00:00All right, Alexander, let's talk about the fog of war between Iran and Israel in this military
00:09conflict. And it is very difficult to get a clear picture as to what is happening.
00:17Trump posted on Truth Social a couple of days ago that the United States has, well, we, he said we,
00:25he said we have air superiority in the United States. He said we, which is an interesting
00:31choice of words. You're hearing that a lot now from the US government, even from people in Congress.
00:38They're saying we now a lot more, more often when referencing Israel and Iran. But he said we have
00:47air superiority. Does, does we, do we have air superiority as Trump puts it? Does the United
00:57States and Israel have air superiority? Because the news that I'm, I'm getting is that, that missiles
01:05are, are, are being launched from both sides and they're just doing, and a lot of damage is being
01:11done by both sides. What do you, what do you think is going on? Well, I, I, I get it. First of all,
01:18say, going back to the first part of your question, that there is a massive amount of misinformation
01:24and propaganda being spread by both sides. It is also the case that after the first day,
01:34when the big attacks happened, the Israelis launched their big strike on the night of the,
01:41uh, the 12th of June and over the course of the 13th of June, the Iranians then launched
01:48their big strike, um, on the, um, on the 13th of June and in the night. But ever since then,
01:55each side has been gradually tightening up its media control and the Iranians now have been clamping down
02:02on the internet. They've considerably reduced the internet coverage across Iran. And the Israelis
02:10are now imposing censorship, much more assertive censorship than they had, than they did previously.
02:16So all of this is creating a great deal of difficulty in understanding exactly what is going on.
02:21But you're absolutely correct. The reality is this, as far as I can tell,
02:27the Israelis are able to launch strikes against targets inside Iran. Now,
02:37there is some claims circulating that, in fact, these strikes are being launched mostly by Israeli
02:47air for aircraft operating outside Iranian airspace, that the Iranians, the Israelis fly close to
02:55Iranian airspace, but they don't enter Iran itself because the air defense system, the Iranian air
03:03defense system, uh, has to some extent got its act together over the last couple of days and that it's
03:10the strikes are being mostly conducted from Iraqi territory. And if you look at the map of where the
03:19strikes are the most of the Israeli strikes are, they seem to be overwhelmingly concentrated in Western Iran.
03:27And that is consistent with the strikes being carried out by Israeli aircraft operating from Iraqi airspace.
03:37The Iranians, the Israelis do send drones over Iran. And some of these are strike drones.
03:46But the Iranians finally seem to be succeeding in shooting some of these drones down.
03:52So there is that side. The Iranians for their part are able to launch missiles against Israel.
04:03And the Israelis were clearly very embarrassed by reports that were starting to appear over the last couple
04:09of days about the ineffectiveness of their air defense system. But the result is that they've tightened up
04:18very, very considerably. And they've been trying to spread stories playing down the significance
04:23of the Iranian strikes. But the fact is that the Iranian strikes are still continuing. And we are starting to get reports
04:33in the American media, in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, that the Israelis are indeed,
04:41exactly as we predicted on these programs, running out of air defense interceptors.
04:48So it may be that the reality is that the Israelis do not have the undisputed and unchallenged aerial
04:56dominance over Iran, that they are leading us all to think. And that the reality is that,
05:03yes, they can strike targets in Iran, but from a distance. And that Iran is able to strike targets
05:09at Israel, obviously from a distance also.
05:12Do you have any idea of Iran's situation with missiles?
05:18Nobody does.
05:19Nobody does.
05:20We have completely contradictory stories here. Some say that they have a stockpile of up to 40,000 missiles.
05:26I mean, I've seen that figure. Others say there's a stockpile of 3,000 or 2,000 missiles.
05:33Nobody knows. And the Iranians, for obvious reasons, are keeping this all very much to themselves.
05:40So we don't know. There is so much about the situation that we don't know. I'll give an example
05:47of the misreporting that there is. The Israelis said that they'd expected that in the first days of an
05:59attack on Iran, the Iranians would launch strikes and 5,000 Israelis would be killed. I'm going to say
06:05straight away, I don't believe that story. I don't believe that the Israelis ever imagined
06:10that they would lose that number of civilians in the first days of the battle, of any kind of battle
06:16with Iran. If they really believed that, they wouldn't have launched the battle in the first
06:20place. And what was the point of creating this elaborate air defense system if they really thought
06:26that was going to happen? Then they've also claimed that only 20 Iranian missiles have got through
06:34and only two drones have done so. But when you actually read the article that made that claim,
06:43they said only 20 Iranian missiles got through and hit civilian areas. So Iran isn't just striking
06:51civilian areas. They're also attacking military facilities. So even if that figure of 20 missiles
06:57getting through is true, it doesn't tell you all everything about what the Iranians might be hitting
07:06elsewhere in Israel. But how deep, how large Iranian capabilities are, I don't know. We have no
07:17information about that. But we do have some information from the American media, which I suspect is well
07:26sourced, that Israel is indeed starting to run out of air defense interceptors. That is the only piece
07:34of information that I would consider reliable out of all the masses of information we have seen over
07:40the last couple of hours. And one report said that the Israelis can keep up
07:49the level of air defense they have at the moment for roughly 12 more days. But after that,
07:55serious problems will begin. If Iran is able to continue to launch strikes, which we don't know.
08:03Yeah. So my final question is, Israel may have 10 to 12 days for as far as air defense and missiles go,
08:15but they have the United States at their back. So the next question is, how much does the US have,
08:23given everything they've poured into Ukraine and all around the world? Or how much are they willing to use
08:30in the Middle East? Well, they have a lot more than Israel does. I think that's the first thing to say.
08:36But they don't have that much. Now, they do have apparently, there are apparently roughly 3000
08:43Patriot missile interceptors available around the world. The trouble is, not all of them are controlled
08:52or in the ownership of the United States. Apparently, fewer than half of them are. Supposedly,
09:00if a missile is launched against a target, then you need two missile interceptors to have some
09:08confidence of being able to shoot it down. So let's say that the Americans have around 1200
09:16Patriot missile interceptors, then they can perhaps have some hope of shooting down, say,
09:24three to 600 missiles that Iran launches. But does Iran have those 300 to 600 missiles? I mean,
09:36I simply don't know. And the Americans also, of course, have enormous capabilities to strike
09:44missile launch facilities. It seems a lot of these missiles are being launched from underground silos,
09:51but the United States might be much better equipped to destroy those silos. So there's lots of
09:58uncertainties here. The United States also, of course, has a very large stockpile of cruise missiles
10:08missiles that it can launch against Iran. I mean, it can launch huge numbers of Tonahawks against Iran.
10:17But again, the stockpile of these is not unlimited, and they're expensive, and they're not easy to produce,
10:28and, you know, seal production of these cruise missiles. It's not unlimited. And Iran is an
10:35enormous country, as we've discussed many times. So one can imagine that if there's an aerial campaign
10:41against Iran, things will start to get depleted on the American side fairly quickly also. So, you know,
10:50the burn rate in these campaigns can be very high. And the US probably doesn't have the definite
10:59resilience in terms of burn rate, especially if we're talking about Tomahawk missiles. It needs to
11:06keep a significant inventory back in reserve in case it finds itself in conflict with China
11:16at some point in the next few years. So there are limitations on this.
11:21Yeah, exactly. There are limitations on all sides. Okay. We will end the video there at
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