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The vast majority of their ballistic missile assets are underground. The fact that they have a handful of aboveground production facilities (mostly holdovers from before they developed their underground capabilities) doesn't change that.
I never claimed otherwise, but this doesn't contradict my point which is that Iran launched exactly as many missiles as they needed to hit their targets and to maximally exhaust Israeli AD. Iran had to operate under the assumption that the war could last for months and potentially involve the US, they couldn't just blast off everything they had right at the beginning of an attritional war.
Yet they somehow made even less progress on the ground compared with 2006 despite all this. The rate of rocket fire actually increased towards the end of the war. They assassinated plenty of Hezbollah leaders but historically that hasn't made much difference; the day Nasrallah's predecessor was assassinated one of the Israeli papers (I want to say Maariv) ran the headline of "HEZBOLLAH DEFEATED". As Obama discovered, assassinations don't win wars.
There is a different way to read Hezbollah's inaction when Iran was hit, namely that they recognized that their help wasn't necessary. Had they pulled off a coup on day 1 then Hezbollah would have made no difference and otherwise it was clear that Israel lacked the ability to win in an extended exchange.
Hitting Mashhad proves that they didn't control Iranian airspace, because it's known at this point that Israel was attacking Iran from the north by crossing Azeri airspace to reach the Caspian. From that distance Mashhad is just 550 KM or less than 350 miles, well in range of ALBMs, potentially closer if they were willing to go through Turkmenistan.
Here's a question: if Israel actually controlled that airspace then why didn't they fly over the most fortified and valuable targets dropping dozens of bunker busters the way they did to get Nasrallah? Instead all of the satellite imagery matches up with the theory of missile strikes on soft targets. If the Mashhad airport strike is your best evidence that the IAF had air supremacy then that basically proves they didn't.
You think air defenses are suppressed but the political cost of being wrong and an IAF pilot getting taken hostage is unlimited, so you send drones first. The drones get shot down, confirming that AD remains operational. You then agree to a ceasefire, having confirmed that you can't just bomb them without.
Makes more sense then "non-operational air defenses miraculously down drones and then you agree to a ceasefire for no reason"
If you thought that blowing up the TV broadcaster would cause the Iranian people to spontaneously rise up then a few ALBMs would be a small price to pay. The goal was clearly regime change, not a war of attrition. As soon as they failed they called in Trump to give them a face saving exit before the cost of using fancy missiles to blow up clocks, jails and TV broadcasters became apparent.
On my side, literally all of the OSINT satellite evidence, strike location and damage assessments matching up with my explanation. On your side, the Israel government making claims with zero proof of any kind.
It's good to see you understand why this is such an important dispute, though,
They hit took out a lot of military leaders assembled for exercises but as far as I know nobody confirmed that it was an actual command bunker or even that the IAF was responsible. Most of the confirmed assassinations have been ascribed to Mossad drones, Mossad Spike missiles and the occasional Mossad bomb, all of which could plausibly have taken out the assembled generals just as easily as an IAF bomb.
Alternatively, penetrating a bunker is within the capabilities of the higher yield Sparrow variants like the Silver Sparrow and the Golden Horizon. The damage assessed from the (failed) attempted strikes on Arak and Natanz were performed by such missiles so it wouldn't be farfetched to assume that the successful assassination was their responsibility too.
Still, lets be generous here and assume it was the responsibility of the IAF, and that it was a bomb and not just a missile (or several). Why did this only happen on day 1? Why weren't they able to replicate the pace of assassinations for the remainder of the war, or to take out comparably valuable targets like the missile cities? Even if it were true, this seems more suggestive that they had temporary access to Iranian airspace granted by Mossad blowing decades of assets to give a few hours of access rather than actual aerial supremacy.
So Iran was defenseless, Trump decides to call off Israel for no reason thereby saving Iran, Israel decides to obey Trump despite having previously had no problem disobeying him regarding Lebanon and Syria. Today, Iran is openly defying Trump by continuing nuclear enrichment and Trump is threatening to restart strikes, yet Israel is still doing nothing to Iran while continuing to bomb Syria in active defiance of Trump. I dunno, I still think the explanation that he was saving Israel rather than Iran makes more sense.
Also, fact check, Israel took billions of dollars in losses over just twelve days, and that was with Israeli and American AD operating at peak efficiency. I've yet to hear what "meaningful damage" done to Iran makes that comparatively not meaningful, since they recovered from the assassinations pretty easily.
It's been made abundantly clear within Israeli media that they never had a shot at Khamenei regardless of the bluster, they just assumed that taking out a significant portion of the top military leadership combined with direct threats to murder their families if they didn't rise up would cause the regime to collapse. Instead the older and more cautious elements were instantly replaced by young IRGC hardliners, pretty much the exact opposite of the intended result. It increasingly seems like your arguments only make sense if you unquestioning believe Israeli claims and also assume they would never unwittingly do something stupid and shortsighted.
90% of those missiles were basically chaff designed to drain Israeli AD. The higher quality ones actually intended to hit something had no issue getting through and obliterating Israel's highest value targets. The longer the war lasted, the less "chaff" needed and the more effective strikes on target, particularly since several of the more accurate and higher yield (but slower and easier to intercept) missiles weren't even brought out once.
The nuclear program wasn't gone and neither were the missile cities. If the IAF actually had total air control then they wouldn't be sending missiles at clocks, they'd be Nasrallah-bunker-busting every Iranian fortress and knocking out those capabilities for good.
Yes, the US didn't want to get drawn in. But if Iran had responded to Trump's ceasefire offer by humiliating him Putin style and continued pounding Israel indefinitely then it's pretty hard to imagine Trump not getting drawn in. Beating Israel is easy but beating America is not. Their only options were to risk an existential war immediately or to take a ceasefire and to prepare for the day when Israel no longer has American backing. There are arguments for the former but it's easy to see why they chose the latter. On the flipside there's no reason why Trump or Israel would cut a favourable truce with their worst enemy at their weakest only to impotently threaten to return to fighting by the end of the month because said worst enemy continues to defy them.
So, in your view:
The IDF is just doing these photos with various JDAMs and whatnot linked in this article for pure propaganda? Why?
We know why Iran would lie about having shot down an F-35 or two. But why would Israel need to lie about dropping JDAMs vs. blasting things with ALBMs? They certainly were blowing things up.
You can argue that it doesn't prove the IAF did; you can't argue it proves they didn't. Elementary logic.
Here's a funny (bit)[https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/tensions-erupt-did-israel-use-azerbaijani-airspace-to-strike-deep-into-iran/]:
What was their goal this time? Was it the same as 2006? (No.)
For "exercises"? AYFKMRN? We know who the dead generals are.
Well at least you're willing to acknowledge one part of the Israeli government did a good job.
Because the Iranians got a lot more cautious about things. Obviously. Targeting people is hard when they know they're being actively targeted.
This is not what "spontaneously" means. Quite the opposite.
No reason? He has a whole wing of advisors who wanted the U.S. to take no part. As far as Trump is concerned, the nuclear program was bombed, so mission accomplished.
Those are not the same situations. (After all, you seem to believe Iran remains a significant threat to Israel right now.) Bibi will only test Trump so much.
The Iranians have formed a war council because they expect the war to recommence. Israel is, one presumes, presently plotting for such an eventuality. As they did that last time.
Trump is not a particularly rational actor. He is wildly inconsistent and easily influenced by his advisors; who often have conflicting views. Many people predict great catastrophe if the regime falls. So if it's defanged why not let it live. I think this is wrong, but I know why they think it.
Again, no truce was "cut." Nothing was negotiated. It's a de facto ceasefire.
Do you deny that Iran's economy was massively impacted during the conflict because of the reliance on the oil industry, or is that also propaganda?
Had the conflict continued roughly as it had, who was going to run out of money first?
Here's the core of the issue: you claim bombs were used, yet none of the strikes documented by satellite imagery are consistent with bombs, let alone the repeated bomb strikes one would expect if the IAF actually had total control of the skies. That being the case, it doesn't matter what Iran does or doesn't choose to dispute. If Hamas makes some outlandish claim and Israel doesn't directly dispute it are we supposed to automatically assume it to be true?
You're saying that Israel was not defeated, they just chose not to deliver further damage to Iran despite failing to have destroyed their nuclear program or their ballistic missile capabilities after securing total control of their airspace.
Again, the decisive factor here is the US. Iran doesn't want an existential fight against the global hegemon and Israel can't maintain an extended exchange if the US doesn't directly intervene. That's really the only explanation that covers why neither side has resumed fighting yet.
It was to force Hezbollah north of the Litani and to allow Israelis in the northern communities to return. The IAF is still bombing territory south of the Litani and somewhere between 20% and 50% of the former inhabitants of said communities have left permanently so that's a failure on two counts.
Israel has always been excellent at assassinations, the trouble is that assassinations don't win wars.
Yes, the Iranians were conducting missile exercises when Israel struck.
Yes, that explains why Trump would step out, but why would Israel? In your world they had Iran totally at their mercy yet they still had nuclear material and ballistic missile capabilities. Why would they step back and allow the Iranians to restock, resupply and rebuild their defenses moments after securing total control of their skies? They bomb Syria regularly (who hasn't fired a shot back in return), they even bombed Qatar, why did they stop bombing Iran?
He just bombed Qatar! How in the world would bombing supposedly defenseless and hostile Iran cause Trump to do anything that bombing one of his biggest financial backers wouldn't?!
Netanyahu would love to try again if he thought Trump could be dragged into doing the dirty work but there's little indication that Iran fears Israel on its own.
Massively impacted, sure. More massively impacted than the country that has been fighting multiple wars nonstop for two years using reservists? Probably not.
Israel has an unlimited line of credit with Uncle Sam so of course they're never running out of greenbacks but in an extended war of attrition the real question is who would run out of valuable infrastructure.
The entire country of Israel has just a few dozen major sites containing the critical national infrastructure: power plants, water desalinization, refineries, etc. The Iranians hitting the Bazan refinery alone stressed their entire supply chain; given a few months of daily strikes Israel would be unlivable, though the US would come to the rescue before then.
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