|
Tic-Toc Thread On The War On Iran – 2
Machine translated from Hebrew:
Yossi Melman @yossi_melman – 5:50 UTC · Jun 15, 2025
The euphoria was brief. On Friday morning, I asked if it was even necessary to start a war with the Iranians. Shiites are historically willing to suffer. I mentioned their willingness to sacrifice as demonstrated in the 8 years of attrition with Iraq. I recommend that we cut our losses. Ask Trump to stop the scramble for a reasonable agreement. Otherwise, we’ll end up begging for a cease-fire and Iran will refuse.
—
Yossi Melman @yossi_melman – 6:22 UTC · Jun 16, 2025
There is no one to stop the madness. Ariel Kahana, political commentator for Israel Hayom, writes about Israel’s response plan to attack population centers: The IDF will announce in the coming hours an evacuation order for neighborhoods in Tehran. After that, the air force will bring down buildings, similar to what Israel did in Beirut.
…
The game board has changed a lot in the past 2 day. Here’s what I’m seeing:
a. U.S. is amassing firepower for an overwhelming assault on Iran. All those tankers – what, 25 of them – come with a complement of fighter-bombers. U.S. is planning an overwhelm-with-numbers assault.
b. Iran-Russia-China’s response options include, at least:
___1. Take out tankers, take out staging areas (Cyprus and Diego Garcia, at least, possibly Qatar, UAE American bases) and carriers in Arabian and Indian ocean adjacent to Iran, and do it pre-emptively
___2. Move a lot of Air Defense (radars, missile-killers) into Iran, possibly Iraq if it’s not already in place. It may be; Russia has not been asleep on this one, but if it is, it’s still letting a lot through. Needs to be done already; in-rush is coming soon. Need to push the point-of-ID-and-interdiction boundary farther away from Iran in order to give downstream players (addn’l AD batteries) time to react
___3. Interfere with the West’s ISR. This, IMO, is the West’s major advantage, and it’ll be decisive if left in place. Not sure how well Iran can see the battlespace, and even if they have long-range air-to-air missiles, if you don’t know where the incomings are …. I think this accounts for how few Israeli fighters have been shot down to date.
Let’s play out the moves. Suppose Iran/Russia/China actually do the above, and let’s imagine that the U.S. is actually planning an overwhelm-with-numbers strategy, as it currently appears (to me).
Move 1: Iran-Russia-China sets up long-range AD, fires missiles at incoming tankers and fighters, damages or sinks a western air-craft carrier. Clobbers Diego Garcia and Cyprus’ UK airfields. That blunts or neuters the overwhelm strategy, and makes it difficult to conduct attrition warfare. That’s what Iran-Russia-China want; optimal outcome for them.
Move 2: U.S. says to itself “easy path, overwhelming force not working”. Now they have to make a choice:
___1. Do we back off (not gonna happen, certainly not right away)
___2. Do we get nefarious (likely to happen) by:
_______a. Internal strife, decapitation, kill Khomeini. If that was gonna happen, it’d have happened already.
_______b. Do some form of nuke strikes. Big pop centers, or EMP, or such-like
_______c. Attack Russia proper. Got equipment mostly ready to go all around Baltic Sea, might be able to sneak in some decapitation trick while Russia’s attention is on Israel-Iran. Certainly a feint in this direction, timely-done, would do wonders for distraction.
____3. Do we do nukes
You know Russia, China, Iran have gamed this out. What’s their move to counter?
____1. Tell West: you nuke and we nuke. We understand this is civilizational, all chips on table, the Big One. We have pieces in place to flatten you if you move across this line (nuke Iran). We understand this is for all the chips, and we’re all-in.
____2. Have such awesome ISR and AD in place that no nukes can get thru. Iran-China-Russia just plays defense. What do you think the chances are of no nukes getting thru? Would Russia-China-Iran risk that? Would they do wait-and-see?
____3. Blink. Throw Iran under the bus, let them get ground up by the West, and deal with the consequences later
So, I see this coming to a head in the next few, possibly several days. The West _has_ to prevail against Iran, or their game is over, and they know that well. This doesn’t seem like an “attrition” game, too many parts of the model are in motion, and a decisive action will move a lot of parts one way or the other.
Someone said “buy gasoline”. I did. Got beans, rice, all the little things one tiny little American turtle can do to survive the onslaught. For all the good it’s gonna do.
===
That’s my assessment of where we are. How are you reading the tea leaves?
Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Jun 17 2025 2:26 utc | 860
|
