Turns out that Trump and the Pentagon were lying. Again. This time about the true impact of the Iranian counter-strike on US forces in Iraq. First they claimed that there were no injured U.S. personnel, only to eventually have to fess up that 34 soldiers had suffered traumatic brain injury (which Trump “re-classified” as a “headache”).  Then they had to admit that it was not really 34, but actually 50!
According to some sources, not all U.S. personnel were hiding in bunkers and some were deployed to defend the base perimeter. Whatever may be the case, this adds yet another indication that the Iranian counter-strike was much more robust than originally reported by the Empire. In fact, Iranian sources indicate that following the strike, a number of wounded casualties were flown to Israel, Kuwait and Germany. Again, we will probably never find out the full truth about what happened that night, but two things are now certain:
  1. The Iranian attack was extremely effective and it is undeniable that all the US/NATO/Israeli forces in the region are now exposed like sitting ducks waiting for the next Iranian strike.
  2. Uncle Shmuel has had to dramatically under-report the real extent and nature of the Iranian counter-strike.
Now, let’s be clear about the quality of the warning the U.S. personnel had. We now know at the very least the following warnings were received:
  1. Warning through the Iraqi government (whom the Iranians did brief about their intentions).
  2. Warning through the Swiss authorities (who represent U.S. interests in Iran and whom the Iranian did brief about their intentions).
  3. Warning through the US reconnaissance/intelligence capabilities on the ground, air and space.
And yet, in spite of these almost ideal conditions (from the point of view of defense), we now see that not a single Iranian missile was intercepted, that the missiles all landed with very high accuracy, that the U.S. base itself suffered extensive damage (including destroyed helicopters and drones) and that there were scores of injured personnel (see this article for a detailed discussion of the post-attack imagery).
If we look at this strike as primarily a “proof of concept” operation, then it becomes pretty clear that on the Iranian side what was proven was a superb degree of accuracy and robust ballistic missile capability, whereas on the U.S. side the only thing this strike did was to prove that the U.S. forces in the region are all extremely vulnerable to Iranian missile attack. Just imagine if the Iranians had wanted to maximize U.S. casualties and if they had given no warning of any kind – what would the tally be then?! What if the Iranians had targeted, say, fuel and ammo dumps, buildings where U.S. personnel lived, industrial facilities (including CENTCOM’s key logistic nodes), ports or even airfields? Can you imagine the kind of hell the Iranians would have unleashed against basically unprotected facilities?!
Still dubious?
Then ask yourself why Trump & Co. had to lie and minimize the real scope of the Iranian attack. It is pretty obvious that the White House decided to lie and to present the strike as almost without impact because if it had admitted the magnitude of the strike, then it would also have had to admit to the total powerlessness to stop or even to meaningfully degrade it. Not only that, but an outraged U.S. public (most Americans still believe the traditional propaganda line about “The Greatest Military Force in the History of the Galaxy”!) would have demanded a retaliatory counter-counter-strike against Iran, which would have triggered an immediate Iranian attack on Israel which, in turn, would have plunged the entire region into a massive war which the U.S. had no stomach for.
Contrast that with the Iranian claims which, if anything, possibly exaggerated the impact of the strike and claimed that 80 servicemen were injured (I would add here that, at least so far, the Iranian government has been far more candid and less inclined to resort to crude lies than the U.S. has). Clearly the Iranians were ready for exactly the kind of further escalation that the U.S. wanted to avoid at almost any cost.

So what really took place?

There are two basic ways to defend against an attack: denial and punishment. Denial is what the Syrians have been doing against the U.S. and Israel every time they shoot down incoming missiles. Denial is ideal because it minimizes your own casualties while not necessarily going up the “escalation scale”. In contrast, punishment is when you don’t prevent an attack, but when you inflict retaliatory counter-strike on the attacking side, but only after being attacked yourself. That is what the USA could do against Iran, at pretty much at any time (yes, contrary to some wholly unrealistic claims, Iranian air defenses cannot prevent the US armed forces from inflicting immense damage upon Iran, its population and infrastructure).
The problem with punishing Iran is you are dealing with an enemy who is actually willing to absorb immense losses as long as these losses eventually lead to victory.  How do you deter somebody who is willing to die for his country, people or faith?
There is no doubt in my mind that the Iranians, who are superb analysts, are fully aware of the damage that the U.S. can inflict. The key factor here is that they also realize that once the U.S. unleashes its missiles and bombers and once they destroy many (if not all) of their targets, they will have nothing else left to try to contain Iran with.
Here is how you can think of the Iranian strategy:
  • If the U.S. does nothing or only engages in symbolic strikes (say, like Israel’s strikes in Syria), the Iranians can simply ignore these attacks because while they are very effective in giving the Americans (or the Israelis) an illusion of power, they really fail to achieve anything militarily significant.
  • If the U.S. finally decides to strike Iran hard, it will exhaust its “punishment card” in that counter-attack, and will have no further options to deter Iran.
  • If the U.S. (or Israel) decides to use nuclear weapons, then such an attack will simply give a “political joker card” to Iran saying in essence “now you are justified in whatever retaliation you can think of”.  And you can be darn sure that the Iranian will come up with all sorts of most painful forms of retaliation!
You can think of the current US posture as “binary”: it is either “all off” or “all on”. Not by choice, of course, but these conditions are the result of the geostrategic realities of the Middle-East and from the many asymmetries between the two sides:
Country                                                   USA            Iran
Air superiority                                          yes              no
Combat capable ground forces               no               yes
Willingness to incur major losses            no               yes
Long and vulnerable supply lines            yes              no
Prepared for major defensive operation  no              yes

The above is, of course, a simplification, yet it is also fundamentally true. And the reason for these asymmetries lies in a very simple yet crucial difference: US Americans have been brainwashed into believing that major wars can be won on the cheap. Iranians have no such illusions (most certainly not after Iraq, backed by the USA, the USSR and Europe, attacked Iran and inflicted immense destruction on the Iranian society).  But the era of “wars on the cheap” is now long over.
Furthermore, Iranians also know that U.S. air superiority alone will not magically result in a U.S. victory. Finally, the Iranians have had 40 years to prepare for a U.S. attack. The U.S. has only really been put on notice since January 8th of this year.
Again, for the USA, it is “all in” or “all out”. We saw the “all out” in the days following the Iranian counter-strike and we can get an idea of what the “all in” would look like by recalling the Israeli operations against Hezbollah in 2006.
The Iranians, however, have a much more gradual escalatory capability, which they just demonstrated with their attack on the U.S. forces in Iraq: they can launch only a few missiles, or they can launch hundreds of them. They can try to maximize U.S. casualties, or they can decide to go after CENTCOM’s infrastructure. They can chose to strike Uncle Shumel directly, or they can decide to strike his allies (KSA) and bosses (Israel). They can chose to take credit for any action, or they can hide behind what the CIA calls plausible deniability.
So while the U.S. and the AngloZionist Empire as a whole are much more powerful than Iran, Iran has skillfully developed methods and means which allow it to be in control of what military analysts call the “escalation dominance”.

Has Iran just “ledeened” the almighty USA?

Remember Michael Ledeen? He is the Neocon who came up with this historical aphorism: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business“.
Is it not ironic that Iran did exactly that, they took the USA and “threw it against a wall, just to show that they meant business”, did they not?
And what does this all tell us?
For one thing, the U.S. military is in real trouble. It is pretty obvious that U.S. air defenses are hopelessly ineffective: we saw their “performance” in Saudi Arabia against the Houthi strikes. The truth is that the Patriot missiles never performed adequately, not in the first Gulf War, nor today. The big difference is that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not have any high-precision missiles and that its attempts to strike at the U.S. (or Israel, for that matter) where not very effective. Thus, it was easy for the Pentagon to fudge the real performance (or lack thereof!) of its weapon systems. Now that Iran has been able to pinpoint some buildings while carefully ignoring others shows that the entire Middle-East has entered a radically new era.
Second, it is equally obvious that U.S. bases in the Middle-East are very vulnerable to ballistic and cruise missile attacks. Air defenses are a very complicated and high-tech branch of the military and it often takes years, if not decades, to develop a truly effective air defense system. Due in part to its tendency to only attack weak and lightly-defended countries, and also due to the very real deterrent might the U.S. armed forces used to deliver in the past, the U.S. never had to really worry much about air defenses. The “little guys” had no missiles, while the “big guys” would never dare to openly strike at Uncle Shmuel’s forces.
Until recently.
Now, it is the previously almighty World Hegemon which has been tossed against a wall by a much weaker Iran and thus found itself being treated like a “small crappy little country”.
Sweet irony!
But there is much more to this story.
The Saker