Posted on 06/14/2025 7:38:19 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
D-Day update and thoughts on the ongoing Iran-Israel War - I was hoping it would be known as the One-Day War, but the sides seem to have resumed fire just now.
Items to discuss: 1. Israeli assassination campaign 2. Israeli air campaign 3. Iranian missile campaign
1. Israeli targeted killings
The Israelis kicked off their attack on Iran early yesterday morning (local time) with a series of targeted attacks aimed at assassinating senior leaders in the Iranian armed services as well as nuclear scientists. Alongside several scientists and Ali Shamkhani (a very prominent diplomat), three prominent figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed: General Hossein Salami, commander of the IRGC; Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of the Iranian General Staff; and Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid, whom I've gathered was in charge of a joint forces command.
This move was likely counterproductive to Israeli strategic goals, to the point I suspect these men may have been set up to be killed. Allow me to explain.
For decades, Iran has followed an "aggressive proxy" strategy of confronting Israel under which they provided arms, technical know-how, and occasionally direct military support support to proxy forces positioned to directly attack Israel. This is why Lebanese Hezbollah, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and Baathist Syria received so much support from Iran. It's why [Sunni] Hamas got the same. The thinking was that these Iranian proxies would gradually wear down Israel while establishing a friendly maneuver corridor across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon for the Iranian military to gloriously march on and reclaim Jerusalem from the hated enemy.
If this sounds like millenarian nonsense that's because it was - the odds of such a maneuver actually succeeding would be, in my professional judgment, approximately zero percent. With that being said, Iran in the '90s was a millenarian revolutionary garrison-state that had just spent a decade fighting Saddam and people in that kind of situation can make some genuinely insane plans.
The thing is that it's not the 1990s any more. It's the 2020s and Iran is an increasingly wealthy and industrialized country and the Iranian elite increasingly leery of an endless jihadist project against Israel they get no return on investment from. As such when push came to shove in the last two years we've seen a rapid transition away from direct confrontation with Israel and towards a strategy of defensive deterrence, with the Iranians abandoning proxies in Lebanon and Syria and striking back at Israel directly when their interests were threatened. Of course the Israelis have manifestly not been deterred yet, but that's what the present exchange of fire is about establishing.
And, well, the Israelis just killed three of the architects of that very IRGC-focused "forward proxy" strategy, who probably lobbied and would have continued to lobby in favor of a strategy that saw military resources poured into funding random terrorists instead of invested in the conventional military capabilities and economic development that could make Iran the preeminent power in the Middle East. And driving this home further, Bagheri's replacement as Chief of Staff is out of the regular Army - not the political IRGC.
Why do I think they could have been betrayed? Same reason I think Ismail Haniyeh got sold out - someone very powerful in the Iranian power structure wants to wind down the proxy strategy and they're not above using Mossad to solve their problems for them. As I pointed out earlier, the Iranians may not have known the exact details of the attack but they sure as hell knew enough to take cover.
2. The Israeli air campaign
I pointed out last night that the Israelis didn't seem to be accomplishing much with their air campaign, and I stand by that assessment - the Iranians don't seem to have lost anything they couldn't afford to part with. Many Israeli attacks in the last day seem to have hit dirt, hardened facilities they could not successfully penetrate, or at best "soft" dual-use aboveground facilities. They manifestly failed to knock out Iran's hardened military nuclear facilities, missile forces, air defenses, or a decisive balance of their command and control nodes.
This goes back to the rope-a-dope remark I made earlier tonight - Iran's air defenses seem to have taken a 12-hour siesta at the start of the battle and only "woke up" as the sun set. When they came online, however, they did so all at once and in full force - to the point there were rumors of Israeli aircraft shot down and the IAF seems to have become markedly more circumspect with multiple reports late in the day of large strike packages assembling and then aborting.
The explanation making the rounds for this is that this was due to an Israeli cyberattack. I don't really think that's particularly plausible given the near-total lack of any air defense response for much of the day, without even much manual antiaircraft fire seen. I think it's rather more plausible that the Iranian air defenses were ordered to hold fire and remain in hide sites while the initial Israeli strikes went in.
Why would they do this? Because the Iranians could be reasonably confident those strikes would not fatally damage their hardened strategic infrastructure and those strikes - many of which would be directed at known or templated air defense positions those launchers and radars would not be occupying - would largely expend the IAF's limited inventory of standoff weapons. Lest we forget, the main combat mission of the IAF is milk runs to bomb Gaza, not complex SEAD. When the IAF transitioned to attempting to run aircraft directly into Iranian airspace late in the day to attack with conventional bombs the (still very intact) defenses deployed out of hiding and illuminated, immediately and drastically crimping the IAF's campaign plan given they were then faced with a largely intact air defense network their initial long-range strikes had failed to destroy. Ergo the "rope-a-dope" analogy: the Iranians sat down and waited as they took a beating - one they knew would exhaust their enemy worse than it would hurt them.
3. The Iranian missile campaign
There's not much to say about this that I haven't already said in previous rounds of Iran-Israel skirmishing. The Iranians have ballistic missiles that can penetrate the Israeli missile shield, they have enough of them stockpiled that they don't seem to be in any immediate danger of running out, and this force was manifestly not destroyed nor even suppressed by Israeli attacks today. And as of today they've revealed a willingness to throw them at the heart of the Israeli state and its strategic infrastructure if sufficiently threatened.
Moreover we haven't even seen Iranian drones and cruise missiles launched yet, at least as far as I've been able to gather. Some from allied militias in Iraq, certainly, but nothing from Iran proper. You can bet the Iranians have an apocalyptic stockpile of these relatively cheap and simple weapons ready to launch at a time and place of their choosing.
Going forward? I hope there's a ceasefire soon, I think by now both sides have made their point and there's little purpose in continued fighting. The IRGC hardliners who would have agitated for a nuclear attack on Israel are dead or discredited, the Iranians have established they can eat Israel's worst and bounce back, and deterrence has been adequately established going in both directions.
As supporting evidence for at least one of the claims, here's an archived 2019 article showing the deceased General Salami ranting ineffectively.
On the day of the initial attack before the initial response of Iran, the IDF was already stating that this was going to be a multi-day operation because of the number of targets involved. No one paying attention would think this would be a one day war.
They had to go after the command and control targets (the military leaders) on day one because they would be the easiest to hide and protect on day two and beyond.
(General Salami)
Always ask for Specific Salami
Don’t go with the General...
This is like “Hot Shots!: Part Deux”
Looks like Israel now hitting energy targets in Iran
Iran said they will respond if this happens
OSINTdefender
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Reports now of major strikes by the Israeli Air Force against the Fajr Jam Natural Gas Refinery in the Bushehr Province of Southern Iran.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1933902118051590434
Cool.
Now we got China and India, Pakistan UAE and a few others involved.
This is going great.
seems like just a few eons ago, in April 2024, Iran directly confronted Israel with over 300 projectiles, in an unprecedented, unprovoked attack.
Just want to know your opinion, is Netanyahu waiting for the end of Shabbat to reply to the Iranian attack? We should know soon. Shabbat in Israel will finish at 1:31 edt
Israel has been almost continuously attacking in Iran for the past day. IDF update within the last few hours.
I missed it. Has it been posted in FR?
Here’s text of a post from the last hour:
IDF: The Chief of the General Staff to the Air Crews That Carried Out Strikes in Iran:
“In terms of operational, intelligence, and technological capabilities, this is an unprecedented achievement in the history of the IDF — we are opening the route to Tehran.”
The Chief of the General Staff, LTG Eyal Zamir, today (Saturday met) with air crews and technicians from Tel Nof Airbase who are taking part in the strikes in Iran.
The Chief of the General Staff expressed his appreciation to the technical teams for their important work, praised the air crews, and emphasized the courage, precision, and determination they have demonstrated while executing the mission, preserving freedom of action, operational superiority, and the security of the State of Israel.
From the words of the Chief of the General Staff, LTG Eyal Zamir: “We are in the midst of an unprecedented achievement in the history of the IDF — we are opening the route to Tehran. You are dealing with an unprecedented strategic threat to the State of Israel. I gain confidence from you — from the pilots, the senior commanders in the Air Force, and our intelligence personnel. I visited all the Air Force bases. I saw the pilots, and they gave me the confidence that we can move forward.”
Attached are the following:
Footage of the words of the Chief of the General Staff: https://bit.ly/4kJW3g6
Related Footage: https://bit.ly/3HHdfEj
Related Photos: https://idfanc.activetrail.biz/ANC2037502
IDF: An IAF Aircraft Eliminated Operatives That Launched a Missile Toward Israel’s Home Front This Morning
Attached are the following:
Footage of the operatives’ attack and the surface-to-surface missiles launched toward the State of Israel this morning from a launcher in western Iran: https://bit.ly/43WF2If
Footage from the strike on a truck carrying a surface-to-surface missile launcher: https://bit.ly/43VmQ1O
You mean the attacks that were explicitly in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1st? The one that killed several Iranian officials?
How does that count as “unprecedented” and “unprovoked”?
Syria was a war zone of the unabandond Iranian/Shia proxy Hezbollah, was firing unprevoked rockets into Israel.
I’m just saying, when you’ve had a proxy conflict spanning literal decades, trying to claim that any given attack is “unprecedented” or “unprovoked” rings hollow.
From a couple hours ago:
...”At this hour, air force pilots are continuing to strike and carry out significant blows in various areas in Iran. A sequence of strikes that has not stopped for 40 hours, including over 150 targets,” he says...
“mullahloversonfr”
“putinthewarpig”
Classy.
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