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Iran War Watch: US Moves Towards Attack Footing Despite Questionable Odds of Success

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Perhaps the further increase of US military assets in the Iran theater is merely intensified threat display. But there are signs that, parallel to King Cyrus’ disastrous misreading of the Oracle of Delphi, that the US and Israel continue to think that Iran is more vulnerable than it is and that another hard kick would topple its government, or at least so weaken it as to put that aim closer to realization. It also seems, analogous to the Collective West underestimation of Russia’s capabilities and staying power, that the US and Israel are greatly discounting Iran’s ability to do great damage to Israel, US assets in the region, and the world economy.

US and Israel determination to subjugate Iran reads as if they believe they hold a trump card. But the last two times Israel tried supposed show-stoppers, they fell considerably short. The first was in the 12 Day War, where Israel’s one-two punch of knocking out Iran’s air defenses and killing key officials only resulted in 8 hours of outage, as opposed to an expected 2-3 days, and Iran quickly regaining its operational footing. No Iranian leader or important faction supported the destabilization effort. Similarly, in the recent wave of protests that turned bloody due to US and Israeli escalation, the Iranians again regained control quickly when they shut down communications, most importantly of Starlink, which thwarted the agitators’ campaign to throw Iran into a paroxysm of violence.

Benjamin Netanyahu is flying to the US tomorrow for a meeting Wednesday. Some view this as an effort to reinforce Israel’s demands, which are impossible for Iran to meet. They are:

Or could this be a minor deception attempt and that the US will attack when Netanyahu is in the US?

Iran has made clear it will not do so now if attacked again, even one the US makes and tries to depict as for show.

On an interview with Danny Haipong, Justin Podhur clarified that Iran does not have “proxies” but its allies Ansar Allah, Hezbollah, and Shia militias in Iraq have all said they will respond if the US attacks Iran. Podhur further notes that during the 12 Day War, Jordan and the Saudis fired missiles against Iran, but Iran only hit Israel. Iran has warned that any country that attacks Iran will be targeted this time. Iran could easily turn Saudi Arabia into an economic and environmental disaster zone if it struck its oil fields.1

Even more important, Alastair Crooke has stated that if Iran is attacked, the Supreme Leader will issue a fatwa. Shia have substantial representation across the Middle East, such as 13% of Saudis. Crooke claims that the resulting uprisings would make Arab Spring look like a walk in the park.

We explained long-form in a recent post how the US forces then in theater were insufficient for the US to achieve regime change or meaningfully advance the the Israeli goal of breaking up Iran, even before getting to the costs Iran could inflict by closing the Strait of Hormuz and bombing Israel and US bases. Independent experts continue to be skeptical even with the US further bulking up its forces. Larry Johnson and former Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jermy have both argues that the most the US could do with its naval assets would be a short campaign, of say 5 days as very high intensity or at most two weeks at a less aggressive tempo. More recent takes on what the US could do from its airbases point to a similar ability to sustain a painful campaign. A critical limit is that the US cannot bring in its B-52s (which can drop super heavy bombs) without undue risk; recall Iran allowed them in to hit nuclear sites at the end of the 12 Day War, which is has said clearly it will not permit again.

In an admission of weakness, the US again asked Iran to accept performative tit for tat strikes which Iran again rejected.

The US also cheekily asked Iran to negotiate against itself:

Yet Israelis seem bizarrely confident. From a reader who does business with Israel:

On how Israelis feel about the impending war:

With a sample size of about 12 Israelis, the general feeling of the Israelis about the next round with Iran is not only is it going to happen but Israel is going to buy a decade of stability by doing whatever it is they’re going to do. Most of them are not supporters of the Netanyahu regime and none of them are settler types, all are sabras so they have parents and children in the country. Only one of them has moved their children out of the country, and he did that before the 12 days. Only one of them was extending a trip to stay past Friday in the event the strikes started before this past weekend….

I think we’re less than 2 weeks from the war resuming. I think the 20th of February is the most likely kickoff but it could start as soon as this Friday the 13th.

Perhaps the Israelis think if the US makes a forceful attack that it can bring Iran to its knees via destruction of critical infrastructure, such as water systems or its grid? We highlighted that Greg Stoker reported that Israel’s defense minister delivered a strike package in late January.

Key Iranians similarly doubt the US is posturing:

The US continues to move materiel into the region:

In keeping, Daniel Davis, who is not a hair on fire type, posted a pretty alarmed take on where things were headed on Sunday.

Starting at 3:10:

So all that continues to tell you is that the two sides are miles apart which leads to the the question are these negotiations intended to accomplish anything other than to make it appear that everyone’s trying to be reasonable but it’s actually just buying time for military preparations.

Now that is is a is a normal thing that you could even think of just in a concept but when you look at the physical activities it takes on even more relevancy. Uh for example, here in just the last 48 hours or so, uh there has been a continued buildup and this is as of yesterday. [Reading] A total of 112 US Air Force C7s have now either arrived or are in route to the Middle East with a further 17 to 18 in progress flights, number Royal Air Force logistics flights from RAF Marham to RAF Akotiri (sorry about that pronunciation) in Cyprus. and Movement of the US Air Force CORONETs.

So there’s lots of air force. If you don’t know those C7s, one of the pictures right there, these are the large transports. You can move tanks in these things, large combat vehicles, air defense missiles. These are some of the aircraft that’s used to use a lot of the air offensive and air defensive missiles into the region. And you see there is a huge huge number much much more than anything normal implying that you have been moving lots and lots of equipment and ammunition in uh there has also just been in the last 48 hours or so according to channel 14 out of Israel US has finalized the deployment of Patriot and THAAD missiles defense system across 20 bases in the Middle East. 20 bases.

So, this tells you that we are seriously taking the issue of air defense seriously. And of course, listen, it’s it goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. You’re not going to move in a buttload of air defense systems unless you expect to receive a lot of missiles. Meaning, this is much, much more than just the normal deployment.

And when you take a look at the bases that are scattered throughout the region, you see that there is a lot there. And listen, I mean, it’s it’s useful and necessary to have additional missiles and all these other air defense capabilities, whether it’s THAAD or Patriot or anything else, but as I have talked about many times, and the Iranians have proven last year especially, their offensive missiles will get through our defenses. We’ll shoot some of it down, but not all of it. So if anybody thinks that this is going to be some kind of golden dome in the in the early stages or something and that everything is going to get stopped, you need to just disabuse yourself of that. It’s definitely not going to happen. So that’s that’s on the ground.

Then of course uh we have in the air and in the sea you know the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group is on site has been for a while is fully deployed and in a position to launch military offensive operations as you can see scattered in that picture up to the upper left hand side. There’s additional offensive air power that’s also been deployed throughout the region that can be brought to bear in the event that an attack is shifted there.

Alexander Mercouris, at the end of his Sunday presentation, sounded a similar alarm about US intent.

Starting at 1:15:25:

Now, I have to say that over the last 24 hours, I have been getting an awful lot of extremely worrying reports and messages from all sorts of very well-informed people about the situation in between the United States and Iran.

Some of these people who have been I’ve been in correspondence with are people who are very well known to viewers of these programs. Just to say I say that they’re people who have been there and who made their views known and who’ve appeared on channels and programs and who I know to be extremely well informed. As these were private messages, I don’t want to disclose who they are, but there are also people who to my knowledge are extremely well-informed about the mood in the United States.

[Iran’s Foreign Minister] Araghchi and Witkoff and Kushner in Oman, the meeting that was mediated by the Omani foreign minister who shuttled from one room to the other. Even as the Iranians tell themselves that that meeting went well, the Americans are in a mood of borderline fury and rage.

The Iranians came with no substantive concessions. They continue to insist that they have a right to conduct enrichment, including on their territory. They are not prepared to discuss ballistic missiles. There’s been some word, there’s been all of these other plans about a consortium set up with the various Arab states of Rostom, the Russian nuclear power company participating in enrichment.
These, of course, in my opinion, are all entirely proper and viable solutions to this crisis.

But the United States was expecting clearly from Iran a lot an awful lot more. They were expecting far more substantive concessions to be made for Iran to say that it was about to give up its enrichment or for Iran to make concessions about its ballistic missiles.

I think the Americans were also shocked that the Iranians are not as frightened by the revelation from the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that it was indeed the United States which back in December engineered the crash of the Iranian currency, the rial according to Bessent, they did it by creating a shortage of dollars in within Iran itself. This led to the imminent collapse of an Iranian bank. The Iranian central bank had to step in to bail out that bank. That caused the Iranian central bank, forced the Iranian central bank to print or create more rial that led to an over-supply of rial within the Iranian domestic market which caused the rial to crash. Scott Besssent, who of course has worked with Soros, is himself an expert, I should say, in doing this sort of thing.

Anyway, the Americans may have been expecting that the Iranians would be alarmed and upset by this and frightened by these revelations coming out of the United States. And they are enraged and very angry that the Iranians did not concede.

And all of the talk as I understand it in in Washington is of war again of an attack on Iran. And in what I consider to be a very ominous development, Witkoff and Kushner after meeting with Araghchi apparently flew to the USS Abraham Lincoln and actually toured the carrier itself, and presumably spoke to the crew.

So, I’m afraid it does look to me as if there is now a very high probability indeed of some kind of an attack on Iran within the next few hours or days. I’ve read an article today in the Daily Telegraph by a former Royal Navy officer casting doubt on whether such an operation can succeed. I’ve also read other reports, by the way, which might suggest that there are indeed plans to place boots on the ground in Iran, even plans to try to seize the oil rich provinces in southern Iran in Kistan and reports about an American operation in the north from the territory of either Azerbaijan or Armenia. on on that issue. By the way, President Aliyev [of Azerbaijan] has assured the Iranians that that is not going to happen and the Russians who have very very close monitoring of the situation in Armenia are not speaking or talking about any major American buildup there.

And I wonder to be honest how it can happen given that Armenia has no coastline and large concentrations of American troops would have to cross the border from other countries which might not be particularly keen on such an operation taking place.

But anyway, one way or the other, the situation is extremely tense and the Iranians may think that they did very well for themselves in the diplomacy. But I think that what they need to do over the next few hours is prepare for the attack, which it is quite likely is going to come.

An aside about Bessent bragging about crashing the Iranian rial. Your humble blogger has criticized that as characteristically arrogant and bone-headed. First, it shows that despite trying to make a show of concern about the Iranian people in the protests, the US will harm them cavalierly to advance it and Israel’s stature in the region. Second, Bessent’s crowing told the Iranian people that their distress was the result of US machinations, and not fundamental, internal factors. That supports the (largely true) official version of events, that the sorry state of the Iranian economy is due primarily to the US effort to crush the country.2

Independent commentators have also pointed out that regime change, balkanization, or acute destabilization of Iran would threaten Russia and China. While Russia and Iran do not share a land border, Iran like Russia is on the Caspian Sea, so a broken Iran would be too close for comfort. Russia warned the US about a month ago about the serious consequences of a US war against Iran, not that the US paid much heed.

However, while Russia and China have been increasing their support for Iran’s defenses, it is not clear that they have yet done anything decisive. For instance, after the 12 Day War, Iran relented on its desire to be as independent as possible and agreed to Russia’s offer to build an integrated air defense. But that is a >2 year project. For instance, Alexander Mercouris reported last month that Russia had not delivered S-400 air defense systems yet but was training Iranian operators in Russia, which was expected to take over a year 3 Some tweets in the last month claim that Russia has made fresh S-400 deliveries to Iran….which would be useless unless Russia also provided personnel to fire them.

Russia appears to accelerated deliveries of hardware:

This is a big claim, so take with a fistful of salt for now:

Iran is on or near Belt and Road routes that China regards as essential to reduce its reliance on shipping and vulnerability to US naval threats.

At the end of January, China cleverly boosted Iran’s ISR by making public useful satellite images:

China is rumored to be providing advanced electronic warfare systems:

Even if true, how quickly can they be made effective?

However, there seems to be at least one verified (and important) example:

The GPS changeover has been reported by some YouTubers, which if true, means Iran can jam US GPS while maintaining its operations:

Needless to say, the apparent rigidity of US and Israel goals, along with potentially deficient and/or wishful intelligence may be about to meet a big reality check. The intense emotional reaction that Alexander Mercouris reports is another bad sign, of irrationality at not having expectations met.

The last time we saw over-wrought emotions at a geopolitically key inflection point was at the February 2022 Munich Security Conference, where the participants were giddy over the imminent prospect of war with Russia. But unlike then, it is unlikely to take years for a massive Western miscalculation to play out.

_____

1 Jordan is such a captive of the US that it would almost certainly support a US operation.

2 Asian Boss has provided a useful backgrounder on Iran’s increasing difficulty in managing its currency regime, but IMHO greatly underplays how the US sanctions forced Iran to have to manage and then arguably mis-manage its foreign exchange. He also ignores, as many commentators do, how Iran having to invest so much in defense, as in missiles, drones, and huge underground bunkers all over the country, would come at the expense of consumption.

Past Russian efforts to help blunt the impact of sanctions were not enough to turn the tide:

3 Twitter mentions that some years back, Russia previously “gifted” S-400s to Iran. Forgive me for not running it down, but my impression is that Iranian operators were not trained so that makes their value limited.

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