Middle East Defence & Security

[Big_Zucchini]

An Israeli drone shot down this morning over Iran.
It was revealed by Israel's public broadcaster KAN that 4 Israeli drones have been shot down in Iran so far:

• 2 by Iranian air defenses.
• 1 accidentally by the US.
• 1 by malfunction.

If previous evidence showed 4 drones downed, this indicates now that Iran is still very much struggling to deploy any air defense system in relevant areas.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1937023685736460500

 

[Big_Zucchini]

Increasing actions related to regime change.
Evin prison isn't a regular prison. It's for political rivalry and dissent.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1937076074652876815

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1937074078759706733

This however does not indicate any specific course of action on Israel's part.
Here are several possibilities I can think of, in order of decreasing likelihood:

1. Strikes on internal security targets to pressure Iran politically.
2. Make Iran more conducive for an uprising, should Iranians choose to accept it.
3. A coordinated regime change effort.

 

[Feanor]

How much damage:
24 Israelis have died so far. All within the first 48 hours.
According to Janes, Iraq fired ~200 ballistic missiles (roughly equivalent to first 24 hours on Israel) on Iranian cities, causing >2,000 deaths.
This demonstrates how a combination of air defenses, public shelters and mandated bomb proof areas in every building, and culture of adherence to safety instructions, can create an exceptionally resilient home front.
It is thus safe to conclude that most of the damage is behind us.
Everything else like buildings and other stuff is just material, which literally can just be bought.

Document Title

Iran can probably import missiles that will allow them to trickle fire MRBMs on Israel on the same level as the Houthis, something we'd consider a victory.

Iran hasn't fired its cruise missiles yet. Only MRBMs and drones. I suspect these are reserved for another target.
It's very difficult to saturate Israeli air defenses with something as basic as a cruise missile or a drone.
They launch drones probably because it's cheap enough. But cruise missiles are more expensive, and will be better utilized against something with more limited defenses, like a ship, or a base. Or civilian targets related to local energy trade.

Someone just decided to illustrate my point. It remains to be seen how this plays out in the medium term.

Missile strike in Haifa: alert failure caused by identification error, IDF says - i24NEWS

That same morning, approximately 25 missiles were launched toward Israeli territory - Click on the link for more

www.i24news.tv

 

[PachkaSigaret]

Iran telegraphed it's response to Qatar beforehand, just like they telegraphed their response when Soleimani got assassinated.
If like last time, I don't expect the US to respond again. This does show to me that the Iranian's want to de-escalate this situation as much as possible. I don't think they can afford to even try to close the Straits of Hormuz, their economy is very dependent on that shipping lane being open as well.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-missile-strike-qatar-fits-190007029.html

 

[hauritz]

Trump announced on social media that there will be a ceasefire. Of course this is Trump claiming this so perhaps not the most reliable source.

 

[Big_Zucchini]

Gotta say I'm a bit disappointed. We could have pushed through with more progress.

To clarify:
As a general rule, military success should drive political results.
A ceasefire with no terms is a military success leading to political failure, which in turn quickly diminishes the military success.
Israel would ideally reach a Lebanon-like agreement. Quiet for quiet agreements in the middle east have been notoriously un-favorable to Israel. I'm not advocating for a forever war. I'm pretty sure we got most of our targets. But the final stretch seems very much half assed.


EDIT:
Seems my post about strikes on Basij, Evin prison, and other internal security, was right, and that Israel+USA did not push for a regime change and simply sought to pressure Iran.

EDIT 2:
Ceasefire not holding yet. 20 minutes in and Iran is still just now launching missiles.
Israel has 12 hours + however much Iran violates its own, to conduct more strikes in Iran.
It would be wise, IMO, to focus hard on Iran's internal security apparatus to make them as vulnerable as possible to a popular uprising. Even if it does not lead to one, that's what scares them most.

 

[Feanor]

Gotta say I'm a bit disappointed. We could have pushed through with more progress.

To clarify:
As a general rule, military success should drive political results.
A ceasefire with no terms is a military success leading to political failure, which in turn quickly diminishes the military success.
Israel would ideally reach a Lebanon-like agreement. Quiet for quiet agreements in the middle east have been notoriously un-favorable to Israel. I'm not advocating for a forever war. I'm pretty sure we got most of our targets. But the final stretch seems very much half assed.


EDIT:
Seems my post about strikes on Basij, Evin prison, and other internal security, was right, and that Israel+USA did not push for a regime change and simply sought to pressure Iran.

EDIT 2:
Ceasefire not holding yet. 20 minutes in and Iran is still just now launching missiles.
Israel has 12 hours + however much Iran violates its own, to conduct more strikes in Iran.
It would be wise, IMO, to focus hard on Iran's internal security apparatus to make them as vulnerable as possible to a popular uprising. Even if it does not lead to one, that's what scares them most.

It's possible that the interpretation that Trump hit Iran as a way of getting Israel to agree to an end to hostilities may be correct. He might be doing the old carrot and stick, the carrot is the strikes the US did against Iranian nuclear facilities. The stick is that he could threaten to withhold the interceptors Israel needs to keep trading blows with relative impunity.

 

[Big_Zucchini]

It's possible that the interpretation that Trump hit Iran as a way of getting Israel to agree to an end to hostilities may be correct. He might be doing the old carrot and stick, the carrot is the strikes the US did against Iranian nuclear facilities. The stick is that he could threaten to withhold the interceptors Israel needs to keep trading blows with relative impunity.

Witholding munitions was Biden's strategy. Trump works in other, more closed doors ways.
Made sense for Israel to make a deal with the US to strike nuclear targets if the US was unwilling to assist logistically in an Israeli strike. And nuclear targets were the number 1 priority.
But when we're looking at the full picture, it appears to be the same mistake made with the JCPOA.
Iran's economical assets weren't harmed, to improve chances of an uprising.
Iran's internal security assets were kept intact so far, which allows IRGC to prevent such uprising.
So Iran has all the resources (energy trade) to start restoring its losses, and we're likely politically bound from "mowing the lawn".

Israel technically still has <10 hours left. But I'm skeptical.

EDIT:
When war is conducted properly, it prevents a future, deadlier war. Sans last minute changes, we're probably headed toward another confrontation within the next 2-5 years.

 

[Big_Zucchini]

Ceasefire is over.

 

[Redshift]

@KipPotapych Sorry but this is a combination of historical revisionism and cliches.
JCPOA was de facto a temporary agreement. It had a deadline. Within 15 years there would be no restrictions, with some being lifted years earlier.
Effectively the intent was to ban Iranian enrichment and some other activities for up to 15 years, but give it sanctions relief through which it would build up an arsenal, a deterrent (Hezbollah was supposed to deter a strike but it made a strategic error), and build significant infrastructure including more UGFs and stockpile components for massively increasing the program.
By 2025 it would not be close to a nuclear weapon, but it would so much more powerful ballistic missile arsenal and much empowered Hezbollah, that if October 7th hadn't driven Israel to retaliate and Hezbollah hadn't mistakenly locked itself in a conflict with Israel, it's very much possible Israel would remain deterred from conducting a strike.

You think from the perspective of someone living in the sheltered Europe or US. But JCPOA was never about the full picture. It ignores, as you ignore, the conventional aspect to which it is tied. Iran's array of proxies and its own arsenal. Easy to ignore in hindsight when it was all dismantled already.

This same decision to ignore Iran's conventional capabilities causes your ignorance to the Iranian threat to Europe.
Iran has been developing Europe and US-range missiles for years. They are of no use against Israel.
Over 10,000 of its drones rained down on Europe already.
And it operates significant networks of operatives across Europe. It's been known for years for example that the UK is the regional hub for Iranian activity.
And guess what? Just yesterday they disabled 2 tanker aircraft in RAF Brize Norton.
Why specifically tanker aircraft, an aircraft type that coincidentally is so relevant to air operations in Iran?
They were then set to be branded as terrorist organizations, but the writing was on the wall, as this is actually not the first time they cause millions in damage to a British military facility.

You also dismissed Merz as a buffoon.
Is he really though? It's no coincidence that Iran's missiles can now reach Germany, but as of 2025 Germany does not posses a BMD system to intercept them.
They will soon, Arrow 3 provided by Israel, same one knocking down MRBMs right now. But there are leaks, and Merz knows there's no such thing as actually defending from a nuke without preventing that nuke's construction.

I do not subscribe to the idea of defeatism. I believe problems have a solution, and solutions work.
After defeating Hamas and Hezbollah, and a week into a war with Iran:

1. No WW3.
2. No massive regional war.
3. Strait of Hormuz is open.
4. Israel largely unscathed.
5. No ground invasion into Iran.

Now, I've heard plenty of people doom-mongering on Iran for years. I've always responded with reason. But it never seems to stop. Even in the middle of a war that's the antithesis of that.

Another person apparently made the same case more eloquently and it resonated with more people.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934799660717146343

I see absolutely nothing bad with eliminating a nuke program before it produces one. Nor anything bad about eliminating a regime whose motto was "death to America/Israel/Britain".

Does that mean that a strike in Israeli facilities years ago before they got nukes would have also been "nothing bad"?

 

[Big_Zucchini]

Does that mean that a strike in Israeli facilities years ago before they got nukes would have also been "nothing bad"?

Sure.

 

[Big_Zucchini]

Bit of a reach but perhaps Trumpy shows that he's pressuring Israel out of the 12 hours he promised, to once again create a show of "good will" and restart some operations soon. Perhaps in a takeover from Israel, where it becomes a pure US-Iran confrontation. But we'll see.
If fighting were to resume though, the some stars would have to align to make it quick and painless.


EDIT: I am aware of a narrative that both sides wanted a ceasefire due to mutual depletion. On Israel's part allegedly interceptor shortage.
But there is no conceivable way to verify this. Hence, I did not refer to this narrative so far.

 

[SinisterMinister]

Hard not to see this (if it is truly ended) as anything other than a massive strategic defeat for Israel. Their "deterrence" accomplished neither regime change nor a degradation/elimination of Iran's nuclear program. Iran demonstrated the ability to hurt Israel if needed (the extent of which is up to your subjective interpretation of various streams of propaganda).

More importantly, they withstood an assault and came out the other side with their nuclear aims intact and likely bolstered. This was the "opportunity" to degrade them and it failed miserably. The IRGC is ascendent, and will undoubtedly pressure the Ayatollah to lift his fatwa on nuclear weapons, or simply ignore it. They will most likely withdraw from the NPT (in practice if not in word) and finish their weapons program without further interruption. The Mossad was forced to activate much of their network within Iran for little to no gain and will have significant work to do to rebuild it, not to mention significantly less fertile ground for their plow.

Voila, a new balance of power in the ME, brought to you by the hubris of Benjamin Netanyahu. Not to mention the hawks in Washington being utterly humiliated by Trump's token bombing operation.

Further reading regarding the shift of power within Iran:

https://archive.ph/HTzdh

Of note, "Some in Iran are describing the Israeli-American strikes as chemotherapy to remove cancerous cells."

 

[Big_Zucchini]

Hard not to see this (if it is truly ended) as anything other than a massive strategic defeat for Israel. Their "deterrence" accomplished neither regime change nor a degradation/elimination of Iran's nuclear program. Iran demonstrated the ability to hurt Israel if needed (the extent of which is up to your subjective interpretation of various streams of propaganda).

I agree that at least as of right now, this has been to a debatable extent a large missed opportunity. According to pre-ceasefire INSS poll, 32% of Israelis support a quick end to the war, while 64% support some form of continuation with varying goals.

English version doesn't seem to perfectly mirror the original version in terms of wording or presentation, so linking Hebrew source:

סקר "עם כלביא"

ממצאי סקר מיוחד הנוגע למלחמה בין ישראל לאיראן

www.inss.org.il

But it would be incorrect to state that Iran demonstrated a capability to hurt Israel.
Counting the 2024 strikes and the current campaign, Iran fired at Israel about 1,000 SSMs. Of which <100 impacted something (50-60 in Operation Rising Lion).
This is a very low number, that overall resulted in the depletion of approximately half of Iran's arsenal.
Iran had no demonstrated capability to hit strategic targets in Israel, and eventually resorted to targeting residential areas.
But even then, Israel's homefront is so adept at absorption that even this resulted in mostly material damage, and a civilian death toll far lower than projections. Some projections claimed 1,000-5,000 civilians would die.
There has been no recorded effect from Iran's >1,000 drones launched toward Israel.

Source on operation Rising Lion and OTP 3 numbers:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1937495174499668399

Iran spent 6 proxies and half of its arsenal to ultimately kill less than 2,000 people and deal near 0 military damage (Counting losses since October 7th 2023). Some copelords claim the damage was depletion of Israel's interceptors, but since the war has ended, it has no significance because it was not utilized to inflict damage. Israel in the meantime will restock interceptors for the next confrontation, while Iran is struggling to re-establish SSM production.

This was the "opportunity" to degrade them and it failed miserably.

There is no publicly disclosed BDA on Iran's nuclear program as of yet.

The IRGC is ascendent, and will undoubtedly pressure the Ayatollah to lift his fatwa on nuclear weapons, or simply ignore it.

There is no Fatwa on nuclear weapons. Those who believe the fatwa BS also tend to believe other fairytales like the "hardliners" story and Iranian LGBT rights.
Iran did not start a regional war, losing all its proxies and much of its military capability, while also significantly risking the IRGC's stability, just to pursue something it banned with a Fatwa anyway.

They will most likely withdraw from the NPT (in practice if not in word) and finish their weapons program without further interruption.

There is no significance to Iran being signatory to the NPT. It has no effect on their nuclear weapons program.

The Mossad was forced to activate much of their network within Iran for little to no gain and will have significant work to do to rebuild it, not to mention significantly less fertile ground for their plow.

I agree a single use asset was spent on something whose significance we cannot yet quantify. But such assets also naturally expire, and in their stead new ones are built. This can be something significant, or it could be a nothingburger. That would depend heavily on the timing of the next operation. Such capabilities usually take years to rebuild.
But Iran's significant losses are actually a positive opportunity. It is precisely when an adversary acquires new equipment, that it is most vulnerable. Iran can choose to do very slow and filtered acquisition and reconstruction to minimize such infiltration. But it would take a long time to rebuild capabilities that way, giving Israel a massive arms race advantage.
Or it could do a very fast process and risk vulnerability exploitation by Israel. The pager operation was one such example.

Voila, a new balance of power in the ME, brought to you by the hubris of Benjamin Netanyahu. Not to mention the hawks in Washington being utterly humiliated by Trump's token bombing operation.

Even if Israelis mostly fill bitter about the way it ended, the war, if anything, shifted the balance of power significantly in Israel's direction. There is no conventional threat in the middle east anymore that will be able to credibly threaten Israel for the near future.

 

[Feanor]

There has been no recorded effect from Iran's >1,000 drones launched toward Israel.

It should be noted that 1000 Shahed-style drones is not a large number. And even against far less capable Ukrainian air defenses, repeated Russian waves of 100+ drones don't do catastrophic damge, certainly not on a timeline similar to what we saw in this war. Realistically, given the involvement of IADS assets from the US and other countries in the region, I don't think even 10 000 drones launched at ~1k per day over 10 days would have done all that much. It seems that Iran didn't learn from Russia's lessons with long range strike in Ukraine.

 

[Big_Zucchini]

It should be noted that 1000 Shahed-style drones is not a large number. And even against far less capable Ukrainian air defenses, repeated Russian waves of 100+ drones don't do catastrophic damge, certainly not on a timeline similar to what we saw in this war. Realistically, given the involvement of IADS assets from the US and other countries in the region, I don't think even 10 000 drones launched at ~1k per day over 10 days would have done all that much. It seems that Iran didn't learn from Russia's lessons with long range strike in Ukraine.

I have no idea what they were even attempting to do with that. Maybe just launch assets that were cheap and could potentially be bombed.

 

[Feanor]

I have no idea what they were even attempting to do with that. Maybe just launch assets that were cheap and could potentially be bombed.

Iran's experience against the Saudis in Yemen may have misled them as to the efficacy of such strikes. I think massive fleet of many thousands every night non-stop, and timed to work in conjunction with missile strikes could have accomplished something. But they would have to be a coordinated effort. Also I know Russia did a lot of work in terms of upgrading their shares to make them harder to down and more deadly. I wonder if any of those improvements made it back to Iran. Perhaps not...

 

[SinisterMinister]

stat
Counting the 2024 strikes and the current campaign, Iran fired at Israel about 1,000 SSMs. Of which <100 impacted something (50-60 in Operation Rising Lion).
This is a very low number, that overall resulted in the depletion of approximately half of Iran's arsenal.
Iran had no demonstrated capability to hit strategic targets in Israel, and eventually resorted to targeting residential areas.
But even then, Israel's homefront is so adept at absorption that even this resulted in mostly material damage, and a civilian death toll far lower than projections. Some projections claimed 1,000-5,000 civilians would die.
There has been no recorded effect from Iran's >1,000 drones launched toward Israel.

Source on operation Rising Lion and OTP 3 numbers:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1937495174499668399

Absolutely no reason to believe those numbers at all, especially given the ban on publishing missile footage in Israel.

There is no publicly disclosed BDA on Iran's nuclear program as of yet.

You don't have to be a genius to read between the lines: this did next to nothing.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/politics/intel-assessment-us-strikes-iran-nuclear-sites

Depth of facilities at Fordow is not known exactly but I've seen estimates that it is actually more like 300m deep beneath the mountain ridge. It was certainly not destroyed and based on published intelligence estimates it probably wasn't even significantly damaged.

The other factor, as mentioned by Dr Jeffrey Lewis here, is that much of the fissile material and potentially even centrifuges are likely in tunnels near Isfahan which were untouched by bombing.

https://x.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1936955686174466551

Not to mention the assessment from US intelligence that Iran likely maintains further, unknown nuclear sites.

There is no Fatwa on nuclear weapons. Those who believe the fatwa BS also tend to believe other fairytales like the "hardliners" story and Iranian LGBT rights.
Iran did not start a regional war, losing all its proxies and much of its military capability, while also significantly risking the IRGC's stability, just to pursue something it banned with a Fatwa anyway.

Cool story. Iran didn't start this war, if you want to pretend they did, fine, but nobody else believes that. If there were no fatwa, there is no explanation for why Iran didn't have nuclear weapons years ago. They have had the capability for a long time. What are they waiting for? There is no technical explanation for why they don't have one; the explanation is political.

There is no significance to Iran being signatory to the NPT. It has no effect on their nuclear weapons program.

IAEA inspectors have had an immensely detrimental effect. No NPT, no inspectors. No inspectors, nobody knows where their facilities are.

Bottom line is, unless there is a restart to hostilities in the coming days there is not likely to be another attempt to militarily prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and there IS likely to be a renewed Iranian push for one. A nuclear Iran is a major deterrent to Israeli freedom of action. The "tactical brilliance" of Rising Lion is about as strategically impactful as the tactical brilliance of Operation Barbarossa.