David Hearst
24 June 2025 19:48 BST
Last update: ~18:10 EDTWe also know now that the Germans were worried by the effect the image of the ruined Coventry Cathedral would have on the Americans who were yet to join the war. Indeed, the Germans underestimated the resilience of the British, who forged instead a resolve to hit back as never before. The Royal Air Force began a forceful bombing campaign of Germany shortly afterwards.
It has taken Israel’s high command just 12 days to see the total victory they claimed to have achieved in the first hours of their blitz on Iran turn into something that looks more like a strategic defeat. Hence Israel’s massive reluctance to stick to a ceasefire, after promising US President Donald Trump it would abide by it.
None of Israel’s three war aims have been met. There is no evidence yet that Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme has been “completely and fully obliterated” as Trump claimed.
Iran had time to move at least some of its centrifuges out of harm’s way, and it’s not clear where the existing stockpile of more than 400 kilogrammes of highly enriched uranium is being stored. Meanwhile, the scores of generals and scientists killed in the first hours of the attack were swiftly replaced.
An assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, found that the US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of Tehran’s nuclear programme and only set it back by a matter of months , CNN reported on Tuesday, citing three people who saw it.
Weathering the storm If Coventry is anything to go by, uranium enrichment and missile-launcher production will be up and running within months, not years, as the Americans claim. The technology, the know-how, and above all the Iranian national will to restore and rebuild key national assets have all weathered the storm.
Evidently, from the damage Iranian missiles inflicted within hours of Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire, its ballistic missile force, the second Israeli war aim, remains a palpable and continuing threat to Israel.
Israel sustained more damage from Iran’s missiles in 12 days than it did from two years of Hamas’s homegrown rockets, or indeed from months of war with Hezbollah.
In 12 days, Israeli crews have come to grips with the sort of damage to apartment blocks that before only Israeli planes had inflicted on Gaza and Lebanon - and it’s been something of a shock. Strategic targets have been hit, including an oil refinery and a power station. Iran has also reported strikes on Israeli military facilities, although Israel’s strict censorship regime makes these assertions difficult to verify.
ISW is going to be a much more reliable source of information: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-special-report-june-24-2025-evening-edition even with it’s neoconservative bias. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/institute-for-the-study-of-war-bias-and-credibility/
What makes MEE less reliable? I’ve checked them before with MBFC and it seemed alright to me https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/middle-east-eye/ rates the same as ISW
Not so much the news source. The article is titled as opinion, for starters. It’s also chock full of super weird comparisons and assumptions.
In the blurb that you posted, “Israeli crews have come to grips with”, “is a shock” is unverifiable emotional bias. At the end, it claims that Israeli censorship has restricted the data that I found easily, most of which from ISW. There are more examples like this through the article.
My point is not to be “Israel bad” or “Iran bad”, but show how easily verifiable data can twisted into a propaganda article masquerading as a battle analysis on a site that should have a moderate reputation.
Read what you want to read but please be aware of how data is presented.
Thanks, updated the post to include an opinion tag and more of the article, I might post the ISW link as its own post because man is that one dense, and I’m a little [email protected] for all that rn LMAO
