The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Israel Attacks Iran, Again - Part 1 & 2 || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

This video was originally released on Patreon 1 week ago. If you want to see the videos as soon as they come out, join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Now that we've had a bit more time to see what happened in Israel's latest attack on Iran, let's dive a bit deeper. Israel struck military facilities like missile storage and production sites, but avoided nuclear and oil infrastructure. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/israel-attacks-iran-again-part-1-2

Hey everybody, Peter Zine here coming to you from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Behind me, that's the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which is where the U.S. Navy tinkers with all kinds of naval stuff, most notably the nuclear submarine fleet, so lots of fun stuff going on here in New Hampshire. But that's not what we're going to talk about today. It is the 28th of October, and the news today is that Israel has launched attack with several dozen warplanes. Jets on Iran targeting what they said are missile production and storage facilities. There was a concern after the most, well let me back up. Ever since the Hamas assault on southern Israel back in October of last year, wow, it's been a year already. There has been a concern that the issue could boil up into a

wider war. It's never something that I've been too concerned about because Gaza does not produce transit or consume anything, except for you know, aid. And anyone who decided, to make Gaza an issue is doing it because they have something else that they are actually after so Iran is after regional power the Houthis are after more money and trying to get sponsorship from the Russians which they've had with some success people in the United States are doing it either because they hate Jews or because they love Jews everyone has their own angle here but Gaza itself really doesn't matter by any meaningful metric it's horrible to say but it's still

true. Anyway, so as regards Iran specifically, Iran has been needling Israel in order to increase its gravitas with various populations, saying they're the only ones who are standing up for the Palestinians. But you know, it's all it's all about publicity. But these Israelis are a little sensitive, so every once in a while when the Iranians do something, the Israelis feel that they have to strike back and hit harder than they were hit. So after the attack last April, when the Iranians didn't simply launch 300 weapons, they called the Swiss Embassy first and said, hey, tell the Jordanians, the Americans, the Brits and the Israelis that were launching these weapons systems from these places on this schedule and this is their flight plazaum, please shoot them all down.

Because they wanted it to look good, but they didn't actually want to hurt anything that was going to trigger a real response. And, you know, it worked. The biggest damage was a pothole in a taxiway. And then the Israelis responded in a few days by taking out a single air defense system near the Iranian nuclear facilities in Isfahan trying to underline that you know we could have done so much more. Fast forward until last month, was it last month already? Recently, recent weeks. The Israelis launched another couple hundred missiles this time without the warning. Damage was very, very light, but Israel felt compelled to respond.

And the concern was whether they'd go after the nuclear weapon sites in Iran, excuse me, nuclear research sites. Iran doesn't have a weapon. Or the oil offloading facility, which is something I've talked about in previous videos. Today, when the Israelis attacked, it was clear that was not the issue. They went after purely military targets, and it's unclear at this point how much damage they were able to cause, but the Israelis have already declared the matter closed, and the Iranians have already said that the damage was light, and no further escalation is necessary, although they reserve the right to react proportionally, which means we're still in this

holding pattern that we've been for the last year, where everybody's trying to have the last word and still use the Palestinian issue as a crutch to prop up whatever issues. they care about. So this is not the end of the story. The risk of a wider regional war remains low because nobody has a vested interest in it and keep in mind that Israel and Iran, if they really decide they want to go at it, they can't do all that much more than what they've done. Iran's capacity attack, Israel, at scale and with precision, is very limited. Their weapon systems don't have that kind of accuracy and the Israelis have arguably the best theater missile to defend. defense in the world. If the Israelis want to go the other direction, there are some single-point

failures within the Russian system, Karg Island for the oil sector, or the Iranian refineries, which, if they were taken out, could really cause some domestic problems for the Mullahs in Iran. But the weapons systems that the Iranians are developing in their nuclear field are too dispersed, too far away, and too hardened and too many for Israel to meaningfully damage them, much less eliminate them without extensive outside help. It's an open question even if the United States had multiple aircraft carrier battle groups in the region if the US could do it. There's just that many targets. So we are unfortunately still in the holding pattern and hopefully this is where it will stay. Because the two countries can only do so much damage to one another, it's just easier to work

via proxies. The Iranians like to work via Hezbollah that hasn't been working as well lately since the Israelis have basically decapitated the group and are now involved in an open-ended war in Lebanon as well as Gaza. And going the other direction, the Israelis have always preferred political assassinations going after nuclear scientists who just happen to be a little bit too useful. I see no reason for that to change. The only concern I would have is if a third party from the outside manages to independently stir the pot to trigger more than would happen normally. I mean, what we're seeing right now, this is what negotiation in the middle of the middle of, least looks like. It's frustrating because it seems so pointless to everyone on the outside, but this is just how business is done here. That third party, if it's going to be anyone, is going

to be Russia. Because anything that sparks a crisis, anywhere in the world is something that keeps attention off of Ukraine. And so the Russians have a vested interest in doing it. And so the newest information that has leaked out just in the last few days is that the Russians have been actively supplying the Houthis of Yemen. Those are the guys that have been launching missiles and drones at shipping in the Red Sea. The Russians have actively been supplying them with satellite recon to help them target civilian vessels, which is a violation of what handful of treaties the Russians are signatories to that they haven't abrogated already. Should the Russians be able to stir some shit up in this region? You know, we would all notice. And that is absolutely

what they are attempting to do. But on its own druthers, the Iranian-Israeli situation for the moment, remains about as calm as it can be considering. All right, take care. Hey, everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from Austin, Texas. It is the 27th of October, and we're going to do a follow-on to yesterday's video about the Israeli retaliatory strike on Iran, now that we know a little bit more about what was hit.

The Israelis were able to target a number of military facilities. They didn't go after the nuclear program, and they did not go after oil facilities. Instead, their primary target were facilities that stored missiles, and particularly were a critical component in the construction of the missiles that the Iranians like to use. Basically, there's two types of fuel that you can put in a ballistic missile. The first is liquid fuel. This is cheaper. This is technically easier, but it's really expensive and it's very dangerous because you can't store the rocket fuel in the rocket. So if you're not going to launch in the next couple of days,

you generally leave them empty. And so it's easy to know when the bad guys are going to launch a bunch of missiles because you just need some satellite information to see all the trucks come here. to pump in all of this somewhat toxic, very explosive, very dangerous fuel. Now, the Iranians have moved on from liquid fuel to solid fuel, which is much more stable. You can store the fuel in the rocket forever, but it's more technically involved, and the Iranians don't know how to do it themselves. So they have bought the facilities that make this stuff from China, and now those are pretty much all smoking holes on the ground after the Israeli raid. So until these things are built out again, and Iran is under much stricter sanctions now

than it was when it bought all these things years ago, the Iranians are going to have a hard time running their missile fleets in the way that they have, which is clearly what the Israelis were after. They probably have one or two that are still operational fuel fabrication facilities, but certainly not the type of scale that is a real threat to Israel. So, you know, strike one, Iran. The second thing to keep in mind is that wherever the Israeli fighter bombers went, whether it was over Iraq or Lebanon or over Iran itself, they took out all the air defenses along the way, and most of the air defenses that the Iranians use are something called an S-300, which is the second from top of the line that the Russians produce and export, top-of-line

being the 400. Well, the Iranians knew this was coming. They had plenty of notice, and they still couldn't shoot down a single Israeli jet. And so between this race, and the war in Ukraine, where there's also a lot of S-300s in play, we have been getting a bit of an awakening for people who have bought Russian equipment all these years because they couldn't do jack. And all of those are now smoking holes in the ground. And if you play this onto a larger stage, the Israelis are now pretty confident that whenever they feel the need to establish air superiority, they don't even need jets to do it.

They just have to take out the air defense because nobody in the region has air power anyway. But when I look at the broader strategic picture, the Russians do have some S-400s, but not enough to provide full coverage, and they've lost several of them in Ukraine war already. So, I mean, yes, they're the most advanced that the Russians have, but they're not that much more advanced than the S-300. Far more importantly, the Chinese have their local air defense, the HQ9 and the HQ22, which, or we're simplifying here, but they're basically the local knockoffs of the S-300 floor model. They've been upgraded Chinese style in a few ways, but we've never seen them actually in combat. And now we know the Israelis who don't have a first-rate air force were able to take out all of the S-300s they came into contact with, which means that the United States, which has, you know, a better air force, probably would have no problem operating that sort of environment in China should push come to shove. So surely this is not what the Iranians planned when they did that raid on the 1st of October, but they've given U.S. strategic thinkers a lot to,

chew on and indicating that air defense on the other side of the line might not be nearly as interesting or capable as we have long been concerned about. So, you know, ha-zah.