The promised Patriot production surge is a fantasy that will not materialize before the end of the decade. THAAD is even more terminal: more than half the inventory of roughly 360 interceptors already gone, production still stuck at 96 a year. The Islander details America’s critical air defence deficiencies, which spell the end of regional dominance
For weeks independent observers have warned that the US was running critically low on stocks of air defence missiles and now it’s official. The US has suspended escalating operations after the US could not adequately defend its forward bases from Iranian retaliation
Flashback to 2018 when a major US logistics hub was opened in Kuwait to serve U.S. military operations in Iraq, Syria and possible operations in Iran. Less than ten years later and IRGC missiles struck the base and the most recent reports suggest that it has been abandoned
While the US and Israel appear committed to a wider conflict with Iran, a very subtle change is taking place elsewhere in the administration. Specifically with JD Vance, who appears to be trying to distance himself from Israel and Trump’s more hawkish policies. Has Vance realised that Trump’s Iran policy is doomed and that he must distance himself from it if he is to survive politically?
“This war is a war against humanity”
By deploying more US troops and two US carrier groups to the Middle East, plus sending an additional 150 medics to the main medical centre for US service personnel in the region, Trump appears to be preparing for another, wider round of conflict with Iran
The unintended consequences of meddling in matters you have no idea about – or, put more in popular social media terms, “f–cking around and finding out” – is about to hit Donald Trump in the coming hours.
Trump was encouraged to strike Iran with promises of an easy win. However, the Iranian Army’s fighting ability, the sheer size of Iran (bigger than Western Europe) and its geography, must be making Trump rue the day he allowed himself to be talked into the attack. An outright US defeat is now a real possibility. Will Trump consider using nuclear weapons to avoid this?
Iran continues its retaliatory strikes on US military assets in the region. On Friday the IRGC announced that it had destroyed several US fighter jets in Jordan, a Patriot air defense system and a compound of American personnel in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan
“The Kremlin now understands, they only partially understood up until recently, that the Europeans and the Americans are out to wreck Russia”, says John Mearsheimer
Iran has warned new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory is a legitimate target,” after he pledged to continue to allow the US to use air bases in Britain to launch strikes on Iran
Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi tells Pascal Lottaz about the situation in Tehran and why still relatively quiet, it nonetheless has the potential to massively escalate