Mega Mullet: Iran War Forecast & System Models

SCENARIO SUMMARY:

In this scenario forecast, explained in detail below across seven phases (one slide per phase), US and Israeli airpower begins an attack by conducting anti-air operations in Iran quickly shifting to decapitation strikes. Their goal is regime change meaning they want to begin attacking Basij and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) positions so that popular uprisings and/or ethnic insurgencies become emerging state actors capable of conducting sustained irregular warfare against regime forces.

However, Iran begins counter-punching by launching barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at targets across the region. Aircraft flying into Iran might be shifted away to hunting launchers vs. hunting regime leadership or military units. Also, airpower was probably held in reserve to augment ground-based interdiction. This is probably why the initial strikes in Iran were numerous, probably over 200 sorties, but not as much as the combined force is likely capable of at 500+ sorties/day. The remaining aircraft were positioned to try and absorb these barrages and waves.

This is where we’re at now today on Sunday, with Iran ‘probing’ the defenses as US and Israeli airpower continue to try and eliminate their launchers. Where they find weakness, expect ‘large’ barrages (much bigger than current) to see if they can hit a heavy blow with a large casualty count or significant infrastructure damage.

Over the next few days watch for Iran activating its remaining ‘counter-punch’ capability, which is the regional proxies in Hezbollah, Iraqi PMF, and Houthi militias. Each of these are independent, yet backed and aligned to Iran, and may choose to support (or not) Iran. But all of them have different abilities to add complexifying factors to the rocket and missile barrages.

When that happens, it will basically be a war of attrition in terms of the missile/rocket/drone stocks of Iran and its proxies (and the launchers to launch them) and the interdictor supplies and op tempo capabilities of the US, Israeli, and possibly even GCC air forces to keep up with the attacks.

This is why the war, barring a negotiated end, will likely last longer than a week, and could last two weeks in this phase. If the US or Israel run out of supplies, which is unlikely but possible, they may seek terms under pressure of rising civilian casualties.

More likely, Iran and its proxies will gradually run out of counter-punch capabilities. The US and Israel will be able to shift more and more airpower and rockets and missiles of their own to targeting both C2 and fighting capabilities of the Basij and IRGC. Only when these are eroded low enough will we start seeing popular uprisings and ethnic insurgencies taking the fight to depleted units. This may take weeks of air power to get to this point.

In the final phase of this forecast, again assuming this continues without negotiation or abandonment. As the popular uprisings and ethnic insurgencies mix with weakened military units – they can militarily kit of their own and gradually form up experience in tactics and organizations. Expect many different factions to emerge, more like Libya or Syria. The airpower support will become more close combat, supporting local indigenous resistance forces perhaps with embedded air liaisons calling in US close ground support missions during direct confrontations. This last one may last weeks or years, ending when the regime capitulates and collapses (which took ten years in Syria), public support from US or Israel for continued operations erodes (which took 20 years in Afghanistan but may be quicker so soon after), and/or the emerging state actors are considered sufficiently strong to continue irregular warfare against the state on their own. Barring a collapse of the regime, such an internal conflict would effectively become a multi-sided civil war in Iran, akin to Syria, lasting potentially years.

Caveats up front – this is not a judgement on the soundness of starting a war with Iran or the ultimate efficacy of regime change. This is a systems analysis to understand the layering and phases such a war might go through and why it’s going to last much longer than previous regional strikes. Closer to sustained intensity and focus of a sustained air campaign of weeks such as in Gulf War I or the invasion of Iraq, the Bosnian or Sarajevo air campaigns etc. The analysis is presented as a modeled forecast in phases, and like all models and forecasts, likely wrong on details, but hopefully useful in general.

Blue = the US, Israel and partner allies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)

Red = Iran and its partner proxies in Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas

The forecast is made with certain assumptions and end goals that align with publicly stated objectives. I understand one can argue “but this is all a distraction of the Epstein Files!” or “this is a distraction from the Oracle healthcare merger!” But this is not that argument. I’m modeling the publicly stated national security objectives. Doing so not only provides some use for the current case, but models a general case of a kind of warfare that may become increasingly likely as we shift into rocket/missile/drone heavy countries facing off against airpower and interdiction heavy ones.

The US/Israel end-goal is to accomplish sustained regime change in Iran *without* the use of their own conventional ground forces. To accomplish this, they need to decapitate the regime and degrade both the Basij and IRCG who are used to suppress both popular uprisings and armed ethnic insurgencies of the Kurdish or Balochi. The US/Israel end-goal is achieved if any one, or more of these groups, advance to become emerging-state actors capable of sovereign control of territory and irregular warfare against the Iranian government, at which point emerging state actor hypothesis dynamics take over (see source in first comment.)

The Iranian end-goal is simply to survive as an intact regime within the current borders of Iran. If they can force US/Israel to withdraw *prior* to the establishment of sustainable emerging-state actors competing with the regime, they have achieved their end-goal. In this forecast even losing regional proxies would be accepted if the regime itself survives strong enough to suppress internal dissent and maintain itself.

A key assumption is that the Iranian regime (Red) operates in an institutional manner, versus charismatic, and thus no single charismatic leader is the lynchpin for the country, the death of which would accomplish decapitation. Additionally, these institutions and military units are capable of operating in disaggregated manner maintaining loyalty, cohesion, and capability to regime interests until they are individually stopped. Decapitation and communication interruption will impact the ability to coordinate for maximum effectiveness or issue new orders, but it will not cause a regime collapse.

The forecast makes two key assumptions on air power. The first is that there is not enough to do everything simultaneously. Even with two air craft carriers, a wing of planes from UK, B-2’s staged to strike, the Israeli Airforce and possible partner GCC countries – there is never enough. The second assumption is that wherever US/Israel (Blue) airpower targets it destroys. This isn’t a binary switch of “total obliteration” that by allocating airpower to launcher hunting all launchers will get destroyed immediately. What it means though is that if that a launcher is identified, located, and targeted by airpower sortie that deploys – that launcher is going to be eliminated. Same for proxy assets. This generally reflects the conventional competitive realities of US and Israeli ISR and airpower versus Iranian and proxy defenses. It’s simplified, because contingency always matters, but in simplification reduces the operational nature of this forecast to a simple question. “How do Blue commanders prioritize different threats that emerge at different phases of the war and allocate airpower accordingly?”

Phase simultaneity– finally the forecast is presented in phases for simplicity of the reader. But these phases can all exist simultaneously to varying degrees, overlapping one another with weighted phase states.

The initial phase, as with any air power war, consists of suppression of enemy air defenses (SAED) missions to destroy and suppress red force radars, communications, and anti-air batteries and sites. This Phase was mostly accomplished by Israel during the 12-Day war of the summer, and to the extent it mattered on Saturday morning, probably only lasted a few minutes to a few hours.

After SAED and air dominance is established, both Israel and US appeared to have shifted to regime decapitation strikes. Indeed, it was the opportunity of a targeting window to hit the Grand Ayatollah and several military commanders by surprise, identified by Israel, that probably led the US to agree to launch the attacks even as negotiations continued. This isn’t as much ‘wagging the dog’ as Israel did with US interests last summer; where it appears, the US jumped in at the end to execute its long developed Fordow destruction mission after Israel cleared all defenses. But it is still an example of Israel basically leading the US’s determination on when and how warfare will begin.

But all sides have now admitted the Grand Ayatollah was killed, and in addition the Defense Council Secretary, the Chief of the Armed forces, several major generals, the Chief of Intelligence, and a handful of other high ranking military officials. If this were Saddam’s Iraq, that might be enough to collapse it. But Iran, at least in my operating assumptions, is an institutionalist authoritarian regime. That means that institutions can survive the removal of an individual in the leadership and are capable of operating both without leadership and elevating new temporary or permanent leadership to replace losses. Think of the Catholic Church. Certainly, killing the Pope would be a blow, but it wouldn’t ‘eliminate the Catholic Church.’ There’s still the College of Cardinals that can elect a new Pope, and much like that there’s a Supreme Shura Council of high-ranking Mullahs who can elect the next Grand Ayatollah. But even if you killed all the Cardinals in the College, you wouldn’t ‘eliminate’ Catholicism and likewise killing all the Mullahs in the Supreme Council wouldn’t eliminate the religious orders that are networked throughout the regime. Same for the military institutions – including the IRGC, the semi-autonomous QODS special forces within them, and the Basij. Each of these ‘institutions’ is the result of an interlocking network of relationships, continuity plans, and reconstitution capabilities. Remember, Iran came into being through revolution against the superior power of the Shah and then fought a long existential war against Iraq for ten years. It’s spent the last twenty years with imperialist ambitions under former QODS Commander General Soleimani, the so called “Shadow Commander” of the middle east who developed extensive expeditionary and proxy capability for Iranian units to operate dispersed across the middle east during the war in Iraq, the Syrian Civil War, in Yemen, even in Afghanistan.

This is reflected in the system pattern by showing how decapitation airstrikes can reduce Red’s command & control (C2) from its normal levels, but the effective levels are a combination of that decapitation offset by their preparation to operate in disaggregated ways. And there’s good evidence that they are doing that as I’ll discuss below in Phase III.

In a ‘perfect’ world from the Blue perspective, regime decapitation would be accompanied by close air support to suppress Basij and Iranian Republican Guard Corps (IRGC) forces, and we saw some of that targeting yesterday 28 FEB and today 1 MAR. In the system map this is shown as a double-fronted investment capacity and growth structure. These structures are useful for understanding how linked negative loops can operate as a series of “switches” turning on or off the positive growth feedback loop. In this case the two fronts are the two means by which the Iranian regime faces internal threat: popular uprisings and ethnic insurgencies. In normal conditions, both are suppressed by specific forces. The popular uprisings are suppressed by Basij and the ethnic insurgencies by the IRGC. As long as the regime can invest capabilities into these two forces, the negative or balancing switch sequence is set into the “suppress” condition sufficient to keep any uprising or armed insurgency from becoming an emerging state actor. Close combat ground support or operational strikes against these capabilities, as well as the degradation of the regimes’ ability to invest, erodes these capabilities.

This dynamic is key for understanding the ‘change’ part of ‘regime change.’ In order to enact regime change, these two forces must be reduced *low* enough that popular resistance groups and ethnic insurgencies feel safe enough to grow in size. Under normal conditions, like in early January, a popular uprising or separatist movement gets crushed. So, people learn not to challenge the regime. This is the causal mechanism of regime change. Reduce these two forces sufficiently through regime decapitation that they break apart or actual strikes to the point popular uprisings and ethnic insurgencies can both grow and survive – they might last long enough to acquire organization, manpower, weapons, and tactics. Because that’s the key problem of regime change without boots on the ground, you have to rely on the forces in country. And while the armed ethnic insurgencies are armed (hence the clever naming) the popular uprisings are not. Much like in Libya and Syria, the only way popular uprisings are going to arm themselves and form into military units is through seizing weapon caches of overrun units, having units abandon their materiel as they flee, or in rare cases defections of units to the resistance side. Only once they have a good supply of weapons and equipment can these groups begin taking ground from the state and engaging in the initial key dynamics of shifting from an armed uprising or insurgency to an actual emerging-state actor with the power to threaten a regime.

If we stopped at Phase II, it would be a one-sided fight where US and Israeli forces just conduct unopposed airpower campaigns until the Red force is at or approaching capitulation. The only limit being their operational tempo and resupply. This was essentially the air war strategies of both the Gulf War and the Iraqi invasion.

Iran, learning from those conflicts and having years to prepare, has created counter-punch capability in a combination of rockets, missiles, and drones. They can send these combinations in waves of barrages targeting US and Israeli military, as well as civilian targets, in a host of countries. These barrages are like a Russian nesting doll of numbers of games.

The smallest numbers game compares the size and diversity of vehicles sent in a barrage to inundate a target with the number and quality of interceptors available to defend that target. Rockets, missiles, and drones have different ranges, speeds, payloads, and costs. Generally, interceptors like the THAAD or Patriot systems are more expensive than all of those. But it’s better to use a costly interceptor on a ballistic missile capable of wreaking havoc than a cheap drone with a 100lb payload. Iranians launch barrages mixing all three hoping expensive interceptors are used on cheap drones, of which they have thousands and can launch from anywhere, while the ballistic missiles get through. Or maybe some of the earlier barrages are all drones, hoping to soak up the interceptor inventory which is difficulty and takes significant time to resupply.

Yesterday I saw a shift to this phase a few hours after the attack. Whereas in past attacks Iran would signal a symbolic, time delayed, and easily countered single wave – yesterday the gloves came off. They fired multiple barrages at targets across the region: Israel, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, KSA, and Iraq. And the barrages came in waves, sometimes in one or two, and sometimes in regular waves every few hours. But this isn’t all that Iran can, or could, fire. It felt more like a combination of disaggregated units, cut off from C2 by the decapitation strikes operating on pre-directed orders and a kind of ‘probing attack’. Hoping to soak up some of those expensive interceptors with cheap stocks and find weak areas in the defensive nets across this vast region of conflict.

The end-goal of these barrages is to create enough regional casualties and infrastructure damage to shift the allocation of airpower moving the conflict into Phase IV.

In this phase Iranian regional barrages creates a need to reallocate airpower from decapitation and enemy force targeting to defensive roles. That defensive OODA loop I’ve been talking about. In this role airpower is held on reserve and joins ground-based defense systems with mobile airpower to create the most optimal way of taking down incoming rockets, missiles, and drones. Or airpower is on standby for detection of ballistic missile launch from Iran’s limited supply of launchers and then go in to eliminate those.

This creates a cat and mouse game for mobile launchers (and cat-got-mouse game for fixed launchers), which quickly become fixed craters. This is the second nested numbers game in the Russian doll. The mobile launchers can shoot and scoot – hoping to not be there when the airpower arrives. And this is why the regional barrages yesterday came in periodic waves, rather than a continuous stream.

Iran only has an estimated 150-200 mobile launchers for its main ballistic missiles, and maybe 1,500 missiles. So, each ‘wave’ is only going to be a subset of those two, because some of the launchers (having just fired last wave) are now scooting and hiding, while others are getting into position. This is also why drones have become a popular armament for Iran. They can be launched from just about anywhere, fly to their target in novel routes with some maneuverability, and crowd up the radar space of the interceptor and interdiction aircraft.

In the amoral calculus of this game of numbers a win is using a $20-$35M aircraft and a $500k-$1m aircraft missile to shoot down a $5k drone. Iran is suspected to have a stock pile of 5,000 drones. And other than expensive interdictors and air-based missiles there’s no real good counter to them. Doom fantasies aside, shotguns don’t really work, and they can just maneuver around gun emplacements. The payload isn’t huge, but against a soft civilian target can generate a lot of damage.

This is pretty much where the war is at right now. The game of numbers of waves of barrages at different locations across the Gulf – which are impossible to all cover at the same level, probing for weaknesses and hoping to deplete inventories of interdictor and interceptor stocks. And the cat and mouse game of airpower versus launchers in Iran trying to reduce the ability to fire the most concerning armament, the ballistic missile.

What comes next, however, is Iran activating it’s second layer of counter-punch capability.

Despite Hamas’s near obliteration by Israel, Iran’s other regional proxies remain strong and dangerous. Hezbollah has thousands of fighters and tens of thousands of rockets and drones capable of adding their own barrage waves to those of Iran targeting Israel and Jordan. The Houthis in Yemen have proven capable of launching drones both at Israel, Gulf States, and American naval vessels with varying results. And the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, Shia based militias backed for years by Iran, are interwoven into the fabric of the Iraqi military structure but retain some loyalties to Iran. Numbering in the tens of thousands these PMF can physically reach out and touch US bases with terrorist or direct attacks, as well as targeting them with drones or rockets.

Each of these regional proxies are not simply at the beck and call of Iran as if this were a Command & Conquer RTS. They have their own interests, motivations, and agency in actions. Hezbollah, for example, has so far stayed out of the fight, pledging solidarity with Iran but not yet attacking Israel. (UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, even as I was posting the sources in first comment, Hezbollah activated with rocket salvos against Israeli from Lebanon.) The Iraqi PMF’s on the other hand have already begun targeting US bases with rocket attacks. These proxy forces may attack independently or try and blend in with local protests targeting US embassies and consulates. They may also attack non-US targets, which are less well defended, hoping to create casualties and infrastructure damage that compels the US and Israeli forces to divert airpower away from Iran towards proxy-hunting missions.

If the war continues, and Iran can motivate them, expect the proxies to continue to activate and add another layer of threat for the Blue coalition to consider over the remaining week ahead, leading to Phase VI.

Very similar to launcher hunting, airpower assets are now further pulled from offensive OODA Loop operations inside Iran and used to stop proxy attacks in progress or retaliate against those who launched them. This spreads the peanut butter pretty thin across all regions in range of the proxies and this is where additive complexity begins to potentially strain Blue resources. With barrage waves coming in from Iran, proxy attacks launching, and their own fatigue from tempo mistakes and lapses will occur. However, this is also where superior US and Israeli military technology come into place. A single F-35 operating in a networked oversight role is designed for this kind of complexity, giving that single aircraft a C2 on their immediate environs similar in sophistication, if not personnel of traditional AWACS. It will be the first real test of this highly networked conventional capability in a sustained manner after most of the 21st Century being focused on asymmetric concerns like counter-IED and tech for foot patrols.

This Phase will continue for a few weeks and basically runs until one side quits and accepts a ceasefire, or becomes exhausted and unable to continue the tempo, withdrawing. The most likely state to do that first is Iran, meaning the war now shifts to Phase VII.

Assuming Iran’s ability to fire barrages and activate proxies is exceeded, and fades, then all US and Israeli airpower and missile capabilities can be directed back towards Iran. This begins to look more like the air campaigns of the first Gulf War, against Sarajevo, the invasion of Iraq etc. Sustained day-after-day bombings and targeting of C2 and any military unit foolish enough to pop its head up.

This phase could take weeks or months. But at some point the Basij and IRGC will be perceived as too weak to oppose popular uprisings and ethnic insurgencies, or there will be no apparent appetite for uprisings or insurgencies to occur. In the latter case, the Blue forces of US and Israel will have to accept a limited end-condition; the significant degradation of Iranian regime and military capabilities, without the regime change they sought after.

However, if popular uprisings do occur and/or ethnic insurgencies gear up then this phase may eventually shift to an emerging-state actor dynamic. Indicators will be unarmed resistance groups overrunning weakened or abandoned military positions and seizing the armaments, or defector units passing them around. Armed factions will arise around regional and ethnic interests. These may fight one another but will primarily be focused on protecting themselves and attacking the regime. As some of these factions gain sovereign space, territories that the Iranian regime can no longer effectively operate in, day or night, they will become in effect emerging-state actors. Beginning their own forms of governance and coordination, as if they were a state government. The dynamic from there is longer than this already long forecast, but I’ll link some papers in the comments about how that plays out.

So, to review a few end game scenarios in this forecast, ordered from least likely to most likely areare:

1) A complete collapse of the regime under Phase VII attacks or even earlier decapitation strikes or calls for ‘surrender’ of the IRGC. This would be only a partial win condition for the US as the creation of a large power vacuum, with no clear armed (or unarmed) successor groups capable of filling it. I find this very unlikely for reasons discussed above. Iran is a government of institutions, rather than individuals, and probably has more staying power and experience operating in disaggregated fashion, and has prepared for this, than Trump anticipates.

2) Iran counter-punches exceed regional and US/Israeli domestic appetite for another forever war and pressure on the Blue Forces (US and Israel) to disengage with the Iranian regime intact. This is a clear win condition for the Iranian regime. I don’t think its probable because neither President Trump nor Prime Minister Netanyahu strike me as willingly taking the L when they can use their militaries in defiance of regional, and even global, condemnation if such arises.

3) The US and Israel coalition exhausts Iranian counter-punches and succeed in sparking popular uprisings and ethnic insurgencies. These result in emerging-state actor dynamics that topple, or at least tangle, the Iranian regime significantly reducing its power and projection capability for years to come. What plays out looks like the Syrian Civil War, lasting for years or more of conflict before a final resolution. If Iran cannot maintain it’s counter-punch and the US and Israel are determined to keep striking until uprisings or insurgencies occur, this is a probable if grim, scenario.

4) The US and Israel coalition exhausts Iranian counter-punches but fail to spark popular uprisings or ethnic insurgencies after several months. This is the most likely scenario. Iran has regularly killed off thousands of organizers and leaders who would be needed to launch a protest, the most recent just several months ago. Without offering ground support, or even arms shipment, Trump’s call for “YOLO!” is going to be hard to generate sustained enthusiasm for. Both sides take a partial win condition. For the US and Israel, they will have set Iran back years. For Iran, the regime survives. Israel gets a head of sovereign state notch on their ‘killed abroad’ list. Trump gets to claim he ‘beat’ Iran, even if conditions don’t change for the regime and it looks more like Venezuela than anything else.

5) The sides break off combat operations suddenly under auspices of a ceasefire and negotiation. This is the most likely scenario, but only after the end of this week. Iran cannot let the death of the Grand Ayatollah go unpunished and neither President Trump nor Netanyahu can look ‘soft’ for having risked so much. However, this is exactly how the 12-Day War ended. Face-saving combat on both sides waning rapidly to a ceasefire and a period of negotiations. I’m not the only one capable of doing analyses like these and there’s very few win conditions available to either side without a long heavy drawn-out slog…so it may just be better to invent new win conditions and negotiate for those.