Yesterday, the entire afternoon and most of the night I spent communicating with sources throughout the world and passing breaking information and updated assessments to my Substack followers via X (Twitter). I am no fan of social media, to say the least, but X is one of the fastest ways to communicate fast breaking news to a diverse audience. As such, please follow my account on X for commentary and updates between more detailed Substack columns during fast breaking events.
Now, as for yesterday’s events, I deliberately did not update my most recent post in the run up to Iran’s launch. The reason for that is the analysis was sound (as events have borne out) and the assessment remained unchanged. Continuously moving the bar prior to an event not only shows weakness in the assessment but creates unnecessary confusion and should not be done unless necessary. This is another way of saying; I’m trying to get you good information minus the hysteria. If I saw something significantly change, I would have modified or updated it.
Now to recap, Israel deliberately struck Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus to trigger a situation where Iran would have to retaliate. This was designed to put Iran in a dilemma where it could not back out and had to attack Israel. This was done to create a pretext for Israel to expand the war to Hezbollah and Iran now that Gaza is more or less bulldozed and contained. This is the second phase of the operation I warned you would come way back in October when I laid out the Israeli strategy. Of note, I pointed out that Gaza was staged, and it was the beginning, not the end. I’m not going to debate that point further. You can read my prior columns on it where I go into detail presenting the case for that conclusion. Either way, Israel has indeed moved to phase two as predicted and that was initiated by the attack on Iran’s diplomatic facility.
That brings us up to last night. As expected, and broadly telegraphed by everyone, Iran did launch a limited and targeted strike on Israel against military installations involved in the strike on their embassy in Syria. In the run up, I tried to temper those sensationalist claims that Iran was going to wipe Israel off the map by explaining Israel’s layered air defense would be effective against most rockets, drones, and cruise missiles, but some ballistic missiles stood the highest probability of hitting their targets. Further, Iran would likely include some attempt to attrit and overwhelm Israeli air defenses prior with a larger number of cheaper rockets and drones fired by proxies. This is exactly the scenario that played out. I’ve seen no evidence that any drones or cruise missiles made it through to hit targets in Israel, which is in line with Israeli claims, but they did serve the purpose of making a big spectacle and eating up a lot of air defense assets. All or nearly all of these were shot down prior to even getting to Israel by Israeli and coalition aircraft. I have seen good evidence of ballistic missile impacts but have not seen any detailed damage reports beyond it does appear those missiles struck two Israeli air bases that house sensitive strike craft like their F-35 fighter jets. How bad they were hit is going to be something the Israelis try to keep secret, but I think in the coming days a lot more information will leak out. My guess is they did more that “minimally” damage a base in the south as the Israelis have already been forced to admit. Israel has been known to claim losses to assuage proxies in successful disinformation campaigns to prevent follow-on attacks, but this doesn’t look like the case. There were close to a dozen large impacts geolocated in and around those bases, which shows good accuracy and supports the assessment of more widespread damage than Israel is claiming. After the strikes, Iran announced this operation was over with a stern warning to leave it as closed and not to escalate or a larger attack would follow.
That brings us to today. Israel’s war cabinet has met and is in a bit of a bind if the reports are true that regime leader Biden informed his counterpart in Israel, President Netanyahu, that the US would not support any offensive strikes against Iran. This certainly forced Israel to recalibrate its military response “if true.” I am leaning towards “true” on this. Biden knows that a major war in the Middle East right now means Russia wins in Ukraine and more importantly to Biden, this means his re-election bid will become a disaster. Make no mistake that a big regional war in the Middle East means oil and gas production will be taken offline. This leads to massive economic damage to the US and Europe, fuel shortages, and probably $20 a gallon for gasoline. Further, Biden in his infinite wisdom has emptied the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try and lower gas prices prior to his election and screwed our domestic production so has absolutely no buffer if global production is reduced. The Democrats are painfully aware of this reality so do not want a war. Unfortunately for them, Israel really doesn’t care about Joe Biden or the USA. They need a war and will get it.
This brings us to what you can expect in the coming hours and days. Israel is prepping a strike package as we speak. Without US refueling assets, this will limit their options to use strike aircraft. Instead, Israel will be forced to rely more heavily on drones, long range cruise missiles, and both land and sea launched ballistic missiles. This last category is what I believe Israel will have to most heavily rely on in order to achieve the ranges necessary to safely penetrate into Iran with any hope of hitting their targets. Of these, I think the world will be surprised that many will come from submarine launched missiles, which will likely target Iran’s command and control and air dense installations. Even then, this will have only a very limited effect. Conventional payloads simply don’t have the ability to penetrate Iran’s hardened facilities deep underground. These targets require either massive US produced bunker buster bombs or nuclear weapons. The bunker busters can’t be delivered using stand-off strikes and basically need to be “dropped” by an overhead aircraft so unless Israel can penetrate Iran’s formidable air defense network and refuel to safely recover the strike package, there is no chance Israel can hit those deep targets in an early stage of war. As such, I think Israel will opt to hit targets designed to provoke a bigger response from Iran to pressure the US to enter the conflict rather than targets designed to cripple Iran’s military capabilities. Israel knows Iran will retaliate in a bigger way after it strikes and is planning on using this as propaganda to force the US into the fight.
If the US remains reluctant, this then leads to Israel executing a plan I have over the years discussed in detail. In short, Israel will use a false flag type operation to force Iran and US into a fight. One option is to hit US targets so that Iran would be blamed. The other options are to give Iran the impression the US was actively attacking it so that Iran retaliates against US targets creating the justification for the US to enter the war. As Israel escalates, you can expect some permutation of this plan to be triggered if the US doesn’t just get pulled into it prior on its own stupid initiative. Israel also has the literal “nuclear” option, which is nothing short of blackmail. If all else fails, Israel will punk the US and demand the US intervenes or it will be forced to use nuclear weapons to prevent it getting obliterated as it runs out of air defense munitions. This isn’t a bluff. The nation is led by very unstable lunatics that will use nuclear weapons. In fact, I actually think there is a disturbingly likely possibility of this eventually occurring as the tit-for-tat escalates into a full-blown regional conflict.
Now before you jump to the let them kill each other, it isn’t my concern mindset, let me remind you that Russia and China have security and defense agreements with Iran. Russia in particular has stated and likely will come to Iran’s aid the second the US becomes directly involved. It doesn’t take much of an analyst to see how badly things will go sideways after that moment. Russia missile ships are currently in the Mediterranean Sea as I type. These ships carry hypersonic cruise missiles and are fully capable of destroying all US surface vessels in the region. I have no doubt Russian attack submarines are also lurking nearby shadowing US ships in the region. Should the US get pulled in, and I believe that is almost a foregone conclusion, Russia will be pulled in. From there, you may actually see the Ukraine war merge into one giant world conflict and yes, this is full-blown World War 3. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail, but Israel will need to be put firmly in a box to prevent this.
So, now that the dominos have been tipped and the chain reaction is in motion, the world has changed. It will not be the same after what just occurred whether or not people realize it yet. In the coming hours and days, some pretty bad horrors are going to begin unfolding across the Middle East and these events will likely escalate very rapidly. Again, look for updates on X during these fast-breaking events. This will escalate fast, and I think it will ultimately end up leaving Iran, Syria, and Lebanon completely destroyed by nuclear strikes and Israel surviving, but badly damaged. As for the US and Russia, I don’t know. I know the US will lose its superpower status and be humbled, but how bad is anyone’s guess. Worst case, it goes full nuclear, and the Northern Hemisphere pretty much is a waste land. Best case, the US limps home incapable of projecting force for at least a generation with its economy shattered and the dollar useless.
Stay tuned, because the big reset is now beginning.
D.t.Y.