In the early hours of June 13, the Israeli Air Force, reportedly aided by special forces/spy units pre-deployed into Iran, launched a barrage of massive strikes against Iranian air-defenses, nuclear facilities, command-and-control nodes, and individual targeted Iranians, military and non-military. Iranian government negotiators were planning to meet in Muscat, Oman, just two days later, in the next phase of the talks that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had maintained for the previous two months. (Israel’s attack reportedly killed some of the Iranian specialists who were planning to attend those Muscat talks.)
The Israeli attack almost certainly took the Iranians by surprise. Israel killed many senior military leaders, especially in the elite Iranian revolutionary Guard Corps. But within just a few hours, Iran’s command system proved capable of responding in kind; and since June 13, every night has seen an exchange of deadly missiles between the two countries. Israel has delivered much of its ordnance against Iran from air-force planes flying right over Iran, or close to its Western border in the skies of Iraq and Syria protected by U.S. surveillance (and potential interception) capabilities, while Iran has delivered its missiles, including some hypersonic missiles, from its own home turf.
The Israelis claim they have destroyed many significant Iranian military and nuclear-research facilities. Their attacks– along with calls from Pres. Trump for the “evacuation” of the whole of Tehran–have caused deep disruptions in the lives of millions of Iranians.
The human casualties of this war have been very much higher in Iran than in Israel–though not on a per-capita basis. In Israel, families who have never previously experienced “incoming” attacks that caused more than minor damage have now been seeing the much larger level of damage inflicted by those Iranian missiles that manage to evade Israel’s multi-layered (and partly U.S.-supplied) anti-missile shields.
The two sides have seemingly become locked into a deadly war of attrition with no clear end– or even a plausible diplomatic off-ramp– in sight. (There have meantime been some reports that Israel’s stock of “Arrow” anti-ballistic missiles has been depleting at a rate that can’t be sustained for very much longer.)
Within this picture of a possibly lengthy, slugging-it-out war of attrition, there are a number of possible wild cards:
Continue reading “Netanyahu’s big roll of the dice in Iran”