Here are excerpts from a lengthy article written by a long-term defense and intelligence specialist who lives in the Middle East.
Take a look, and see what you think:
Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the dominant narrative has settled into a comfortable groove: The United States and Israel stumbled into a war without a plan. Iran is retaliating across the region. Oil prices are surging, and the world is facing another Middle Eastern quagmire. US senators have called it a blunder. Cable news has tallied the crises. Commentators have warned of a long war.
The chorus is loud and, in some respects, understandable. War is ugly, and this one has imposed real costs on millions of people across the Middle East, including the city I live in.
But this narrative is wrong. Not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are cataloguing the price of the campaign while ignoring the strategic ledger.
When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades.
Iranian ballistic missile launches have fallen by more than 90 percent from 350 on February 28 to roughly 25 by March 14, according to publicly available data. Drone launches tell the same story: from more than 800 on Day 1 to about 75 on Day 15.
The figures drawn from US and Iranian military statements differ in detail but converge on the trajectory. Hundreds of Iranian missile launchers have been rendered inoperable. According to some reports, 80 percent of Iran’s capacity to strike Israel has been eliminated.
Iran’s naval assets, fast-attack craft, midget submarines and mine-laying capabilities are being liquidated. Its air defences have been suppressed to the point at which the US is now flying nonstealth B-1 bombers over Iranian airspace, a decision that signals near-total confidence in air dominance.
The campaign has moved through two distinct phases. The first suppressed Iran’s air defences, decapitated its command and control, and degraded its missile and drone launch infrastructure. By March 2, US Central Command announced local air superiority over western Iran and Tehran, achieved without the confirmed loss of a single American or Israeli combat aircraft.
The second phase, now under way, targets Iran’s defence industrial base: missile production facilities, dual-use research centres and the underground complexes where remaining stockpiles are stored. This is not aimless bombing. It is a methodical campaign to ensure that what has been destroyed cannot be rebuilt.
That is quite an endorsement of what we are doing in Iran. And he told us he lives in that part of the world. So he must be an Israeli, right?
Wrong.
That article was written by Muhanad Seloom, who lives in Doja, Qatar…
…and it was published by Al Jazeera, which usually has no problem at all telling us what we are doing wrong in that part of the world.
Amazing, isn’t it? Al Jazeera, at least by publishing this article, is more positive towards/impressed by our success in Iran than a large number of our own mainstream media; certainly more than the New York Times, CNN or MS-NOW (formerly MSNBC).
What does that tell you? Plenty, I’ll bet. At least I hope so.
