October 24th Evening Israeli War Update
As has been my practice, I try to take a more measured approach when assessing rapidly developing situations. There is always a certain amount of triage when trying to get my readers the latest and most important information fast when balanced against the need to allow a situation to develop enough that one can make assessments with a high degree of reliability. I appreciate each and every one of my readers and assure you that if there is something critical and time sensitive, I will immediately go to press. Knowing this, I have been closely watching how events developed for indicators of rapid escalation in the Middle East. For example, Friday night, I sent out notice that the greenlight had been given for Israel’s ground invasion to begin. This was factual; however, Hamas made a last-minute deal to release two hostages buying some time and further delaying the offensive. Since then, Israel has come under heavy pressure from the United States to delay the offensive until it can move additional military assets into theater such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. THAAD, is an air defense system designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. THAAD is a big clue to what’s coming. You see, Hamas does not have ballistic missiles of any type. They have a hodgepodge of crudely built, but sufficiently effective and cheap rockets. However, Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran have lots of ballistic missiles. In addition, the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group was repositioned from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf Region. Again, just like with THAAD, you do not need aircraft carrier strike groups to mitigate the threat from Hamas. However, you do need them to deal with major state actors like Iran. Knowing this, the reason for the delay is clear. Israel is legitimately expecting that this war will escalate to include Hezbollah and Iran. Without a major diplomatic breakthrough, it is looking more and more likely the war in Gaza will indeed grow into at least a major regional war in the Middle East.
At this point, its clear both the US and Israel expect the war to escalate because they are preparing for it. Not only are they preparing for it, but they all seem to be threatening it and have given no overt diplomatic signals they want or intend to deescalate in Gaza. Still though, left to fight it alone, Israel would not want to seek to create a broader war because of the immense costs and damage Israel would suffer in the expanded war. This is in part why US support to Israel is making things worse, not better. Israel is very worried about the threat from Hezbollah and assesses it as extremely dangerous. To mitigate the threat, it needs to destroy Hezbollah. The problem is they need a military solution but are not capable of doing the job. In order to accomplish this, Israel needs to fight one enemy at a time…or more preferably, only fight one enemy while having the US do its fighting for it against Hezbollah and/or Iran. You see, Israel does not want to admit it no longer can effectively deal with a real multi-front war. It’s military capability, morale, and training have all decreased over time while Hezbollah and Iran have dramatically improved their military capabilities. The hard truth is Israel must have the US do its fighting for it now because it can’t fight and win a prolonged war without the use of nuclear weapons. This is why blind US support to Israel is so dangerous. We are getting signed up for another war that is going to be a costly disaster Americans want no part of. If Americans knew their support to Israel would equate to dead soldiers, sailors, and airmen, an economic collapse, and a huge national embarrassment, it would be unlikely you’d be seeing so many people waving Israeli flags. The virtue signaling only goes so far. When it is American men and women coming home in body bags, this lovefest will sour quickly. America gets nothing from this parasitic relationship. The sooner we step back, pull all funding from all sides, and tell them to figure out their own problems, the quicker this will end.
On the flip side, neither Iran nor Hezbollah want to go to war. Despite the rhetoric, Hezbollah has maintained a very scripted escalatory method of proportional retaliation with Israel to prevent things from becoming a full-blown war. Both sides have benefited from this calculation and need to save face, so Hezbollah has launched some limited attacks and moved forces close to the border. Iranian backed militias have flown a few drones into US military bases in Iraq and Syria as a warning. This was necessary to tie down Israeli forces in the north and to remind the US they are illegal occupiers. In response, Israel had to move some of its best forces to its northern borders to combat what it sees as a bigger threat than Hamas. Further, Israel has launched strikes against Hezbollah, but so far has refrained from all out strikes into Lebanon and Syria. Nonetheless, tonight this is in danger of unraveling very quickly. Israel, now emboldened by the blank check the US establishment wrote Netanyahu without any public debate or declaration of war, sees no downside to bombing deep into Syria. In fact, with Israel now confident their American dupes will be fighting, dying, and paying for their latest war, it may just have decided to pick a big fight.
Israel is playing a dangerous game. Neither Israel nor the US are in a good position to fight a major war. Remember, the US and NATO are dangerously low on military stockpiles. They have exhausted all excess equipment and munitions on Ukraine at just the time Israel is demanding a half million 155mm artillery shells. Something has to give as resources are finite. Don’t forget for a second that the war in Ukraine was turned into an existential war for NATO and a loss there would be a disaster even if they try to ignore it and use a war with Iran as a distraction. With the US becoming engaged in a major war in the Middle East, there simply will not be sufficient forces and equipment to continue to supply Ukraine. There just aren’t enough analysts, satellites, special forces, bombs, drones, etc. to adequately support both wars. This will be the end for Kiev, and everyone knows it. Unfortunately for the rat Zelinsky and the poor Ukrainian people that followed that false prophet, they are going to be sacrificed for Israel. In addition, beyond air and missile strikes, the US has very limited options when it comes to fighting Hezbollah and Iran. Iran has air defense systems and plenty of missiles of its own to send right back our way. In fact, Iran could likely destroy most of our bases in Iraq and Syria with massed missile and drone strikes. Further, our ships will become very vulnerable to attacks by anti-ship missiles as I articulated in my previous letters. In the event of a major war, we are very likely to lose ships and my guess is the Eisenhower Strike Group in the Persian Gulf would be the most likely to be sunk if we strike Iran. As for US boots on the ground, get that thought out of your head right now. It is simply not feasible and would lead to massive casualties. With ships being unable to access the region without being sunk, there is just no workable logistical solution to supplying a large ground force in or near Iran. Worse, the personnel we do have in the Middle East will quickly become very vulnerable to being overrun by angry locals backed by well-armed Shia militias and this is not the worst case. If nations like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are forced into the war, the US will have no safe haven at all and be completely overwhelmed. In short, we really must think deep about the taunt, “What are you going to do about it?”
Israel is no better off. They know they’ll very quickly begin to run short on munitions of all types if a multi-front war breaks out. Let’s dive deeper into this and look at Israel’s air defense system known as Iron Dome. I want to use Iron Dome because it is symptomatic of the bigger Israeli picture when it comes to logistics of all types…from personnel to weapons to fuel. To begin, understand that the crude rockets launched by Hamas, have done a very good job of forcing Israel to expend its precious stockpile of Tamir missiles used in its Iron Dome missile defense system. Cost estimates are all over the map for what a single launch costs but runs from a low of $20,000 to a high estimate of $150,000 per intercept. Either way, when Hamas is basically spending $600-800 to launch a sewer pipe with fins welded to it, Israel is losing (or the US since it is our citizens paying for it). Further, it is very hard to say exactly how many interceptors Israel has. I’d say they have at least 10,000 – 30,000 by simply using the $1.1 billion the US gave them to procure missiles at a price point between $50,000-$150,000 per unit. My guess is Israel grossly overcharged the US citizen for the missiles so it’s likely they have double the actual number of missiles. As such, I’d estimate Israel has roughly 60,000 interceptors for their Iron Dome system. This may seem like an insanely large number, but when you consider Hezbollah has literally hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles plus mortars and artillery, you could quickly eat through 60,000 missiles in short order. Estimating that Hamas has launched something like 8,000 rockets so far, it’s safe to say Israel has no more than about 50,000 interceptors left. Hamas probably has at least 5,000 missiles left so this will continue to eat away at that number. This means Israel needs to keep the roughly ten Iron Dome batteries focused mainly on Gaza, and this is where Israel starts to run into real problems. Each battery has 3-4 launchers that can fire a max of 20 missiles each. Assuming max numbers, each battery could fire 80 missiles before needing to be reloaded giving Israel a total of 800 missiles at any given time. This is actually a pretty impressive number until you realize that each battery only covers a small slice of the sky, and its radar needs to be focused on that area. Further, I’d estimate Iron Dome is only successfully intercepting about 20-30% of missiles fired, but this is very difficult to assess. This may sound bad and far less than the utterly false claims of 90%+ but considering the threat and what a normal air defense system is capable of, it actually is decent and about as good as one could expect. Still though, it means they are going to face a big problem when someone starts shooting better and more accurate missiles and rockets. Should missiles come from a direction like Yemen, Israel is much less likely to be able to see and intercept them. Further, it creates gaps in the system allowing batteries, even if using overlapping coverage, to be overwhelmed by firing salvos of over 80 rockets. Now add in the threat of Hezbollah firing rockets, mortars, artillery, missiles, and drones, Iron Dome, even when coupled with the other air defense systems Israel employs, is going to be overwhelmed and defeated. Further, with the ability to precisely target with missiles, Hezbollah has the capability to knock out Israeli batteries and radar installations, which could then begin a very rapid and costly degradation of Israel’s air defenses leaving the nation quite vulnerable to significantly more damage and casualties. This paradigm is reflected across Israel’s force posture. If they use tanks in Gaza, they don’t have the massed armor to blast through dug-in Hezbollah positions. If they fly drones over Gaza, they can’t focus as much collection on Lebanon or Syria. If they send their best troops to clear tunnels and rubble in Gaza, they just have poorly trained and unmotivated hippies to deal with battle hardened Hezbollah fighters. Do you see? Israel can deal with Hamas but cannot deal with Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel knows it, we know it, Hezbollah and Iran know it. I hope this sober assessment is enough to reign in Israeli actions, but as I stated earlier, Israel is feeling tough with the US standing behind it and all signs now point to Israel provoking a broader war.
More soon as this rapidly developing situation continues. In the interim, I see the most likely direct impact on people living in the US as economic. This is going to cause some wild swings in the stock market that could be good or bad depending on how you trade them. Fuel prices are also going to be on a roller coaster. Escalation almost certainly means higher fuel prices so go ahead and buy now so you can lock in your price and supply. If you wait, you may be facing both high prices and shortages. Even if you don’t have bulk storage, at least set aside five gallons of whatever fuel you use to give you some backup. If we see a war open against Iran, and I think we are on track for this, we WILL experience fuel shortages. Biden emptied the strategic reserves, more or less crippled domestic production and development, and is having to turn now to Venezuela. If you didn’t notice, Biden quietly lifted sanctions using false pretenses so the US would have some backup to Middle Eastern oil. This is another sure sign the US is planning on a war with Iran. Look at what they do, not what they say. For a nation as big as the US and as dependent on vehicle transportation for pretty much everything, any type of fuel disruption will get very ugly fast. People suddenly won’t be able to get to work, pick up their kids, or go buy groceries. Shelves will go bare as truckers also run dry and have to cut their runs. This will also impact industry, forcing many companies to shutter operations. This causes an economic death spiral. Again, this is why I recommend having some capability for bulk fuel storage. Gasoline won’t store long, even with stabilizer additives, so plus up and then use it and refill. Diesel lasts longer, but the same thing applies. If things do get bad, you’ll have the most valuable investment around.
Look for updates as this develops. In the interim, please remember to like and share these letters and subscribe to my Substack account. It is a huge help and as always, donations are both greatly appreciated and needed to keep content flowing.
D.t.Y.