Iranian Abyss: Will US Take the Plunge?
The following premium paid article is a comprehensive discussion of all the possibilities for the upcoming Iranian-US conflict, including my personal predictions on what will happen. It is a whopping 5,000+ words in length and covers various aspects of the stand off, from the US ability—or lack thereof—to hit Iranian nuclear sites or even degrade Iran’s air defense network, to why Russia and China may or may not be assisting Iran in this eleventh hour.
Things are moving extremely fast on the Iranian front, such that any analysis risks immediate obsolescence by new developments. This is particularly the case given that some of the actors involved—Trump, namely—are acting with extraordinary unpredictability and whiplash-inducing inconsistency.
Trump’s ongoing treatment of the Iran saga has been utterly erratic, even psychotic. From demanding talks to sudden outbursts of ‘SURRENDER’ and “Evacuate Tehran Now!” it’s impossible to predict what the deranged head case will say or do next; the only thing that has become near-certain is Trump has been taken prisoner by some form of extremely compromising threats by his Israeli-linked handlers: there is very little else to explain his bafflingly unhinged behavior.
There is one thing to explain it, which takes us to the main point of this article. Israel clearly expected a very swift capitulation by Iran via a series of debilitating decapitation strikes which only partially succeeded. When that didn’t happen, and when Iran began raining down retaliatory blows, the Israeli-led bloc panicked and began to exert tremendous pressure on Trump to save the ‘chosen’ kingdom.
Part of it has to do with Israel not being equipped for long, drawn-out attritional warfare:
The Jerusalem Post article above confirms:
“Neither the US nor the Israelis can continue to sit and intercept missiles all day,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Israelis and their friends need to move with all deliberate haste to do whatever needs to be done, because we cannot afford to sit and play catch.”
Israel needed a quick operation to disable Iran, and was likely counting on the US to enter the war. But this should be tempered with the fact that Israel does claim they have prepared for the potential of a long-running conflict, but presumably only under the total aegis of the US and the West completely backstopping them in every facet, particularly weapons, fuel, etc.
So what did Iran do? Iran, it appears, has chosen a similar strategy to Russia—which is to deliberately slow the conflict down and stretch Israel’s resources. Israel expected Iran to “splurge” and launch its entire complement of missiles not only to immediately exhaust itself, but also to invite a huge ‘tragedy’ that can be used to incite the US’ entry into the war. Instead, Iran chose to bleed Israel dry slowly with the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy developed by Russia against the Atlanticist empire in Ukraine.
Thus, Iran is now sending small volleys of missiles daily to grind down Israel’s social, economic, and political resources.
Why has Iran chosen this strategy? Because it’s the only one with a chance of success, as giving Israel a massive “shock and awe” campaign would merely play into its hands and give the Israelis exactly what they were looking for. One report indicated that Israel had prepared for 5,000+ Israeli casualties from the Iranian strikes and clearly did not expect Iran to instead choose a slow-broil method:
Israel's leadership had braced for around 5,000 civilian deaths in an all-out war with Iran but has found its foe unable to wreak serious damage, former senior intelligence officer Miri Eisin told Iran International.
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. The only videos of strikes Israel has shown were on a small handful of ancient Mim-23 Hawks, short-range Karmin-2, and the short-medium range Khordad systems. Nothing like the S-300-equivalent Bavar-373 has been attritioned at all, though Israel “claims” they have wiped out some made-up percentage of Iranian AD with zero substantiation.
It appears likely that Iran has withdrawn much of its longer, serious AD systems further east toward Isfahan and beyond in anticipation of large-scale US bombing strikes. This would be in accordance with an actual report of the withdrawal of heavy missile launchers to the same region, which are likewise being targeted by Israeli strikes.
Recall that Israel was never capable of even overflying Syrian territory, which had far weaker AD than Iran—Israel bombed Syria from behind Mount Lebanon. Only after Jolani took over was Israel finally able to destroy the unmanned and abandoned Syrian AD network. Further, recall Israel had to fly its F-35s mere meters above the ground in Jordan during previous strikes against Iran, with reports claiming:
"The moment Israeli F-35I Adir fighter jets fly at extremely low altitude over Jordanian territory to avoid radar before striking Tehran."
Similarly, the US is incapable of overflying Yemen, and must launch stand off strikes lest the F-35s get “almost shot down” again when they approach too close to the border. Thus, Israel certainly is not at the moment capable of overflying Iran beyond, possibly, some small incursions just past the border.
Broader Designs
The true purpose of the planned operation goes well beyond merely degrading Iran’s nuclear program, and even beyond mere regime change, but instead seeks to partition Iran entirely into smaller, easily-dominated ethnic statelets:
Not surprisingly, Iran is now under the knife to be broken up only weeks after it launched a critical node of China’s New Silk Road, which bypasses the US-dominated sea, strait, and canal choke points:
Israel struck Iran right after the launch of a game-changing new rail link between Iran & China. It happens to pose an existential geoeconomic threat to the US & its allies.
The route bypasses US sanctions and would unlock Iran’s economy, allowing it to flourish like never before, with Iran likewise becoming a key Eurasian transport hub reaching all the way to Russia:
Now, Khamenei’s “regime” is scheduled for dismantling because Iran poses too great a counterweight to the neocons’ imperialist dreams—and more importantly—their handlers’ Babylonian-messianic prophecies.
The self-proclaimed ‘crown prince’ of Iran even made his CIA-produced appeal for people to take to the streets and overthrow the ‘regime’ right on cue:
It’s clearly a highly-coordinated production meant to do to Iran what was done to Assad and Syria late last year.
Can the US Succeed?
Now we get to the most important part. Given what we know about Israel’s inability to penetrate Iran’s airspace with its fighter jets, what can Trump and the US possibly do to quickly ‘defeat’ Iran?