To Iranians,
Call me an Azeri traitor if you will, but I am not shedding tears over the likes of old fools like Salami and Shamkhani being gone. Sure they gave their lives for the nation on duty but let us not romanticize incompetent clowns. These crude ground soldiers from Iraq war turned self appointed policy making generals sabotaged Iranian military progress without even realizing. They introduced the PR stunt culture in IRI, I can list but not the moment or thread for it. Khamenei himself is the biggest roadblock who needs to go with Buffoon fatwa. It will be a blessing in disguise if Israel takes him out and younger more aggressive man leads the nation, be it his son. Khamenei has ruined Iran to the core, the earlier nation gets itself free from this Russian planted relic priest , the better. He is the reason Iran is still in NPT BS, still putting its national security insurance (Nuclear program) on table as a bargaining chip with US. Khamenei politicised Iranian nuclear program for internal political gains for years and years.
Iran’s internal security architecture is a mess. As a revolutionary unnatural mullah + socialists run system, IRI has always prioritized ideological loyalty over competence when it comes to hiring people and now is paying the price with serious security lapses. There are too many political appointments who got promoted for "praying" rather than understanding modern warfare. IRIAF was destroyed by this dangerous culture but seems like same happened to internal security set up as well. Being a harshly ideological theocracy, IRI has a massive local traitor problem too. Those Israeli drone launches inside Iran were not done by some Jew superheroes parachuting in from hell. They were local traitors who were farmed within Iranian society when IRI was busy arresting teen girls over hejab crap.
I thought Gen. Hajizadeh was a loss. But the way IRGCAF made a come back within hours has me thinking that even sharper minds were hiding in the ranks all along. IRGCAF is performing better than it ever did under Hajizadeh. Credit where due, under Hajizadeh, IRGCAF has become a mature, lethal, battle hardened force over the years, free from personality cults. This force is now kinda dictating the war direction within 48 hours. If this keeps up for another 10-15 days Israel’s civil structure will crumble. That’s the downside of being a tiny, externally dependent state. Jews may control the weather but not outcomes of war against a capable enemy that has shown it can bring fire to the enemy home at will. The swift reestablishment of CoC was surprising. But then again remember how many generals Russia lost and still kept the war machine rolling. Western Jew MSM propaganda loves saying “Iran is about to collapse” or “Russia is on the brink", "China is ageing”. In the real world war is a grind and resilience wins. For those who doubt this, will see what I said here in next 10-12 days. As incompetent the system is, IRI seems to have a coherent war doctrine of elongating the war with daily reciprocating night strikes that would not let the enemy escape with "victory" claims over night which Israel was looking for. IRI did not go suicidal in Persian Gulf against US because of emotions over loss of Generals which may have dragged NATO in. Seems like IRI wants to keep fighting a low threshold war against Israel that extends over days or weeks will become impossible for the smaller country to fight naturally with smaller resources at hands. Signs of strategy rather than broken CoC are visible. IRGC will degrade Israeli air defenses with waves of cheaper Emads and Ghadrs, flood their systems with Shaheds and Arash drones, all while keeping the hypersonics for "Shock" strikes.
Overall, Israeli, campaign has failed almost all of its key objectives. Not a single Iranian nuclear site has been "destroyed". The general's assassination did not trigger internal collapse, it backfired actually because CoC got restored, Iran started bringing fire into Israel, nation rallied behind Mullahs once again. Israel kinda has lost the escalation ladder within 48 hours. They have failed to bait the US, NATO, EU into direct kinetic offensive support as well. I have been getting laughed at for years in that IRIAF thread for demanding real MRCAs instead of PR stunts. Iran will come out of this war more emboldened it seems so if leadership has any shame left, IRIAF needs to be rebuilt. Minimum 250 airframes of Su-30SM/35S/57/J-35 backed by 100 Yak-130M combat variants all under full ToT. Mothball some, throw the rest of the current fleet to IRGC. IRGCAF will drag IRI through this war but IRIAF needs to be invested in NOW!
I have not seen anyone talking about it on SM but Israel has seriously targeted lots of decoys set up in open, some have been there for years. I did not expect this from them. A lot of those are hollowed decommissioned systems, painted to look functional. That’s why despite the "Shock" campaign of assassinations and propaganda, CoC was re-established quickly, IRGCAF is still launching barrages and IADS is still operating againt what it can (Aeroballistic MaRVs cant be stopped by any AD in the world). Like I said above, war is where shock stunts, propoganda does not work, resilience wins, current strategy of IRI is smart despite Mullahs being incompetent.