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Simplicius is now only more sure than ever that Israel expected the decapitation strikes to cause an immediate collapse

The decapitation strikes served their purpose, to prevent the initial barrage of hundreds, if not a thousand, ballistic missiles being fired at Israel as soon as they attacked (with no one alive to give the order, it never came), and to buy time for Israel to secure air superiority over the missile cities in Western Iran and start bombing them, crippling the ability of these assets to stay in the fight. I don't think anyone serious expected an immediate collapse of the Iranian government, and the president or Ayatollah were not targeted by this. Main targets of the decapitation strikes were the aerospace forces and head of the IRGC, to serve this purpose, preventing the initial counterstrike by Iran.

The only piece of footage that Simplicius has seen of Israel hitting Iran with aircraft is a video of JDAMs striking Kermanshah, just 100km into the border of Iran, which would have meant Israel penetrated a couple dozen kilometers into Iran to drop them.

There's plenty of footage of JDAMs (24km max range) and SPICE 1000 (100km max range) or SPICE 2000 (60km max range) being dropped on Tehran. Plus footage of what would usually be a strike done by GBU-31 JDAMs with BLU-109 penetrator warheads on bunkers in the mountainsides of Tehran. Drones will not be making such huge explosions, that's just not possible, they don't have the payload or warheads to do that... Plus, the first large craft Iran shot down was a Hermes 9000 (Israeli equivalent to an MQ-9 Reaper) over Isfahan. If Hermes 9000s, which shooting down is the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel for any surface to air missile system (Yemen has shot down over 20 MQ-9s) are flying over Isfahan, what does that say about Iranian air defence? If they can fly over Isfahan with platforms like that, they can fly over Tehran. I know this is a difficult pill to swallow, but there's so much evidence of this now that it's not worth denying anyone.

SPICE 2000 or GBU-31 JDAM over Tehran on June 16

Airstrikes on bunkers in Tehran

This is not being done by drones:

Iranian long-range air defense has not been degraded at all. Israeli strikes are only evidenced on very old Mim-23 Hawks, short-range Karmin-2s, and the short/medium-range Khordad systems. The Bavar-373, an S-300 equivalent, shows no physical/video evidence of being degraded beyond mere Israeli claims, which are always very suspect.

Khordad series is probably the longest range air defence system outside of S-300 and Bavar-373, and probably the most advanced currently in the Iranian arsenal. The Sayyad-3 missiles on the Khordad 15, which Israel did provide footage of being destroyed, have a stated 200km range. That's not short range. HAWK may be an old system, but Iran have over 200 batteries. As for Bavar-373, I think it's capabilities have been exaggerated (there's no way it's better than an S-400) and it may just be a unicorn system if Iran only has a couple of operational batteries. If only one or two are actually operational, they're not going to be making a difference on the battlefield, and have likely been relocated to the far east to avoid destruction, further than Isfahan, if they haven't already been targeted. The main use I've seen for the system is allowing use of components of the S-300 system that were not destroyed by previous Israeli airstrikes, like the missiles and battle management radars. If Bavar 373 was as good as Iran claims, why have they put so much effort into integrating the surviving S-300 components? The backbone of Iranian long range air defence are the S-200 systems, they have enough of those operational to actually make a difference. But I doubt that modern fighter jets are very vulnerable to hit, only 1 Israeli aircraft was shot down by S-200 in it's history of service in Syria. Keeps rearward assets like mid air refueling aircraft and AWACS at bay though.

The US also could not safely fly over Yemeni territory, with F-35s launching stand-off strikes before they reached the border.

This is not true, F-35 were armed with stand in weapons like JDAMs over Yemen, and even suspected of being armed with Hellfire missiles. Most of the stand off strikes were carried out by the F/A-18s. Aircraft were audible on video over Sana'a multiple times. There's quite a difference between ambushing an aircraft and taking shots at it that it has to evade, and actually denying the airspace. Iranian airspace is still not safe for Israeli rearward assets like mid air refueling aircraft and AWACS, just like how Syria's wasn't during Assad. Which is why everytime Israel attacked Iran beforehand, they had to suppress Syrian air defence.

And obviously it's a regime change operation, it's called Operation Rising Lion. Anyone familiar with Persian history will immediately get the reference to the sun and lion, part of Iran's flag until the Islamic Revolution.

Simplicius is now only more sure than ever that Israel expected the decapitation strikes to cause an immediate collapse, and when that did not happen, Israel was forced to go to Trump and get the US involved because Israel cannot handle a war of attrition with Iran (running out of interceptors to protect critical infrastructure)

This is what has me absolutely convinced that the US is going to get involved. No way it gives up its staging area in the Middle East without a fight.

Really hoping this turns out to be America's Suez Crisis though

Who's Simplicius? First time I've seen them here

Hmmm, this seems very reminiscent of the start of the Ukraine war -- big doomerism from people afraid that the country might collapse due to Western pressure, and then it just... doesn't.

False claims of air dominance from the West, some "embarassments", deaths of high ranking officials (Generals in Russia's case), Western hopes to balkanize the country, and finally a slow, attritional approach to avoid giving the West casus belli to jump in with their own forces.

Thank you for the hoperism

huh. i actually never doomered, not even once, so none of this is a surprise to me.

but had i doomered and assumed that america could be an indefinite arsenal of genocide, is that just wrong? does the US not have the interceptors? (are/were these interceptors used by Ukraine? did the Americans help Ukraine too much?)