based Policy-Wire are claiming that the Mossad’s infiltration of Iran has been facilitated by the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) — the Indian CIA — relying on the rabidly anti-Muslim BJP government of India and the thousands of Indian tech workers and students who have been allowed to work and study in Iran for over a decade.
Of course the Pakistanis have nukes but lack good ways of delivering them; the Iranians have hyper-sonic missiles but no nukes. Iran and Pakistan also have a long land border. The recent conflict in Kashmir may be pushing the Pakistani civilian government into the Iranian camp but the Pakistani Army has a long and sordid history of being bought-off by the Americans. The question will be whether the right people are being bribed.
I wondered about the Pakistani general’s visit. Has anyone been commenting on what the story might be? I just saw it mentioned briefly on AJ and nowhere else (but I wasn’t watching too carefully).
Trump hosts Pakistani army chief, disagrees with India over India-Pakistan war mediation, Reuters.
U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir at the White House on Wednesday in an unprecedented meeting that risked worsening a disagreement with India over the president’s claim that he stopped last month’s conflict between the nuclear-armed South Asian foes.
I think Trump is trying to keep Pakistan out of the fray. The motivation for that is up for debate. I’m certain we will hear “Trying to stop World War 3”. I think Trump does not want encounters with Chinese made fighter jets.
Maybe the J-35 is ahead of schedule. Pakistan says China offered 40 J-35 stealth aircraft, among others, Breaking Defense, June 10.
The development was noted Friday by the Pakistani government’s twitter account, in a list of diplomat achievements credited to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, saying Islamabad had been offered “40 fifth-generation Shenyang J-35 stealth aircraft, Shaanxi KJ-500 Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C), and HQ-19 air defense systems from China,” according to an online translation.
David in French Harbor: the Pakistanis have nukes but lack good ways of delivering them; the Iranians have hyper-sonic missiles but no nukes.
Nukes are not some generic weapons class. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is widely believed to consist exclusively of some 170 A-bombs — fission bombs — which is to say, versions of the same technology, however further advanced, that the US used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Conversely, no credible public evidence exists that Pakistan has successfully developed or tested modern thermonuclear weapons (fusion-boosted aka hydrogen/H-bombs). These enable much greater variation in the design, type, yield, and — what’s relevant here — physical size of the device. Only with the appearance of thermonuclear weapons could warheads be sufficiently ‘miniaturized’ to be placed on the then-new ICBMs in the latter 1950s.
So Pakistan’s nukes are A-bombs which are big enough they must likely be delivered from sufficiently large aircraft or — conceivably in 2025, I suppose — large drones. Therefore, your hypothetical Axis of Resistance synergy of Pakistani A-bombs with Iranian hypersonic missiles is almost certainly not remotely feasible in reality.
Several sources suggest that the Pakistanis have produced a couple of dozen tritium-enhanced fusion-boosted compact battlefield thermonuclear warheads that can be air launched using the Ra’ad and Ra’ad II cruise missile platforms.
The Federation of American Scientists is on record that Pakistani nuclear capabilities are being underestimated. The Pakistanis kept secret that Bin-Laden was living in Abbottabad for years. As the saying goes, F-around and find out!
Interesting. Sources?
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for one. Search term: “tritium”
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-09/pakistan-nuclear-weapons-2023/
Perhaps the Revisionist Zionist fear factor is due to Mossad’s RAW assets detecting Pakistan moving some of these warheads to a “safe haven” during the most recent unpleasantness in Kashmir. Who knows?
We can only speculate why the head of the Pakistan military dropped by for lunch at the White House in the middle of a crisis so close to Islamabad. Maybe he was just out for some air…
Thanks.
Goodness how hoŕrible. I’d hate to be vaporized by old technology.
If there was any question about Trump’s sanity…
Has anyone mentioned to Trump that there won’t be anywhere to play Golf after a Nuclear exchange?
In replacing Biden with Trump we have successfully transitioned from dementia to demented.
Ah, sanity and dementia seem to be a common affliction. Today on Judge Napolitano his guest Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer made the remark that the Ukraine’s military leadership had lost it’s grip on reality. When influential people are off their rockers, you can bet the small fry that follow them are in the same boat.
Many months ago many people were bemoaning how Military Summary’s Dima was appearing biased in his treatment of that conflict. He had remarked once over a year previously that his in-laws were Ukrainian. I assumed that he was being coerced at that time by Ukraine through his relatives. I think yesterday he opined that Russian and Iranian saboteurs were behind the tanker collision. In the same broadcast he predicts that Iran will surrender in (checks watch) a day.
I think that my programmer sister-in-law was correct, “Garbage in, garbage out.” I no longer watch his videos as he has poor information and no judgement.
I think it likely that the U.S. will strike Fordow and claim that it has destroyed the centrifuges. It will then call off the Israeli attacks, and Netanyahu will declare victory. The non-existent Iranian nuclear bomb program will cease to exist, and Iran will resume building missiles to prepare for the next war. This is the way Trump declared success in his campaign against the Houthis. Absent the internal collapse of Iran’s regime, the U.S. can’t defeat Iran.
I think that’s the best case scenario, so to speak. Israel seems intent on escalating things further, though, that US can’t get away so eadily.
Such “friends” we have…
Trump isn’t the “decider”. Jewish billionaires are the deciders. They want Israeli hegemony throughout the entire region. For the US, it wants to stymie China. That is the Holy Grail. In order to accomplish that, Iran must be removed from the picture as far as BRICS and the Belt & Road Initiative are concerned. Iran was always going to be targeted. The non-existent nuclear weapons program is just the excuse as there must be an excuse to attack Iran. Will Russia and China defend BRICS? Will China defend its BRI? This war on Iran poses important tests for both Putin and Xi. Will they rise to the occasion, or will they wilt in the summer sun? We shall see.
The problem is that this would not be a victory for Israel – Indeed it would be a loss, since that was already an option (since almost a decade in fact), meanwhile this war has shattered the Israeli sense of invulnerability. As long as the Iranian regime remains in power, that will remain the case.
Netanyahu has no option to back down, and no interest in doing so – There won’t be another bite of the nuclear apple.
Netanyahu was gambling on collapse of the Iranian regime and/or its overthrow by a full-scale U.S. invasion. Neither is likely. He rolled the dice knowing it was his last chance, just like the Japanese in WWII. The shattered buildings in Tel Aviv mark the end of Israel’s military invulnerability. How many missiles will Turkiye, Egypt, and the Gulf States build in the next few years, now that they know Israel can’t stop them. Unless Israel makes peace, it will face eventual military defeat.
Torah, Torah, Torah!
looks to me like theyre already defeated(“a mere flesh wound!!”…comes to mind)
bibi and the rest of those guys are done…even with their own people.
ive never been in a bomb shelter under attack…but ive been beaten and buried alive, twice…once by cops.
such moments of extremis focus the mind, and prompt a review of ones choices leading up to such an event.
i find i can still feel compassion for the israeli people…and i reckon they are going through that exact mental/emotional process right now.
“looks to me like theyre already defeated(“a mere flesh wound!!”…comes to mind)
bibi and the rest of those guys are done…even with their own people.”
It is not over till the fat lady sings.
Plenty of things may happen, and there is that 1% (or perhaps even 5%) chance that can turn upset the best laid plans — especially those from frenzied maniacs (Israel), rigid ideologists out of their depth (USA), and calcified, diffident apparatchiks (Iran).
We have a track record for putting a stop, militarily, to things that don’t exist. Look at WMDs and how we stopped their non-existence from spreading by invading Iraq.
This time I hope we can quickly destroy a non-existent nuclear enrichment site (because – near a bomb for 30 yrs or so) and avoid the Israel-Iran war that might drag on.
Imagine a thing that doesn’t exist not needing bombing. Nope, with past history, that seems unlikely, I guess.
Updating Condoleezza Rice’s words, Let’s make a smoking hole before they can make a mushroom cloud.
So, Hail Trump?
But Caesar conquered Gaul and won a civil war (including from the grave via his adopted son).
The mustachio man also had some victories under the belt…
Caesar also punished Pompey’s murderers: if you mess with Romans, even Caesar’s enemies, you are still dissing Rome and you will pay. I think, without that, he could never have become the Roman leader. Our so-called leaders, otoh, eagerly call on foreigners to do their dirty job, includibg against donestic foes. That’s bo way ti build an empire.
IMO he will bomb Iran sooner than later due to the damage Israel is taking and from what hes saying.
And as if that isn’t scary enough, I guess he really admires Truman and what he did with Japan and ending the war meaning nuclear weapons.
It seams he wants his own war, not ones that Biden started, cue up Iran.
Terrifying beyond comprehension
Bibi orders Trump to put US boots on the ground in Iran. Faster than Biden, Trump jumps up and says: Yes, sir!!
Israel First….MAGA…hah!
MAGA…..Miriam Adelson Governs America
100,000,000 reasons why. A lot before that, too.
Awesome.
More American Genocide Abetting
MIT Prof Ted Postol speaking with Lt. Col. Daniel Davis deflates the GBU-57 bunker buster myth. Postal: “bunker busters are likely to have very low rates of success”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=TriASB-F5UY
The deep bunker of Iran’s Fordow facility is reportedly 800 meters below the surface– or 2600 feet. With maximum of 200 feet penetration by GBU-57, that leaves 2400 feet of rock and subsoil to absorb the blast, plus the structure of the bunker ceiling is likely designed to resist a massive blast. So why would the USAF risk the shoot down of a precious B-2, and consequent PR disaster?
If they have information about location and depth of access tunnels, they might be able to temporarily cut off the deep galleries from the surface by collapsing those.
It might be enough to declare “mission accomplished”, at least with respect to that site.
stickNmud: …the GBU-57 bunker buster myth. Postal: “bunker busters are likely to have very low rates of success”.
Thank you.
Samuel Conner: ...if they have information about location and depth of access tunnels, they might be able to temporarily cut off the deep galleries from the surface by collapsing those. It might be enough to declare “mission accomplished”
It seems improbable that the Iranians won’t have built with precisely this possibility in mind, so their preparations will include, forex tunnels — underground roadways — opening on the surface many miles away.
It’s not just depth. Anyone building such a complex would include offsets (bunker is not below entrance) and deflection features that likely cause the bomb to “skim” along shallow depths or get bent and tumble, similar to how reactive armor works. Postel walked Danny Davis through an explanation of this. Per Postel, Iranians are far from stupid.
Seems clear the nuclear capability is a pretext for region change.
I don’t remember where I got the 800M depth, but I assumed it was a fact and did not think to verify. Today, June 19, Southfront wrote that the Fordow “plant lies some 80-90 meters underground, making it completely immune to strikes with regular bunker buster bombs.”. Yes, 80-90m is at least 260 feet, so still deeper than the 200 feet that the GBU-57 can penetrate, and the plant doubtless has a thick concrete angled ceiling, but it may be more vulnerable than I thought. First sentence of Southfront post:
President Donald Trump told his defense officials the United States should only strike Iran if its massive “bunker buster” bomb could definitely destroy the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, The Telegraph reported on June 19.
https://southfront.press/u-s-could-need-tactical-nukes-to-destroy-irans-fordow-enrichment-plant/
This questioning by Trump of the claims by the bomb-Iran hawks on the efficacy of the bunker busting bombs may give Trump an ‘out’, and he has now given himself two weeks to decide. So this could be yet another TACO event, even after he humiliated DNI Gabbard with his answer to reporters question “I don’t care what she said”. If Trump had the presence of mind to stick to Netanyahu’s ‘immanent nuclear threat’ narrative, he could have said that the facts have changed since Gabbard’s March (sworn) statement at her confirmation hearing. Not sure if this shows Trump is just dumb, or that he really was ‘out of the loop’ on Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, and has not been properly briefed/rehearsed on the official narrative.
One of the many colleagues who Postol doesn´t really talk to any more (to my knowledge), Jeffrey Lewis – as commented by Pavel Podvig:
https://nitter.poast.org/russianforces/status/1935745097695670561#m
Podvig:
I’m wondering if this would qualify as a “chatter” about a possibility that the US using nuclear weapons (if you understand what I mean):
Lewis:
References to “tactical” nuclear weapons in this otherwise great @guardian story by @hugolowell are misleading. The US would drop a strategic B61-11 nuclear earth penetrator with a yield of 300 or 400 kilotons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 21 kt.
theguardian.com/world/2025/j…
Jun 19, 2025 · 4:48 PM UTC
Here is Lewis´s entire thread on the nuke subject:
https://nitter.poast.org/ArmsControlWonk/status/1935741529559076954#m
Emma Ashford speaks of 300 feet depth not 800 metres (however as Georgetownian of course quoting IDF):
https://nitter.poast.org/EmmaMAshford/status/1935661809849303070#m
W.H. Auden
Nice one.
I have an uneasy sense that many elected Ds might be OK with a war that turns out badly for US — think of the implications for the midterms.
Not attempting to restrain DJT in the current adventure would be just more of the same in the face of executive overreach since 1/20.
That’s forward thinking, lol. What are the odds of elections in the wake of WW3 I wonder.
There’s a palpable lack of urgency here in the states.
Temporary delay (two weeks?), but can this ultimatum be met?
Within the next two weeks could mean tomorrow, or in two weeks, or anywhere in between.
Meanwhile Israel wants Iran’s ballistic missile program terminated, so it seems the strikes will continue regardless of what Trump does.
Israel will not last two weeks at this level of punishment.
Prior to the attack on Iran there were reports of conflict within Israeli society to the effect there were citizens objecting to the ongoing Gaza conflict. This included reports of citizens not reporting for military service.
Since the start of the Iranian conflict there is reported to have been imposed a strict censorship. Have not seen any further reports of internal social conflict. Citizens who welcomed the leveling of Gaza and be unlikely to welcome a similar leveling within Israel.
What is the possibility of regime change in states other than Iran?
I concur. I have this nagging suspicion that the “two weeks” is really Trump (or whoever) wanting to see if Israel can keep it together that long and decide what to do then.
“Israel will not last two weeks at this level of punishment.”
Bibi has a lot of faith in his handling of Trump. Guess he, too, has a copy of the Epstein tapes.
That’s all for show and typical Trump bluster. Trump knows that Iran will not accept “zero enrichment” so making that the heart of his “deal” is a non-starter from the get go. He knows this. He says what he says for domestic consumption. The only real reason Trump may delay attacking Iran is because he fears things may go very badly and so he is likely requesting strong assurances from the Pentagon that things will go “very well”.
NakedEmperor: … he (Trump) is likely requesting strong assurances from the Pentagon that things will go “very well”.
Yup. Whoever gives him those assurances, though, will then have their heads on the line if/when it all goes wrong.
Israel is pushing for both no enrichment and no missiles, primarily to scupper the agreement.
I can’t believe even they think Iran would agree (particularly the missiles).
Two weeks! Yves is right. TACO!
I’m desperately clutching at unfounded hope for the political acumen of Donald Trump: He’s given his racist base an increasingly costly labor force his Chamber of Commerce supporters won’t allow. Through threat of tariffs, he’s given his NATO frenemies free reign to fund their own war on Russia– enough rope to hang themselves, just as now with Miriam Adelson’s down payment on war against Iran.
TACO makes a lot of sense to any politician with an instinct for survival. Survival trumps intelligence every time.
Right. I bet the US is dropping its first bombs as soon as the stock market closes tomorrow. The one thing you can count on now is that whenever one of “our” leaders opens they/their mouth, a lie comes out.
Or, the US waits until Monday, allowing Trump”s buddies, Congresscritters and other assorted Grifters to position on Friday for a Monday market dive, oil rising etc., you get the picture.
I think Israel can keep this up for a while unless Iran escalates to something like power (or water) infrastructure. Israeli leadership has spoken of ‘bracing for 5000 civilian deaths’. Sounds optimistic and yet Israel has suffered nowhere near that because Iran is restrained and loathe to escalate.
99.9% of Israelis are not directly affected by the current strikes other than running to bomb shelters–which they are used to doing at this point. Ukraine has suffered such strikes for years and the citizenry seems pretty indifferent to them. What “reaches out and touches” every civilian is the power and/or water going out. This has caused rare public protests in Ukraine–Odessa springs to mind.
Israeli hubris may force Iran’s hand if Israel starts in on major infrastructure strikes. Iran would have to respond in kind, I imagine. Whose civilian population will cry uncle first in such a situation?
Unlike most commenting here I have direct and daily interaction with dozens of Israelis (I am neither Zionist nor Israeli) and I concur with all you’ve written. I’m surprised by the degree of ‘Israel is in ruins’ and ‘Israelis have been cowering in stairwells for a week now they’re about to break’ commentary here. It isn’t and they are not (they spent months at a time last year running for the shelters and so far the alerts have been far less frequent although larger munitions). They’re not cowering, they’re pissed off and truly believe they have no choice but to fight back to end this ‘once and for all’. Whether we believe that to be self-serving given what they’ve been doing to Gaza and Lebanon is irrelevant. Whether we believe Netanyahu/Ben Gvir are cynically playing this to their advantage is irrelevant. Enough Israelis below them have been convinced they have been backed into a corner and their lives, families, futures, finances etc in Israel are at stake. They will tolerate a lot more than this if they think there is a light at the end of the tunnel and right now that is being dangled in front of them.
Yes there is military censorship. Yes it is likely the full scope of the severity of strikes – especially on strategic and military sites – is not known to the public. Yes it is likely Iran still has some undisplayed options and is holding them in reserve until the US enters the fray. This does not mean Israel has only a little time left.
Then please tell me why were Israelis trying to leave in large numbers? Why did Israel have to bar their exit by airport? Why are there many reports of Israelis with dual passports leaving on packed full ferries and yachts?
At a minimum, there seems to be sample bias among your interlocutors. The ones who are trying to flee are busy getting out and figuring where to wind up.
Some in the queue below are doubtless people who were visiting and stranded. Still:
This is from a Zionist account:
See Haaretz, only tourists will be allowed to depart. Those with dual citizenship will have to go through an approval process, which means at best delay and odds of denial:
https://archive.is/4tiXF
I think that you forgot the appropriate background music ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0rWAKS1y7w (4:02 mins)
I’m not denying there are many who are fleeing. Most of the people I interact with are sabra (multi-gen born in Israel) and have dual or triple citizenship with European countries. These are senior tech/startup people, not diaspora, not returnees. They have aging parents to take care of and kids in school in addition to property, and these are the stated reasons why they’ve mentioned they wouldn’t leave. The obvious corollary is they are also ex-IDF and in many cases ex-intelligence officers. These are true believers although more on the secular end than the messianic end (not a lot of beards on the men or support for the current government). Yes, this is going to skew my sample and what anecdata I share here. My point is that this is a society that has proven they’re willing to do heinous shit to keep what they have and as they continue to be hyped up to believe they are being backed into a corner and at risk of annihilation, quite a lot will bristle, endure and fight back. And this is going to have a bigger outcome than currently projected by those commenting/discussing and linked here.
To be clear and to restate something I said a few days ago, I think we’re going to step back from the abyss this time via negotiation over the next week. But this will resume again at some point in the next 6-9 months and I think then it is more likely to escalate to some of the more dramatic scenarios currently being projected. I think this is especially true if the daily strikes/alerts continue at the reduced rate but high impact pace they’ve held this week and Netanyahu continues to remain in dire straits. If dual nationals truly are blocked from leaving a month from now in that scenario then I can also see the need for Netanyahu to continue to manufacture crises of this nature. And I do believe eventually his luck will run out; whether that coincides with the destruction of Israel or not remains to be seen.
Iran has learned, as Russia has, that Israel and the US are completely dishonest.
And Israel has rejected negotiation. I saw a subhead to a Guardian piece on the European attempts at negotiation (as if they are authorized by the US or Israel? Trump went out of his way to be rude to Macron at the G-7) where the Israel defense minister was still calling for regime change in Iran. So they aren’t even remotely on board with diplomacy.
Iran has said they will stop attacking Israel if Israel stops attacking them.
I don’t think this round will be resolved by direct diplomacy especially by the Europeans, although Iran’s FM is meeting with European FM’s today. I think it is more likely to be back channel messaging through Qatar or another semi-neutral Arab actor directly to the US. And to be clear I don’t think it will be a full ceasefire or cessation of hostilities, there may even be some US-assisted strikes, but I don’t think they are going to break out the MOPs at this time or do full regime change, whatever that means without the full Iraq-style preparation.
If Israel stops attacking Iran now before Trump officially says “No US assistance, you’re on your own”, Netanyahu’s fragile coalition will collapse and he goes to jail. If, as Wisker suggests above, Iran begins targeting civilian infrastructure and even the sorts I interact with begin moving their children out of Israel for safety then I will believe things are about to get eschatological.
fwiw:
Andrei Martyanov had posted this 30 sec video exchange between head of Mossad and Ben Gvir as proof for Israeli worries. (I was sceptical since this kind of serious discussion on Iran I wouldn´t expect in public). He had it translated since he doesn´t speak Hebrew.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/06/ah-warm-evening-in-tel-aviv.html#disqus_thread
Today he added this update:
“UPDATE: yes, looks like it is not Iran related.”
At least one American state is doing this too. Here’s a “rescue flight” from Israel. It was on the national news last night:
‘We won’t turn people away’: DeSantis welcomes rescue flights arriving from Israel to Florida
https://www.wesh.com/article/rescue-flights-from-israel-to-florida/65122416
I haven’t been able to find how many are dual citizenship or not, that never seems to get mentioned.
It is interesting to note that according to Louis René Beresn, “No state, including Israel, is under a legal obligation to renounce access to nuclear weapons.”
https://besacenter.org/limited-nuclear-war-and-israels-national-strategy/
What is also interesting is the special case that is Israel operating as the de facto regional enforcer working for the imperial global enforcer and the unlawful development of their own nuclear capability. See for example,
https://www.watanserb.com/en/2025/06/16/how-israel-acquired-nuclear-weapons-in-defiance-of-international-law/
https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/israels-nuclear-weapons-what-you-need-know
Where a certain hypocrisy is necessary to assume that Iran, as a partner in ‘an axis of evil’ and its nuclear ambitions, whatever they might be, threatens hegemonic dominance and is therefore going to made an example of; where, the imperial policy appears to be, “If you do not do what we want, when we want it done, and how we want it done, very bad things are going to happen”.
Finally, to end on an ‘optimistic’ note regarding nuclear survivability, “some humans would survive, eventually to repopulate the planet, and that a species-level extinction of Homo sapiens is unlikely even after a full-scale nuclear war.” That observation might be a bit of encouraging news for first strike advocates and all those individuals who seem to dislike the situation of having nuclear weapons and not using them.
Re; Ali rope-a-dope
Boxing is a science, and not just a couple of meatheads pounding the crap out of each other in a ring. In meathead vs thinker, a thinker in reasonable condition will most always prevail.
Ali, god bless the man (and Foreman too– good man), was an expert in the ring and out-thought a stronger and more brutal Foreman in this legendary bout: https://youtu.be/nCOvjkbEn3c?si=YTaSLEtu10g6hC5B
So when we’re talking “rope-a-dope” as strategy, that 5-minute video will help to provide context (and I don’t disagree with the analogy– it fits).
Seymore Hersh’s inside sources say that Trump is going all in with strikes this weekend.
For non-subscribers, he finishes with this:
Places we may never get out of.
Iran may help Trump get to places it has never been:
The distance between Chabahar, Iran, and Diego Garcia is approximately 3,600 to 3,800 kilometers (2,237 to 2,361 miles).
2010 was 15 years ago. TACO may be in for a suprise.
Sy Hersh is out with his latest Substack release today. His sources have informed him that Trump will begin a heavy bombing campaign coupled with the destruction of the Fordow facility, all leading to the overthrow of the Iranian government. This will start soon after the close of the US markets tomorrow so as to have the whole weekend to digest the attack before US stock markets open on Monday.
Is it written in the US constitution that every President must lead a regime change operation?
Well if he is right then thanks to Si for the heads up.
After his quick victory Trump can move on to taking over Greenland and Panama. Canada look out.
Me thinks that it is likely that at some not too distant future time, this will in retrospect be seen to have been such a bad idea (bad even prospectively) that not even JRB would have gone for it.
What a legacy.
Does he say whether nuclear weapons are authorised because that is what will be needed ? Filling up our jerry cans here in Australia today, 10 weeks supply in country.
Empires must continually expand or they will die. Same with capitalism. Zionism too must continually expand because Zionist billionaires must continually expand their fortunes. It is so written.
“This will start soon after the close of the US markets tomorrow so as to have the whole weekend to digest the attack before US stock markets open on Monday.”
It’s almost too predictable.
Hm, I tend to go the other way. That sounds too definitive and detailed. When Hersh still worked for the New Yorker he was predicting a war with Iran too (around 2008 I think). It didn´t happen. If his report was one reason for preventing it, I don´t know. Hersh predicted WWIII over Ukraine 2 years ago and a few other huge events. Which fortunately never happened. After all he is an investigative journalist not the Delphian oracle.
We´ll see.
Trump made the decision long ago. The USA will attack Iran. Wilkerson said as much weeks ago.
Trump’s delays and talk of negotiations are another ploy for a surprise attack. Maybe the old 1, 2.
1. A decapitation strike when US intel sees a weakness/opportunity for maximum damage. Decapitation of personnel and technology.
2. US missiles rain everywhere over Iran straight after
The question is, how have the Israeli’s spies infiltrated the defences of Iran? They have been planning this op for decades.
Once Greenland bombed Pearl Harbor War with Iran became inevitable, according to White House sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter. .
from the Amen Corner:
https://x.com/DrCaseyBabb/status/1935330472982134812
he’s apparently looking at very different vids than i am
Yo amfortas. I definitely want some of the meds this cat is taking. The complete erasure of “Reality”(TM) is quite a trick, even with the help of serious psychotropic substances. It would help me get through the seriously hard times looming on our horizons.
Please don’t tell me that this person is under the “care” of a religious worldview tending towards Millennialism or Eschatology. I cannot go that extra stadia.
Be safe out there in your “Own Private Alamo.”
and this is, more or less, how i see all this mess:
https://x.com/apocalypseos/status/1935432530456625591
Hey amfortas, thanks for the heads up re Jacques Cheminade. His video is here, and for those whose French is rusty, turning captions (CC) on and switching autotranslate to English gives you usable subtitles.
and theres apparently an argument within the war room about whether or not the MOP can even do the job, without a tactical nuke…or several…dropped right behind it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/trump-caution-on-iran-strike-linked-to-doubts-over-bunker-buster-bomb-officials-say
see tom postol yesterday, with his diagrams of diamond shaped concrete and whatnot.
all this is too stupid for such a lovely afternoon.
so im shutting down.
good night, and good luck.
wake me when it happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4L6THYAbM
I’m curious to know what benefits accrued to the US and Israel during the 30 years or so of the Shah’s rule in Iran. It seems to me that regime changes are overrated. Whatever benefits there are to the regime changer are minimal in the grand scheme of things, and the costs are quite high. Trump and his whisperers aren’t smart enough to recognize a powder keg while they are playing with matches.
(to the tune of Blue Grotto – Amon Düül II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1av_-cpJkCU
(Ludwig, Ludwig
Ludwig, du bist so wunderbar
Ach Ludwig, du machst mich wahnsinnig)
Donald
Where did you lose your smile
Your blue eyes
Are dark from sadness
Your graven-face
Is still orange from madness
Donald
Thatthingonyourhead fascinates me
Sensitive Dandy
Knight of the moonlight
Your kiss-proof make-up
Is melting at midnight
Prince of desire
Hypnotized by candlelight
You are so
Impudent unreal
Churlish King
Chaos is your possession
And also daily policy
Crawl ’round the NeoCon Grotto
Arm in arm with Netanyahoe
Zion-stoned Donald
You missed your flight to Zionland
Where all your fantasies
Came to a flaming end
Zion-stoned Donald
You failed to find your princess
Playing with countries like roaches
Ends in distress
Your
Carrier Strike Groups are watching the pleasure-ground
Dreamer of a self-made Atlantis
It was denied, to you to slay
Old Bibi’s mighty dragon
To join Saint Ronnie’s conference-table
Go down and meet, Melania
On her swimming bed of roses
She’s the one to hold your hands
Sailing away, sailing away, sailing away
On velvet gloves and silky legends
To the Empire-Skyscraper-castle
You Royal-fairy-tale-rebel
From MoA
Tic-Toc Thread On The War On Iran – 5
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/06/tic-toc-thread-on-the-war-on-iran-5.html#comments
Behind the scenes negotiations continue:
Exclusive: Iran delivers response to new US proposal
The Iranian response was sent to the White House just before noon EDT on June 18. The high-ranking source with insight into proceedings described the document to Amwaj.media as “a polite no, but with a good explanation.”
A second senior source described the communication as “long” and in essence stating that Iran, in principle, does not object to negotiations to “discuss possible ways forward.” However, the source stated, it is not politically feasible to do so “while our people are under bombardment.”
The source declined to get into specifics on the substance of the response, but Iran has in the past indicated that it would be open to the idea of a multilateral consortium—as long as such a facility is built on Iranian soil.
The exchanges over June 17-18, which are believed to be direct, come as President Trump has publicly demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” while hinting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be Israel’s next target.
* * * * * *
Andrei Martyanov will be on with Garland Nixon in 30 minutes. No idea what they will talk about in particular. I assume missiles and AD will be among the topics.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/06/garland-and-yours-truly_19.html
Apropos, maybe, of Brian Wilson’s recent passing,
John McCain liked to sing…
Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb, bomb, Iran
Bomb, bomb, bomb
Bomb, bomb, Iran
to the Beach Boys – “Barbara Ann”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmI6CaBu9UM&list=RDzmI6CaBu9UM
Just looking at basics. Israel is a small country, with limited infrastructure in energy, airports, sea ports, petroleum(refine and store) and water(desal)
It seems a somewhat courageous decision to attack a near peer , much larger, enemy and expect it to end well. I guess hubris, expectation of US cavalry and a huke in the back pocket have skewed logic.
I have a nervous feeling this is going to result in a blinding flash over Tehran, and a rethink on who should or shouldnt have the big toys.
Hope I am wrong, bigly.