Israel Buckles as Iran War Shifts to New Drag-Out Phase

Today a round of urgent talks concluded in Geneva between European-American representatives and Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi. The talks reportedly went nowhere as Iran rejected calls to end all enrichment, and instead rebutted that Iran will not negotiate with anyone until all attacks by Israel first cease.

Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi: I have told the Europeans that Iran will never negotiate on its missile program and that uranium enrichment is a red line. Iran will NOT negotiate with any party as long as Israeli attacks continue. We will continue to exercise our legitimate right to self-defense against Israel.

Araghchi will next try Moscow, where he heads on Monday.

But this development is remarkable for a number of reasons:

First, the arrant hypocrisy demonstrated by the Western-bloc position that Iran must first negotiate and only then will hostilities be brought to an end. Wait a second, wasn’t it that in Ukraine the “appropriate” sequence of events, according to this ‘rules based odour’, is that first hostilities must immediately cease, and only then negotiations should begin?

As you can see, the West twists the chain of logic in whichever way serves its interests at the particular time. In Ukraine’s case, Ukraine is badly losing and so the West seeks to immediately save their ward by sermonizing Russia about how it’s only “right” that hostilities must end first. In Iran’s case, it’s the opposite: the West is quite keen to allow Israel its illegal and unprovoked campaign of violence against Iran.

No consistency, no principles, as always.

But the other remarkable thing is that Araghchi’s bold rejection seems to imply that Iran is not particularly desperate for an end to the hostilities, which can only indicate that its leadership views their chances in the escalating attritional war positively, contrary to Western propaganda that Iran is ‘on the ropes’. Of course, we can’t let that guide our analysis entirely—every country utilizes their own flavor of bluffs and deimatic behavior as defense mechanism.

We must admit that Israel has begun racking up some serious damage against Iran since the last report. The latest compilation released by the IDF shows quite a few new Iranian radar sites hit by what is likely to be Delilah missiles:

The destruction of various Iranian radar stations, including a local copy of the Kasta and Mersad , and the Tor-M1 air defense missile system, by Delilhah cruise missiles and hangar/warehouse.

Furthermore, Oryx’s team has apparently now engaged themselves in this conflict, and claim nearly ~80 verified hits on Iranian ballistic missile launchers thus far.

It brings us to the brief discussion of numbers. Sources claim Iran has anywhere from 3,000 to 28,000 total ballistic missiles, and produces roughly ~300 new ones per month, which is a relatively plausible number given what we know of Russia’s own production figures. 28,000 is likely exaggerated, and the lower end of the scale is a more realistic bet; no country really has stockpiles that large.

For argument’s sake, let’s say Iran had closer to 3,000, though it could be a bit more than that. Some sources claim Iran has already launched 1,500 of them, and thus could have gone through a significant portion of its stockpiles. However, more precise graphs like the following seem to point to only about ~500 total having been launched thus far:

Recall that according to Western intel Iran produces up to ~300 per month. This could also point to why Iran has cut down to launching only a dozen or so per day, as 10 per day multiplied by 30 days is precisely 300—this would allow Iran to essentially break even and launch just enough to continue the pace indefinitely without further depleting stockpiles.

But on top of that, Israel’s ability to repel the strikes has been degraded as well, as per their own sources:

That means Iran needs to fire nearly half as much, for the same effect. And this is shown by the graph above, where you can see that claimed “impacts” are similar despite the numbers launched being much lower than initially.

▪️Despite the reduction in the number of missiles in a salvo by the end of the first week of shelling, the number of recorded hits often remains approximately the same - at the level of 4-5 hits . This number was observed both with 50 missiles launched and with 20.

A couple fascinating videos.

First, the IRGC released a video of the launch of one of the latest waves of ballistics:

‼️IRGC shows footage of 14th wave of missiles launched at IDF headquarters

▪️The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Public Relations Department has released new videos of rocket launches as part of the ongoing operation against Israel.

▪️The target of the 14th wave of strikes was a large command and intelligence headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces.

RVvoenkor

Next, the wild subsequent scene in the skies above Tel Aviv. It is claimed that two Israeli Iron Dome missiles somehow miraculously took down one of the Iranian missiles—but even then, look at how many salvos Israel is forced to expend on a single Iranian projectile:

Here senior IRGC officer Mohsen Rezaee remarks on the above topic. He explains that both Israel and Iran have already evaluated one another’s capabilities—the correlation of forces—in sustaining such a conflict, as well as each other’s strengths and weaknesses:

By the way, his numbers seem to agree with the earlier graph—he admits Iran fired over 400+ missiles, and that “dozens” of successful impacts were recorded. This would appear to be an admission on his part that Iran’s missiles thus far have yielded at most a 20-25% success rate. However, recall that many of the fired projectiles were either intentional decoys, or old junk missiles that essentially acted as decoys, which were never really meant to hit anything. As such, the percentage of hits from the real flagship systems are likely far higher, and can only increase as Israel’s own AD stockpiles diminish further.

Rezaee also stated that Iran knew by March of this year that a war with Israel was inevitable, and as such took all necessary precautions:

He says Iran’s ‘missile capabilities’ were subsequently ramped up “five or six times”. If by this he means the production of missiles, then we can assume earlier production figures are obsolete, and Iran has gone down the Russian path of vastly bolstering its military-industrial base during war time.

Even more interestingly, he explains that as precaution, Iran already removed all of its most important nuclear program materials to safe locations, implying that whatever Israel is spending resources to hit now is a complete waste:

If we are to believe him, that means Israel is not significantly degrading Iran despite various flashy videos of precise hits on sensitive Iranian sites.

Experts tell Bloomberg: So far, Israel's attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities have caused only limited damage. At the Natanz nuclear facility, for example, only electrical components have been damaged, which are important but can be replaced within months

Israeli ex-prime minister Ehud Barak seems in agreement that it is not possible to take out Iran’s nuclear program by force:

‘It’s impossible to dismantle a nuclear program’ warns former Israeli PM Ehud Barak

He says ‘the US has never won a war’ citing Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan

Barak urges Washington to negotiate and reconcile with Tehran

He also agrees with my analysis from the last premium article. As does Trump, who appears to be following our prediction of de-escalation—at least for now. He seems to have gotten major cold feet after realizing taking out ‘Fordow’ may either not be as simple as he’d like, or yield no practical results:

Trump is cautious about the idea of ​​striking Iran, as he fears that the situation could repeat the Libya scenario, the New York Post writes. According to the publication, he is considering the option of limited strikes - only on Iranian nuclear facilities, in particular in Natanz and Fordow. This is not a full-scale war, but rather targeted actions to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions without getting drawn into a protracted conflict. - AN

He claims to be in favor of giving Iran another two weeks:

But of course, recall that he used the ruse of negotiations before to allow Israel to sneak-attack Iran—so this could be another in a long line of lies.

He also inadvertently confirmed that the issue was not that Iran was currently making a bomb, but rather ‘greedily’ stockpiling more civilian Uranium than ‘is necessary’. Trump presumes to dictate to sovereign nations which energy sources they can or can’t rely on for their needs, here outrageously dictating that Iran has plenty of oil and should not be using that much civilian Uranium for energy purposes:

Who is Trump to dictate to nations of the world which types of energy they can or can’t utilize?

But most egregious of all was Trump’s despicable throwing under the bus of Tulsi Gabbard because she fell “off-message” with an increasingly narrowing clique of Svengali agents puppeteering Trump’s inner circle:

U.S. President Trump is increasingly relying on a small group of advisers for critical input as he weighs whether to order U.S. military strikes against nuclear facilities inside Iran, according to two defense officials and a senior administration official who spoke with NBC News.

In addition, another senior administration official said, Trump has been crowdsourcing with an array of allies outside the White House and in his administration about whether they think he should “green light” strikes on Iran. However, despite speaking to several outsiders, President Trump continues to make decisions with only a small handful of officials within the White House, including Vice-President JD Vance, White House Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief-of-Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of State as well as Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, all while sidelining several other senior officials and advisors, such as National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who opposes U.S. strikes against Iran, and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

Listen closely as Trump shockingly implies Gabbard has no clue what she’s talking about, despite earlier appointing her precisely to be his top intelligence informant as Director of National Intelligence:

It’s clear Trump’s foreign policy has been hijacked by the Mossad, and he’s now dangerously sidelining the only people capable of providing him the real unadulterated truth about the ongoing situation.

One thing no one has mentioned is how Trump continues to defend himself with the claim that “he’s always been consistent” on the Iran matter—that Iran cannot have a nuke—and as such, his current behavior is not some sudden neocon dark turn.

But this is slyly misleading: while Trump may have always been a proponent of a disarmed Iran, the fact remains that the current Iranian nuclear ‘flashpoint’ was not even an issue up until Israel started to lose the Gaza war. Recall that Netanyahu launched ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ in May, which has yielded no results, and has again seemingly bogged down into an endless attritional pit war against Hamas. Facing collapse of his regime, Netanyahu suddenly and conveniently upped the rhetoric against Iran.

So while it’s ‘technically’ true that Trump is “being consistent”, it’s a kind of lie by omission given that the sudden ‘trumped up’ charges against Iran’s nuclear program are clearly fraudulent and artificially timed. The fact is, Israel is on an endless spree of escalation, a kind of Ponzi scheme of genocide, wherein a new conflict is constantly required to wash away the stain of the previous one.

Israeli figures and media are already salivating at the prospect of what’s next after Iran, with various posts about Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan all being lined up for disarmament and dismantling:

Israel likewise continues begging Trump to ‘finish the job’ as if the plan all along was merely for Israel to “open up” the gates for US firepower:

And of course, that is the case—Israel never had the endurance to go twelve full rounds with Iran, and the hope was always that US would step in, which is why everything now depends on Trump and his tiny cohort of string-pullers.

But again, judging by Araghchi’s defiance, Iran does not seem in a particular hurry to genuflect to the Empire. This can only mean that Iran likes its chances, and may not have suffered as much attrition thus far as claimed.

Israel on the other hand continues to suffer worsening economic effects:

"Maersk has suspended all vessel calls to Haifa, Israel’s only fully operational deepwater/hub port. With Ashdod Port constrained by its proximity to Gaza and Eilat Port now defunct due to the Red Sea blockade, Israel’s maritime access is approaching strategic isolation."

Recall that Israel’s airports are also now facing lockdown, with Israeli leaders forbidding people from permanently fleeing the sinking ship of a country. They may also be trying to use visiting foreign Jews as human shields to create more PR ‘tragedies’, as seems to be the case here:

One thing is certain, while Iran’s strikes may have declined, so have Israel’s notable hits, particularly after Iran launched a nation-wide dragnet which has thus far netted dozens of Israeli operatives. The Mossad, for the time being at least, has been critically weakened in Iran, which has resulted in a sharp drop-off of “successes”. Now Israel spins its wheels, striking empty or nonessential ‘nuclear sites’ to no effect merely to evoke a sense of momentum for its flagging operation, while Iran slowly reorganizes itself and puts the country on a wartime footing.

After the initial ‘splurge’ and fireworks, we now enter a new slug match phase that will test each country’s endurance. The US continues arraying massive forces everywhere from Saudi Arabia to Diego Garcia and could tip the scales in Israel’s favor should Trump commit to a massive long-haul operation. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves in thinking the US would not face dire consequences for this: Trump had only just bragged that “wages were up” to the highest level in 60 some-odd years, and was again tooting his horn on the ‘economic miracle’ he’s presiding over. The closure of Hormuz and oil prices spiking to ungodly levels would crush that miracle and send Trump’s ‘golden age’ into the sewer, which is surely foremost on his mind as he hovers his finger over that red button.

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