All mainstream publications report that the intelligence community believes Iran retains most of its missiles to make the Iran War look stupid.
It’s nonsense.
First, as far as we know, these different leaks might all come from the same person talking to different reporters.
Second, these reporters want the war to look stupid because they hate Trump and Israel, so they just repeat whatever their sources tell them without asking for corroborating evidence or comments from government veterans who know how to read intelligence reports.
The dirty little secret is that most experienced policy professionals are skeptical of what the intelligence community produces because the intelligence community always has its own agenda. There is something called raw intelligence, which is all the information the intelligence community gathers from its spies, signal interceptions, satellite images, and so on.
The intelligence community is pretty good at gathering the raw data, but not very good at making conclusions. Seasoned government officials ask to look at the raw intelligence and make the conclusions for themselves for two reasons. First, the intelligence community has its own, strong policy preferences, and it skews the raw data to produce a report that pushes policymakers into doing what the community wants. Second, just because the intelligence community thinks something doesn’t mean it is true. By looking at the raw data, senior government officials avoid getting trapped in the intelligence community’s biases and blind spots.
One of these problems is damage estimates. Unless something is obliterated into a thousand pieces, the intelligence community will say that the enemy can still use it, even though it might not be usable at all.
When it comes to Iran’s missiles, these leaks claim that Iran still has access to 70% of its missile capabilities. If that is true, it is a strong argument that we should keep bombing Iran, right? But it is not true. (And to be clear, this is not a strong argument that we should no longer bomb Iran!)
Raw intelligence data might show a missile launcher with parts of it seriously damaged, but the core intact. That launcher, unless repaired, would not be able to do anything, but the intelligence community would count it in the 70 percent category that Iran has retained. Now, you might say that Iran could fix it. Sure, but also, Iran has lost up to 90 percent of its industrial capacity, so it will take a long time for Iran to be able to fix all of its damaged launchers.
This is just one example. In addition to its launchers, the United States and Israel also attacked Iran’s missiles. Some of those missiles blew up, but others might be dented or have their fuels neutralized. This makes them entirely useless. Even a small dent affects aerodynamics so much that it will not land anywhere near its intended target. But the intelligence community will count those as within Iran’s capacity because they might not see that dent or because there is no way to figure out from an image whether the fuel still works.
Also, a lot of these are based on wiretapping the conversations among Iran’s military officials. Iran has just dug into its storage and launch facilities that they had lost access to because of our hits. It will take a long time for the Iranians to find out whether those missiles and launchers still work. So the NSA might have intercepted a conversation where the Iranians just gained access to 100 missiles in some facility, with some lieutenant saying “they look alright,” and the final U.S. report will claim that Iran has 100 operational missiles.
Admiral Brad Cooper, who has been in charge of our operation against Iran, also appears skeptical. He told Congress that these reports are inaccurate, Iran retains only moderate, if not small, capacity left, and it has lost up to 90 percent of its industrial capacity, meaning that it will take a very long time for Iran to be able to restock its missiles and repair the damaged ones.
You might have gotten a New York Times alert last week that an intelligence report suggests that Iran retains access to 70% of its missiles. But I bet that you did not get a report stating that Admiral Cooper called the report inaccurate. In fact, if you went on the New York Times, Washington Post, or CNN website, you’d have to dig very deep to find an article reporting the admiral’s remarks. Why? Because they want the war to look like a failure.
I get that some people hate Trump, and I get that all journalists are Democrats. I just wish that they were not so blinded by partisan hatred that they would hope that we lose a war to Iran. But I also hope that I could win the lottery without buying tickets, and honestly the odds of that are better at this point.