We do not know much save the fact that the US attacked the three Iranian nuclear sites, at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. There was what amounted to a short warning via lots of chatter anticipating an imminent attack; I even e-mailed a colleague that it looked as if Trump was going to unleash the dogs of war at his 6:00 PM Situation Room meeting on Saturday.
🚨U.S. strike on the Fordow site. pic.twitter.com/Wgc7egGAqj
— From Iran🇮🇷 (@A_M_R_M1) June 22, 2025
As you see, Trump declared that all the strikes had been fully successful. He also said more was coming if Iran did not negotiate, as in surrender to US demands.
As indicated, we are deep in fog of war terrain. For instance:
❗️❗️Trump's Truth Social post after striking three Iranian nuclear sites!
"Fordow Is Gone"#Iran #IranIsraelConflict #IranVsIsrael #IsraelIranConflict #IsraeliranWar https://t.co/Ex6dfHYb4B pic.twitter.com/e9RXSAI3aV
— The Third Eye (@thethirdeyereal) June 22, 2025
Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear site isn’t just secure, it’s nearly untouchable. Analysts say it’d take 10 B-2 bombers striking in under 3 minutes to even dent it. pic.twitter.com/CJYlFcYgTF
— فیلڈ مارشل عبد العالم الغیب واشہادتہ (@safi_wajahat) June 22, 2025
It appears Iran was unable to impede the entry of US jets. Alternatively, in the light of Iran’s claims that it had removed nuclear assets from these sites ( the enriched uranium and perhaps the centrifuges), a much less likely but possible scenario is that Iran decided not to contest the entry since if their claims are correct, America would have wasted firepower on now-unimportant targets. Better to husband air defenses for more critical targets and to lull the Americans in a false sense of security. Note that, in a much-watch video below, Trita Parsi points out that Iran does not need large sites for its nuclear development program. It can distribute the activity across many locations.
NEW: Senior Iranian Official Says Iran Moved All Enriched Uranium, Including 60% Natanz Stockpile, to Safe Sites Ahead of Israeli Strikes
“Israel hit Natanz, Isfahan’s nuclear facility, Khondab, and Arak, but those sites were already evacuated. All the materials they were… https://t.co/U6owuTKxAb pic.twitter.com/18DFbzIgpm
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 19, 2025
Larry Johnson takes a different but somewhat optimistic view, that Trump has a pattern of making showy but deliberately not very damaging attacks. From his post:
To understand what happened today in Iran, you need to recall the last two times Trump claimed to have carried out massive strikes to derail alleged weapons of mass destruction. I am talking about Syria:
1. April 6–7, 2017 – Shayrat Airbase Tomahawk Strike
- Date & Time: April 6, 2017 (evening ET); missile impact around April 7, 4:40 a.m. Syria time
- What happened:
- Trump directed the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. destroyers targeting the Shayrat airbase—the launch site for the April 4 sarin attack on civilians in Khan Shaykhun.
- This was Trump’s first military action directly against Assad’s forces, intended to punish chemical weapons use.
2. April 13–14, 2018 – Coalition Precision Strikes
- Date: April 13, 2018 (U.S. time); strikes executed early April 14 Syria time
- Details:
- In collaboration with the U.K. and France, Trump ordered precision strikes—chiefly missiles—against three Syrian chemical weapons facilities, responding to the Douma chemical attack on April 7.
- Strike reached sites near Damascus and Homs, with approximately 105 missiles used.
Now, here is what actually took place behind the scenes. How do I know? Can’t tell you that. The US alerted the Russians in advance to our intentions and plans. The warning was given with enough advance notice that Russian and Syrian assets were able to vacate those locations. All Trump did was launch an expensive fireworks show that cost millions of dollars and blew up some sand dunes.
Given that history, I suggest everyone pour themselves a big scotch or vodka and relax. Initial reports almost always are grossly exaggerated. Here is one possibility: Trump may be doing another Houthi spin… you know, declare that Iran has capitulated and then pull US forces out of harms way. Iran has been extremely patient to a lengthy list of US provocations
Scott Ritter has a new video up which we cannot embed, but it’s only six minutes. The key point is in the subhead: President Trump just sent the most sophisticated weapons in the US arsenal to bomb three empty sites in Iran. Why? He adds that this was not a serious attack and did not advance US security interests. It seems designed to limit Iran’s retaliatory assets because the US used only assets out of theater, as in not (supposedly) implicating US bases in the region. He argues that this was show intended to save Trump’s face.
However, Iran is not Syria. Indian media has been reporting on the increasing damage that Iran’s daily and sometimes more than once a day bombings are inflicting. Despite Trump’s bluster about the need for Iran to return to the capitulation, um, negotiating, table, this action does not stop Iranian strikes, which look to be reaching the point of serious damage. For instance:
And:
Haifa water systems CRATER after new Iranian ballistic missiles slam Israel's biggest port pic.twitter.com/HRVUoQ2lpn
— RT (@RT_com) June 22, 2025
Israel has put itself in a PR conundrum by seeking regime change in Iran and depicting Iranian strikes as largely unsuccessful. But we know from the Washington Post as of 3 days ago that on then-current trajectories, Israel would run out of air defense missiles in 10 to 12 days. So Israel is already taking serious hits and is not far from being completely exposed to Iranian strikes. What then? The US is going to be under acute pressure to stop Israel’s pummeling.1
Now perhaps Israel will stand down in the wake of the US attack. Iran’s position has been they would stop shooting when Israel stopped shooting.
But failing that, despite Trump apparently hoping a showy strike would be sufficient to save his manhood, if Israel does not back down, the US will be forced to go up the escalatory ladder. I have said the probable next play would be to pummel Tehran. Israel brought Hezbollah to heel, not by defeating it militarily, but by inflicting so much punishment on the capital that Hezbollah, which is also a political actor in Lebanon, had to stand down. It may attempt a replay in Iran or alternatively hope that civilian deaths and infrastructure damage will produce its hoped-for public revolt.
Having said it would retaliate and hit US bases all over the Middle East if the US attacked, what does Iran do now? Iran has tended to be very cautious and under-react, and then a bit late. This war is getting too hot for that to be a great idea since the US cannot be seen to abandon Israel.
At a minimum, Iran intensifies its pounding of Israel. Perhaps it engages in an out-of-the-box move and hits the British airbase in Cyprus, which has been supporting strikes on Gaza. One YouTuber said the US base in Qatar had been evacuated, so perhaps that is the immediate tit for tat.
Since it seems vanishingly unlikely that the Trump will be unable to stand up to calls for escalation when Iran keeps pummeling Israel, where will Iran go if the US makes a strike intended to do serious damage? If Iran successfully parries that, perhaps not much. But otherwise, Iran’s best next move would seem to be to block the Strait of Hormuz. They can loudly announce that they’ll reopen it as soon as Israel and the US stop their attacks.
Finally, as Alexander Mercouris pointed out yesterday, this attack means Donald Trump’s presidency is over, at least in terms of getting much further with his domestic agenda. This war will become his tar baby.
This is a tragic mistake, but our dogged support of Israel and Netanyahu’s wiliness and personal survival focus got us here. As the movie version of Elizabeth said when rejecting the advice of ministers to attack Spain, “I do not like wars. They have uncertain outcomes.”
Or to again invoke a Sun Tsu dictum that yours truly has applied regularly to Trump: “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat.”
____
1 In case you are late to this story, the US, after seeming willing to accept a JCPOA 2.0, fell in with Israel hardliners, demanding that Iran abandon not just all nuclear enrichment but also effectively prostrate itself by also giving up its ballistic missile stocks and development. Iran has consistently said no to these demands, the latest at a bizarre meeting ginned up last week by European leaders with Iran’s foreign minister Araghchi. Team Trump attempted a peculiar last-ditch outreach. Per Axios in Scoop: Trump’s back channel to Iran failed after supreme leader went dark:
President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quietly sought to arrange a meeting between senior U.S. and Iranian officials in Istanbul this week amid Israel’s escalating war with Iran.
- But the effort collapsed when Iran’s supreme leader — in hiding due to fears of assassination — couldn’t be reached to approve it, according to three U.S. officials and a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
This ploy goes firmly in “How dumb do Americans think other people are?” terrain. The leaked story that Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate Khamenei was meant as a threat, that but for the good graces of Hair Furore, Khamenei might well be dead. The mercurial Trump could easily change his mind as Iranian defiance continues.
And let us not forget that Israel has made a point of assassinating negotiators and top leaders who let their security procedures lapse during negotiations. It has been reported that Israel tracked Hamas chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh to the guest house in Tehran where he was martyred. Similarly, it’s been reported that Israel was able to track communications after an negotiating session with Hezbollah to locate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to an apartment in Beirut (apparently with other top Hezbollah officials involved in the negotiations) and flattened the entire apartment block.
Recall also that the US assassinated Iranian general Solemani when he was in Iran to conduct negotiations, and supposedly had a physically protected status via operating in that capacity.
So even if Israel were to uncharacteristically respect international norms and not assassinate him en route to and from Istanbul, they would track him upon his return with the hope not just of eliminating him but also other members of the leadership that he would brief on what happened.
Keep in mind also that Khamenei has handed over authority for operating the war to the top general of the IRGC, so the silence may also signal that Khamenei sees the time for talking as past.
Thank you for this post and all the links. Larry Johnson could be right and this is performative war for the Israelis. Interesting times indeed!
I have read that Ansar Allah has joined the war tonight. Perhaps Iran will continue to concentrate on Israel and any possible strikes on U.S. bases and Saudi oil infrastructure will come from Yemen. At this time the Straits of Hormuz seem to be busy with tankers leaving the Red Sea. We will know so much more on Monday.
My bad, I meant tankers in the Persian Gulf not Red Sea.
Ansarallah striking in the rear will cause plenty of trouble. This is why the USA made such a decided effort earlier this year to subdue the Yemenis — this was a technically necessary prelude to attacking Iran successfully. The offensive against Yemen turned out to be much more difficult, costly, and dangerous than expected, and was aborted.
This historical precedent makes some first comments about last night’s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites going the rounds in the Internet a bit more credible:
1) this was a demonstrative action which Iran had little reason to take risks opposing;
2) or Iran had already secured everything valuable and just let the USA spend some valuable ordnance in vain;
3) or the operation was actually carried out with submarine launched cruise missiles exclusively, against which Iran has not yet put defensive measures in place.
I agree that Iran will avoid escalating against the USA for the time being, and concentrate its wrath against Israel — with a show of force there as a warning to Trump and the Pentagon. Likewise, Iran will avoid blocking the strait of Hormuz until the destruction of its energy infrastructure prevents it from exporting its hydrocarbons.
Unfortunately, this new escalation by the USA means that the fighting will probably go to the finish, and Iran has few good cards to play. For all the talk about “Israel cannot win a war of attrition”, many forget that:
1) Israel (and the USA) wage of a war of attrition against civilian targets, not military ones. While Hezbollah was systematically destroying Israeli radars, missile launchers, and observation posts on the frontier, Israeli was razing entire Lebanese villages, blowing up large buildings in Beirut, and goring the civilian arm of Hezbollah with the infamous pagers; Hezbollah lost. While Palestinians are blowing up Merkava tanks and sniping Israeli soldiers on an almost daily basis, Israel is blowing up Palestinian hospitals and killing, maiming, starving hundreds of women and children every day; Palestinians are slowly but surely losing. Let us recall that the USA started blowing up bridges, TV stations, and power plants when the Serbian military proved too tough and dangerous a nut to crack. Remember also that the war against Hezbollah lasted many months, and the one against Palestinians has been going for 21 months. Oh, and all the while, Israel managed to invade Syria, and trade blows with Yemen. Attrition? Israel is not short-breathed because it plays really dirty.
2) The USA is now attacking Iran in coordination with Israel. Aircraft and warships from the USA, the UK, France, and Jordan have been helping shoot down missiles and drones lobbed by Iran and Yemen at Israel. Every day, airplanes from the USA, the UK, or Germany, laden with ordnance, land in Israel. AWACS aircraft from the USA, the UK, Germany, France are helping Israel fight the Palestinians and Iran. Turkey, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Jordan, continue supplying Israel with the energy and other materials it needs. Apart from Yemen, who is helping Iran?
Whether Iran dares wage the same kind of war of attrition (against civilian targets), and can take on Israel, the USA, NATO, and Near-Eastern countries simultaneously appears to me quite doubtful. And if Iran figures out how to inflict unbearable pain on its foes, then the crazies in Jerusalem and Washington may be very tempted to retaliate with atomic bombs. I am afraid the conclusion will depend on some important players (Russia, China, Pakistan) who so far remain rather aloof.
More hopium. The US has been scraping the bottom of the barrel to find weapons for Ukraine, It has even had to employ arms provided by Turkiye that it captured when Syria fell.
So how will the US get the needed arms? Will it magic them into existence?
I’m not sure if you comment is aimed directly at vao, but its a mistake to think that the US cannot maintain a long term air assault on Iran. They are completely different stocks of weapons from those needed by Ukraine. The USAF has been preparing for attacks of this nature for decades and has huge reserves, none of which have been touched by Ukraine as they are completely different weapons in nature and design.
Lack of suitable bases will be a problem: the obvious ones, in the Gulf and Turkiye are out. I don’t think the host govts can stand for them publicly, in addition to the obvious vulnerability. Whatever attacks that do happen will have to be from long range and that will complicate logistics and operating conditions. This likely means that you can’t keep going for too long even if you have the bombs.
I don’t believe the Gulf is out – while none of the governments there will overtly help the US, none of them want Iran to come out stronger either. There is some evidence that the Saudi’s and Kuwaitis are turning a blind eye to Israeli overflights (maybe the Iraqi’s too, even if they have limited capacity to stop them), and if this is the case, they will certainly do what they can to not impede US actions if they think its to their strategic advantage. Having intel and refuelling capacity based in the Arabian peninsula would make logistics far easier for the US.
There is a finely balanced calibration going on between Iran and the sunni states, which is independent of what Israel and the US does. The Gulf States wants Iran weakened, but do not want a war – they are perfectly aware of what Irans missiles can do (while Iran may be running out of its longer range stocks, it still has many thousands of c.500km missiles). Likewise, Iran can’t afford to have any of its neighbouring States going to war with it overtly – most of those states have pretty formidable militaries of their own (albeit with the usual qualifications about the quality of Arab militaries). So I believe that the calculations being made within the capitals in the Arabian peninsula (and maybe beyond) is to see how far they can aid Israel and the US for now, without crossing any Iranian red lines.
The submarine-launched missiles have not been used in Ukraine, nor against Yemen, so there are enough of them to strike Iran repeatedly.
The airplanes that are or will be used against Iran are F-35, F-22, B-2, possibly B-52. They carry other types of ordnance than the F-16 used in Ukraine and in Yemen. So again: the supplies are there to bomb Iran for quite some time.
On the other hand, the USA might start getting short of missiles and anti-missiles aboard ships, because they expended plenty of them to down drones and missiles launched by Yemen.
Again: at this point it is not that clear that Iran will be the party that can persevere the longest in a war of attrition.
Excellent overview. We are now in very much uncharted territory, and much depends on Irans strategy. It’s hard to think of many precedents for a war of attrition where none of the main combatants share a land border or direct line of contact. Iran’s best strategy is probably to simply bunker down and focus on striking Israel. But it does not seem likely that they can maintain this for a long period – they have limited stocks of missiles of sufficient range. Strategically, it’s important for Iran not to give the US an excuse to go after overtly civilian infrastructure, such as electricity and oil/gas facilities – these are highly vulnerable. For now, it may be a reasonable bet that Trump will ‘declare victory and go home’, which would be very much in line with his m.o. But if it is the neocon crazies who are really driving this, then we are in for a very long haul of unconventional warfare and eventually all bets may be off, especially if Iran calculates (or miscalculates) that it has nothing to lose by going for a form of escalation that could encourage the sunni States to join in against them.
This is not the conflict of your ancestors mate. Iran has a 2X Mfg advantage in missiles and drones. You might reconciled your past opines on the Ukraine/Russian conflict and how that worked out.
“It’s hard to think of many precedents for a war of attrition where none of the main combatants share a land border or direct line of contact.”
I had never thought about that.
Truly, the last years will go down in history as an epoch of fundamental changes (should we say disruption?) in warfare: Azerbaijan vs. Armenia; Russia vs. Ukraine; Iran & Yemen vs. Israel & USA.
Historically all wrong vao … just Jap vs US alone is contra to the proposition. PK is having a really bad time of late due to their economic/ideological baggage.
‘they have limited stocks of missiles of sufficient range’
I somehow doubt it. They have judged the ideal number of missiles to hit Israel with which would probably be below their production capacity. Enough to cause accumulating damage but without it being so bad in one hit that the Israelis go crazy. Sleepless maybe but not crazy. Putin is keeping a large proportion of his forces free in case NATO does something spectacularly stupid and I would suggest that the Iranians are doing the same for the US
I think the video of the Haifa water system is just a mains break after the strike on Friday of a derelict building in Haifa downtown (nobody was in the building but people on the street who didn’t make it to the shelter in time were injured, some seriously). The city water system is definitely still on according to a colleague who lives there and just performatively turned on the sink for me on video to demonstrate.
The refinery has definitely been hit. But the port facilities are still functional I think, you can see the cranes in the strike video from an hour-ish ago.
I don’t think Israel is going to back down ‘permanently’. I think there may be a lull of a few to several months with a reduced rate of attacks/tit for tat, Israel attacking launchers and removing leadership, Iran retaliating on Haifa and Tel Aviv. I think it will resume with intensity within 6-9 months max. At that point the US will unlikely have any good escalation options.
This is hopium. Mayors in Israel are saying in large numbers that the attacks on Israel have to stop, the damage is too high. This is per Indian media with supporting videos of the statements. I have competing duties today but I will see if I can find time to embed a clip or two.
I’ve seen the clips of the Haifa mayor stating such after the Friday strike. Here is where he says the damage is too much and they need peace (1:34 in)
“Strategic Points Hit” Iranian Missiles Strike Port City Of Haifa, Israel Navy Base The Target?
I do not hope Israel keeps it up. I don’t want to see people I work with and talk to daily get hurt and that is going to happen if they don’t stand down. But the people I talk to don’t make these decisions, it’s Netanyahu, and in his speech after Trump he lavished on the praise to Trump and the ‘unshakeable alliance’ between US and Israel. To me this just sounds like laying the groundwork for demanding more.
Watch: Netanyahu Thanks Trump After U.S. Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites | WSJ News
Thanks, Yves
There are too many bad faith actors in the mainstream media at times like this, and valuable sources of straightforward and accurate commentary like NC are therefore indispensable.
Plus you help to keep us sane.
Many thanks again.
Hopium *rofl* Never heard of it before, I guess hope plus opium equals hopium, right? The problem with many people: they hate reality and love hopium!
There is a great deal of Hopium going around. The Israeli stock market rose 4% today to an all time high. Investors certainly believe that Iran can’t destroy Israel’s economy.
I have not yet found the clips about mayors sounding alarms due to new reporting drowning that out. But even the UK’s Times was showing damage yesterday:
And fresh from Sky:
The fact that the military censors are not barring these videos = Israel building a case for continuing the war.
And why should Iran back down unless Israel stops attacking entirely, which is Iran’s entirely reasonable demand? Even then like Ukraine, a pause only serves to allow Israel to rearm, but I do not think Iran is risk-oriented enough to press its advantage if Israel meets its immediate demands.
I have heard Larry Wilkerson describe in vitriolic terms how arrogant and stupid Israel military officials are. So between them and Netanyahu, you are not dealing with rational actors.
In other word, Israel belligerence and undue faith in US power (and the US being joined to Israel at the hip) IMHO makes even a near-term deescalation seem unlikely.
We’re in agreement on all points, Yves, except I don’t think it’s going to immediately escalate, I think it is going to be drawn out over several months with some lulls, and it’s highly dependent on Netanyahu’s grip on power.
With respect, an immediate reaction of shock and horror to being directly hit is entirely to be expected. Contemporary media reports from Zeppelin attacks on London in WWI, right through every initial aerial attack in the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Lebanon, Iraq, etc., always report an initial horror and despair at what (in historical context) will be seen as relatively little damage. But people are resilient and remarkably adaptable. This is why strategic air attacks on cities or infrastructure, whether directed or indiscriminate, rarely make much of a difference to the outcome of a war (although they can lead to very strategically bad responses, such as the Imperial Japanese high command’s panicky response to the Doolittle Raids).
The Israeli’s love to dish it out, but are not so happy to be on the receiving end – this is to be expected, its human nature. But there is no particular reason that they won’t simply adapt – no country has proven better at turning a victim mentality to its advantage better than Israel. If anything, it seems to be strengthening Netanyahu’s domestic political control – the few dissenting voices within Israel are rapidly going quiet.
Obviously, there are potential wild cards everywhere – most obviously the Israeli economy. But even this is no guarantee – war changes peoples mentality, both for the best (resilience and camaraderie) and for the worst (loss of empathy for the ‘other’). While Israel is running out of interceptors, Iran has a limited capacity to strike at such long distances – there is already plenty of evidence (the daily drop in launches) that it is close to the end of its stock of 1000km range missiles. The Israelis know this. It would be very surprising if the civilian population was not prepared to stick this out until some new equilibrium is reached.
And yet the analyses I’ve seen about the drop in the quantity of Iranian missiles have been pointing out it’s been all about Israeli defenses deteriorating to the extent that Iran is using smaller and different strike packages everyday to a) keep up the pressure b) test the remaining air-defenses, c) leave plenty of room for escalation while d) retain a huge reserve for when the US joins the fray.
There are estimates that the current Iranian production rate is 10 missiles and 250 drones per day. That’s more than they have used lately per day.
The overwhelming majority of Iran’s stockpile, and its construction capacity, is based on short and medium range missiles. The 1000+km plus range missiles are a subset (a fairly recently developed one) of its overall capacities. It was always Irans core strategic belief that it could use Hizbollah’s stocks as its own, but of course we’ve seen that didn’t work out too well. The development of a range of missiles that can strike Israel directly from the Iranian heartland is a relatively recent breakthrough for Iran, and they’ve not had the time required to build up large stockpiles.
Obviously, I’ve no idea what Irans tactical doctrine says about the use of its long range missiles, but standard air doctrine is that you ratchet the pressure upwards, not downwards in order to stress the enemies defences to breaking point. Ratcheting downwards makes no sense either in tactical or strategic terms, unless you are playing some sort of judo ken move to make your enemy think you’ve run out. You can come to any number of fancy hypotheticals to persuade yourself that Iran is just waiting to deliver a killer strike, but the available evidence is pointing towards a degradation of its ability to strike at the range required to really hurt Israel directly.
It’s pure cope to think that Iran has some sort of massive stock of long range missile just waiting for the right moment to be released. Sure, they are manufacturing more, but you cannot produce missiles of that size and sophistication at scale at short notice. Sure, it can produce plenty of Shahid’s (the shorter range ones), and thousands of drones, and it no doubt has many thousands still in stock, but Israel can shrug those off in the same way it was able to survive Hizbollah attacks. The missiles that can do real damage are very sophisticated, very expensive, and require time and effort to build.
TYPO “However, Israel is not Syria ”
should be Iran is not Syria?
Thanks! Fixing.
This attack looks very strange and I have no clue what it’s supposed to accomplish.
We’ll have to wait for confirmation of the damage, but with the very limited amount of bombs used it doesn’t seem likely that there would be any results.
Does it impact Iran’s enrichment capabilities? We’ll have to see but probably not.
Does it degrade Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities? No.
Does it damage Iran’s internal political stability? Maybe, but only if they don’t retaliate.
Either this is some confused attempt to “escalate to de-escalate” by pretending that Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed or US leadership is terminally incompetent.
As I said in another thread, the only thing that matters is whether Israel stops attacking Iran. If Israel does that, Iran will stop shooting back. If not, this strike changed nothing save the US is now officially a combatant. Perhaps the assumption was that Iran would find that terrifying. If so, bad call.
The attack gives Trump opportunity to publicly state that we did everything that Israel sought to do vis a vis Iran and quietly tell Israel to stop attacking. But Israel’s obvious response to this will be: oh, yeah? stop us if you can. Well, we can stop Israel if we really “mean” it, but how about those pro Israel congresscritters? Can Trump and his allies stare them down, too? That means Trump will have to drop his current act, one should think, and show that he really is an enemy of, at least, the present Israeli govt. Can he do that? Maybe, just maybe, the American people have seen enough of the madness emanating from Israel and turn on those guys, but I don’t know.
The funny thing is that Iranian missiles are the biggest leverage Trump has vis a vis Israel. But if I were Trump, I’d want to increase the pressure incrementally…except he has no obvious control over Iran’s missile launches and we can’t tell how loud Trump is telling Israel to beat it. Trump probably can’t make that public–too many friends of Israel in high places–even if he is actually doing that.
Its obviously early days, and I’m breaking my own personal rule of commenting when there is too much fog of war to say anything sensible, but in the circumstances, its hard to avoid it.
Looking at what information is available, the strike by the US is quite curious – and it fits into something we’d expect from Trump. It seems designed to grab attention without inflicting too much damage (contrast, for example, the first day of the US air assault on Iraq). It may well have made the underground networks unusable for a few weeks by blasting all the entrances without significantly damaging the production facilities (assuming the Iranians haven’t already removed everything possible, which logistically I doubt very much).
So this may be intended to rescue Netanyahu from the mess he has made. It takes the focus away from the missile exchanges which neither Israel nor Iran can win. It may create a space where both sides can back down and Trump can declare himself a peacemaker. Of course, it may also trigger a set of retaliations which spin out of control. Given the number of people within Tel Aviv and Washington who genuinely believe that an upcoming apocalypse is actually quite a cool thing, I don’t have too much faith in their good judgement.
This rationalization begs the question why should we be rescuing an indicted war criminal? There’s a legitimate argument to be made that rescuing Bibi is in itself aiding and abetting future crimes against humanity. And that’s after we have aided and abetted his ongoing crimes against humanity.
I understand that Israel depends on eight desalinization plants for its existence. Is that true?
If so, could Iran demonstrate, by taking out one, and then bargain leaving the remaining desalinization plants intact against Israel turning Netanyahu and his regime over to the ICC? Give them a few days time limit and then hit the next and so on, until compliance or no more drinking water for Israel?
Also included could be the IDF exiting Gaza, all attacks on Iran from Israel or the US or from within, as well as any other moves against Iran. Of course, a nuclear attack on Iran would mean taking them all out at once. Perhaps this is the kind of deterrent that Israel and the US would understand and unless there is some climb down it seems almost inevitable that Israel, with its back to the wall, would at some point go that route.
It would be important, I would think, that Iran make its demands perfectly clear and non-negotiable.
Technically, I do not know how hard it is to take out a desalinization plant, but a hundred hypersonic missiles at a time..? Is that kind of launch possible? If so, we know they cannot be stopped.
Although extreme, it avoids targeting civilians and gets to the root of the problem which is Zionist Israel and its aspirations for hegemony in the ME that are driving this whole conflict, in Gaza and beyond. In fact, it is the Israel decapitation strategy in reverse.
All speculation. Obviously, I have no understanding of these things but from a high level it seemed like a possibility and hopefully it is more humane than a protracted war of attrition that will over time kill many people and destroy many lives on both sides, and perhaps escalate completely out of control.
Sorry if this is just an extremely stupid idea. If so, my fault. I would so much like this madness to end.
Desalination plans of the type used in Israel are generally modular and extend over a wide physical area. They are not particularly vulnerable to attack – or put another way, you could expend a vast amount of ordnance against a desalination plant, do a lot of damage, but still not prevent sufficient fresh water being produced. The Israelis have been aware of their vulnerability to air strike since the years of its foundation and have (to varying degrees), built a requirement for resilience into their infrastructure.
Much the same applies to oil refineries. You can strike them, and create spectacular fireworks, but actually knocking them completely out of action requires either a very lucky (or well aimed) strike at one of the few key vulnerable nodes. In WWII the allies devoted enormous resources to bombing German and Japanese refineries (mostly in Romania and what is now Indonesia) without successfully destroying them (albeit they did very significantly reduce output). Natural gas networks (production, pumping and refining facilities) are far more vulnerable.
There are a lot of misconceptions out there about how easy it is to destroy a countries infrastructure, mostly I think due to people watching too many movies where one bomb brings the bad guys to their knees. Some so-called military experts online are also guilty of perpetuating these myths. Most infrastructure, whether water, power, or transport, involves lots and lots and lots of steel and concrete, and generally have multiple layers of resilience built in – both deliberately and as a consequence of decades of overlapping construction. Even very accurate and very large aerial bombs have a surprisingly poor record of doing more than superficial damage. And missiles carry a lot less explosive than even a small bomber and are a lot less accurate (if the bomber uses direct line of sight laser guidance, which is the only guaranteed method of directing a large bomb with sufficient precision to, for example, knock out the structural core of a bridge).
This isn’t to say you can’t do enormous damage with a well aimed bomb. In my own city, I could tell you one precise location where even a modest bomb could reduce water supply by around 80%, and another smallish building that could cripple the fibre-optic network if something bad happened there. I know of three key transformers that if struck simultaneously could cause a black out lasting weeks if hit with a big enough bomb. But my city wasn’t designed to withstand a military strike, and the knowledge of those locations isn’t widely circulated for obvious reasons (vandalism, not military).
Cluster munitions ….
You really don’t seem to have an idea of the potential munitions that could be used and how it would effect various systems. Israel is a a bucket of fish mate.
I saw a day or two ago an Iranian ballistic missile hit which used cluster munitions so they do have them. My take on that was Iran telling Israel ‘Guess what we can do?’
Regarding your footnote #1, the way the European meeting is presented in Frankfurter Allgemeine (fully supportive of Ukraine, fully supportive of Israel”) is “they rejected our generous offer, so they had it coming.
Case in point: Jürgen Hardt, the parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrats, currently the senior partner in government, said:
„Nach der Weigerung des Iran, auf das Verhandlungsangebot der Europäer einzugehen, war die Konsequenz eines US-amerikanischen Schlags gegen die Atomanlagen absehbar”,
Loosely translated:
” After the refusal of Iran to engage with the European offer of negotiations, the consequences in form of a strike on the nuclear facilities was foreseeable.”
Thus European MSM participate in the manufacturing of consent.
Correction: Soleimani was in Iraq when assassinated, not Iran (?)
What makes this phase so dangerous is the loss of trust that the Iranian leadership has with the USA. This trust has to be reestablished in order to dial down hostilities. The only way is by Trump enforcing a strict unilateral ceasefire by Israel for a certain designated time period and not the Israeli version of a ceasefire, where they continue to attack. Hopium?
This attack is a bit like the blind men and the elephant. OK, first blind man says that it was all theater. Two of the sites were abandoned and the third long expecting an attack. They spent high-cost munitions attacking nothing. It might deserve the label ‘No Iranians were harmed in the making of this production.’ Second blind man says that it’s all about Trump. He is trying to limit any reaction against US units in the region by using out of theater assets aka the B-2s and the subs. If the Iranians take it out on the Israelis, who cares he says? Third blind man reckons that it solves the problem for Trump how he boxed himself in. He ‘did something’ and maybe the media will say that he is now acting ‘Presidential.’ It gets the Neocons and Bibi off his back for a while at least and buys himself some time. Fourth blind man says that it is a bluff. He wants Iran to denuclearize and disarm itslef but which they would be crazy to do. How many Iranians think that it would be a good idea to get rid of their missiles. Fifth blind man reckons that it puts the screws on Israel. They are still being pounded and their anti-missile missiles are still being depleted. Maybe in a fortnight they are out. Bibi might demand that the US strip the Indo-Pacific of all of those missiles to be sent to Israel but the Pentagon will stomp their foot down hard on this idea. For Israel, the clock is ticking. Sixth blind man thinks that Bibi’s convinced that the US will now finally enter the war in a big way which solves his domestic political problems. If his legacy is a Greater Israel out of this war, then nobody will ever touch him. Yeah, about that…