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Radio War Nerd EP #530 — Israel-Iran War: Iron, Doh! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-18 00:32:39
Imported:
2025-06
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Content

Recorded: June 17, 2025

Five days into Israel's war on Iran, we reassess Iran's offensive missile capabilities even as they continue to suffer savage Israeli blows, and marvel at Trump's eagerness to dive into the war he assumes is already all but won...

*Table of Iranian missiles

(source here, from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which has a shady record as as DC research org, but this table is one of the clearest catalogues we could find)

Total time: 1:08:53Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

Garibaldi

Can't wait for the comments on this one

Tariq

a title for the ages

Jack Ross

Ayatollah John Dolanei

NYCM&AHole

I’m on Israel’s Samson option target list. 250kt-400kt of vaporization

William

Half past tweeeeeelve

NYCM&AHole

Wow I feel old recognizing the George W Bush quotes

Jacob

Keep in mind, the Iranian situation in regards to its military is NOT one to emulate. Yeah it has missiles and drones, but it’s lack of a functioning Air Force means that Israel can just bomb whatever it wants, and traditional manned air platforms are still the best way to deliver powerful strikes at moving targets, and places where you need or want absolute precision. BMs cant replace an airforce, and the fact that Iran has no control over the sky will make a ground defence near impossible should it turn into a ground war. You can’t hide from modern aircraft like the VC and NVA could.

Michael

I firmly believe that overall “MAGA” wants whatever Donald Trump tells them to want. In the end MAGA is Trumpism and Trumpism is whatever Donald Trump wants.

Lojban Chauvinist

Iran doesn't have much of a chance. If it closes the Strait of Hormuz, it cuts off oil to China and loses any hope of Chinese support, which it needs. Same with if Iran attacks Saudi. Iran got dealt the weakest hand (its first mistake was to be Shi'a in a Sunni world). Its only hope is to invite Chinese sponsorship, Ukraine-style.

PostmasterFenian

How many kms did Israeli ground forces get into Lebanon lol after a month. it's not like Iran has mountains or anything. Decapitation strikes and sanctions will destabilize the government though it's probably why the penetration happened

Allen M

Too much of an Israel losing take, because the missiles made great video. I think the US providing huge logistical support that just broke is too much for Iran. Russia is mad, and wants to use this as an opportunity to bleed the US in Iran. But they have no spare modern gear. So, now the US has air supremacy over Iran, I imagine the missile launch sites will be dust. Further, I suspect the US has a ready program of bombing to degrade all the nuclear facilities and even the national grid of Iran. This is on par with destroying the entire infrastructure of a powerful second world country. And China will keep the oil flowing, in spite of regime change.

Garibaldi

On the topic of the Red Army, I'm curious to see how anyone could defend the purging on Tukhachevsky, the father of Deep Operations, and Soviet tank warfare, on the advice of Budyonny, who sabotaged the Soviet-Polish War, thought cavalry would beat tanks, and oversaw one of the largest encirclement in history at Kyiv.

Ana

Nobody in this country's "leadership" or Europe's thinking through the whole "this is the Persian Gulf itself we'd be permanently destabilizing" thing. Or that Iran is the 17th most populous nation on earth. Yeah, let's just wreck the whole world economy because we can. I swear to god boomers heard "the personal is political" back in the 70s and took it to mean "take everyone else out with you when you go."

Lojban Chauvinist

Israel didn't need to go any deeper into Lebanon. They achieved victory enough through remote means. Hezbollah can try again, in a few years, but it faces the same threat. Israel and the US are capable of devastating Iran with bombing alone. We did it to North Korea, we did it to Vietnam, we did it to Laos and Cambodia. We finished off Libya that way too. This, not a ground invasion, is all the US needs to do to remove Iran's deterrance and end whatever regional influence it once had. If you want to prove me wrong, I welcome any evidence disproving Israeli air superiority over Iran. Iran's options are very limited. Whatever damage they can do to Israel (limited and likely to decrease as launchers get blown up) or to US bases, the Israeli/American coalition can do thousands of times more damage to them. The remnants of the Axis of Resistance would have done something already if they were capable. Attacking Saudi Arabian infrastructure would seem a very stupid move; it would do nothing but make Iran an actual pariah state, one that China, Russia, and likely all Muslim states would be unwilling to support. The Sunni Arab states and Turkey benefit from American/Israeli alignment (or their capable rulers do), and their populations are unlikely to revolt. This seems to be the endgame of a multigenerational campaign to eliminate all resistance in the Middle East, and Iran has no moves left.

Pranjal Dwivedi

Drones might be good and cheap, and ballistic missiles are impressive and inflicting damage (not as much after Sunday) but air superiority counts for something, Iran not being able to shoot down enemy plans and having its air defence degraded is not a good sign for this conflict.

NYCM&AHole

After hearing Mertz thank Israel for bombing Iran, I do think Russia should keep going and do a regime change in Germany.

Stephen Norrie

Can't they just bomb the airfields & hangars though? They said they were doing that last night. Not clear what the results were yet. I'm surprised it's taken them this long. Perhaps that does hint at some weakness or limit to Iran's capabilities...

Maggie+Al

the hezzbolah defeate seems less mysterious when you remember that their are fewer Lebanese Shia than Gazans and they rely on the aquiesence of the rest of a very fagile country to operate.

albalae

Iron cheese cloth

a clash of purple

What victory in Lebanon? Just because the Israelis try to do something, fail, and then lie and say they were trying to do something else doesn't mean they were "victorious." Their stated aims are to destroy Hamas, destroy Hezbollah, destroy Iran's nuclear program, and topple the Iranian regime. They haven't achieved any of those goals, and they're not going to. They've killed a lot of people (including some of their own) and done a lot of damage, but they've failed and they're going to keep failing, because these are not things that can be achieved through brute force. And, let's be real, Netanyahu's only real goal is to keep himself out of jail. Which he's been successful at, so far, but it's not the type of motivation that leads to wise strategic planning. He's just hitting all the buttons and damn the consequences. People in Israel are not happy with him. It's a volatile situation. Also, yeah, we can devastate countries through bombing alone. That doesn't win wars. Every conflict you named was a massive failure for the U.S., except Libya (and only because we just wanted to murder Gaddafi and didn't care what became of the country afterwards). On a strategic level, air superiority is vastly overrated. Also also, Iran is afraid of becoming a pariah state? Really? They're not already? wtf has the international community done for them lately, praytell? I'm sure that issue is part of their calculations, but I highly doubt it's a big variable. "Oh no, we might lose Russia and China's invaluable support, which consists of them doing absolutely nothing to help us."

a clash of purple

How long until everyone in the U.N. except the U.S. and Israel just takes a dump on their desk and walks out of the building? The whole "rules-based international order" fiction is in absolute tatters by this point. Even the Northern Europeans can't possibly believe in it anymore. Clearly it's every country for themselves and whoever has the biggest stick gets to dictate terms.

PostmasterFenian

One thing I don't understand about Irans grand strategy is why hezzbollah didn't have integrated air defenses. Large missle and rocket forces are not the most mobile and very vulnerable and Lebanon does not have much air space to cover

PostmasterFenian

How'd the air war over Yemen work out? Ask the saudis about ground operations. It's patently false to say a ground defense is impossible in irans case although I don't think the us is quite that dumb. If I were to bet on an outcome it's probably going to be a horrible bombing campaign that degrades Irans ballistic missle force. Iran doesn't have a ton of options and potentially there's a nationalistic regime change or some type of junta (don't really know of any insurgent groups in Iran that have actual purchase but there are a lot of ethnicities there). But I think it might take a while for something like that to happen - maybe Syria time scales- unless the decapitation strikes go quite deep and postwar stability depends quite a lot on Chinese and Russian assistance which I wouldn't bet on

PostmasterFenian

Wars the us has won with air power Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, Red Sea/yemen, oh wait

Doug Cartel

It's hard to smuggle an S-400 through Syria I can't say the same for an Igla

Doug Cartel

Look at it this way: the first day of this war would, in a movie, be the sneak attack by the evil empire against an unsuspecting peace loving underdog I mean Americans would be confused by the labels on the good guys and bad guys but it still stands

Doug Cartel

Also, exo-atmospheric missile interception photos are visually spectacular

Demented Avenger

When asked, "¿Cómo es Juan?" Butt-Head replied, "Rico Suave," and Beavis replied, "Spaghetti." As the teacher said, "The only Spanish you guys learned was at Taco Bell, and Beavis can't even get that right!"

Doug Cartel

One thing I've heard about Hezbollah is that they ceased operations to prevent popular opinion in the rest of Lebanon from turning against them. After all they did intervene on Palestine's behalf as a matter of religious obligation and solidarity and not because they had been attacked; one thing I've seen them doing as they lay low has been to go 'OK, Lebanon government, it's your turn to show you can actually lead' and thus far the official government has been chasing down Lebanese and arresting them for the crime of getting shot at by the IDF and other nonsense like that, which Hezbollah has been criticizing them for.

John Waaben

Like this comment if you don’t want Israel and/or the United States to use nuclear weapons against Iran

PostmasterFenian

Their coalition is a lot more tenuous and weaker than the Houthis

David Bond

There was some rumor floating around that Hezbollah sent a large portion of their missiles to Syria to protect from Israeli interference. Supposedly they were destroyed in the airstrikes when Assad fell. Sounded plausible.

Hugo

I don’t know how significant it is, but I haven’t. They already shut down for a 35s? I mean how many of those does Israel have?

PostmasterFenian

I feel like they need more stuff like the pantsir or buk but ya at this point those aren't getting to Lebanon

T

The US and their allies in the European ruling class performed a quiet coup across Europe after the second Iraq war. The reason why the same European countries that did not support Dubya are now supporting the US is that the entire European elite has either been recycled or silenced.

Jonathan Penn

The current contretemps between Iran and Israel (soon to include the ever-bumbling US empire) illustrates a key problem with missile defense. First, testing the system is expensive. You have to throw one or more target missiles up and then, according to doctrine I have read, you have to fire at least two interceptor missiles to try to hit the targets to have a reasonable chance of getting it. This quickly becomes very pricey, very quickly. Hence, tests tend to be highly scripted events- the interceptor team knows when the target is launched, how many there are, etc. War tends not to be so highly scripted. More importantly, the people building and launching the target missiles are only allowed to include a certain number and certain type of what are called "penetration aids" or decoys, so as to allow the interceptors a better chance of hitting their target. Iran has had a long time to figure out what may penetrate/confuse Israeli anti-ballistic missiles and I doubt they've accepted any constraints on numbers and types of penetration aids. Yes, there is a tradeoff between payload and penetration aids, but you can put a whole bunch of different types on at a very small weight cost. Plus, you can use older generation missiles to launch completely inert warheads with a cloud of penetration aids to soak up a lot of interceptor missiles. This is why the US and the USSR agreed to an ABM treaty. It costs way more to defend than attack. We are seeing that this is still the reality in the current battle between Israel and Iran. And I am going to LMAO if Iran manages to hit a B-2 (a la the Bosnians with a F-117) Talk about an expensive hole in the ground.

Lojban Chauvinist

Misread as "second world war" at first. I know less about *this* quiet coup

Elsie Hupp

And I’m not a fan of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but, as an American, I, too, hope that Iran can finally defeat the Great Satan, once and for all… I can change him!

Kawaii Leonard

If it’s any comfort to John, I have a hard time seeing many Pleasant Hill kids in 2025 carving “Fuck Iran” anywhere. There are some snobby white rich kids in that corridor of 680 now but I don’t see them as especially nationalistic. Nationalism is passé and dull

Dissipatio

What an effing epic stupid decision to allow Isreal to set up in Palestine, one we will likely not recover from. They have proved to be a US state anyway, we should have given them Florida where they could have imagined Palestine ... it's a theme park there already anyway.

drizzly_november

John talking about how Trump uses golf terms to describe war just made me think of, “I call upon all nations to stop these terrorist killers… now watch this drive!”

Jeff Normal

This is assuming they close the strait with mines (which are indiscriminate) there are other ways to limit traffic. They could close the strait to enemy ships only.

Jeff Normal

The few times I see the Strait of Hormuz mentioned in the mainstream (and sometimes even here) it’s assumed it can’t be shut because it will hurt the PRC. Who says that the only way to shut down traffic is with mines? Shutting down the Strait is a central pillar of the defense of Iran. They have more tricks than just mining the Strait. Y’all know they can pick their targets right?

Demented Avenger

That Rico Suave guy is probably now only remembered for that

Lojban Chauvinist

Is it crazy to think Trump might bomb Fordo, but then immediately strongarm the Israelis into a ceasefire?

Terry Dunk

Very insightful comment, thank you

LET ME DELETE MY ACCOUNT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES

I can only imagine Iran has been waiting for "IT" the one final attack forever now. And not fully investing in these constant minor attacks. Its most likely expecting a ground invasion before glassing israel. In a way the West has new ideas and battle plans. Place like Iran, and another good example Russia, has had a final battle in mind for over 50 years. Its long term long battle coldwar thinking. Doesnt gel with the US thinking now.

IRIDYSCENZIA

You have a very unique and original vision 💖 nice work

Dr. Ron Jambo

Vorauseilender Gehorsam is the word.

James

The tests are highly scripted because the tech does not work. They are Potemkin tests.

James

The Chinese think long term and you are thinking short term.

Nic Bodiford

Keep these episodes coming! Great stuff. Hoping you can get Hersh back on the show to talk about his latest.

JoR

They need you on the show lol you called that shit