Alexander Kovalenko: Israel Stretched Iran Into A Twine

• 16.06.2025, 20:10

The ayatollahs' regime may fall.

The Israel Defense Forces announced the end of a massive wave of airstrikes on Iran. Since Friday, some 250 strikes have been carried out against 720 targets on Iranian territory. What has been accomplished in that time? The website Charter97.org talked to Ukrainian military and political observer of the group "Information Resistance" Alexander Kovalenko about it:

- Iran's nuclear program has been stopped. As of today, we can say that all these endeavors that were made by Tehran in the matter of creating nuclear weapons have been set back not for years, but even for decades. So Israel has certainly achieved its primary goal.

Above all, it can already be said with certainty that Iran has lost its air defenses these days. Today Iran has no echeloned air defense, and the restoration of the lost systems will also take decades, as it is not a simple process for a sub-sanctioned country.

The more so that a significant part of Iran's air defenses were also Russian-made. And Russia itself now has big problems with both air defense production and air defense needs.

Now the process of destroying underground factories, underground factories for the production of ballistic missiles and other types of missile weapons in Iran is underway. I think Israel will achieve this goal over time as well. Of course, it is more difficult because underground facilities require a very different approach to destruction. Let's say, a longer one, if we compare it to the destruction of the same facilities of the nuclear program.

It is also worth noting the elimination of leaders, who, it would seem, could be very easily replaced by deputies and so on, but along with these leaders and deputies began to be eliminated. The heads of security agencies and scientists who took part in the nuclear program, whose replacement will be much more difficult than an average officer of even the highest rank. Iran will soon have serious problems with scientists who will be able to revive or restore the nuclear program.

And, of course, now we are also talking about Iran's oil and gas industry. Israel has warned that if there are retaliatory strikes on the country's territory, the IDF will destroy the oil and gas industry as well. And this is what we are now also seeing, so I absolutely do not rule out that in the finale of this whole operation we will see Iran not only without a nuclear program and without scientists, which also take decades to train. We will also see Iran without air defense, Iran without ballistic weapons, Iran without a military-industrial complex that was hiding underground, Iran without oil refineries and the energy producing industry in general.

- Can we talk about any innovations in terms of warfare on the example of the Israeli attacks and Iran's response?

- I can say that there was a complex of all the technologies and capabilities that the modern world provides for warfare. That is, it was not only a classic operation with strikes on air defense positioning points, with the use of aircraft, or also Israeli-made missiles. It was also strikes through the use of agent networks from the territory of Iran, from the territory of Iraq. Again, we recall Operation Web, using cheap drones to destroy more expensive pieces of equipment.

That is, everything was absorbed here: precision strikes on individual personalities, on their apartments, IRGC command staff, scientists, and so on. This is a complex action that absorbed many elements.

The first concentrated strike was aimed primarily at disarming Iran in order to leave it without the ability to cover its airspace. And today we see that Iran's airspace is open for the IDF Air Force to continue its operation.

- You have already said how we may see Iran in the near future. Is this the most likely scenario or are there any other scenarios?"

- Of course there are, there are different scenarios. One of them is the fall of the Ayatollahs' regime. I think it is quite realistic for the opposition and the heirs of the Shah overthrown in the 70s to return to power and the Islamic Republic of Iran to become a secular republic of Iran.

Israel has, shall we say, stretched Iran into a twine. Israel immediately warned that if there was a backlash, not only Iran's nuclear program but its entire oil industry would be destroyed. This is critical for Iran. And it simply cannot survive with a dead oil industry.

But Iran also could not help but respond, because it would be a humiliation, a serious reputational loss in the region. It would have completely lost any status at all, so it had to respond after all. The fact is that the absence of a response would still lead to an internal political conflict of the radicalized part of Iranian society, who would demand revenge, bloodshed and so on.

The acting authorities of Iran were forced to respond, but they were not forced, let's say, to continue this response. And they are continuing it. And this all leads to a scenario where it is no longer the internal political radical strata of Iranian society that will have any influence on all this, but will give opportunities and strength to the opposition structures, opposition cells.

The more so that in Iran the opposition has not been completely dealt with, it has not been completely eradicated, shot and imprisoned. And some resistance is still present.

I do not rule out that this operation may lead not only to all the above-mentioned consequences, but also to the fall of the ayatollahs' regime.