Iran and America are at war. This is where I'd usually say Iran vs. the White Empire, but that's not where we are. 'Israel' is sitting this one out (with Beelzebub Smotrich saying as much) and the European rump states are getting spanked in Ukraine enough. The White Empire is divided amongst itself, if not yet conquered by the Resistance.

Background

This Iran War (calling it the American War wouldn't narrow it down) is what Bikrum Gill calls the first anti-imperial war. While White Empire lost in Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, et cetera, it nonetheless held together. This is not what's happening. The Whites barely set foot in Iran. They're on the backfoot in Kuwait, Bahrain, and now Jordan – the whole Greater Israel. The Empire is not merely failing in its attempts to recolonize Iran, it is flailing to hold its regional imps at all.

The Iran War is also the first smart-missile war. This is a shift as big as the smartphone (consider it Uber for bombs) and the White Empire is on the wrong side of it. Riding airplanes into battle today looks like riding horses. Why would you do that, when the missiles can fly themselves now? It's not just the cost difference (which is massive), it's the quality difference (which is an order of magnitude). Iranian missiles are better than American bombs. They're more accurate, they're more flexible, they're more hidden, and quantity is its own quality, of course. Using a billion dollar platform to launch a million dollar missile is like Nokia vs the iPhone. It might be bigger (for the moment) but that's not an advantage. We are in the age of smart-missiles, and America is a dinosaur used to dumb bombs.

The Missile Gulf

During the Cold War, the United States talked about a 'missile gap' with the Soviet Union. What is opening up against Iran is a missile gulf. Iran has lots of cheap missiles and drones and effectively endless productive capacity while America has a few, manufactured in bespoke quantities. Iran's missiles are stored underground, where it can conserve them, while America just parks assets in the open, and has to expend more missiles to conserve them. Thus the delta (the difference) gets exponentially wider as Iran destroys American positions while the Americans literally pound sand and try, like Xerxes, to whip the ocean.

If I was to graph it – which I won't because I'm on terrible hotel Wi-Fi in Shangrila – the missile gulf between American and Iran starts out small and then gets exponentially wider. America starts with stand-off missiles that they can use to blow up schools, but it's hardly what they specialize in. They specialize in dropping 'gravity' bombs on people without air defenses using manned aircraft. That's the battlefield they're used to, F-35 vs Toyota Hilux. However, Iran's good enough air defenses have made this approach too costly in terms of airframes. I'm not saying America couldn't gravity bomb Iran, but they'd take losses worse than Vietnam or WWII, which they no longer have the stomach (or reproductive organs) for. Iran has already destroyed multiple F-Frames, refueller tankers, and command-and-control AWACS, some on the ground. Thus America is dragged to a battlefield they are not specialized in – horizontal vs. vertical – and the missile gulf opens.

Missile warfare is precisely what Iran does specialize in. Iran barely has an Air Force, it's called an Aerospace Force in the IRGC. Iranians can do amazing things in vintage airframes (see the Kuwait strafing run) but their missile program is more modern than America's (see Kuwait, in general), both in terms of quantity and quality. When it comes to the missile domain, this is asymmetric warfare in Iran's favor. Iran bet the farm on missiles decades ago and now it's MQ-9 Reaper time. They reap what they sow. Furthermore, Iran's defensive requirements are very different. Its Aerospace Force operates from tunnel cities under literal mountains. Their launch platforms are (for many missiles) basically just trucks. America can only bomb the tunnel entrances, which a simple bulldozer can dig out. The key to guerrilla warfare is dragging the enemy to a battlefield of your choosing, which negates their advantages. This is what Iran has done. The missile gulf didn't just happen. Iran strategized it for years, stockpiled for decades, and now we're seeing the inevitable tactical result.

The missile gulf was, perhaps, not as apparent during the 40-Day War when America was able to commit massacres, assassinations, and chemical attacks on Tehran. But note that this isn't really happening anymore. Instead, they're reduced to strafing the coast and blowing up fishermen from afar. Over the 40-Day War, America was able to go band for band, but as they lose more and more land, they have less stuff to fire and less places to fire it from. This is why I say the gulf widens exponentially. When Iran hits missile systems, America has less, and when America tries to defend themselves with missiles, they have even less. Using two (or eight) missiles to shoot down one incoming makes the missile gap astronomically worse. Even if Iran doesn't hit, they attrit.

Now the missile gulf is yawning so much that Iran hitting American bases is boring. Staging areas in the Gulf Apostates were barely hit in the Iraq Wars, but now Iran is causing major drama going into reruns. Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, are getting hit again and again. And now Jordan and Saudi are being cleared of occupation, despite their satraps protestations. There is not a single US bases that hasn't been debased. These bases are not actually usable anymore, though they're still using them. And again, missile defenses do not solve this problem. That is solving your problem with more problem. They just make the missile gulf even more yawnsome.

Why is this happening? Because Iran spent decades planning for this war while America spent decades planning for forever war, everywhere, all at once. The American military is like a Swiss Army Knife. It has (almost) every possible type of weapon, but specializes in none of them. Thus America has standoff missiles, but only in the sense that a Swiss Army Knife has a knife. HIMARs and ATACMS are highly portable, usable systems, but they simply don't compare to purpose-built systems dug into mountains. America has brought a Swiss Army Knife to a knife fight.

This is not the age of the fighter jet. That concept is as antiquated as knights on horseback. We are in the age of missile and drone wars. This is also not the age of the aircraft carrier and aircraft hangar. We are in the age of tunnels and satellites, and anything you can see you can lose. We are also not in an age where someone 10,000 kilometers away can tell other people what to do. Nature is healing in that sense, and 500 years of white supremacy by sea and air are burning across the Persian Gulf. The most obvious sign is the missile gulf opening between Iran and America. As the Quran says, "there are indeed signs for people who use their reason."