Streetwise Professor

The latest installment of the Friday the 13th horror franchise is in limited release, available only in Iran.

In the early hours of Friday 13 June 2025 local time, the Israeli Air Force launched a series of devastating strikes against a wide range of targets in Iran. These were supplemented by another horror movie trope: the drones are coming from inside the house! The Israelis had special forces units operating within Iran that launched drones that mainly targeted what’s left of Iran’s air defenses and its ballistic missile launchers.

It all started with what is arguably the most devastating and comprehensive decapitation strike in history. Virtually the entire Iranian high command was wiped out. Apparently they had gathered at a single location, lured there by an Israeli operation. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander General Hossein Salami was among those sliced thin.

They're going to need a bigger wall. Much bigger. pic.twitter.com/6kBb6HNrdk

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) June 14, 2025

The intelligence necessary to pull off this simultaneous whacking of virtually the entire Iranian command echelon is beyond amazing.

And NB: no mullahs were apparently targeted. This had to have been a deliberate choice.

The lack of any coherent response for hours no doubt reflected, as intended, the chaos that occurs when a military’s “brain” is hit. (JFC Fuller, one of the pioneers of mobile warfare, included going after the enemy’s “brain” in his Plan 1919, the progenitor of the indirect approach in offensive warfare).

The Israeli AF focused on Iran’s nuclear assets, starting with Natanz and then proceeding to Fordow and others. Natanz and Fordow are buried deep below the earth, and it is widely believed that Israel does not possess the deep penetrators necessary to destroy them. Who knows? We have no idea what the rather ingenious Israelis have developed on their own, or what the US gave them.

Furthermore, Israel also whacked many of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists. Going after both the nuclear hardware and meatware that the mullahs dream of deploying against Israel.

Last night Iran struck back with a ballistic missile and drone assault on Israel, specifically Tel Aviv. The Israeli MoD building was hit, as were multiple civilian sites. Iron Dome, supplemented by US sea-based and ground-based anti-missile weapons, destroyed most of the incoming missiles. US aircraft assisted in shooting down drones.

The scale of the Iranian barrage was relatively muted. They had threatened to launch 1000, but only 200 or so showed up. This presumably was due to the Israeli targeting of Iranian missile infrastructure and equipment.

No loss of Israeli manned aircraft has been reported. Iran’s air defenses were scourged last year, and weakened further in the latest assault. Israel has unchallenged air supremacy and can strike whenever and wherever it wants, for as long as it wants.

All demonstrating the utter futility of attempting to build an expensive offensive capability (nukes) without the ability to defend it.

The Mossad operation within Iran was pretty amazing, and would have seemed even more so if Ukraine had not done something similar a few weeks back. I wonder if Israel was concerned/pissed to be pipped by Operation Spider Web.

How did Mossad do it? Well, it helped that the head of Iran’s anti-Mossad counterintel force was . . . an operative of Mossad. Said individual has been exfiltrated to Israel.

Those crafty Jews!

It is endlessly amusing that people (notably the Iranians) who go on and on about the Jews being evil geniuses who control the world with their diabolical plots are thunderstruck when the Jews pull off one of those diabolical plots.

The US is not involved in kinetic operations in Iran. Yet. (Intel–who knows?) But events have set off massive speculation about American involvement, knowledge, and approval.

Trump says he knew. Well of course he did. And of course he approved–Israel would never have dared to do this behind the US’s back. The withdrawal of non-essential personnel from US Middle East diplomatic posts immediately prior to the strikes indicates clearly that we knew the shit was about to hit the fan. The remarkable thing is that the Iranians apparently failed take the hint.

The entire history of the last two months also looks very different in the aftermath of this operation. Trump was engaged in negotiations, and saying nice things about their progress. But he gave the Iranians warnings that there was the easy way (come to a deal) or the hard way (the way we are seeing now). He told the Iranians that production of weapons grade nuclear material would not be permitted: the Iranians said that it was their right to produce them. He gave them two months.

But Iran chose to listen to the idiots in the US and Europe dismissing Trump’s credibility, and put on the TACO trade, thinking that Trump would not push the issue.

Very bad idea.

The entire narrative about Trump supposedly losing patience with Netanyahu, distancing himself from Israel, etc., now looks very different in retrospect. Now it looks like part of a massive deception operation.

The Iranians believed what they wanted to believe. They ignored what Trump said point blank would happen if they persisted in their obduracy.

Hopium is apparently not haram. They played a stupid game, and this is their parting gift–quite literally, for many of them.

One other interesting angle here is that Israel required (and continues to require) extensive use of Arab airspace. Arab nations are tut-tutting about the strikes, but actions speak far louder than words.

What next? Well, the smart play would be for Iran to capitulate to American and Israeli demands. They have no viable military option. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. And the longer they wait, the worse it will get for them.

But we’re talking about the Mullahs here, and they will probably think that they are Eisenhower, and faced with an unsolvable problem will expand it. How? Attempting to do something in the Straits of Hormuz is about their only option.

That would be unlikely to have a lasting effect. And it would be an engraved invitation for US involvement to destroy the Iranian Navy (can you say Operation Praying Mantis? I knew you could!) and all anti-ship missile installations along the Straits and in the Gulf. Another battle the Iranians can’t win. Not to mention it would piss of the Chinese, who get most of their oil via the Straits.

The Iranian missile response brought an Israeli strike on Iranian energy assets, namely the Pars gas field and some oil refineries. Fucking around in the Gulf would just lead to a major ramp up in such attacks, and not just by Israel.

Oh, and the mullahs would likely be put on the target list.

Iran is checkmated. It should have realized the state of the board was decisively against it when its proxies were largely dismantled. It should have taken the deal that was on the table and resigned.

But in their monomaniacal obsession with destroying Israel with nuclear weapons, they sowed the wind. They are now reaping the whirlwind.