Is the Islamic Republic a messianic theocracy or a brittle dictatorship? It\u2019s neither \u2013 as those attacking it are finding out<\/p>\n
When the US and Israel launched coordinated strikes<\/a> against Iran on 28 February, the campaign was structured like a textbook air war: destroy defences, degrade retaliatory capabilities and decapitate leadership. Iranian air defences \u2013 already battered in last summer\u2019s war \u2013 were further dismantled to secure uncontested skies. Missile factories, drone infrastructure and naval assets were hit to erode Iran\u2019s ability to retaliate. And a steady cadence of precision strikes removed senior commanders in what amounted to a sustained attempt to disorient Tehran\u2019s decision-making.<\/p>\n From a purely operational perspective, the advantages have been stark. Once skies are open, the war becomes cheaper: plentiful, relatively inexpensive munitions can replace the long-range systems that defended airspace typically demands.<\/p>\n Ali Vaez is Iran project director and senior adviser to the president at the International Crisis Group<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is the Islamic Republic a messianic theocracy or a brittle dictatorship? It\u2019s neither \u2013 as those attacking it are finding out When the US and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran on 28 February, the campaign was structured like a textbook air war: destroy defences, degrade retaliatory capabilities and decapitate leadership. Iranian air defences \u2013 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}