Shredding the Iranian National Security State

After last year’s round of strikes between Israel and Iran the Iranians probably should have developed a better appreciation of how precisely the Israelis could hit senior members of the leadership team. They did not.

This account of how Iranian officials were preparing before Israel conducted widespread attacks across their country on Friday, and how they reacted in the aftermath, is based on interviews with half a dozen senior Iranian officials and two members of the Revolutionary Guards. They all asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information.

Officials said that the night of Israel’s attack, senior military commanders did not shelter in safe houses and instead stayed in their own homes, a fateful decision. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace unit, and his senior staff ignored a directive against congregating in one location. They held an emergency war meeting at a military base in Tehran and were killed when Israel struck the base.

This is the result of a combination of precision munitions with outstanding intelligence work. It’s the closest we’ve seen to the complete decapitation of a security leadership team since… well, since the Israelis did something very similar to Hezbollah. The Iranians have to be asking themselves the following question: “What is wrong with our communications and force protection systems such that the Israelis can casually pinpoint the locations of senior leadership?”

With respect to the image above… I mentioned in comments a few posts back that we have the game Persian Incursion at Patterson and we’ve played it several times since it came out. As the Rex Brynen review indicates, it is extremely complex and not for the neophyte gamer. The airstrike mechanics mimic nothing so much as the colossal boredom of war, where the key decisions involve determining the loadouts of every fighter the Israelis launch, the targets that those aircraft will strike (micro-level decisions about whether to hit this refueling tower or that equipment bunker), and whether the Iranian aircraft are sufficiently well-mainted to get aloft and get shot down by their Israeli counterparts. As a game, it’s tedious for the Israeli team and utterly a waste of time for the Iranian team. As a simulation, it’s pretty terrific; the Israelis can choose whether to hit the nuclear program or Iran’s oil economy, with sets of victory conditions that evaluate either campaign.

An update to the system would require a few tweaks (modernization of Iran’s air defense networks, increasing the number and precision of Iran’s drone and ballistic missile options, adding F-35s etc.) and a significant revision to give the Israeli the option of hitting “regime targets” with a dynamic system for managing the effects of such strikes on Iranian command and control. Which, in the end, would make the game more tedious for the Israelis and even more boring for the Iranians. We’ll probably try to play out a session this summer with the Patterson Wargaming Society, and if we do so I’ll post an evaluation. Copies are still out there if you wish to indulge…

In other news:

• Israel now striking targets associated with Iran’s energy industry.
• Iran still has the Strait of Hormuz card to play.
• Maybe the Iranians could learn something from the Houthis?
• On the Iranian ballistic missile campaign.
• On the Israeli drone smuggling campaign.