“Whatever you do, don’t hit a hospital.”
I realize turning the other cheek isn’t an option when you’re a teetering authoritarian, but at this point, Ali Khamenei would do well to avoid giving Israel additional excuses to carry on bombing regime targets in Iran.
On Thursday, an IRGC missile slammed into the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, injuring more than three-dozen people and causing “extensive damage” to the sprawling facility.
A hapless Iran intimated it was trying to hit a nearby military headquarters, maybe the Southern Command. Israeli media called that claim implausible, noting that the Hatzerim Airbase is several miles away. I have to admit, a direct hit on one of Israel’s largest hospitals seems like some coincidence. If it was a mistake, why not some random other building? Or a park? Or somebody’s house? Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the missiles destroyed an IDF “command center.” I wonder if maybe — just maybe — Israel, like Hamas, puts such facilities near hospitals.
All of that said, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the IRGC was in fact trying to hit the Hatzerim base and was just that wide of the mark. After all, we’re talking about an outfit which accidentally shot down a Boeing 737 in January of 2020 after somehow mistaking it for an incoming US cruise missile. A lot of things were claimed for the IRGC prior to these last five years. Capable, competent and so on. As far as anyone can tell, most — and maybe all — of those claims were wildly overstated.
Whatever the case, Israel Katz naturally seized on Thursday’s incident in Beersheba to call for the assassination of Khamenei, a “dictator” who “cannot continue to exist,” as he put it. The IDF will “intensify strikes against strategic targets in Iran and government sites,” he said, while Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “exact the full price” from Tehran. Given that the rial’s worthless, one can only assume that means Israel will get it back in blood, possibly Khamenei’s.
Katz’s remarks — and to a lesser extent Netanyahu’s — were yet another indication that Israel intends to kill the Ayatollah regardless of whether Donald Trump decides to enter the war. Supposing his fate’s sealed anyway, you could argue Khamenei may as well keep lobbing missiles. But if the regime’s still holding out any hope of swaying Trump, bombing large Israeli hospitals — accidentally or not — is a very bad idea.
Additionally, Iran’s going to run out of missiles sooner or later. And they can’t exactly make any more right now. An unnamed IDF official who spoke to the Western media this week said Israel believes Iran’s lost well more than half of its launchers since late last week. It still has 100 or so left, the same person guesstimated. Every time they launch missiles, they expose the locations of those remaining launchers which they have no capacity to protect. It is, in a word, hopeless.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing over the notion that the IRGC could, as a last resort, mine or close the Strait of Hormuz, but is that really an option? For one thing, it risks infuriating the Sunni powers at a time when they might otherwise be at least vaguely sympathetic to the plight of their traditional sectarian rival. But more importantly, that’d absolutely draw the US into the war.
Further, mining the Strait does nothing to address the main problem for Khamenei which is that he has no air defenses. You can’t mine the sky. So you disrupt a fifth of global oil flows, and then… what? It’s not as if the US doesn’t have minesweepers, and during the ~month it’ll take to de-mine that oh-so-crucial chokepoint, the regime would be deposed by brute force.
Meanwhile, Ali Sistani — he’s the grandest of Iraq’s Grand Ayatollahs — gently suggested that assassinating Khamenei would be akin to poking a hornet’s nest. “It may lead to complete loss of control and widespread chaos, further worsen the suffering of people and severely harm the interests of all parties involved,” he warned.
Later Thursday, Trump bought himself some time. “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not [to enter the war] within the next two weeks.”
Perhaps Congress should use that window to take the decision out of his hands.
This war sounds like Russia House, the realistic le Carre, Tom Stoppard, Sean Connery movie of 1990. The mismatch is that outrageous. There, the West admitted that a Russian ICBM would be lucky if they could hit Utah. We always over-estimate these backward militaries / polities / leaders. Furthermore, what the hell is the U.S. doing here? Trump.s idea is like Stalin declaring war on Japan AFTER Hiroshima. He. did it – really – and threw a million troops into it.
The Soviets attacked before Japan surrendered, faced little resistance over a short period of fighting, received land and influence, also contributed to the surrender. It’s not clear it’s an example of a bad decision.
It seems like an extremely bad idea over the long term to leave the saber-rattling, near-nuclear totalitarian theocracy next door humiliated and wounded but defiant on the other hand. Silly that European leaders would push for that, but they don’t have any influence on the outcome anyway.
I regard that as the decision of a bully. One that has poisoned Japanese – Russian relations for many decades
One of the things that most surprised me over the course of my studies was how much the Japanese revere Douglas McArthur. They respect him as a worthy adversary, but they really celebrate him for two things: giving them their constitution (which they are rather fond of considering it was written by a victorious occupying adversary), and saving the island of Hokkaido from Soviet occupation. The Soviets got basically all of Eastern Europe and a quarter of Germany, but with Japan, they only got the Sakalin and Kurill islands. Stalin wanted Hokkaido as his share of the spoils, but McArthur put a stop to that.
(They also like that he protected the Emperor from prosecution as a war criminal).
I think Trump is waiting for the arrival of the Nimitz carrier battlegroup in the gulf. They would be able to provide better protection from anti ship missiles in the Straits of Hormuz. Until they arrive he is trying to make it look like he is playing 3D chess. There is no way for Iran to back down after being asked to surrender unconditionally. The hornets nest has definitely been poked already.
Per the Financial Times, In two weeks all of the assets necessary to bomb Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant will be in place.
The Ford just emergency deployed. there’s your two week timeframe.
https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2025-06-18/ford-carrier-europe-iran-israel-18165558.html
Imagine sitting in Tehran and reading that article (the details of what all’s involved in terms of ships and planes and so on). I think sometimes we get so lost in these “new world order,” “realignment,” “end of US hegemony” narratives (and God knows I’ve published plenty of them myself) that we forget just how terrifying this war machine of America’s really is in the context of conventional conflicts. Anybody can lose an asymmetric fight with guerrillas and insurgents. And if you go poking around where you don’t belong, you’re going to get yourself a Vietnam eventually. But when it comes to just — you know — “Here we come dammit, and we’re gonna see about all that trash talking,” the US military is a helluva thing. If you’re a Putin or a Xi or a Kim, what happens later (i.e., after the initial onslaught) is irrelevant. The fact that the US ended up bogged down in Iraq didn’t save Saddam. The difference with Putin and Xi and Kim is obviously that they all have nukes, but I wonder sometimes if they’d even have time to decide whether to launch them. I mean just think about what it is we’ve all just witnessed: We’re not even one week into this war and there’s basically nothing left of the regime in Tehran. And that’s “just” the IDF. What we’ve just seen over the past six days suggests the US could’ve wiped out the IRGC, all the nuclear sites and toppled Khamenei quite literally overnight.
H-Man, it seems that we are only joining the party because of the big bomb and we have the only plane that can deliver the big bomb. So if that is the goal, IDF could always put boots on the ground to go in and blow up Fordo. But if this is regime change, and we test the waters, smells like another Iraq or Afghanistan. So probably wise to just stay clear of this mess and let Israel and Iran sort it out.
H- can we get an update on how the regime change is going in Syria?
Lest we forget:
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/hospital-damaged-by-israeli-strike-in-western-iran-241723973849
Not to mention all the former hospitals of Gaza.
” Congress should use that window”
….Whose congress ? Ours ? I doubt that will ever happen.
“It is so scary out there!, Oh please sir, make it all go away……”
There’s a bill in the House with bi-partisan support which would do just that. They’re in recess at least until Monday though. A similar Republican led bill (“with privilege”) in the Senate does the same, but its priority is behind budgetary concerns. Whether either can pass before 2 weeks expires remains to be determined, but the wheels are turning. And remember, the pro-Russia wing is on board.
I am skeptical that Trump will actually wait two weeks. Could be misdirection. The US has a lot of air assets in the region, plenty to crack Fordow and join in hunting down Iran’s remaining launchers.
I wonder how many missile systems Iran gleefully sold to Russia over the last three years. Bet they wish they had some of them back now.
ISW’s June 18 Iran update has a great note on how Iran has had to pull back their missiles to protect them from Israeli attacks, but now their most numerous medium-range missiles are… out of range. So I guess there are some limitations to Israeli range for “normal” attacks within Iran.
I think Heisenberg is right when he says Trump 1) has a real thing for Iran, and 2) really wants to blow stuff up. There’s some interesting tension though with a third factor though. TACO.
Here’s the ISW report. It has some great maps. https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-special-report-june-18-2025-evening-edition