E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

'Little Lightning': Why Israel's 'Blitzkrieg' Didn't Go According to Plan
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov

[REGNUM] Israel's Operation Lion Force against Iran could well go down in history as the Middle East's lightning war. Especially since Israel based it on the concept of a preventive strike, which it had already used more than once. And it allocated a lot of forces - almost as many aircraft participated in the first raid as in the Six-Day War of 1967.

However, Tel Aviv apparently did not achieve a "small victory". Tehran not only withstood the blows, but also launched a counter-offensive, which is becoming increasingly difficult for the Israelis to repel with each passing hour.
That’s certainly one perspective of events.
CRITICAL MISCALCULATIONS
In preparing for the operation to “pacify” Iran, Israel clearly underestimated its opponent.

First of all, it was the general ambition and belief in the power of the first strike that let them down. Tel Aviv attacked the “holy of holies” for modern Iran – its nuclear infrastructure.

Part of the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz was destroyed, and the heavy water production complex at Arak and the Fordow facility, where the Israelis believe they were stockpiling weapons-grade uranium, were attacked several times.

However, none of the facilities were ultimately completely destroyed.
Completely destroyed is not necessary. Rendered inoperable and very difficult to repair — that will do the trick for the short term, while rendering the human side of the program non-functional, as it were, will take care of the possibility of rehabilitating the thing for long enough that anything thereafter won’t matter.
Even in Natanz, which suffered the most, only the workshop with the latest centrifuges burned, while the rest of the infrastructure more or less survived. The damage to the underground complexes was even less.
Possibly Mr. Tsukanov has fallen behind recent reports…
The insufficient scale of destruction of the Iranian nuclear perimeter, from the point of view of Israeli "hawks", is partly compensated by the blow to its personnel potential. In less than a week, Israel eliminated about a dozen and a half nuclear scientists, including the heads of research programs, as well as their superior curators in uniform.

But he quickly paid for this later, too, by missing a missile strike on the Weizmann Institute, one of the country's leading research centers.

The second miscalculation was the excessive reliance on subversive intelligence work. Of course, the military intelligence and Mossad commandos deployed to Iranian territory greatly helped the army on the first day of the operation, disrupting the air defense systems and ensuring free entry of Israeli aircraft into Iranian airspace.

However, it was not possible to consolidate the success - closer to the second half of the day, the Iranian air defense was restored, and Israel began to lose its first aircraft in the raids.

In addition, a hunt for saboteurs began on the ground. The Basij mobilization forces (essentially a local militia and reserve troops "in one bottle"), whose human resources amount to several million fighters, quickly organized dense patrols of areas of Israeli aviation activity and helped to detain enemy agents. Further actions to launch kamikaze UAVs from Iranian territory were thwarted.

SPECIAL SPIRIT
Finally, the Israelis underestimated the moral and psychological state of the Iranians. The General Staff of the Israeli army and the government residence "Balfour" believed that it would be enough to shake the ruling regime, and the Iranians, dissatisfied with life, would overthrow it themselves. Especially since the country had previously been repeatedly shaken by large-scale protests due to economic and social problems.

However, Iranians, on the contrary, demonstrated unity around the flag.

Something similar happened during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), when echelons of Iranian volunteers (the so-called “Karbala caravans”) went to the front with almost no preparation to hold back the rapid advance of Saddam Hussein’s army.

Of course, some fringe forces – such as the Kurdish-Iranian rebel group the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) – tried to take advantage of the turmoil of the early days of the conflict and call for an uprising against the ayatollahs’ regime, but they were unsuccessful.

Moreover, the operatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) nipped the activity of the “rebellion headquarters” in the bud, arresting most of the PAK leaders and activists who had made their way to Iran. The option of organizing an “opposition march on the capital” according to the Syrian scenario disappeared for the Israelis by itself.

COUNTERMEASURES
Even taking into account the considerable damage inflicted on Iran in the first day of the clash, Tehran recovered relatively quickly and found the strength to retaliate. By the end of the day on June 13, the first kamikaze UAVs and ballistic missiles were heading towards Israel.

And although the density of fire, at first glance, was comparatively small - in any case, less than during the first retaliatory operations - the strikes were more destructive.

Tehran not only moved away from the tactics of “symbolic launches,” but actually mirrored the Israelis’ tactics by specifically attacking Israeli nuclear facilities. Among other things, the nuclear center in Dimona and the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, as well as key sea and air ports, came under attack.

The latter category of targets has proven particularly vulnerable given Israel's heavy dependence on foreign trade and tourism.

It is also worth paying attention to the growing number of successful hits by Iran and its proxies on selected targets. In the last two days, it has been growing progressively. The Israeli air defense system, apparently, is experiencing severe overloads and cannot independently repel attacks with different types of ammunition.

Moreover, Israel's allies and partners are in no hurry to intervene in the air war - except in cases where UAVs and missiles enter their airspace: the risk of provoking Iran to expand the geography of strikes is too great.

Tel Aviv still has some hope in relation to the US and Great Britain.

London and Washington have promised to help protect Israeli airspace, and the Pentagon has even begun a hasty transfer of aircraft and naval forces to the combat zone – apparently, for now, only to show the flag and provide cover for Israel from the sea.

However, it is possible that the United States will sooner or later have to intervene in the conflict more actively in one form or another. Especially since, despite the failure of the "little victorious one," the Israeli authorities clearly do not plan to back down.


Posted by: badanov 2025-06-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=766392