[MilitaryTimes] Iran war depleted US Patriot missile stockpiles, creating readiness challenges, experts say
The United States has depleted roughly two-thirds of its pre-war Patriot missile interceptor inventory during the conflict with Iran, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies — a drawdown the think tank says could create readiness challenges if another major conflict erupts before stockpiles are rebuilt.
Using publicly available information on missile expenditures, production rates and estimated U.S. inventories, the Washington-based think tank estimates the U.S. has expended about 65% of its Patriot inventory, leaving fewer than 1,000 interceptors remaining. The analysis also estimates U.S. inventories of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors have declined by about 38%, leaving an estimated 234 to 278 interceptors.
Posted by: Dopey Photch2701 ||
08/04/2026 06:39 ||
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#1
Paging Rosie the Riverter.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/04/2026 12:40 Comments ||
Top||
#2
...Anybody with an ounce of brains knew this was coming, but it was more fun to shovel cash at the planes and ships than the ammo. Less than 1000 Patriots? That could well be a few days if the Chinese get froggy, and the THAAD would go even faster.
#3
Again quite possibly misleading. "U.S. inventories"
Which ones? We have several including theater caches. Are they including them or just the ones on the mainland that are ready to ship out when needed? (and also the number in theaters is highly classified along with several areas of storage in the US)
Lord knows we need a better manufacturing scale up for munitions but relying on "open source" numbers is not a great way to guess.
#6
Quite possibly misleading, indeed! The Military Times is not affiliated with the US military. Their parent company is Sightline Media Group which is owned by a private equity firm, Regent.
The conclusion comes from a think tank analysis using open source data and estimated inventories. Not DoD numbers.
I call shenanigans.
(Which is not to say we shouldn't make more. If you ignore the fighty bits, war is a resource management game. First one to run out of something loses.)
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Vladimir Dobrynin
[REGNUM] The "coastal walk" to Spain by 60,000 Moroccans attracted worldwide attention. During the crisis, Spanish analysts, experts, media outlets, and bloggers eagerly shared their answers to the question "Why this demonstration?"
Theories include: financial incentives (a similar crisis in 2021 resulted in the allocation of €30 million from the Spanish budget to the Moroccans "to strengthen the police controlling approaches to the state border"); a desire to prove that Spain is incapable of maintaining order on its own territory and that the upcoming 2030 World Cup final should be held not at Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu, but at a new stadium in Casablanca, which will be built specifically for the purpose; and an attempt by King Mohammed VI of Morocco to pressure Madrid to stop supporting Western Sahara.
But none of the versions, despite the feeling of their validity and plausibility, answered the main question: does Spain have the right (legal, and not just the right of the strong) to say that this is an attack on its sovereign territory?
Spain has held the two territories longer than the Turks have held Constantinople, and both Spain and the Moslems have held their current possessions for millennia less than Jews were in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. But do go on.
In the modern "European Garden of Eden," it's not a good idea to be considered a colonialist. Madrid never tires of reminding London of this, pointing out the injustice (in its view, of course) of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which created the British exclave of Gibraltar on Spanish territory. Miguel Cervantes's compatriots aren't shy about considering it a British colony.
There was no way around the claim that the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on the African continent was "different." And at the end of last week, the heavy artillery of Spanish historical scholarship entered the fray.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
So why is a territory located in the heart of North Africa part of Spain, and what legal status does it actually have in the international community?
The official response of Spanish diplomacy and international law is categorical: the United Nations recognizes it as a Spanish province, and the law does not consider it a colony.
While the Arab kingdom has effectively claimed it since independence in 1956, based on the irredentist doctrine of Greater Morocco, Madrid's legal argument rests on "more than five centuries of uninterrupted sovereignty, dating back long before the modern boundaries of the North African map were defined."
The Iberian Peninsula's connection to this part of continental Africa actually arose long before the formation of the modern Moroccan state. In the 15th century, Ceuta was one of the Islamic world's most important economic and strategic ports, under the rule of several Berber and Arab dynasties, but was conquered by Portugal in 1415 as part of the Christian Reconquista.
In 1580, the death of the Portuguese King Sebastian I, who left no heirs, allowed King Philip II of Spain to unite both crowns in the Iberian Union, integrating the city into Spanish dominion. When this union dissolved in 1640, the residents of Ceuta themselves decided to swear allegiance to Spain.
Meanwhile, in 1497, the Spanish completed the capture of another city on African soil: Melilla. A fleet sent under direct orders from the Catholic Monarchs (Reies Catolicos—an honorary historical title of two Spanish monarchs: Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile ) captured this port just five years after the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada.
For generations, control of both cities was crucial to maritime and commercial survival on one of the world's busiest waterways.
For the Spanish state, controlling access to the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar was a strategic priority. "Ceuta and Melilla acquired enormous value due to their proximity to the Iberian Peninsula and their ability to control passage through the Strait of Gibraltar," explained historian Manuel Torres Soriano of the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville in an interview with the BBC.
Situated just across the strait and just 14 kilometres from the peninsula's coast, Ceuta served as a hub for trade and the flow of people between the two shores of the Mediterranean.
"Melilla, on the other hand, fulfilled the need for a port and a base for combating piracy. This was a huge security problem for Spain," Torres added.
Given that the pirates were Moslem…
After five centuries of uninterrupted presence, Spain considers these two cities an integral part of its territory. "Now that the population is stable, Ceuta and Melilla are still as much Spanish territory as any on the peninsula," the historian stated.
This strategic and military weight remained unchanged throughout the turbulent first half of the 20th century. From 1912 to 1956, Spain and France administered a protectorate in North Africa, encompassing vast territories of modern-day Morocco.
However, Ceuta and Melilla were excluded from this agreement, as they were already Spanish national territories. Following Morocco's independence in 1956 and the return of the southern zone of the protectorate in 1958, both cities remained under the uninterrupted sovereignty of Madrid.
MOROCCO'S PROPOSALS REJECTED
Almost from the very moment of independence, Moroccan diplomacy attempted to "decolonize" Ceuta and Melilla. Morocco claimed that the Spanish presence constituted an occupation inherited from the colonial past and brought the issue before the UN Special Committee on Decolonization (the so-called "Committee of 24").
However, the international organization rejected the request outright. Unlike territories such as Western Sahara, which was included in the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, Ceuta and Melilla were recognized as an integral part of Spain's provincial and constitutional structure.
"According to the law, these territories are not considered colonies, since they are fully integrated into Spain as autonomous entities within the framework of the Spanish constitution," Jamie Trinidad, an international law expert at the University of Cambridge in the UK, told the BBC.
"It will be very difficult for Morocco to change this status, although I think it will continue to defend its claims as a political strategy," he noted.
The political regime of both exclaves changed dramatically in 1995 with the adoption of their Statutes of Autonomy.
This legal framework guarantees their citizens full legislative representation in the Spanish Congress and Senate, and also ensures the direct application of all European Union law, as these territories are the bloc's only land borders on the African continent.
ECONOMIC VULNERABILITY
Despite robust legal and constitutional protections, everyday life in Ceuta is characterized by a fragile socioeconomic balance. According to official data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the city consistently ranks among the lowest in the country for per capita wealth.
Its economic model has historically been shaped by informal cross-border trade and reliance on transit flows with neighboring countries, which has already led to serious economic shocks. Such as the border closure announced by Morocco in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, which lasted for over two years and exposed the region's extreme vulnerability.
"Despite the Moroccan origins of many residents of Ceuta and Melilla and the growing influence of Islam in the region, the issue of national identity has not yet become widespread. In fact, residents of Ceuta and Melilla of Moroccan descent feel more confident in their Spanish identity," Torres notes.
According to him, “from the point of view of the majority of residents of these cities, Morocco’s claims are perceived as a threat.”
“With more than five centuries of shared history and strong international support, Ceuta is not a relic of the colonial era, but an integral part of the Spanish state in North Africa,” El Confidencial correspondent Jorge García González concludes this excursion into the distant past.
"The future of Ceuta and Melilla inevitably depends on restructuring their production systems to reduce external dependence and strengthen their security amid diplomatic tensions between Madrid and Rabat. Dramatic events such as the sudden influx of approximately 8,000 migrants in the spring of 2021 or the serious incidents at the Melilla border fence in 2022 demonstrate that border tensions are often used as a bargaining chip in political negotiations," he argues.
The 2021 crisis deserves special attention in this context. The situation with the virtually simultaneous invasion of Ceuta by 8,000 Moroccans is the result of one wrong decision by Madrid—from Rabat's perspective.
On April 18, 2021, by order of the Spanish Socialist government, Brahim Ghali, Secretary General of the Polisario Front
…a member of the Socialist International since 1973…
(the organization that de facto governs Western Sahara), was admitted to a hospital in the Spanish city of Logroño for treatment for COVID-19. He is also Mohammed VI's arch-enemy, preventing him from taking control of the third of Western Sahara—the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
Unlike the other two-thirds, it is not subordinate to Rabat. De jure, the SADR territory remains a Spanish colony, although this term is not mentioned in the Spanish press.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared Ghali's hospitalization an "act of humanitarian aid." Mohammed VI saw it as political, and... 8,000 Moroccans entered Ceuta, then quickly left. No one, it must be said, hid the fact that they had no intention of obtaining residence permits in Spain. The demonstration was a success: the Moroccan police received substantial financial support from the Spanish budget.
Some experts doubt that the new crisis was a planned move by Rabat. This is especially true given that Madrid created its own problems with the Supreme Court's ruling that deporting immigrants who arrived by sea was unconstitutional. The African kingdom's Foreign Ministry stated that the massive influx of immigrants to Ceuta was triggered by disinformation spread on social media about the border's opening.
However, there is one fact that could have angered King Mohammed this time and forced him to "act as a deterrent." On July 20, Sánchez made an official visit to Algeria. He came to discuss friendship and cooperation (including oil and gas supplies). The caveat is that Algeria is the only African country that openly supports the Polisario, meaning it is in conflict with Morocco over this issue in the struggle for influence in Africa.
This could have been the final straw: Rabat already had a grudge against Algeria, which in 2021 stopped gas supplies to Spain via Morocco. Sánchez's direct contact with Algerian suppliers practically bluntly tells Mohammed VI that there will be no resumption of transit (and therefore no money from it, nor free gas) through Morocco.
Moreover, Morocco supports Israel, and Sánchez condemns the war in Gaza. So the recent "beach march" may not be the last act in this story. Furthermore, hundreds of illegal immigrants are still in Ceuta, roaming the streets and threatening the local population.
[PJMedia] Javier Milei has done great things for Argentina — and honestly, the entire region — and will continue to do so, but I have to admit that his latest proposal left me weak in the knees. He's calling it the grillete fiscal or the "fiscal shackle," and it's part of a larger reform of the Central Bank's charter that he's sending to the country's Congress, possibly for a mid-to-late-August vote.
I said we would achieve a fiscal balance in our first year in office, and we achieved it in the first month. Today, we can say that we lifted fourteen million Argentines out of poverty.
— Milei in English - Official Account (@jmilei_english) August 1, 2026
Essentially, if the Argentine national government runs a fiscal deficit for several months in a row, the Congress receives a warning that it has a matter of weeks to fix it. If it doesn't hit the deadline, the "shackle" activates automatically, and the political class will be the ones impacted. Here's what happens:
1. Non-essential government functions are suspended (hello, government shutdown).
2. All new spending is frozen and will not be authorized until the problem is resolved.
3. No new contracts can be awarded.
4. No new public-sector employees can be hired.
5. Discretionary transfers to the provinces are halted.
And last but not least, the best part:
6. The salaries of the top politicians stop completely. The vice president, ministers, secretaries, undersecretaries, national senators, national deputies, and even El presidente himself will not receive a dime of taxpayer money until they solve the problem.
Of course, essential services will remain protected.
"For the first time in our history, if politics doesn’t do its homework, politics will pay the cost — not the people," Milei said during a national broadcast last week, during which he introduced the proposal.
My question is why the heck isn't every national government in the world doing this?
More specifically, my question is why doesn't the United States do this? (I know the answer.)
We do have our fair share of government shutdowns when Congress can't get its act together, but the everyday people who work for the federal government are the ones who suffer and are often furloughed without pay, while those same members of Congress continue to receive their salaries.
Now, I will point out that in May of this year, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) sponsored a resolution that would make it so that our senators are not paid in the case of a government shutdown. It had bipartisan support and was unanimously approved. It states that these senators' salaries are withheld and released once a shutdown ends. That will take effect the day after the November 2026 elections and only applies to the Senate, not the House.
#1
I've liked the idea of a balanced budget amendment that a certain debt level can't be blown past (say 3%) unless in times of declared war. Along with that if congress failed its ONE constitutionally mandated job in passing a budget, all congressmen are barred from re-election and they lose all pensions and medical care after they leave office.
#2
...budget, nah. The appropriations need to be passed by the end of the fiscal year which is also set in stone so they can't move it. At the same time bar omnibus appropriations requiring each department to be so funded separately. As you note, not only barred from reelection but also any federal other elected position or appointment for a period of no less than 10 years.
[FoxNews] The danger isn't that America cannot destroy targets. It is appearing trapped in a cycle of retaliation without a defined political end state
Five months into the Iran war, America is winning almost every battle. The harder question is whether we are winning the war.
No one should minimize what the U.S. military has accomplished. American air and naval power have inflicted extraordinary damage on Iran's military infrastructure. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has lost command centers, missile launchers, drone facilities, air defenses, coastal installations, logistics hubs, and key personnel. Our servicemen and women have once again demonstrated unmatched professionalism, precision, and courage.
Those are genuine tactical successes.
But military history teaches a hard lesson: tactical success does not necessarily produce strategic success.
That distinction matters because the strategic center of gravity in this conflict is shifting. In the opening weeks, the focus was rightly on degrading Iran's military and nuclear capabilities. Today, the consequences increasingly extend beyond the battlefield to American credibility at home and abroad.
Iran has shown greater resilience than many anticipated, dispersing forces, hardening underground facilities, shifting to mobile launchers, and continuing to launch missiles and drones despite sustained bombing. Determined adversaries often adapt faster than expected when fighting for regime survival.
Washington’s campaign appears to assume that destroying Iran’s senior leadership could cause the system to collapse. But the regime’s real source of endurance may run deeper, rooted in a revolutionary Islamist ideology reinforced by the clerical establishment, the IRGC, security organs, patronage networks, and a culture of martyrdom. Leaders can be killed and command posts destroyed, but bombs cannot extinguish an ideology that treats suffering as validation. This doesn't mean American intelligence failed. It may mean Washington's theory of victory placed too much faith in decapitation and physical destruction, when ideologically committed regimes often absorb punishment that planners assume will compel surrender. The real question is whether repeated battlefield success is producing the political outcomes Washington seeks.
President Trump, converting military success into political results is now the central challenge.
Like it or not, President Trump's credibility, and increasingly America's credibility, is becoming the strategic center of gravity. Every warning, every red line, every promise of retaliation is now evaluated not only by Tehran but also by Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Brussels, and voters here at home.
Credibility is one of America's most valuable strategic assets. It is earned when military action consistently advances defined political objectives. It is weakened when adversaries conclude they can absorb punishment while waiting for Washington's patience, or its public support, to erode.
That domestic support deserves careful attention.
An AP-NORC survey found that roughly two-thirds of Americans believe the war has not been worth fighting, while only about one-third believe it has. Support has softened even among Republicans. Americans increasingly doubt the campaign has a clear destination and worry about its duration, cost, and expansion.
In a democracy, that matters.
Public opinion should never dictate military strategy, but neither can elected leaders indefinitely sustain a costly conflict if Americans lose confidence in its objectives. If these trends continue, Iran could become a consequential midterm issue, especially if voters link it to rising energy costs, strained resources, or distraction from border security, inflation, and China.
America's allies are watching just as closely.
Israel focuses on immediate security. Gulf Arab partners want energy infrastructure and Hormuz navigation protected. NATO allies want assurance that Washington can manage multiple crises without weakening deterrence elsewhere. Indo-Pacific allies are asking whether a war consuming American attention and resources changes Washington's long-term commitment to Asia.
That same question is being studied most carefully in Beijing.
China is analyzing American logistics, missile defense, intelligence, precision strike capability, naval operations, industrial capacity, public opinion, and political endurance, watching how quickly the United States replenishes munitions and how democratic governments sustain support during prolonged conflict.
China is learning about America's strengths.
It is also searching for America's limits.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
08/04/2026 03:53 ||
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#1
Trump is not fighting a war - he makes a deal (the idea that the rules of business he learned in his life are NOT laws of the Universe doesn't seem to penetrate).
#2
When this is all over, I strongly suspect that there will be information, that we the public don't have now, explaining why the US took the actions it did in dealing with the IRGC
There is no evidence in the provided context that President Donald Trump is "coddling" the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); rather, he has issued ultimatums for them to **surrender or face death** and recently threatened to **"wipe out"** the organization. While Trump announced on August 2, 2026, that he was **cancelling planned strikes** because the "perimeters of a deal" had been agreed upon, he explicitly conditioned this pause on the **immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz** and an end to Iran's nuclear threat. Iranian officials rejected Trump's claim that Tehran requested the pause, labeling it a **"new lie"** designed to blackmail Gulf rulers, while Trump warned that US forces remain **"locked and loaded."**
The perception of leniency may stem from the complexities of negotiating with the IRGC, which controls a vast **financial empire** and dominates Iran's economy, leading some analysts to argue that military strikes alone cannot dismantle the regime without causing a **"forever war."** Critics suggest that any deal involving the release of frozen funds could effectively **refinance the IRGC**, yet Trump has simultaneously pursued a strategy of **economic blockade** to sever the group's funding sources and force defections. The situation remains volatile, with the US and Iran having resumed strikes in late July after a brief ceasefire collapsed, indicating a strategy of **coercive pressure** rather than appeasement.
A compensatory facade for the midterm masses.
Not capitulation.
#4
What is actually happening and what the US voter thinks is happening are two different things.
Sadly I believe that if there is no positive decisive end to the Iran conflict before say 10/1, the mid terms are unlikely to go the way we want them to.
#5
Everyone asked one time or another, if you can go back in time and kill Hitler to stop all that happened to the world. Now ask if you have the ability to stop the crazies in Iran from getting the bomb would you? How far are you willing to go?
#7
#1 Trump is not fighting a war - he makes a deal (the idea that the rules of business he learned in his life are NOT laws of the Universe doesn't seem to penetrate).
It may not be the laws of physics, but Trump's moves are straight out of the modern game theory playbook. Thomas Schelling proposed the bargaining model of war back in the 60's. It seems to have caught on. One example
Two dynamics make this situation confusing. The first is a what the meaning of "is" is when it comes to "Who is Iran?". If the Grand Duchy of Fenwick declares war or signs a treaty, you are dealing with a single entity. All nice and tidy.
With Iran, there are two main factions, distinct but intertwined. On one hand, you have the Ayatollahs/IRGC who have been running the country, although with fewer Ayatollahs than before. These guys want the bomb and are happy to see the war continue at a low level. The other faction is the civilian government and economic interests. They are more interesting in surviving another day to keep making money, running the country, and oppressing the citizenry. (MikeKozlowski laid this out the other day in a post I cannot find)
tl;dr: if you see conflicting messaging from "the Iranians", it is because there are two competing factions, each with their set of interests.
The second issue is that the world is big and the war is far away. Most of us have no direct contact with it. We don't get read in on Presidential briefings or see bomb damage assessments. All we know is filtered and curated by the news media. Walter Lippman called this a "pseudo-environment" in his book Public Opinion (1922).
When we hear "Trump says yes, but the Iranians say no", the media is shaping the story by emphasizing or omitting interesting facts in order to create a certain mental picture. In this particular case, the omitted fact is that the yes and no come from competing Iranian factions. But as long as Orange Man Bad and Chaos Everywhere, then the message has been delivered.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar is about my favorite ME events analyst.
Kedar is an expert in Israeli Arab culture. He served for 25 years (1970—1995) in IDF Military Intelligence, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. He specialized in Islamic groups, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic press and mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.
He has a podcasts in Hebrew and Arabic; such an interview in English is very rare.
I’m sure we would enjoy a lightly edited machine translation of those essays you consider his best work, Grom. Something to consider for some future Sundays, perhaps.
[IsraelNationalNews] The possibility of an agreement with Hamas is reigniting the question of whether Israel is repeating past mistakes when it puts trust in a terrorist organization that some say sees deals as merely a tactical means and not a binding obligation.
Some say?? Who is so silly as to claim otherwise?
In an interview with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News, Middle East expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar warns that the safest way to avoid falling into a trap is to refrain from signing deals with Hamas.
"They have a long history of violating agreements," he said. "As far as they're concerned, particularly when it comes to non-Muslims, deception, hiding, stalling for time, and cheating are legitimate means to reach a goal. This modus operandi is based on the Hudaibiya Pact (signed by Mohammed in 628 AD), which they see as merely temporary.
According to Kedar, the Hudaibiya Pact, which various Islamic organizations rely on, is seen as an arrangment which may be violated the moment the balance of power changes. "As long as they don't have power, they sign, but the second they gain power, as far as they're concerned, the agreement is no longer binding. Therefore, anyone who signs with them has to understand that the agreement may be broken the moment they have an interest to do so."
A hudna, in fact. We know about those.
That being said, Dr. Kedar does not rule out signing a deal for diplomatic reasons if it serves a broader Israeli interest. "If we want to make a move that enables diplomatic achievements with the White House or in preparation for another move, we can sign. But we can not make a mistake and think that this is true peace. We have to understand that this is a game."
According to Kedar, one of the mistakes that Israel and the West repeat is the assumption that the other side aspires to the same objectives. "We assume that they want peace, welfare, and a good economy just like we do. But to them, the goal remains the destruction of Israel. As long as they can't do it, they accept temporary agreements."
Kedar believes that, in any case, if a deal is signed, it must be backed by especially tough enforcement mechanisms. "We must state that any violation, even the entry of one rifle into the Gaza Strip, immediately cancels the agreement and allows Israel to return to war. Not to wait until they bring in thousands of weapons and only then to claim that the agreement was violated."
He says that it is not enough to simply prohibit the entry of weapons, but rather the agreement must include clauses that would prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military capabilities. "We have to also ban the weapons training, even with fake wooden weapons. We can not allow them to rebuild their military infrastructure under the guise of other activities. We have to close every possible loophole."
To demonstrate the importance of enforcement, Kedar points to the peace agreement with Egypt. "An agreement at the end of the day is just paper. The question is how it's enforced. If every violation is answered with a fierce and unrelenting response, the other side will understand that there's a real price for violating obligations."
Regarding the possibility that senior Hamas officials could be expelled from the Gaza Strip as part of a future arrangement, Kedar said such a move would be valuable but cautioned against viewing it as a complete solution. "If the commanders leave, that would certainly be a success," he said. "But we must not think the problem ends there. There will always be replacements. At first, they may be less experienced, but within a short time, new leaders will emerge and continue down the same path."
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
08/04/2026 00:00 ||
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#1
Might not include his best stuff, but there's a bunch of English and subtitled Kedar on NewPipe YouTube. Thanks for the nudge.
[Ynet] Israel planned to create the conditions for regime change through a Kurdish invasion, mass protests and Ahmadinejad as an alternative leader, but the US halted the central operation as deep disagreements emerged among the Mossad, IDF and Cabinet
In 1932, Ze’ev Jabotinsky published an essay that became foundational, at least for the Revisionist minority. Its title was “On Adventurism.” An avantura, in Yiddish, is something between an adventure and a brawl. An “adventurist,” a trouble-seeking daredevil, was a serious insult in the cautious world of the Jewish shtetl. Jabotinsky came along and argued, in the context of the struggle against the British White Paper, precisely the opposite. There are moments, he said, when such adventurers are needed, people who will change the world, who will be applauded only if they succeed and denounced immediately if they fail.
In his own words: “And where is it written, and what is the source of the indisputable conclusion, that among the many instruments of war there is no place for adventurism? The lesson of history is otherwise. History teaches that quite often even an unsuccessful adventure is an instrument of war. Particularly ‘when it is not the adventure of one individual, but of many individuals.’” He proposed “thumbing one’s nose,” as he put it in the essay, at the restrictions imposed by the British Mandate and immigrating to the Land of Israel.
When one thinks about the ambitious plan to overthrow the regime in Iran, it is impossible not to think of the avantura. It is one thing to try to bring down the regime through economic pressure, influence operations and the sowing of fear and confusion, over time and through gradual attrition. But trying to recruit former Iranian president and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an agent and install him as leader? Initiating a full-scale Kurdish invasion? That is the kind of project in which even superpowers can fail.
Israel tried to do it and invested enormous effort in the attempt. In recent weeks, The New York Times and Haaretz have published many intriguing details about it. The following account presents additional details about the most ambitious regional objective Israel has attempted to advance: regime change in a country of roughly 100 million people, a regional power, while at war and in coordination with the world’s sole superpower, the United States.
In a presentation delivered by the Mossad to the Security Cabinet on the eve of the operation, ministers were told that regime change would come within “one to three years.” It was an appropriate qualification; the Islamic Revolution itself did not happen in a day. But the music the ministers heard was different. “We understood,” one of them told me, “that we were going for rapid and sweeping regime change, with the killing of the current leader, a Kurdish invasion, Ahmadinejad as our agent and protesters in the streets.”
The first distinction is important. Again and again, the effort has been described as “a Mossad operation.” The Mossad was undoubtedly its driving force, its planner and its chief advocate. But this was an operation of the State of Israel, ordered by the Cabinet. It emerged from a conception that gradually became entrenched within the political leadership and was imposed on the defense establishment: There would be no solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis or to the confrontation with Iran without regime change.
An opportunity for regime change had emerged after the 12-day war and with Trump in the White House. Israel had to try, because the opportunity might pass. The price of inaction, even at the risk of failure, was higher than the price of action. Netanyahu said those words explicitly to the American president. And indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu was the father of the concept.
These are not interpretations. The objectives of Operation Roaring Lion were never officially published for the public. But after conversations with a double-digit number of military and political sources, it is possible to understand that the central objective was to deeply damage, or remove, the threats Iran posed to the State of Israel by creating the military conditions for regime change in Iran. Those may not have been the precise words, but “creating the conditions for regime change” was the bottom line.
The formulation was the product of compromises, including with the IDF. From the first moment of the war, the military explained that it did not know how to bring about regime change by itself. For the General Staff, the principal effort was to inflict strategic damage on Iran and eliminate capabilities over time. Assistance to the Mossad, as the military saw it, was a secondary effort.
Why “creating the conditions” rather than “overthrowing the regime”? One security official offered this explanation: The IDF knew that it was a complex, perhaps impossible, objective. It did not want to be dragged into a war whose goal was so absolute that it could continue forever, and far beyond the limits of the IDF’s interceptor-missile inventory. Nevertheless, the Cabinet voted for an objective that was, in practice, an attempt at regime change.
It was an objective so vast, some would say megalomaniacal, that it required the allocation of immense resources and carried severe regional implications. In other words, the nuclear and ballistic missile programs may have been important, but they were not the holy grail. Nor were they the central message of the war that followed. While the 12-day war in June 2025, Operation Rising Lion, prioritized damage to Iran’s nuclear program and did indeed lead to the suspension of uranium enrichment, Operation Roaring Lion was intended to be the war that ended all wars. At least against Iran.
The result, as of this writing, is this: Iran’s military industry, particularly its ballistic missile production line, was severely damaged, and the damage to the nuclear program was deepened. The IDF inflicted grave losses on Iran, measurable in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Israeli intelligence demonstrated an extraordinary ability to penetrate the Iranian establishment. But if Roaring Lion’s objective was to create the conditions for regime change, the regime remains alive, functioning and ruling with an iron fist.
Foreign actors made sure to leak the details of the Israeli plan, including the asset, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Once the Israeli operation failed to achieve the objective that had been set, the regime could say it had won: “We won because we survived.”
That is not semantics. In the summer of 2025, the “axis of resistance” had been battered across the region, and Israelis, according to the polls, felt a sense of victory. In the summer of 2026, an overwhelming majority of Israelis do not believe Israel defeated Iran in the war. Only 11% believe Israel won, according to a Channel 12 News poll, while the axis of resistance appears to have recovered. The previous summer, the Iranians did not control the Strait of Hormuz. A year later, they hold a waterway critical to the global economy. The regime will not survive forever, but it is doubtful that the war “created the conditions” for its fall.
This is not a story about an adventure that simply went wrong. Many of those involved argue that the regime-change operation could have succeeded had the United States not changed its mind about some of its central components. There is not enough information to judge that claim, because parts of the plan remain in the dark. The story is one of systemic failure: how an enormous strategic objective, regime change, became an operational mission without the political leadership, the IDF and the Mossad ever truly agreeing on its nature, centrality, feasibility or on whether the tools matched the objective. In retrospect, most of those actors also disagree about the facts.
Skipping down to the closing section:
IN DEFENSE OF THE ADVENTURE
The campaign against Iran is not over. The deep damage to Iran’s military and nuclear industries is beyond dispute. The regime’s distress is a fundamental reality, reflected in inflation and severe economic hardship. At times, very small acts and forces bring down empires, including states larger and more powerful than Iran. Far fewer than 15,000 armed men brought down the Soviet Union.
Who knows? Had Trump approved the Kurdish invasion, perhaps the regime would have been destabilized or at least dragged into civil war. Had that happened, everyone would have praised the Mossad’s avantura. In an undertaking like this, you need to succeed only once.
Those are necessary words. But they are not persuasive.
An uprising began in Iran in December 2025. Together with the country’s weakness after Operation Rising Lion, Trump’s promise to protect the protesters, the American success in Venezuela and the extraordinary capabilities demonstrated by Israeli Military Intelligence and the Air Force, an atmosphere developed in which everything seemed possible. Including regime change.
Netanyahu, with the scent of elections in his nostrils, pushed and pushed hard. That was precisely the moment when Cabinet ministers and security officials should have recognized the obvious danger: a bridge too far.
More seriously, no comprehensive staff process examined the campaign as a whole. Anyone who wants to make kings must understand kingdoms.
What would happen to Israel’s standing in the United States if it publicly pushed Washington toward an all-out war against Iran? The answer: a severe, perhaps fatal, collapse. How might Turkey disrupt the Kurdish initiative? With a single telephone call. If the supreme leader were killed, might the door open to dangerous radicalization? It did.
Above all, Israel did not understand, and to this moment still does not understand, American conduct surrounding the Strait of Hormuz. “It is a mystery,” one knowledgeable official told me.
It is not merely a mystery. It is a failure of Israeli coordination with the United States. Hormuz was, and remains, Iran’s most important strategic achievement of the war.
In the late Netanyahu era, the phrase “the limits of power” has disappeared. Israel’s defense establishment is engaged in a relentless war of attrition against a belligerent political leadership that recognizes no limits. The National Security Council does not function as an effective policy-planning body, particularly during wartime. The Defense Ministry’s diplomatic-security division is paralyzed. The professional ranks of the Foreign Ministry are ignored. There is no independent, functioning team around the prime minister.
That was the situation on February 28, when Israel went to war. It remains the situation today, perhaps on the eve of another confrontation.
Posted by: Penguin of the Best Desert ||
08/04/2026 00:00 ||
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#4
Kurds are part of Deep State, and deep state wants a mullah controlled Iran. I ascertain Kurds are deep state assets because they are in cohorts with the NGO Asylum Ecosystem which is organized by deep state.
Kurds have a huge presence in Japan where they are hated along with the other unassimilated foreign muslims. Unless the Kurds are mobilizing for a globalist action item (like destabilize iraq), they will be useless in our struggles and fight against iran.
[NationalContext] Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani was received by Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the People’s Palace in Damascus on Monday, with a giant Kurdistan flag raised beside Syria’s for the occasion. It is the first visit by a Kurdistan Region president since the fall of the Assad government in December 2024. Syrian state media said the talks centred on bilateral relations and economic cooperation, while Syrian officials told AFP the visit was also aimed at advancing the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces into the state.
Context: The flag carries the visit’s symbolic weight. Its raising in Damascus means the Kurdistan flag has now been raised officially in all four capitals governing sizeable Kurdish populations. Iraq came first, where the 2005 constitution recognised the Kurdistan Region and the flag flies as its official banner. It was then displayed officially in Ankara in 2015 and flown publicly in Turkey two years later. It was raised in Tehran in 2021 when Barzani arrived for President Ebrahim Raisi’s inauguration. Damascus was the remaining capital, and the circle has closed a century after the partition of the Ottoman Empire left sizeable Kurdish populations divided across three new states, with Iran governing the fourth part.
The visit also arrives at a specific point in the Syrian state’s handling of the SDF. Since the January fighting, Damascus has recovered roughly 80% of the territory the SDF held, compressing the question into a far smaller, Kurdish-populated strip along the border. That campaign pushed the SDF into a framework it signed under pressure, and the framework’s central term is structural: no regions and no federal entities, a unitary state secured on paper. What remains is implementation, which Damascus is pursuing through gradual containment and gradual absorption inside the agreement.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
08/04/2026 00:00 ||
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[132 views]
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
