Assuming the IAF can take out approximately half of this arsenal or the infrastructure necessary to deploy it, that leaves Khamenei with a very finite window of combat effectiveness. 2/x

It's already the case that most of Iran's SAM defenses have been destroyed and the IAF has established a full air superiority corridor as far as Tehran. 3/x

Combined the degradation in defensive capabilities and senior leadership, a reserve of only 1,000 or so missiles means that, at some point in the very near future, Iran will be entirely incapable of defending against or responding to Israeli attacks. 4/x

In other words, you're going to have an IAF airshow over Tehran, Fordo, etc. every night for months, with aircraft dropping bombs at will and for as long as it takes for nuclear infrastructure to be destroyed. 5/x

My assumption is that it won't come to that, however. IAF will start targeting economic infrastructure like oil fields, at which point China and Russia will start applying pressure on Tehran to take a deal -- any deal -- that Witkoff puts on the table. Probably much less

This is a foreign policy coup (metaphorically, folks, don't get too excited) by the Trump admin, applying the pedals of diplomacy and hard power expertly to achieve a negotiated result on favorable grounds. 7/x

As I mentioned earlier, this is a much different type of operation than most expected. Rather than a single, massive Shock-and-Awe blow to destroy the Iranian nuclear program in one night (something that would have been very, very hard to do), this is more deliberate. 8/x

Decapitate and defang the Khamenei regime, then take as long as you need at your leisure to systematically disassemble Iran's nuke program, all the while providing an off-ramp via negotiated terms with the US that get worse and worse the longer Iran tries to hold out. 9/9

One noteworthy postscript: None of this would have been possible without the crippling of Hamas and Hezbollah and the ouster of Assad's regime. Iran's only line of defense against an operation like this was the short-range missile threat those actors posed to Israel. Degrade