Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from sunny Colorado. Today we’re going to talk about what’s going on with the Israel Iran war, the possibility of the United States getting involved and what you should look for and why. Core issue is that Iran and Israel not only don’t border one another, there’s a couple of major countries in between them with some major population centers, most notably Iraq. 

So there is no way for these countries to get at each other in terms of land action. There are only two ways they can interact. One is basically an air war, which we have right now. And the second option would be an exchange of nukes. On that front. The Israelis have about 150 nuclear weapons, mostly tactical scale. 

And the Iranians have none. Now, one of the reasons people have been arguing for striking Iran for a long time is to prevent them from getting nukes, but keep in mind, it’s a multi-stage process. And the Iranians haven’t completed the first one. So step one is you get uranium or you spin it until you get enough weapons grade fissile material that you can then make an explosive core. 

That is the stage that the Iranians were close to completing. However, once you have enough fissile material, you then have to build some explosives that make a perfect implosion to force the nuclear reaction to happen. They don’t have those. Then you have to make an explosive device. They haven’t done that. Then you have to ruggedized that system so it can survive an attack. 

They haven’t done that. And then you have to miniaturize it. So you can either put on a bomb that a plane can carry or a missile. And they haven’t done that. So even if they had enough to make a uranium or God forbid, a plutonium core, they don’t have any of the additional steps. And at the pace that they’ve gone so far just to get to this step. 

We’re not talking about this being a reasonable threat this century. That’s piece one. So if you want to talk about regime change, you now have to shift to a different sort of conversation. Yes, Iran is a deeply authoritarian system, but it is not a dictatorship. It is not a one man rule. This is not Putin’s Russia. This is not Xi’s China. 

This is something else. This is a theocracy. So even if the Grand Ayatollah who’s in charge of everything right now, where to kick it tomorrow with either because he’s older than dust or because a bomb drops on his head that doesn’t remove the regime. There are over 15,000 mullahs that are part of the ruling class. And while regime change certainly could lead to a period of instability. 

It doesn’t fundamentally change what Iran is. And what Iran is, is Persia. Iran is a bunch of mountains. It’s not a chunk of plains like Mesopotamia. It’s not a single seaside community like Israel. It’s about 80 million people who live in mountains. 

Some version of Persia has existed almost since the beginning of the human story. It is one of the original civilizations of our species. And yes, the government has fallen from time to time, but really, we’ve only had seven regime change that are worthy of the term in 6000 years. We’re not going to see one this year. And the United States lacks the capacity to force that issue, even if it does get involved. 

Now, in this heartbeat, the United States does not have any carrier stationed in the Persian Gulf somewhere on the way. This heartbeat. We don’t have a large military force in Iraq any longer. So if we want to do a ground invasion, we’re talking about some months of prep. Hopefully none of that happens. But if the United States was to get involved in the air war version of this, keep in mind that the various aspects of the Iranian nuclear program have been preparing for an American air war for the better part of the last 40 years. 

And so it’s dispersed. It’s hardened. It’s underground. And does the United States have enough bunker busters to take them all out? Because you would probably need a couple thousand. Maybe some of these facilities would probably take several dozen all by themselves. And yes, that might remove the theoretical future of a nuclear program which is nowhere close to producing a weapon. 

But then what? Iran is still Iran. Persia is still Persia. The United States can’t send in a military force on the ground to clean up the entire clerical class. No. If there is going to be a meaningful regime change, if Iran is going to enter a fundamentally different governing age, it’s going to have to be a revolution. And you don’t sponsor a revolution with bombs dropped from the air. 

So where does that take us? I’m honestly not sure. Donald Trump’s inner circle on national security issues is small and incompetent, and being nudged by the Russians to get us directly involved in the fight as quickly and as deeply and up to our eyeballs as is possible. It is unclear, from my point of view if Donald Trump is falling for it, yet he keeps his own counsel on issues like this. 

It’s one of the few things he’s quiet on. But forces are moving into the region. So we are all going to find out probably within the next week or two.

Hey, all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. We are going to talk about the status of the air war between Iran and Israel. Today it is the 16th of June. You’ll be seeing this one in the morning. Short version. It hasn’t gotten all that serious from a physical damage point of view, especially on the Israeli side. 

Iran lacks meaningful long range power production capacity. They’ve got a lot of missiles. But they’re not particularly smart. And the Israelis have a pretty good theater missile defense. And that’s before you consider the Americans are helping as well. So no appreciable damage inflicted within Israel at the moment. Going the other direction. The Israelis have been primarily targeting air defense, which has proven to be woefully inadequate, on the Iranian side and have taken out the easy targets in the Iranian nuclear development program, most notably the centrifuge complexes at Natanz. 

That is where most of the centrifuges are. That’s where they take raw yellowcake, which is processed, uranium ore and turn it into a kind of a mid enriched uranium. From that point, the stuff is then sent to other facilities to go to highly enriched uranium. And the idea would be that if you get highly enriched enough that you could make a actual bomb. 

No indications at the moment that the Iranians have been getting to the level of enrichment that is necessary to then go to the next part of the process. The problem that the Israelis are facing is that those more advanced centrifuges, the one that goes a higher percentage of fissile material, are underground. They’re buried. They’re dispersed. 

Keep in mind that the Iranians have kind of been playing with their nuclear industry for 30 years now, and the Iranians always assumed that when the bombs actually fell on them to break up their nuclear program, it was going to be the United States dropping the bombs. And the United States would have had things like aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf that would be flying out of places like Kuwait and gutter. 

And so there would be lots and lots and lots of sorties dropping very, very advanced bombs that are designed to penetrate very, very deep places. Israelis don’t have any of that. They’re flying from an extra thousand kilometers away. They don’t have the deep penetration capacity. So can Israel hurt Iran? Of course. Can they take it all out? I really doubt it. 

It’s an open question whether the United States could, which means that the Iranian nuclear program is only stalled so long as the bombing continues, and Israel only has so many weapons that can be used in this conflict. So the question we need to start asking ourselves is, what is the victory condition for Israel? Because their ability to actually destroy everything in the nuclear program is probably not going to happen. 

So what they seem to be doing is going after the power infrastructure and the access infrastructure to delay what’s left of the Iranian nuclear program as long as possible, which is a reasonable plan. And then the question becomes whether or not they decide to do more to set back Iran. More generally, going after military sites is kind of pointless because Iran’s military, for the most part, is infantry based. 

And if you’re doing long range pinpoint attacks, you’re just not going to break it up in any meaningful way. But you could torpedo the Iranian economy by going after the oil refining capacity. Iran is an oil exporter, not merely what they used to be back in their heyday, probably only about a million, a million and a half barrels a day. 

Today. That includes the smuggling, but they are highly dependent upon fuel processing at home just to keep the country together. So if you go after the refineries, which are much easier than going after the oil fields, the Israelis could achieve two things. Number one, that could destabilize the internal regime, because if there’s not fuel, it’s really hard to maintain an industrial level economy. 

And second, it would actually probably pour some literal oil on troubled waters, because if the Iranians can’t process the crude into fuel, they would then be forced to export more crude, which would actually weirdly push oil prices down. Something to consider. No sign that the Israelis are doing that right now, but considering their limited options for actually removing the nuclear card from the board, it’s something that seems pretty feasible to me.

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from a slightly stormy Colorado within the last 12 hours. The Israeli government has started a broad scale military campaign against Iran, going after primarily their nuclear facilities. This is the big one already. They’ve done more damage in Iran than any other power has done since the rise of the Ayatollah back in 1979. 

And they’re telegraphing that this is going to continue for at least a couple of weeks. The damage inflicted is notable, but let’s do a quick breakdown of what’s going on and where it’s likely to go before we all jump to conclusions. So first of all, let’s start with the non nuclear targets. The Israelis have targeted nuclear scientists. They have targeted military leaders. 

They haven’t had a success and targeted at least some of them. But honestly this is not all that impressive from my point of view. Israel has been going after nuclear scientists for the better part of the last 20 years. It’s not a great industry to be in if you want to live. So taking out 2 or 3 here and there doesn’t really change much. 

And as for the military leadership, Iran’s military is an occupation force that Iran uses to keep its own population in check. It’s not really capable of projections across territory. So if they were all gutted and it’s only been a few, it really doesn’t change the math at all. Got Iran affects its region through paramilitary groups that are not Iranian citizens. 

So by supplying them with equipment like the Houthis in Yemen. So gutting these two ranks of people doesn’t really change my math for anything of more significance is going after the nuclear facilities. Primarily we’re looking at Natanz, which is the primary enrichment facility that the Iranians used to turn uranium ore into something that can be used, fissile isotopes that can be used in weapons. 

There are secondary facilities in a place called Isfahan, which also handles a lot of fabrication. And higher end machining. In theory, being designed to be put into weapons. Now, let’s be clear. The Iranians have never tested a nuclear device. They have never demonstrated that you have the ability to put a nuclear device onto a missile and miniaturize it and ruggedized it so it can actually be thrown. 

We’re just talking here about a country that at the moment is working on enrichment and maybe the next couple of steps. And then the Israelis have started targeting an area called for, though, which is just sort of calm. For though, is the one place in the country where the centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium are actually in a reinforced location under the mountain. It is unclear whether the Israelis have the military capability of shattering for though this is where they turn. 

Kind of like mid-enriched uranium into highly enriched uranium, the fissile stuff, you can make a bomb out of, and so they’re going after things like air defense, power grids, that sort of thing going after the access points. Early days. We’re really only in the second wave of attacks right now. But the damage is notable. 

What? The Israelis have not gone after to this point are known stockpiles of nuclear fuel or the operational civilian power plant at Bushehr. It appears that they don’t want to be accused of war crimes by basically doing an inadvertent or maybe advertised dirty bomb in civilian areas. So that has not happened to this point. 

All right. What’s next? 

What is perhaps most interesting about this attack so far is there has been no meaningful Iranian air defense at all in the last two rounds of strikes over the last year, which were much smaller by comparison. Israel went after the air defenses first and discovered that they weren’t nearly as robust as they thought they were. These are older systems, or Russian systems, that have been purchased in the last 30 years, and apparently against the Israelis, who have a much more sophisticated, air penetration capacity than, say, Ukraine. 

They’re just not working at all. So if you’re a country out there and you bought a lot of Russian air defenses, you may have wasted a lot of money. Anyway, the Israelis aren’t just attacking with impunity. They’re actually announcing what their future targets would be. And there is plenty of indications across Iran that the Israelis have infiltrated and put agents on the ground and are using things like drones to go after movement of things like trucks and personnel. 

So if you announce you’re going to hit X site, an X site pulls out of their bunkers and starts to run, then they get hit by drones. So this is something that the Israelis very clearly have been working on for months. And it’s been played out so far pretty effectively. Whether it will completely destroy the Iranian nuclear program is, of course, an open question, because there are so many sites, and the Iranians have been preparing for this for so long. 

But if there’s anything that we have learned about Iran over the last few years, is that a lot of their stuff is not nearly as robust as they thought it was. It’s a lot more brittle. And so the Iranians really don’t have any good way to respond. Iranian power is not about the conventional military. They’re stuck in their mountain fastness. 

Half their population is not Persian. It’s in their paramilitary groups that they support around the country. She is in Iraq, Houthis in Yemen, maybe the Palestinians, if they get lucky, Hezbollah in Lebanon. And most of those groups between the American war on terror and recent Israeli operations have basically been gutted at the organization on the leadership level. 

And so none of them can really strike back against Israel in a meaningful way. That just leaves missiles. And yes, we have reports now that several hundred of those have been flying over, I should say several dozen. We’ve got drones and missiles. A lot of things are in the air. It’s not clear yet that they can get through Israeli defense or not. 

We’re. Oh, rain. We’re nearing a position where if Iran still thinks it’s going to have strategic leverage in anything, it’s going to have to use it or lose it. The thing is, it may know well that if it uses it, it will be its last shot and it’s not going to achieve anything anyway. Anyway, no one can decide the political and strategic math on that, except for the Iranian government and they’re under assault.