Die atemberaubende Inkompetenz des Iran

Arash Azizi: “News of the Israeli attacks on Iran reached me in the United States just before 5 a.m. Tehran time. The city had been hit in multiple places, and strikes meant for Iran’s military commanders and nuclear scientists had brought down residential buildings across the city. So I figured my friends and family in the Iranian capital would be awake. I rushed to call.

“To my shock, I woke several of my relatives. They hadn’t heard anything. No sirens had sounded; there had been no rush to shelters. The number of civilian casualties so far seems to be relatively low, but every lost life hurts. Online, the stories circulate—of a young woman who loved cycling and ecotourism, of children found under rubble. I spoke with a friend whose close relative suffered a miscarriage last night, in her eighth month of pregnancy.

“Iranians have the right to condemn Israel for the attacks. But what was their own government doing to protect them?

“Everything about the June 13 attacks speaks to the Iranian regime’s incompetence. Israel was able to hit major nuclear and military sites all over the country in the space of a day. It has taken out dozens of high-ranking military and nuclear officials. The list includes Ali Shamkhani, one of the most powerful men in Iran’s military, political, and economic firmaments. Among other portfolios, he was in charge of Iran’s nuclear talks. Shamkhani was also a longtime commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the militia that undergirds the power of the Iranian regime. The IRGC lost its chief and several of its top commanders in the Israeli assault. Consider this: The Islamic Republic wasn’t even able to protect its own brass, let alone the people of Iran, to whom it has long shown nothing but contempt.

“The Iranian regime’s utter ineptitude is matched by a record of belligerent action and rhetoric. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the only world leader who celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel. His state armed Hamas and a host of other militias in the region. For years, he has promised to bring destruction to Israel. In 2018, faced with the first Trump administration, he gave an ominous double pledge: ‘There will be no war; nor will we negotiate with the U.S.;

“In the end, Khamenei was forced to negotiate and still couldn’t avoid war. Although the United States did not participate in the Israeli attacks, Donald Trump is now gloating about their success. The next round of talks between Washington and Tehran were scheduled for Sunday in Muscat; now Trump is telling Khamenei that he should have taken the president’s repeated threats more seriously and moved faster to reach an agreement.

“Israel has only just begun a long campaign—one that it says will go on for at least two weeks. Iran has promised harsh retaliation, but it has woefully few options. The last time its territory was attacked at such a scale was when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran, in 1980. Now the regime appears to be in shock, taking the time to lick its wounds before it acts.”

Read more: [https://theatln.tc/TK8sNAh0](https://theatln.tc/TK8sNAh0) 

I think their “incompetence” is yet to be seen.