We do not know much save the fact that the US attacked the three Iranian nuclear sites, at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. There was what amounted to a short warning via lots of chatter anticipating an imminent attack; I even e-mailed a colleague that it looked as if Trump was going to unleash the dogs of war at his 6:00 PM Situation Room meeting on Saturday.

As you see, Trump declared that all the strikes had been fully successful. He also said more was coming if Iran did not negotiate, as in surrender to US demands.

As indicated, we are deep in fog of war terrain. For instance:

It appears Iran was unable to impede the entry of US jets. Alternatively, in the light of Iran’s claims that it had removed nuclear assets from these sites ( the enriched uranium and perhaps the centrifuges), a much less likely but possible scenario is that Iran decided not to contest the entry since if their claims are correct, America would have wasted firepower on now-unimportant targets. Better to husband air defenses for more critical targets and to lull the Americans in a false sense of security. Note that, in a much-watch video below, Trita Parsi points out that Iran does not need large sites for its nuclear development program. It can distribute the activity across many locations.

Larry Johnson takes a different but somewhat optimistic view, that Trump has a pattern of making showy but deliberately not very damaging attacks. From his post:

To understand what happened today in Iran, you need to recall the last two times Trump claimed to have carried out massive strikes to derail alleged weapons of mass destruction. I am talking about Syria:

1. April 6–7, 2017 – Shayrat Airbase Tomahawk Strike

  • Date & Time: April 6, 2017 (evening ET); missile impact around April 7, 4:40 a.m. Syria time
  • What happened:
    • Trump directed the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. destroyers targeting the Shayrat airbase—the launch site for the April 4 sarin attack on civilians in Khan Shaykhun.
    • This was Trump’s first military action directly against Assad’s forces, intended to punish chemical weapons use.

2. April 13–14, 2018 – Coalition Precision Strikes

  • Date: April 13, 2018 (U.S. time); strikes executed early April 14 Syria time
  • Details:
    • In collaboration with the U.K. and France, Trump ordered precision strikes—chiefly missiles—against three Syrian chemical weapons facilities, responding to the Douma chemical attack on April 7.
    • Strike reached sites near Damascus and Homs, with approximately 105 missiles used.

Now, here is what actually took place behind the scenes. How do I know? Can’t tell you that. The US alerted the Russians in advance to our intentions and plans. The warning was given with enough advance notice that Russian and Syrian assets were able to vacate those locations. All Trump did was launch an expensive fireworks show that cost millions of dollars and blew up some sand dunes.

Given that history, I suggest everyone pour themselves a big scotch or vodka and relax. Initial reports almost always are grossly exaggerated. Here is one possibility: Trump may be doing another Houthi spin… you know, declare that Iran has capitulated and then pull US forces out of harms way. Iran has been extremely patient to a lengthy list of US provocations

Scott Ritter has a new video up which we cannot embed, but it’s only six minutes. The key point is in the subhead: President Trump just sent the most sophisticated weapons in the US arsenal to bomb three empty sites in Iran. Why? He adds that this was not a serious attack and did not advance US security interests. It seems designed to limit Iran’s retaliatory assets because the US used only assets out of theater, as in not (supposedly) implicating US bases in the region. He argues that this was show intended to save Trump’s face.

However, Israel is not Syria. Indian media has been reporting on the increasing damage that Iran’s daily and sometimes more than once a day bombings are inflicting. Despite Trump’s bluster about the need for Iran to return to the capitulation, um, negotiating, table, this action does not stop Iranian strikes, which look to be reaching the point of serious damage. For instance:

And:

Israel has put itself in a PR conundrum by seeking regime change in Iran and depicting Iranian strikes as largely unsuccessful. But we know from the Washington Post as of 3 days ago that on then-current trajectories, Israel would run out of air defense missiles in 10 to 12 days. So Israel is already taking serious hits and is not far from being completely exposed to Iranian strikes. What then? The US is going to be under acute pressure to stop Israel’s pummeling.1

Now perhaps Israel will stand down in the wake of the US attack. Iran’s position has been they would stop shooting when Israel stopped shooting.

But failing that, despite Trump apparently hoping a showy strike would be sufficient to save his manhood, if Israel does not back down, the US will be forced to go up the escalatory ladder. I have said the probable next play would be to pummel Tehran. Israel brought Hezbollah to heel, not by defeating it militarily, but by inflicting so much punishment on the capital that Hezbollah, which is also a political actor in Lebanon, had to stand down. It may attempt a replay in Iran or alternatively hope that civilian deaths and infrastructure damage will produce its hoped-for public revolt.

Having said it would retaliate and hit US bases all over the Middle East if the US attacked, what does Iran do now? Iran has tended to be very cautious and under-react, and then a bit late. This war is getting too hot for that to be a great idea since the US cannot be seen to abandon Israel.

At a minimum, Iran intensifies its pounding of Israel. Perhaps it engages in an out-of-the-box move and hits the British airbase in Cyprus, which has been supporting strikes on Gaza. One YouTuber said the US base in Qatar had been evacuated, so perhaps that is the immediate tit for tat.

Since it seems vanishingly unlikely that the Trump will be unable to stand up to calls for escalation when Iran keeps pummeling Israel, where will Iran go if the US makes a strike intended to do serious damage? If Iran successfully parries that, perhaps not much. But otherwise, Iran’s best next move would seem to be to block the Strait of Hormuz. They can loudly announce that they’ll reopen it as soon as Israel and the US stop their attacks.

Finally, as Alexander Mercouris pointed out yesterday, this attack means Donald Trump’s presidency is over, at least in terms of getting much further with his domestic agenda. This war will become his tar baby.

This is a tragic mistake, but our dogged support of Israel and Netanyahu’s wiliness and personal survival focus got us here. As the movie version of Elizabeth said when rejecting the advice of ministers to attack Spain, “I do not like wars. They have uncertain outcomes.”

Or to again invoke a Sun Tsu dictum that yours truly has applied regularly to Trump: “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat.”

____

1 In case you are late to this story, the US, after seeming willing to accept a JCPOA 2.0, fell in with Israel hardliners, demanding that Iran abandon not just all nuclear enrichment but also effectively prostrate itself by also giving up its ballistic missile stocks and development. Iran has consistently said no to these demands, the latest at a bizarre meeting ginned up last week by European leaders with Iran’s foreign minister Araghchi. Team Trump attempted a peculiar last-ditch outreach. Per Axios in Scoop: Trump’s back channel to Iran failed after supreme leader went dark:

President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quietly sought to arrange a meeting between senior U.S. and Iranian officials in Istanbul this week amid Israel’s escalating war with Iran.

  • But the effort collapsed when Iran’s supreme leader — in hiding due to fears of assassination — couldn’t be reached to approve it, according to three U.S. officials and a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

This ploy goes firmly in “How dumb do Americans think other people are?” terrain. The leaked story that Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate Khamenei was meant as a threat, that but for the good graces of Hair Furore, Khamenei might well be dead. The mercurial Trump could easily change his mind as Iranian defiance continues.

And let us not forget that Israel has made a point of assassinating negotiators and top leaders who let their security procedures lapse during negotiations. It has been reported that Israel tracked Hamas chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh to the guest house in Tehran where he was martyred. Similarly, it’s been reported that Israel was able to track communications after an negotiating session with Hezbollah to locate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to an apartment in Beirut (apparently with other top Hezbollah officials involved in the negotiations) and flattened the entire apartment block.

Recall also that the US assassinated Iranian general Solemani when he was in Iran to conduct negotiations, and supposedly had a physically protected status via operating in that capacity.

So even if Israel were to uncharacteristically respect international norms and not assassinate him en route to and from Istanbul, they would track him upon his return with the hope not just of eliminating him but also other members of the leadership that he would brief on what happened.

Keep in mind also that Khamenei has handed over authority for operating the war to the top general of the IRGC, so the silence may also signal that Khamenei sees the time for talking as past.

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