The Duran Podcast - Iran-Israel; Missile stockpiles and air superiority

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Iran-Israel; Missile stockpiles and air superiority

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the fog of war between Iran and Israel in this military conflict. And it is very difficult to get a clear picture as to what is happening. Trump posted on truth social a couple of days ago that the United States has, well, we, he said we. He said, we have air superiority in the United States. He said, we, which is an interesting choice of words. You're hearing that a lot now from the U.S. government, even from people in Congress. They're saying we now a lot more, more often when referencing Israel and Iran. But he said, we have air superiority.

Does we, do we have air superiority as Trump puts it? Does the United States and Israel have air superiority? the news that I'm getting is that missiles are being launched from both sides. And they're just doing, and a lot of damage is being done by both sides. What do you think is going on? Well, I get, first of all, say, going back to the first part of your question, that there is a massive amount of misinformation and propaganda being spread by both sides. It is also the case that after the first day, when the big attacks happened, the Israelis launched their big strike on the night of the 12th of June and over the course of the 13th of June, the Iranians then launched their big strike on the 13th of June.

But ever since then, each side has been gradually tightening up its media control. And the Iranians now have been clamping down on the internet. They've considerably reduced the internet coverage across Iran. And the Israelis are now imposing censorship, much more assertive censorship than they did previously. So all of this is creating a great deal of difficulty in understanding exactly what is going on. But you're absolutely correct. The reality is this, as far as I can tell,

the Israelis are able to launch strikes against targets inside Iran. Now, there is some claims circulating that in fact these strikes are being launched mostly by Israeli aircraft operating outside Iranian airspace, that the Iranians, the Israelis fly close to Iranian airspace, but they don't enter Iran itself because the air defense system, the Iranian air defense system, has to some extent got its act together over the last couple of days and that the strikes are being mostly conducted from Iraqi territory. And if you look at the map of where the strikes are, the most of the Israeli strikes are,

they seem to be overwhelmingly concentrated in Western Iran. And that is consistent with the strikes being carried out by Israeli aircraft operating from Iraqi airspace. The Israelis do send drones over Iran, and some of these are strike drones, but the Iranians finally seem to be succeeding in shooting some of these drones down. So there is that side. The Iranians, for their part, are able to launch missiles against Israel, and the Israelis were clearly very embarrassed by reports that were starting to appear over the last couple of days. about the ineffectiveness of their air defense system. But the result is that they've tightened up very, very considerably.

And they've been trying to spread stories playing down the significance of the Iranian strikes. But the fact is that the Iranian strikes are still continuing. And we are starting to get reports in the American media, in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, that the Israelis are indeed exactly as we predicted on these programs running out of air defense interceptors. So it may be that the reality is that the Israelis do not have the undisputed and unchallenged aerial dominance over Iran that they are leading us all to think. And that the reality is that, yes, they can strike targets in Iran, but from a distance. And that Iran is able to strike targets at Israel, obviously from a distance also.

Do you have any idea of Iran's situation with missiles? Nobody does. Nobody does. You have completely contradictory stories here. Some say that they have a stockpile of up to 40,000 missiles. I mean, I've seen that figure. Others say there's a stockpile of 3,000 or 2,000 missiles. Nobody knows, and the Iranians for obvious reasons,

are keeping this all very much to themselves. So we don't know. There is so much about the situation that we don't know. I'll give an example of the misreporting that there is. The Israelis said that they'd expect it that in the first days of an attack on Iran, the Iranians would launch strikes and 5,000 Israelis would be killed. I'm going to say straight away, I don't believe that story. believe that the Israelis ever imagined that they would lose that number of civilians in the first

days of the battle, of any kind of battle with Iran. If they really believe that, they wouldn't have launched the battle in the first place. And what was the point of creating this elaborate air defense system if they really thought that was going to happen? Then they've also claimed that only 20 Iranian missiles have got through and only two drones have done so. But when you actually read the article that made that claim, they said only 20 Iranian missiles got through and hit civilian areas. So Iran isn't just striking civilian areas. They're also attacking military facilities. So even if that figure of 20 missiles getting through is true, it doesn't tell you all, everything about what the Iranians might be hitting elsewhere in Israel.

But how deep, how large Iranian capabilities are? I don't know. We have no information about that. But we do have some information from the American media, which I suspect is well-sourced, that Israel is indeed starting to run out of air defence. Interceptives. That is the only piece of information that I would consider reliable out of all the matters of information we have seen over the last couple of hours. And one report said that the

Israelis can keep up the level of air defense they have at the moment for roughly 12 more days, but after that, serious problems will begin. If Iran continues at the pace, you can continue to continue to live. long streets, which we don't know. Which we don't know whether it can. Yeah, so my final question is Israel may have 10 to 12 days for as far as air defense and missiles go, but they have the United States at their back. So the next question is, how much does the U.S. have given everything they've poured

into Ukraine and all around the world? Or how much are they willing to use in the Middle East? Well, they have a lot more than Israel does. I think that's the first thing to say. But they don't have that much. Now, they do have apparently, there are apparently roughly 3,000 Patriot missile interceptors available around the world. The trouble is, not all of them are controlled or in the ownership of the United States.

Apparently fewer than half of them are. Supposedly, if a missile is launched against a target, then you need two missile interceptors to have some confidence of being able to shoot it down. So let's say that the Americans have around 1,200 Patriot Missile Interceptors, then they can perhaps have some hope of shooting down, say, 3 to 600 missiles. missiles that Iran launches, but does Iran have those 300 to 600 missiles? I mean, I simply don't know. So, and the Americans also, of course, have enormous capabilities to strike missile

launch facilities. It seems a lot of these missiles are being launched from underground silos, but the United States might be much better equipped to destroy those silos. So there's lots of uncertainties here. The United States also, of course, has a very large stockpile of cruise missiles that it can launch against Iran. I mean, it can launch huge numbers of tunnel hawks against Iran. But again, the stockpile of these is not unlimited and they're expensive and they're not easy to produce. and serial production of these cruise missiles.

It's not unlimited. And Iran is an enormous country, as we've discussed many times. So one can imagine that if there's an aerial campaign against Iran, things will start to get depleted on the American side fairly quickly also. So, you know, the burn rate in these campaigns can be very high. And the US probably doesn't have the definite resilience in terms of burn rate, especially as if we're talking about Tomahawk missiles, it needs to keep a significant inventory back in reserve in case it finds itself in conflict with China at some point in the next few years.

So there are limitations on this. Yeah, exactly. There are limitations on all sides. Okay, we will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on Rebel Odyssey, Bitch, Telegram, RockFit, and X. Go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch, like what we are wearing in this video update. The link is in the description box down below.

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