• Iran’s capabilities to significantly damage Israel or US bases in the region are limited. Israel and the US have overwhelming air superiority and almost certainly managed to take out a substantial part of Iran’s missile launching capabilities
  • We can’t expect much from Hezbollah which is still reeling from having its leadership taken out, the fall of Assad in Syria, continuous small strikes by Israel. Hezbollah kinda missed its window of opportunity to put real pressure on Israel when Gaza was at its hottest point and Iran was stronger than it is today. The Houthis can’t do much either, nor can the Shia militia in Iraq. There’s no reason to assume Iran or any of its proxies can do more than some token damage
  • Israel and the US are aiming for regime change in their best case scenario, but even if that doesn’t succeed the immediate goal seems to be to wreck Iran’s military capabilities for a long time
  • A ground invasion would be risky and would almost certainly turn Iran into a worse quagmire for any invading force than Iraq or Afghanistan ever were. If anything like that is attempted it would probably be a blitzkrieg to occupy Tehran and install a pro-western regime, but this is much harder and costlier than merely bombing Iran’s military and nuclear programme.
  • the hope will be that by weaking the current government some kind of national uprising takes place, but this sort of external pressure on Iran tends to have the effect that internal cohesion in Iran is bolstered, not fractured
  • This time around the US and Israeli may also take out Iran’s navy to make sure Iran can never again potentially block the strait of Hormuz
  • Oil prices will fluctuate, but stabilize soon enough
  • Russia and China are not going to be happy about this, but what can they really do? Weapon deliveries may have been on the way, including anti-ship weaponry, so these strikes may be taking place before useful equipment arrives
  • Iran has already cracked down on protests and the details of this crackdown are not well known, Iran may have already eliminated some of the most capable opposing forces inside Iran in the previous weeks
  • In short, expect Iran’s military capabilities to be hurt very considerably, without Iran being able to seriously retaliate, by serious retaliation I mean damage inside Israel or to the US army or to the global economy. At best some US base is hit and some buildings in Israel are hit, maybe some damage to a US war ship. Iran is highly unlikely to shoot down F-35s, though its media may claim to have done so, they claimed this in the past
  • Oh, civilian casualties will be made light of in western media. Western media doesn’t create sob stories out of dead Iranian kids. It reserves that moral outrage for when an Israeli kid is scared or slightly injured

To fardah, see you tomorrow