Israel has launched a significant military campaign against Iran, primarily targeting nuclear facilities. Let’s break down the targets, impacts, and what’s coming.
A handful of sites used in uranium enrichment, fabrication, and machining were hit, along with several Iranian scientists and military figures.
Iran’s air defenses have fallen short, and given the amount and style of attacks, it’s likely that Israeli agents have made their way into Iran. The response from Iran has been lackluster and that’s not likely to change; with limited response options (paramilitary proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis are too weak), missile and drone launches are the extent of Tehran’s retaliatory options.
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.
