Army of ghouls faces a righteous leader !
Note the hexagram banners
Iran commentary by top observers
Re: Iran commentary by top observers
Re: Iran commentary by top observers
"Some thoughts on the current situation with Iran:
Deployment prior to this week was, as I pointed out at the time, consistent with a show of force to underline a negotiating position rather than a serious operation. Although that has begun to change, US aerial forces in the Middle East remain inferior in strength to the Israeli Air Force that quickly ran out of steam in combat last year. Any air campaign would not be a step-change from that of the Twelve Days' War.
The departure of huge numbers of tankers to the Middle East, without concomitant massive fighter deployments, indicates that the USAF intends to base its strike aircraft out of the easy range of Iranian short-range missiles on the other side of the Middle East or even farther afield in Cyprus, Diego Garcia, etc. This will dramatically curtail sortie generation compared to aircraft flying out of Al Udied in Qatar and other bases on the Gulf - established for exactly this confrontation but now perfectly useless given the number of short-range missiles the Iranians have pointed at them.
- USN forces in the region have a realistic total throw-weight of 300 to 400 badly out of date Tomahawk missiles, which is grossly inadequate for a sustained strike campaign against Iran.
Recall that the USN fired almost eighty in a single strike against Syrian WMD targets a decade ago and most were shot down. The USN task force realistically has two or three missile salvos against defended point targets before its magazines run dry.
Iranian offensive and defensive capabilities are formidable and have been overtly bolstered by the Chinese in recent weeks. Any attacks on Iranian soil will need to be - as in the Twelve Days' War - conducted from a limited pool of standoff munitions. The Israelis, who are expected to join any strikes, certainly have not replenished their own stockpiles. This dramatically curtails the combat endurance of the coalition forces.
The Chinese and Russians are feeding intelligence to Iran. This likely allowed them to stymie a US bomber strike last month prior to latest force buildup. The Iranians can be expected to have an excellent picture of US and Israeli moves at the tactical level.
In the aftermath of the Twelve Days' War and the insurrection in Iran last month, Mossad's attack network is likely a spent force and cannot be expected to contribute meaningfully to the war effort.
Iran retains significant proxy capability across the region. Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen are practically untouched. Hezbollah in Lebanon sat out the Twelve Days' War but can be expected to join in a regional Götterdämmerung.
No significant US ground forces have deployed, and the Iranians killed or arrested all of their compradors two weeks ago. Ergo, there is no route to actual regime change in Iran. There's no Delcy Rodriguez and Vladimir Padrino interested in a coup d'etat by proxy and able to elaborately set conditions for it to happen.
US facilities in the Gulf and the VERY vulnerable US embassy in Iraq (and the somewhat less vulnerable US embassy in Beirut) remain un-evacuated at this time. Evacuation of those facilities is a short-notice indicator of war - as we saw last month when bombers were likely airborne before being called off.
Trump talks a big game until the markets start to believe him, whereupon he reliably beats a hasty retreat and pivots to a new distraction from the Epstein Files. The moral hazard here is that Trump has done this so many times that by this point global markets don't actually take him seriously and so they're reacting late and weak to what are objectively very concerning developments. With that said oil prices are - finally - starting to rise.
US deployments to the Middle East thus far are to give Trump a credible military option if he decides to use force against Iran - prior deployments were non-credible and the Iranians would have taken them as such - but talk that war is necessarily imminent or that this force is actually adequate to the absolutely colossal task at hand (Iran is a country of 90 million and a geographic fortress) is irresponsible. As ever, use strict informational hygiene and consider source bias and attempts to box in US decision-making through planted reporting from controlled outlets and journalists.
Netanyahu desperately wants a war (fought by the US on his behalf, of course) but Trump probably wants a deal - and it's noteworthy that Iranian reports suggest one may be developing."
Source : armchair warlord on x
Re: Iran commentary by top observers
Larry Johnson is very sane & helpful here in this 26 min. analysis of the current situation.
Covers some military aspects that most of us don't know about.
WELL WORTH listening to, tho I hate to recommend any interview done by Jackson Hinkle who is DEFINITELY a fake, in my opinion.
https://x.com/LegitTargets/status/2024482641890697512