by Ron Unz, The Unz Review:
Much like individuals, countries may often become victims of their own great success.
This risk certainly applies to criminals, including criminal regimes. Even if they effectively conceal their direct involvement in particular incidents, over time their method of operation—their “M.O.”—may become obvious. This allows the ready identification of their handiwork, whether by law enforcement agencies or interested historians.
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Last week’s sudden surprise attack by Israel against Iran was a remarkably successful decapitation strike that assassinated much of the latter country’s top military and national security leadership at a single stroke. According to news reports, the victims included the head of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, both the head of the Iranian armed forces and his top deputy, and the entire leadership of the country’s powerful missile and drone division. No previous historical example comes to mind in which the high command of a major nation’s military had been so completely annihilated within just a few hours. On June 12th, IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami had publicly declared that Iran “was ready for any scenario,” but 24 hours later he was dead, along with most of Iran’s other military leaders.
Moreover, the losses extended far beyond the armed forces. Ali Shamkhan, the national security advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader and the individual responsible for the ongoing nuclear negotiations with America was killed, as were the head of Iran’s nuclear research program and many of his top scientists.
Last year the Israelis had employed a similar decapitation strategy to eliminate the entire leadership of Hezbollah, effectively destroying that organization. But although Hezbollah had been widely regarded as the world’s strongest and most heavily-armed non-state militia, renowned for having given the Israelis a black eye during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, it lacked any air defenses and was based in neighboring Lebanon. Meanwhile Iran was a powerful nation of 90 million, possessing advanced weaponry and located more than 1,000 miles from Israel. Iran’s decapitation was simply astonishing.
The exact tactical details of how the Israelis so easily pierced Iran’s robust air defenses cannot yet be firmly established given that elements of the widely published reports might merely constitute deceptive propaganda. But if those accounts are correct, Israel had secretly prepositioned large numbers of powerful drones and other military equipment on Iranian soil, then used these to blind and disable Iran’s network of anti-aircraft defenses, thereby opening the door for the huge air strikes that inflicted most of the destruction, and such a scenario seems quite plausible.
Other explosive drones may have been used for the targeted assassinations of many of the high-profile victims, whose exact locations had been determined by either human or technical intelligence. I’ve also seen claims on the Internet that small Israeli electronic warfare teams had successfully infiltrated Iran and disrupted the country’s military communications channels for hours, severely hampering any defensive measures. But none of these particular details much matter, with the overwhelming end result being the only important fact.
I think that the unprecedented success of this sudden Israeli strike against Iran’s leadership also shifts the probabilities on some other important past events. In April 2024, Iran had launched a retaliatory missile strike against Israel, and despite the best efforts of American and British forces to intercept the missiles in their flight path, the hypersonics and most of the ballistics got through and struck their targets, with Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome defense system proving itself completely ineffective in blocking the attacks. When the Israelis failed to counter-retaliate, the Iranians declared that they had been victorious in that major test of force, thus fully establishing the effectiveness of their missile deterrent.
But then just a few weeks later, Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister both died in a still unexplained helicopter crash while returning from a visit to Azerbaijan, leading many to suspect that Mossad had killed the Iranian president. And now that Israel has demonstrated its enormous ability to strike down so many top Iranian leaders in their own country at a time of high military tension, I think that President Raisi should probably be added to the long list of Israeli victims.
Furthermore, Raisi’s sudden death had major strategic consequences. He had been a leading Iranian hardliner, having close relations with Russia and China, and viewed by many as the likely successor to 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile, his replacement was Masoud Pezeshkian, a far more moderate figure eager to avoid any confrontation with America and instead hoping to mend relations with the West. Thus, by eliminating Raisi, the Israelis had drastically “reshaped” the subsequent Iranian political landscape.
