Extremely Uncertain.
A truly regional war.
“It’s the first thing I read every day.” — Brigadier General (retired) Russ Howard, founding director of The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
1. Institute for the Study of War:
The combined US-Israeli force has struck over 2,000 targets in Iran and achieved air superiority over Tehran. The combined force has continued to target Iranian internal security institutions responsible for maintaining stability and suppressing protests, including security forces along Iran’s northwestern borders with Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.
The inconsistency of Iran’s retaliatory attacks on March 1 suggests that Iranian units may be struggling to coordinate large-scale attacks. Iran appeared to fire significantly less munitions at Israel on March 1 than on February 28, which suggests that US-Israeli efforts to degrade Iran’s retaliatory capabilities are succeeding. (Source: understandingwar.com. The entire brief is worth reading. )
2. The Atlantic:
One day after launching strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and embroiled the region in war, President Trump told me this morning that the country’s new leadership wants to talk with him and that he plans to do so.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump told me in a phone call from his Mar-a-Lago resort shortly before 9:30 a.m.
Asked whether his conversation with the Iranians would happen today or tomorrow, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that.” He noted that some of the Iranians involved in negotiations in recent weeks were no longer alive. “Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big—that was a big hit,” he told me. “They should have done it sooner, Michael. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.” (Source: theatlantic.com. Read the rest.)
3. Eurointelligence:
(T)he outlook for a diplomatic off-ramp is extremely uncertain. Iran can drag this war out for longer than Donald Trump can keep this war going against the will of the American people. If leaders aligned with Khamenei’s worldview prevail, US won’t be able to impose its conditions. A more security-focused leadership might pursue tactical compromises to maintain domestic control, signalling a potential shift in Iran’s posture without fundamentally altering its agenda. For hardliners the only thing that matters is not to lose the war. Remember last year Iran celebrated the 12-day war as a victory and a demonstration they survived this joint attack from the US and Israel. It emboldens them even more in their belief that God is on their side. And the narrative that Iran is strong enough to resist the US and Israel will help to cement the hardliners even further in the national setup. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
4. Significantly weakening Iran’s military capabilities will require a prolonged military campaign, Israeli Air Force officials said, adding that this objective cannot be achieved in a few days. Sources in the Israeli military said that the decision to launch an assault was made upon concluding that Iran had continued to develop its military capabilities while also seeking to fortify its nuclear program. The military has formulated a systematic plan to reduce the scope of the threat. Defense officials stress that this is not a short-term operation, but a prolonged campaign expected to continue for an extended period. (Source: haaretz.com)
5. When the U.S. military’s top general laid out the risks to President Trump of launching a major and extended attack on Iran, one of the issues he flagged was America’s stockpile of munitions. Now that is being put to the test, as the U.S. races to destroy Iran’s missile and drone force before it runs out of interceptors to fend off Tehran’s retaliation, current and former officials and analysts say. The precise size of the U.S. stock of air-defense interceptors—what the Pentagon calls magazine depth—is classified. But repeated conflicts with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have been eating into the supply of air defenses in the region. Since Saturday morning Tehran time, the U.S. and its allies in the region have pounded an array of leadership and military targets in the country, including Iran’s missile launchers, drones and airfields. One reason the U.S. and Israel struck first, a senior official said Saturday, was to blunt Iran’s ability to retaliate with its missiles and drones. It isn’t yet clear how long the strikes will need to last. U.S. Central Command said Saturday that its force has already mounted a largely successful defense against hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks, though some have managed to hit their targets, especially in Arab Gulf states that are close to Iran. The conflict isn’t over, and there are still more U.S., Israeli and Iranian strikes to come. “One of the challenges is you can deplete these really quickly,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank who used to teach at the Air Command and Staff College. “We’re using them faster than we can replace them.” (Source: wsj.com. Italics mine.)
