checked what kind of stuff the Polish osint guy was saying yesterday...
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With Russian help, Syria had well developed anti-air capabilities under Assad. Israel destroyed all of it half a year ago after the coup. Iraq has no anti-air capabilities and they recently complained to the UN about Israeli planes illegally using their airspace but of course no one in the 'international community' is doing anything about that.
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A while ago Iran bought an unknown amount of Su-35S fighter planes from Russia and 4 to 6 were delivered in March 2025 but Iranian air force pilots still haven't finished training on them. Israel has showed some footage of damaged Iranian F-14s but apparently they already weren't in a flying state anyway. Iran's planes are generally dated (F-14, F-4, MiG-29).
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About destroying Iran's anti air capabilities early on in the war.. Iran's most advanced radar/anti-air warning systems were destroyed by Israeli commandos using FPV drones and Spike NLOS missiles. This and some other attacks on long range radio location stations created holes in Iranian coverage which Israeli F-35s entered and fired off some special anti-radio location missiles to damage other anti-air targets (I'm not clear on this part). Only after all that, they sent in F-15D and F-16I Sufa planes to attack other targets. Aside from that, plane hangars, runways, and anti-air command centers were all damaged (for example runways in Kermanshah and Mashhad).
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Iran shot down an expensive Israeli Hermes 900 drone and a few smaller things but there's currently no proof of Israeli planes being shot down.
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Iran has a wide assortment of ballistic missiles (like Sejjil or Emad), they've been preparing to defend against a US/Israel attack for a long time. There are between 10 and 20 underground 'missile cities' in Iran with missile launchers inside set up like a conveyor belt. In the first few days of the war Iran was launching 40-50 ballistic missiles and now it's at 10-20, they also recently started using the newer ones like Fattah and Sejjil. Initially the Israeli interception rate was 85-90%, but the rate didn't increase when the missile count went down to 10-20. The interception rate during the last strikes on Be'er-Sheva and Tel Aviv was 65%. Iran is assuming this is going to be a long war so they used their oldest missiles first and those were easier to intercept because they're less technologically advanced. Plus Iranian engineers are constantly making improvements to the tech as the war goes on.
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Some photos of the interior of the underground missile bases:
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Some Israeli military and dual use locations where we have visual proof that Iranian strikes did damage:
- Ben Gurion airport (shut down/passenger planes moved to Turkey).
- Tel Nof airbase (tech zone hit/anti-air hit).
- Palmachim airbase (tech zone hit/anti-air hit).
- The Mossad building (lots of equipment burned).
- IDF C4I cyber command headquarters.
- Weizmann Institute of Science (completely destroyed/killed some scientists too based on obituaries).
- Rafael weapons factory in Haifa.
- Haifa refinery (few hits/disabled).
- Haifa power plant.
- Be'er-Sheva Tech Park (used for software development for drones).
- Soroka Medical Center (military hospital/there are also other military objects around this building).
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One Chinese Il-76 transport plane landed in Iran, but only once apparently (or one every day? I couldn't tell), equivalent of '4 trucks worth' of goods, not known what but it's not much overall.
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A Chinese intelligence gathering ship has entered the Persian Gulf but that's fairly common behavior during wars because during war planes will emit extra signals and it's valuable info to capture, for example to help with signal jamming.
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The Fordo facility in Iran is 100m deep and the US's GBU-57 MOP bomb has a reach of between 40m (if rock mass/granite) or 60m (if reinforced concrete). Some experts are arguing the US would have to drop a second bomb into the crater of the first one. It weighs 13-14 tonnes so only a B-52 or a B-2 can carry it. In Yemen the US used B-2s to drop these.
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Some US military being re-positioned: 3 US carriers (and with them their accompanying 'carrier groups' I guess..), 40 Boeing KC-10s, 15-20 F-22 Raptors, a few dozen F-35s moved from Europe (for example the Aviano air base in Italy), some F-16s moved from bases in the UK, 4 B-52s moved to Diego Garcia, and some B-2s could be joining them soon. One air base in Saudi Arabia currently has around 150 US planes. A UK carrier also got moved.
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The way it's going he expects the US will enter the war soon, as soon as Saturday night this weekend.
