Alex Krainer
It
appears that the operations Epic Fury (U.S.) and Roaring Lion (Israel)
are not going well at all. The campaign seems to have been predicated on
a gamble: that a bit of kinetic action from the air, killing Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
(plus 165 school girls + 20 female volleyball players) would galvanize
the Iranian people to overthrow their oppressive regime and usher in
freedom and democracy. Note, in this day and age, the current regime
still insists on the medieval superstitions that men can’t get pregnant
and that there are only two genders.
Fighting blind
According to Simplicius’s latest sitrep,
it seems that Iranian people will have to wait a while longer for their
own helping of export-grade democracy and freedom. The New York Times
and other reliable sources finally owned up to the fact that the
cowardly Iranians completely blinded U.S./Israeli long-range $1 billion
AN/TPY-2 air defence radars that provide targets for THAAD and other
high end systems.
This is probably the best radar system
in the world, but such assets need robust defenses against incoming
projectiles and it is now clear that these defenses were either
ineffective or non-existent (from the footage that emerged on social
media, it seems they were non-existent). In other words, U.S. and
Israeli defences have no early warning systems against Iran’s most
potent weapons: their massive stockpiles of ballistic missiles, cruise
missiles and drones.
Certain reliable sources have reported that
the Iranians will run out of ammunition, almost as quickly as the
Russians did in Ukraine back in 2022. At the same time, some far-right
fringe conspiracy theorists who should probably be debanked and
deplatformed, claim that Iran has well over 100,000 of such projectiles,
since they have been preparing for this conflict for more than 20
years.
Epic fury and roaring lion ran into headwinds
Of
course, as they say, truth is the first casualty in war and discerning
truth from propaganda is very difficult as each side is claiming
superiority. There are a few difficult to contradict reasons why Iran
has a very substantial advantage over the U.S. and Israel:
- Logistics:
Iran doesn’t depend on fragile, thousands of miles long logistical
operations for their weapons and ammunition procurement (to say nothing
about food, water and rest for their troops).
- Size and determination: Iran is the size of Western Europe and has over 92 million population. They are also defending their country and are not as vulnerable to morale issues.
- Mission impossible:
history does not record any examples of successful regime change wars
fought exclusively by kinetic action from the air. Without “boots on the
ground,” the operation will fail like nobody’s ever seen before.
The
need for troops on the ground is why the U.S. and Israel are now
panic-scrambling whomever they can marshal into Iran: the unenthusiastic
and exhausted U.S. troops, the Kurds, the Azeris, Al Qaeda, ISIS or
whoever. But as much as Trump and Netanyahu might want and need to win
this conflict, it still remains mission impossible: you can penetrate a
nation and blow up a lot of things but to take control of a country of
the size of Iran, you’d need several million troops.
Their combat
operations (which would inevitably turn into a long war of attrition)
would have to be supported by robust logistics networks which simply
can’t be put together in that region: most of the supplies and materiel
would have to be shipped in from the U.S., Europe and other allies who
are thousands of miles away.
Such supply chains would be easy to
disrupt, and disrupted they are: the strait of Hormuz is closed. These
are just some of the reasons why nobody thought it a good idea to invade
Iran since its revolution in 1979 - it’s why it never happened until
now.
The U.S. and Israel have already lost
Even in the short-term, the situation could be much worse than we know. Three days ago, Israeli journalist Alon Mizrahi published a piece that should sober up all the war enthusiasts in the West. Here it goes:
"We
are witnessing history. Iran, to everyone's surprise, is destroying
American bases so thoroughly, on such a large scale, and so decisively
that the world is not ready for this. In 4 days, Iran has managed to
expand its sphere of military dominance in the region. Iran has
destroyed the most valuable and expensive military bases, property, and
equipment in the entire world.
The American bases in
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are among the largest military
facilities in the entire world. These facilities have cost trillions of
dollars over several decades to build. We are talking about the fact
that the bulk of the military spending that has been made over more than
30 years has gone up in smoke.
We see radars
costing hundreds of millions of dollars each being destroyed in an
instant. We see entire military bases being abandoned and burned,
looted, and destroyed. And I'm telling you, as far as I know, the U.S.
has never suffered such destruction in its entire history, except
perhaps for Pearl Harbor, but that was just one attack. No enemy in a
conventional war has ever done this to American military forces as Iran
is doing right now. It's hard to believe.
The
military situation is so serious that censorship is blocking almost all
new information about this war. If you've noticed, we're getting less
and less information every day. Thirty-five years ago, during the first
Iraqi war, we were shown endless footage from Iraq. Back then, smart
bombs and cameras were a novelty, but every night we were shown
night-time footage. Now we hardly see any videos at all.
Understand
this! Supposedly, this is the world's largest military power, with the
world's largest air capabilities, and on the fourth day of the U.S.
offensive, and supposedly breaking through Iranian defenses, we don't
see any signs of American dominance in the Iranian sky. Where are all
the video recordings of our planes flying over Tehran or any other part
of Iran, for that matter?
American soldiers can't
even dream of setting foot on Iranian soil. And to understand how
desperate this war is, on the fourth day you're already hearing the most
insane proposals and ideas from the Trump administration. They're
proposing sending military escorts for oil tankers leaving the Persian
Gulf. What are you even talking about! You want to send American ships
into the zone of destruction of thousands of Iranian missiles? NOW no
one can get through the Strait of Hormuz.
The
Iranians have been preparing for this for decades. They're flaunting the
idea of arming Kurdish militias to invade Iran. What the hell are you
talking about? Have you seen a map of Iran!? It seems the Trump
administration has never seen a map of Iran! Do you know how vast it is?
What does it mean to invade Iran!? Do you think a militia of 10,000
people could invade Iran!? Or even 50,000? Or 100,000? Iran will swallow
them up.
The U.S. and Israel have already lost this
war. The U.S. and Israel can kill millions of civilians in their homes.
They have powerful bombs and can blow up buildings, but they won't win
this war. Iran's military infrastructure and weaponry is deep
underground all over Iran. Neither the Americans nor, especially, the
Israelis have any chance of reaching any of it. They're in deep shit.
They
started something they have no chance of finishing. When this all ends,
the U.S. will never return to West Asia. There will be no American
presence in the Middle East. I'm telling you this now with certainty."
It
might be weeks before we know the score, but this is itself a problem:
this war wasn’t meant to last weeks - it was meant to be finished in
days with the toppling of Iran’s government and their return to the
negotiating table - as supplicants. Well, as Robert Burns put it in his
1785 poem, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men oft go awry.” We are
in completely uncharted waters.