Robert Inlakesh
DANGEROUS miscalculation after dangerous miscalculation, the US and Israel have fallen into every trap, making every conceivable mistake with their aggression against Iran. The regional war they have opened will result in a strategic defeat, and its repercussions will be felt around the world.
To begin with, the attack carried out against the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28 was clearly a violation of the United Nations Charter. Despite this, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has failed to call it as such, offering instead weak condemnations of both sides in the conflict and calling for de-escalation.
For his role in failing to rise to his title, Guterres should be stripped of his position. You need only compare him with Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the UN, who openly declared that the US had violated the UN Charter when it launched its war of aggression against Iraq in 2003. Bear in mind that in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, the US had at least attempted to get a UN Security Council resolution to approve it, something that Donald Trump’s government has not.
As international law is now irrelevant and the UN has aided the US and Israel in hammering the final nails into its coffin, this piece will focus on what truly matters, refraining from referring to the deceased international order either as a metric by which we should evaluate the ongoing conflict.
Assessments I had received from three separate military analysts, before the initiation of the Israeli-US war of aggression, had estimated that Iran would most likely have been put on the back foot for the first three to five days of the conflict. Another went even further and posited that it would be more accurate to assume that the Islamic Republic would struggle for the first week of the war.
All argued that due to the firepower that the US and Israeli air forces could muster during the opening phase, would overwhelm Tehran and make it difficult for them to effectively fire large bursts of ballistic missiles for some time. Instead, they argued, Iran would be more reliant on its drones to do the heavy lifting.
Far from an entire week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) managed within around two hours to launch successive missile waves against not only Israel, but devastating attacks on US military facilities located across the Persian Gulf, in addition to firing upon bases in Jordan and Iraq.
Where the analysts I spoke to were correct was that Iran was indeed restricted as to how large its individual missile bursts would be. For the closer targets in Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, this did not matter all that much, however, as they are less equipped with sufficient air defences to combat Iran’s missiles.
The strategy when targeting Israel has been a little different, however, as the distance the missiles and drones have to travel is much further. Perhaps more importantly, the US-Israeli air defences protecting Israel’s airspace are far greater than those systems placed to protect US bases.
Therefore, the IRGC has chosen to fire small salvos of one to five missiles at a time towards Israel and use their older stockpiles. According to Iranian military officials, some of the missiles being used date back to the 1990s, although this is yet to be independently verified. The purpose of doing this is that small but frequent salvos are designed to drain Israel’s air defences, while a few missiles get through to their targets.
In the cases of the Persian Gulf states, much of their air defences have already been drained, or in the case of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two US THAAD air defence systems have been directly targeted and destroyed. Bahrain has been left essentially defenceless.
The US-Israeli attack has not only turned out to be a disaster for the economies of the Gulf states, especially the UAE, which is now desperately attempting to salvage its image and pay influencers to lie about the situation there, but it is also having a global economic ripple effect. Iran has closed down the Strait of Hormuz, declaring not one drop of oil shall pass through it, sending gas prices through the roof; the worst hit being Europe so far.
US President Donald Trump, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have both celebrated their opening strikes. However, this was perhaps the most disastrous decision either of them has ever taken.
The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, appears to have been a trap that Tel Aviv and Washington ran straight into. The 87-year-old not only remained in his home, refusing to hide in a bunker, thus rendering the enormous missile attack on his residence totally overkill, but also displayed that he was very much prepared to meet this fate.
Before he was killed, Khamenei addressed the US-Israeli alliance’s threats against Iran, labelling them as displaying pure “arrogance”, perhaps the best word that encapsulates their entire regime change war thus far.
Ayatollah Khamenei was not only the leader of Iran but a spiritual leader for tens of millions of Shiites. He was their spiritual leader, the equivalent of what the Pope is to Catholic Christians. In the Muslim faith, being granted martyrdom at the hands of an oppressive enemy is sought after as a gateway to heaven; therefore, it makes sense as to why Khamenei was not fearful and remained in a very well-known location.
This assassination, of a man who is not responsible for managing the Iranian military and the intricacies of day-to-day politics in Iran — tasks delegated to the President, Parliament, Judiciary, Military, IRGC, Police, etc. — was perhaps the most foolish decision possible. Contrary to Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings about the assassination granting the US an off-ramp, it ensured that this war was going to be all-out and regional.
Instead of Iranians taking to the streets to effectively act as a US-Israeli ground force against the state, the death of Khamenei triggered mass protests in Bahrain — verging on what could become a revolution — while demonstrators in Pakistan attacked the US Consulate and Iraqis attempted to breach the American embassy in Baghdad.
Also, as part of the opening strike package, the US-Israeli alliance fired a cruise missile into an Iranian girls’ school, committing a massacre of around 165 children. These acts of aggression, along with the indiscriminate bombing of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Shiraz, and beyond, only worked to rally the public behind their government.
In a masterful move by the Iranian state, they took the military initiative back and battered US and Israeli military targets for almost a full day before they officially announced the martyrdom of their leader. This gave them time to demonstrate to their people that they were fully capable of fighting off their enemies in the absence of Khamenei, instilling confidence.
The time for the US and Israel to be most effective was the opening round of strikes, yet they totally blew that opportunity, instead committing the two most foolish acts that ensured their regime change endeavours would be destined to failure. That being the murder of Ayatollah Khamenei and the committing of civilian massacres.
A Regional War Taking Shape
As the days go on, the Israeli air defences are reduced in supply. In addition to this, a number of Iraqi groups — the PMU and Awliya al-Dam — have joined the fight. Alongside them is Hezbollah, which had refrained from responding while Israel committed over 15,000 violations of the Lebanon ceasefire. Hezbollah is now back and with a vengeance, seeking to finally avenge the war crimes committed against their people and the assassination of Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Yemen’s Ansarallah has declared its intent to join the fight, but appears to be waiting for the opportune moment, while the Palestinian resistance sits tight and assesses the situation.
It won’t be long before the US and Israeli air forces will run into some problems, such as maintenance and giving their pilots a rest, which will slow the pace of their offensive actions, enabling the likes of larger missile salvos from Iran.
In what appears to be an act of desperation, the US has been attempting to get its Kurdish proxy militias in Iraq to invade Iran. These Kurdish militant groups came together just prior to the US-Israeli opening strikes, declaring a joint front, and CNN has just exposed that the CIA has been covertly arming them.
There appear to be attempts to use Kurdish militias, along with Al-Qaeda linked proxies and other separatist militias inside Iran, in a bid to spark civil war and destabilise the country. Yet, Iran has been preparing for such assaults for some time.
Even if these uncoordinated militant groups manage to seize territory and gain ground, it will only be temporary. Iran is a massive country with mountainous terrain. These militias are comparatively small in size, and the Iranian armed forces are far more advanced, as well as better trained. On top of this, these Kurdish militant groups in Iraq will also have to fight against Iraqi resistance forces if they seek to enter Iranian territory.
The US could attempt to launch ground incursions into Iranian territory, very likely from Turkmenistan, although this would come at a massive risk and could lead to a catastrophic embarrassment. Mossad and CIA agents inside Iran could also begin to play a more prominent role as time goes on, as they did during the 12-Day War in June of 2025.
Underestimating the strength of the world’s top military superpower would be foolish, and Iran will certainly suffer major blows throughout the war, but the chances of a US-Israeli victory appear slim to say the least.
There are only three ways out of this:
1. Iran suddenly stops out of nowhere and decides to wait for another attack in a year’s time or so. This would mean abandoning Hezbollah and letting down the Islamic Republic’s base of supporters.
2. There is a regional settlement that is negotiated, whereby the US withdraws from the region or at least scales back its involvement significantly. This would also have to include agreements wherein Israel withdraws from Lebanon and is perhaps forced to agree to a Palestinian state, depending upon what happens during the war.
3. The Israelis or the US decide to use nuclear weapons. The results of which will be the violent destruction of Israel, in addition to the possibility of Iran making its own nuclear weapons.
On the topic of nuclear weapons, it has become abundantly clear that the US B-2 strikes last June failed to destroy their nuclear facilities and stockpile of 60% enriched uranium.
Now, the man whose fatwa (religious ruling) outlawed nuclear weapons has been killed, making it realistic that Tehran could end up pursuing the bomb. The US and Israel, in the name of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, may have just set in motion the process of the Islamic Republic acquiring one.
If Iran simply manages to continue its current pace of fire for months, while combating the various schemes of the US and Israel, it will be on the road to inflicting an undeniable defeat on the world’s top superpower.
So far, everything that could have possibly gone wrong for Trump and Netanyahu has happened. From downed F-15 fighter jets, to a united Iranian population, to an uprising in Bahrain and a regional war hatching that appears to be raging out of control, a US-Israeli blunder through and through.
There are two reasons why this has all happened: US-Israeli arrogance, alongside the undeniable fact that the Trump administration is simply controlled by Israel. It is a war that the overwhelming majority of the American public opposes and is beginning to backfire on them economically, a war that only Israel wanted. Now it will suffer the consequences of its reckless actions.
——–
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Robert Inlakesh
DANGEROUS miscalculation after dangerous miscalculation, the US and Israel have fallen into every trap, making every conceivable mistake with their aggression against Iran. The regional war they have opened will result in a strategic defeat, and its repercussions will be felt around the world.
To begin with, the attack carried out against the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28 was clearly a violation of the United Nations Charter. Despite this, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has failed to call it as such, offering instead weak condemnations of both sides in the conflict and calling for de-escalation.
For his role in failing to rise to his title, Guterres should be stripped of his position. You need only compare him with Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the UN, who openly declared that the US had violated the UN Charter when it launched its war of aggression against Iraq in 2003. Bear in mind that in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, the US had at least attempted to get a UN Security Council resolution to approve it, something that Donald Trump’s government has not.
As international law is now irrelevant and the UN has aided the US and Israel in hammering the final nails into its coffin, this piece will focus on what truly matters, refraining from referring to the deceased international order either as a metric by which we should evaluate the ongoing conflict.
Assessments I had received from three separate military analysts, before the initiation of the Israeli-US war of aggression, had estimated that Iran would most likely have been put on the back foot for the first three to five days of the conflict. Another went even further and posited that it would be more accurate to assume that the Islamic Republic would struggle for the first week of the war.
All argued that due to the firepower that the US and Israeli air forces could muster during the opening phase, would overwhelm Tehran and make it difficult for them to effectively fire large bursts of ballistic missiles for some time. Instead, they argued, Iran would be more reliant on its drones to do the heavy lifting.
Far from an entire week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) managed within around two hours to launch successive missile waves against not only Israel, but devastating attacks on US military facilities located across the Persian Gulf, in addition to firing upon bases in Jordan and Iraq.
Where the analysts I spoke to were correct was that Iran was indeed restricted as to how large its individual missile bursts would be. For the closer targets in Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, this did not matter all that much, however, as they are less equipped with sufficient air defences to combat Iran’s missiles.
The strategy when targeting Israel has been a little different, however, as the distance the missiles and drones have to travel is much further. Perhaps more importantly, the US-Israeli air defences protecting Israel’s airspace are far greater than those systems placed to protect US bases.
Therefore, the IRGC has chosen to fire small salvos of one to five missiles at a time towards Israel and use their older stockpiles. According to Iranian military officials, some of the missiles being used date back to the 1990s, although this is yet to be independently verified. The purpose of doing this is that small but frequent salvos are designed to drain Israel’s air defences, while a few missiles get through to their targets.
In the cases of the Persian Gulf states, much of their air defences have already been drained, or in the case of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), two US THAAD air defence systems have been directly targeted and destroyed. Bahrain has been left essentially defenceless.
The US-Israeli attack has not only turned out to be a disaster for the economies of the Gulf states, especially the UAE, which is now desperately attempting to salvage its image and pay influencers to lie about the situation there, but it is also having a global economic ripple effect. Iran has closed down the Strait of Hormuz, declaring not one drop of oil shall pass through it, sending gas prices through the roof; the worst hit being Europe so far.
US President Donald Trump, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have both celebrated their opening strikes. However, this was perhaps the most disastrous decision either of them has ever taken.
The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, appears to have been a trap that Tel Aviv and Washington ran straight into. The 87-year-old not only remained in his home, refusing to hide in a bunker, thus rendering the enormous missile attack on his residence totally overkill, but also displayed that he was very much prepared to meet this fate.
Before he was killed, Khamenei addressed the US-Israeli alliance’s threats against Iran, labelling them as displaying pure “arrogance”, perhaps the best word that encapsulates their entire regime change war thus far.
Ayatollah Khamenei was not only the leader of Iran but a spiritual leader for tens of millions of Shiites. He was their spiritual leader, the equivalent of what the Pope is to Catholic Christians. In the Muslim faith, being granted martyrdom at the hands of an oppressive enemy is sought after as a gateway to heaven; therefore, it makes sense as to why Khamenei was not fearful and remained in a very well-known location.
This assassination, of a man who is not responsible for managing the Iranian military and the intricacies of day-to-day politics in Iran — tasks delegated to the President, Parliament, Judiciary, Military, IRGC, Police, etc. — was perhaps the most foolish decision possible. Contrary to Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings about the assassination granting the US an off-ramp, it ensured that this war was going to be all-out and regional.
Instead of Iranians taking to the streets to effectively act as a US-Israeli ground force against the state, the death of Khamenei triggered mass protests in Bahrain — verging on what could become a revolution — while demonstrators in Pakistan attacked the US Consulate and Iraqis attempted to breach the American embassy in Baghdad.
Also, as part of the opening strike package, the US-Israeli alliance fired a cruise missile into an Iranian girls’ school, committing a massacre of around 165 children. These acts of aggression, along with the indiscriminate bombing of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Shiraz, and beyond, only worked to rally the public behind their government.
In a masterful move by the Iranian state, they took the military initiative back and battered US and Israeli military targets for almost a full day before they officially announced the martyrdom of their leader. This gave them time to demonstrate to their people that they were fully capable of fighting off their enemies in the absence of Khamenei, instilling confidence.
The time for the US and Israel to be most effective was the opening round of strikes, yet they totally blew that opportunity, instead committing the two most foolish acts that ensured their regime change endeavours would be destined to failure. That being the murder of Ayatollah Khamenei and the committing of civilian massacres.
A Regional War Taking Shape
As the days go on, the Israeli air defences are reduced in supply. In addition to this, a number of Iraqi groups — the PMU and Awliya al-Dam — have joined the fight. Alongside them is Hezbollah, which had refrained from responding while Israel committed over 15,000 violations of the Lebanon ceasefire. Hezbollah is now back and with a vengeance, seeking to finally avenge the war crimes committed against their people and the assassination of Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Yemen’s Ansarallah has declared its intent to join the fight, but appears to be waiting for the opportune moment, while the Palestinian resistance sits tight and assesses the situation.
It won’t be long before the US and Israeli air forces will run into some problems, such as maintenance and giving their pilots a rest, which will slow the pace of their offensive actions, enabling the likes of larger missile salvos from Iran.
In what appears to be an act of desperation, the US has been attempting to get its Kurdish proxy militias in Iraq to invade Iran. These Kurdish militant groups came together just prior to the US-Israeli opening strikes, declaring a joint front, and CNN has just exposed that the CIA has been covertly arming them.
There appear to be attempts to use Kurdish militias, along with Al-Qaeda linked proxies and other separatist militias inside Iran, in a bid to spark civil war and destabilise the country. Yet, Iran has been preparing for such assaults for some time.
Even if these uncoordinated militant groups manage to seize territory and gain ground, it will only be temporary. Iran is a massive country with mountainous terrain. These militias are comparatively small in size, and the Iranian armed forces are far more advanced, as well as better trained. On top of this, these Kurdish militant groups in Iraq will also have to fight against Iraqi resistance forces if they seek to enter Iranian territory.
The US could attempt to launch ground incursions into Iranian territory, very likely from Turkmenistan, although this would come at a massive risk and could lead to a catastrophic embarrassment. Mossad and CIA agents inside Iran could also begin to play a more prominent role as time goes on, as they did during the 12-Day War in June of 2025.
Underestimating the strength of the world’s top military superpower would be foolish, and Iran will certainly suffer major blows throughout the war, but the chances of a US-Israeli victory appear slim to say the least.
There are only three ways out of this:
1. Iran suddenly stops out of nowhere and decides to wait for another attack in a year’s time or so. This would mean abandoning Hezbollah and letting down the Islamic Republic’s base of supporters.
2. There is a regional settlement that is negotiated, whereby the US withdraws from the region or at least scales back its involvement significantly. This would also have to include agreements wherein Israel withdraws from Lebanon and is perhaps forced to agree to a Palestinian state, depending upon what happens during the war.
3. The Israelis or the US decide to use nuclear weapons. The results of which will be the violent destruction of Israel, in addition to the possibility of Iran making its own nuclear weapons.
On the topic of nuclear weapons, it has become abundantly clear that the US B-2 strikes last June failed to destroy their nuclear facilities and stockpile of 60% enriched uranium.
Now, the man whose fatwa (religious ruling) outlawed nuclear weapons has been killed, making it realistic that Tehran could end up pursuing the bomb. The US and Israel, in the name of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, may have just set in motion the process of the Islamic Republic acquiring one.
If Iran simply manages to continue its current pace of fire for months, while combating the various schemes of the US and Israel, it will be on the road to inflicting an undeniable defeat on the world’s top superpower.
So far, everything that could have possibly gone wrong for Trump and Netanyahu has happened. From downed F-15 fighter jets, to a united Iranian population, to an uprising in Bahrain and a regional war hatching that appears to be raging out of control, a US-Israeli blunder through and through.
There are two reasons why this has all happened: US-Israeli arrogance, alongside the undeniable fact that the Trump administration is simply controlled by Israel. It is a war that the overwhelming majority of the American public opposes and is beginning to backfire on them economically, a war that only Israel wanted. Now it will suffer the consequences of its reckless actions.
______________
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
