It's Getting Close to Clear How the War Will Turn Out
- Thomas Neuburger
- 1 minute ago
- 3 min read
By Thomas Neuburger
We’re reaching, in my view, a tipping point in the Israel-U.S. war to destroy Iran. I’ll save a broader analysis, an overall look, for the next time, but most of the pieces are in place that allow a reasonable look at how this will go. Here are a few of those pieces.
1. Israelis may well be close to a breaking point
Listen to Lawrence Wilkerson in the following video. The first six minutes is enough, though the rest is fascinating. Wilkerson says, from information he gets privately and from pirated Israeli videos he has seen, that 1) Israel is “flat being devastated” (his emphasis), “literally being ripped apart,” and 2) their casualties could be five to ten times more than what they’ve announced.
Al Jazeera’s casualty live tracker puts declared Israeli deaths at 18 and injuries at 4800 as of March 25. That’s an impossibly low number. Deaths are more likely in the hundreds and injuries in the tens of thousands.
Plus, those not physically hurt have been living for weeks racing in and out of tight, claustrophobic shelters, suffering through battle-torn days and sleepless nights, listening to air raid sirens that seem never to stop.
They, the people, still want to continue the war, but at some point something will break, both for them and their leaders, just as it broke during last year’s attack on Iran.
Israel has a limit, and where that limit lies is important, both tactically and strategically.
2. Israel’s air defense could be close to collapse
Former Pentagon war planner and MIT professor Ted Postol reinforces the point above. In addition, he thinks, now that Israeli air defense radar has been put out of action, Iranian drones, highly accurate, are now unstoppable, as are its armada of super-speed, high-damage missiles like the Fattah and Khorramshahr series.
Because of this, “Iran is now beginning to bring the full weight of its strike capabilities to bear on Israel and the military installations in the Persian Gulf” (9:33 in the video below). He anticipates increased desperation on the part of the Israeli government.
3. Retaliation for a nuclear attack on Iran would make the Israeli disappear
The second half of the video above (start at 28:00) contains a meticulous slide show by Dr. Postal — again, a former Pentagon war planner — that designs a hypothetical nuclear strike by Iran if Israel attacked Iran first with tactical nukes. (For what it’s worth, a number of commentators today anticipate such an event.)
It’s up to you to decide what would happen if Israel struck Iran with nukes. Would they fold? Or would the government hunker down, further enrich its existing fissionable material, make low-yield nuclear bombs — Dr. Postol thinks they could make at least 10 in less than month — and return the favor?
If the latter, here’s what he thinks they could do to Tel Aviv alone with just three of those ten.
Well-spaced blast sites in Tel Aviv for three low-yield nuclear weapons (exact locations are unimportant, but the wide spacing is). The fireballs (10,000,000°K) are shown in orange. The initial fire zones are shown in yellow. Death toll: 200-300,000.
The spaced explosions allow oceans of hurricane-force, super-heated air to rush toward the blast centers, extending the damage geographically. A schematic (no rough edges) picture of the damage is shown below.
Dr. Postol goes on to talk about radiation effects and so forth. (The area of toxic “black rain” would likely move east, by the way, so Jordan, look out.) Keep in mind, that’s just three weapons and Tel Aviv. Israel is small. Ten weapons would go a long way.
The idea is clear. No one but a madman would want this for anyone.
Would Iran strike first? Not now. Their escalations to date have been tit-for-tat strikes, and no one, not the UN, not even Netanyahu, thinks Iran has these weapons today. But if Israel struck first, how would Iran respond?
With all this in mind, we’ll look at the outcomes and likelihoods in the next piece.