Iran Is Pretty Bad At Real Wars, Actually
OP Rising Lion exposes the hollow military of the Islamic Republic
The revolutionary regime of Iran is very good at retail terrorism and very bad at pitched battles. This has always been the case, and has only become more true over time. The clerics have never trusted the military with any political power, so they created the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a multi-service parallel military force that serves the political purposes of the regime, making its budget larger than that of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (AJA, or Artesh), which exists to defend Iran.
So far, Operation Rising Lion has targeted the leadership of the IRGC, but not the leadership of the regular armed forces of Iran. The neutrality of the regular forces in 1979 doomed the Pahlavi monarchy, though it did not gain the trust of the mullahs, so perhaps Israel hopes to cleave the Islamic Republic internally. As I explained during April in a post that is now unlocked, Iran stands on the brink of a regime transition, with nuclear ambitions being the jewel that Ayatollah Khamenei would like to pin to the turban of his son Mojtaba.
It appears that Israel acted at the last opportunity to prevent this atomic coronation. People who hate Israel are very mad about it, but they should have known better. Anyone who has studied the true state of Iranian arms lately knows that military weakness was the key reason why the regime wanted a nuclear insurance program in the first place. Clerical rule through parallel institutions has always created inefficiencies to exploit. The IDF has exposed this hollow state of Iran’s theocracy to the world.
Ali Akbar Salehi, former chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told an Iranian state TV program in February 2024 that "we have all the [pieces] of nuclear science and technology” to build a nuclear bomb. He compared a nuclear weapon to a car, which consists of “a chassis, it needs an engine, it needs a steering wheel, it needs a gearbox. Have you made a gearbox? I say yes. An engine? But each one is for its own purpose.” While the new civilian government negotiated with Donald Trump, Iran spun up uranium enrichment centrifuges.
They also embarked on a crash program to get all the parts of a basic bomb finished. “New intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program has convinced American officials that a secret team of the country’s scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran’s leadership decides to race for a bomb,” the New York Times reported in February. Khamenei, 82 and rumored to be in poor health, wants his son to inherit all the pieces of a nuclear bomb. He might hold himself to his own fatwa prohibiting nuclear weaponization, but his son can make a different decision.
Regime survival is the paramount concern for Khamenei. State survival is the paramount concern for Benjamin Netanyahu. Decapitation strikes — still ongoing after 24 hours, at the time of this writing — are clearly aimed at destabilizing the Islamist regime rather than the Iranian state. Apparently successful attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, and the targeted killing of key nuclear scientists, have certainly destabilized the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic. Destabilization is the intended outcome.
Ali Shamkhani, head of the Iranian nuclear program as well as Secretary-General of the Supreme National Security Council, was mortally wounded by a precision strike on his apartment. Let us pause to appreciate the achievement here. This was a sniper hit from an F-35, one shot one kill.
As I have argued since the Israelis began operations in response to the massacres of 7 October 2023, a ‘genocide’ that kills just one Palestinian civilian with every ton of explosives used is officially the least-efficient mass murder event in human history. That ratio makes the IDF utter shit as genocidaires. Unlike the Russians, the IDF are not even ‘double-tapping’ to kill first responders in Gaza or Lebanon or anywhere else. Why, it is almost as if they use kinetic force in a disciplined manner!
For the last 48 hours, everyone who hates Israel for one reason or another has found their own reason to wax hysterical about these incredible scenes, trying and utterly and hilariously failing to make them sound like World War III breaking out. In fact their dreams of remaking the world order without a Jewish state are in ashes, so they grieve. (Cry us a river to the sea, guys. Every one of your tears is sweeter than the waters of the Jordan. Mmm.)
“Recent intelligence shows Iran is nearing the point of no return in its race toward a nuclear weapon,” the IDF said in a statement last night. Tehran allegedly had enough enriched uranium to build a handful of basic, but still atomic, weapons. Consistent with international reporting, the Iranian program “has accelerated significantly in recent months” even as negotiations with the Trump administration began, according to the IDF. “Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iranian regime are an existential threat to the State of Israel and to the wider world,” thus the “preemptive” strikes.
Only after the first wave — 200 aircraft sorties in one night, or 60 percent of all Israeli fighter planes, hitting at least 100 targets with more than 300 munitions, according to the IDF — did the world learn that Mossad had set up strikes on air defenses with small drones built in Tehran and deployed from trucks and containers in advance of the planes. Very OP Spiderweb, no?
Agents also used Rafael Spike missiles smuggled into the country. Dozens of radars and missile launchers were destroyed, leaving the Israeli Air Force masters of the skies over Iran when they arrived. Day Two was less intense, 70 sorties that hit 40 targets, according to the IDF, so by Saturday it was clear that Israel enjoyed air superiority, if not supremacy, and was picking its air battles at leisure.
They will now take their time.
It was the latest in a series of successful Mossad operations inside Iran in recent years, suggesting that the regime has become far less secure in its rule than is generally understood outside of the country. While it was to be expected that some Iranians would turn out in the streets to demand the destruction of Israel in response, overall the crowds have been relatively small and the noise muted. The last thing the regime wants right now are mass street gatherings.
After all, Iran’s leadership is too busy scrambling to hide themselves from the Israeli Air Force to do very much, right now. Khamenei released a bellicose statement on television. Iran claimed to have shot down two Israeli jets, including an F-35, and circulated fake images, likely to justify all the ineffective antiaircraft fire over Tehran. The illusion of control is everything, right now.
No ‘bunker busters’ have been used on Iranian nuclear facilities so far. So far. It is worth recalling here that the IAF used more than 80 JDAMs to destroy the bunker where Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah, was hiding, and that they waited to do that until after they had reduced the organization’s ability to launch attacks into Israel.
At the time of this writing, at least twelve Iranian nuclear scientists are also dead, a nuclear science decapitation. All the electrical infrastructure at Natanz is destroyed, however, and so is the above-ground pilot enrichment complex. No uranium will be processed there any time soon. It is less clear what level of damage has been inflicted on the facility at Isfahan, but the target-set seems to be similar. The third site at Fordow, which makes the highly-enriched uranium, is built under a mountain and will prove the hardest nut to crack. The Israelis do not have the massive ‘bunker busters’ needed for such a mission. Getting Khamenei to agree to shut Fordow down — capitulation — is actually easier than destroying it.
From the beginning of the operation, the IDF targeted missile launchers, missile bases, missile bunker entrances, missile fuel, and Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Air Force, who oversaw the drone and missile attacks on Israel last year.
At the time of his death, Hajizedeh was meeting with IRGC Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the Iranian armed forces, as well as IRGC commanding Gen. Hossein Salami, thanks to yet another Israeli intelligence operation. “We carried out specific activities to help us learn more about them, and then used that information to influence their behaviour,” an Israeli official tells Fox News. Once the men were together, “we knew how to keep them there.”
This is a reference to ‘pattern of life’ intelligence, meaning that all of them were being tracked by Israeli spies, probably through their smart phones, probably in-country, which once again underlines the potential depth and breadth of Mossad’s penetration. The regime does not know who to trust, right now.
This decapitation and destruction and distrust explains why the Iranian response has been uncoordinated so far. Because the chain of command was broken and the means of response were already under attack, the IRGC has been unable to fire enough ballistic missiles at any one time to overwhelm Israeli defenses. Aside from one hit on the Kirya, Israel’s Pentagon, Iran’s ballistic missiles have been inaccurate so far, inflicting some civilian casualties, but no material harm to Israeli warfighting capability.
One of the first targets was the Artesh Air Force 2nd Tactical Airbase (TAB) in Tabriz. IAF bombs cratered the runways. Other worties hit aircraft hangers at the Hamedan airbase. Because Iran has no 21st century fighter jets, resistance was futile. Israel was left the master of Iran’s skies in the first hour.
On its second day, the IAF campaign hit the drone factory in Tabriz and responded to Iran’s strikes on civilian areas by attacking the domestic oil and gas infrastructure around Tehran. By leaving the export terminals alone, the IAF confined the economic impact of this retaliation within Iran. They also hit the Farda motors automotive factory in Boroujerd, Lorestan Province, which has no direct military connection but certainly raises automobile prices inside Iran.
An exhaustive listing is unnecessary: in 48 hours, Israel shifted from decapitation strikes to the defeat in detail of Iran’s abilities to hurt Israel, and to pay back any hurt Iran inflicts by imposing costs that Iranians will feel. Domestic energy prices have already caused problems for the regime in recent years and price shocks could add further instability.
The civilian nuclear reactor at Bushehr has been a keystone of regime stability: the postwar baby boom nearly doubled Iran’s population, while electrification was one of the few real social welfare achievements of the clerics. Thus far, the IDF has left the Bushehr reactor alone in this war. It uses Russian uranium fuel, so it will be unaffected by the attacks on enrichment facilities.
Which brings me to my chief complaint today: I was promised nuclear Armageddon. I am disappointed. Where is my nuclear Armageddon?
Here is video of an interceptor missile, probably either an Israeli Arrow or a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) launched by an American battery deployed to Israel, making a direct hit on an Iranian ballistic missile beyond the Karman line, i.e. in outer space, outside the atmosphere. Apparently, this is as close as we will get to the World War III scenario promised to us by critics of Israeli power. We get one five-second clip of what Ronald Reagan’s ‘star wars’ might have looked like if the Soviet Union had not gone broke trying to keep up with western defense spending. That’s it. I feel gipped. (Source)
Notably, the people who warned us that World War III was coming, inevitably, on the heels of any intervention, are exactly the same people dismissing the IDF’s performance so far against Iran because Israel is so strong and Iran is so weak, military-wise.
Darryl Cooper was just one of many figures on that left-right horseshoe to proclaim that a military draft would be necessary in the United States because an invasion of Iran would inevitably follow any strike. Now Cooper refers to Israel as “a grown man beating a baby.” In the American south, this is called poor-mouthing. In Aesop’s fable, it is called sour grapes. In psychology, it is called rationalization.
Iran sponsored the 7 October pogroms on the false assumption that international pressure would force Israel to stop short of destroying Iran’s proxy in Gaza. IRGC leadership did not believe that the IDF would, or could, destroy Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria. A Saturday night strike aimed to decapitate the Houthis by killing their military chief of staff, Muhammad Al-Ghamari, who is a key link between Iran and the Houthi missile program.
As originally intended, all of these proxies were supposed to isolate and surround Israel in a ‘gray zone’ that protected Iran from the IDF. Israel has made this ‘active deterrence’ program into a series of liabilities for Tehran. Their proxies have been tardy to this battle: just two rockets were fired out of Gaza on Friday, none from Lebanon; Hezbollah only started firing rockets on Saturday. That’s what serious recent military defeat in detail will do to a proxy force.
Khamenei already seems to have harbored doubts that proxy support was sustainable before 7 October. Trump’s 60-day ultimatum also seems to have prompted Khamenei towards withdrawal.
Tehran reportedly told their military advisors in Yemen to come home in April. A senior Iranian official indicated that support for regional proxies was being reduced in the face of threats from the new Donald Trump administration. Proxy groups in Iraq also reportedly lost their support and advisors. Six militia commanders in Baghdad also told Reuters that the Trump government had been warning the Iraqi government about airstrikes for some time, and that their Iranian backers had backed down.
For a second, it even almost seemed as if the cooperation, the indirect talks, might even be a tiny bit productive. Perhaps Iran meant to string him along, but Trump only gave Iran 60 days and it turns out that he was serious.
The Institute for the Study of War notes that in the wake of the decapitation strikes, Khamenei has appointed Maj. General Amir Hatami as the new commander of the Artesh. “Hatami is notably a vocal proponent of Iran’s ‘active deterrence’ doctrine, which has underpinned the offensive strategy that Iran has had since 2014-16.” A “generational turnover” at the highest ranks eliminates the last remaining veterans of the Iran-Iraq War.
That Israel has killed so many members within and in the orbit of the Command Network in recent days means that Israel has not only removed a key leadership cadre—it has also degraded one of the most stable and influential factions in the Islamic Republic. The Command Network has been an enduring presence in Iranian decision-making circles for decades—one of the few factions to remain so dominant other than Khamenei himself.
Surprise was somehow total, despite the signs and signals. Intelligence failure was total. “Most of them were targeted in their homes. It shows a level of overconfidence that is not comprehensible, really, in a situation like this,” Hamidreza Azizi, a think tank expert, tells the Wall Street Journal. The early reviews of Iran’s military performance are grim.
“If [Khamenei] is honest with himself, he will admit that he has lost. Everything he has worked for is crumbling before his eyes,” said Afshon Ostovar, associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. “The ship that he stewarded has run aground.”
“How did Tehran miscalculate so badly?” the WSJ editorial board asks. “For months President Trump made clear that he wanted to avoid a military confrontation and make a nuclear deal.” As I keep pointing out, Trump is transactional rather than ideological. His commitment to Israel is not faith-based. He would of course be the very first American president to ever get revolutionary Iran to engage in honest haggling, but that is in fact Trump’s favorite form of diplomacy.
He all but begged the regime to come to terms, and his envoy Steve Witkoff made a generous offer—too generous—that would have let Iran continue enriching uranium domestically for some years.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed it out of hand. “Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” he asked. The Iranians evidently thought they would pay no price for blowing past the President’s 60-day ultimatum and his red line on nuclear enrichment. So long as they kept talking, they presumed they could string along Mr. Trump, who would shield them from Israel.
Instead, Witkoff shifted to a harder line. Then on the 61st day of Trump’s ultimatum, Israel attacked. Trump seems to have led the Iranian side into complacency — and misled the media into reporting a rift that never existed.
Gil Hoffman writes at the Jerusalem Post that “the international press and Hebrew media in Israel were deliberately misled in order to trick Iran into thinking no attack was imminent. Leaks of US President Donald Trump shouting at Netanyahu were part of that deception.” Trump’s Middle East trip and his embrace of the new Syrian regime were seen as strategic snubs to Israel in May, adding to the false impression that he might hold Netanyahu back.
Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, and General Dogsbody Marco Rubio did his best to distance the United States from Israel’s actions. “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” he said. “Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.” As a precaution, American diplomatic personnel began leaving the region in the final 24 hours before Israel’s strikes began — which, again, ought to have signalled Iran that something was afoot, forces should be on alert, and so on.
At the time of this writing, Iran is content to leave American forces and embassies in a ‘gray zone’ and focus on hitting back at Israel. Tehran lacks the bandwidth to enlarge the war, indeed they never really had the means to keep a regional conflict going at this intensity for this long.
The US Navy has two destroyers providing support in the Mediterranean Sea. Many of the Israeli weapons, such as JDAMs and F-35s and Patriot interceptors, are American-made. Detractors of the IDF rationalize Israeli military success as an American contrivance. Following this logic, we ought to consider the Saudis and Jordanians equally complicit for using American-made weapons to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones. In reality, of course, the Saudis and the Jordanians cooperate in the defense of Israel because they are themselves ‘gray zone’ enemies of Tehran, just like the United States.
Here lies a contradiction worth considering: Iran, the international pariah-state, has no real friends at all. China has no interest in intervention to preserve the nuclear apocalypse fantasies of mullahs. Vladimir Putin has no power left to project in support of his erstwhile ally. North Korea is the fourth major threat to American interests in the world, and Pyongyang has no means to help Iran. No one is coming to save the mullahs from themselves.
Historically, the winner of any given war is most likely to be the side with the larger alliance, defined in macroeconomic terms (money, men, and machinery). Israel has more and better friends than Iran does. Their friends help them, so they win wars. This simple truth is always somehow too difficult for Israel’s enemies in the West to understand properly. They think of it as some sort of conspiracy when it is simply what military victory looks like.
Iranian society by contrast is constructed to control Iranians. It is not equipped to win high-intensity wars or conduct national mobilization to invade another country. If a foreign power is actually invading Iran, as Iraq did in the 1980s, Iranian nationalism will rise to the occasion. The IRGC chooses asymmetric strategies, such as cheap drones and suicide bombers, precisely because they lack the domestic support to sustain a wholesale offensive military conflict.
The mistake Tehran made was to use a deterrent strategy — proxies created to ‘defend’ Iran from Israel — as their means to invade and attack Israel before they finished building a nuclear arsenal. Then the IRGC command cadre failed to detect the danger they were in. Hubris is the explanation, but then the Persians never really did get the hang of those basic western civilizational concepts, whereas the Israelis have mastered them.
Don’t be jealous about it like Tucker Carlson. Don’t complain that it’s ‘not America First’ when the United States is letting the Israelis do all the grunt work. Don’t predict World War III when preventing a nuclear Holocaust is the entire point. Contrary to the inexplicable expectations of their western critics, Israel has preempted a regional war. Benjamin Netanyahu has liberated Donald Trump — and America — from responsibility for the security of the Middle East. This ought to make him very popular with the antiwar crowd, but of course they don’t think that way.
How Ukraine Attacks Russian Logistics
It was almost lost in the news about Operation Spiderweb this Sunday, then forgotten in the strike on the Kerch Strait Bridge on Monday, that two Russian train bridges also collapsed, derailing a freight train and a passenger train. Altogether, seven riders were killed and at least 79 more civilians were injured. Russian officials blamed both collapses, which took place a few hours apart, on explosions. Both rail lines were put out of service.