Who Really Won The '12-Day War'?

Author’s Note: This investigation was originally published by MintPress News, a crusading independent media outlet well worth your time, and consideration. It is reproduced here with kind permission.

On June 13th, Tel Aviv launched a criminal, unprovoked military strike on Iran. Israeli jets bombed military and nuclear sites, while in-country Mossad-run sleeper cells carried out sabotage missions against air and missile defense systems, and drones smuggled into Tehran were launched against local missile launch bases. Scores - figures vary - of nuclear scientists and high-ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, and their families, were murdered with pinpoint precision. Chaos and uncertainty appeared to reign supreme.

Israeli officials were so exhilarated with these early results, they talked a big game on where their operation would lead, making several incendiary boasts along the way. They spoke of operating in Iranian airspace without hindrance, invited the U.S. to get formally involved with the “elimination” of Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, and anonymously briefed the media “a multi-faceted misinformation campaign” - in which Donald Trump was an “active participant” - had been conducted “to convince Iran that a strike on its nuclear facilities was not imminent.”

Internationally-wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu menacingly forecast on June 15th Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran “could certainly” produce regime change, as the government was “very weak”, and “80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out.” However, a hard-hitting response to his insurrectionary premonitions, and the Zionist entity’s military strike, quickly arrived from Tehran in the form of a wave of missile attacks. Wreaking unprecedented damage on Tel Aviv and Haifa, the impact on military installations is difficult to assess due to strict internal censorship.

Visibly though, Iran’s bombardments sent Israelis scurrying for shelter, while many others fled the country outright. Such was the exodus - from an entity that has already suffered mass depopulation ever since October 7th 2023 - the Israeli government scrambled to implement legally questionable bans on its citizens leaving. By June 19th, officials in Tel Aviv were no longer possessed of any braggadocio, and the Western media was publishing explainer guides to why Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome air defense system was failing to repel Iranian strikes. 

Iran’s unmolested battering of Israel continued apace until June 22nd, when the U.S. officially entered the war. Iranian nuclear sites Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz were targeted, allegedly using heavy duty B-2 bombers that dropped literally earth-shattering bunker busters. Trump bragged Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated”, and Tehran struck an unmanned U.S. base in Qatar in response. Iran and Israel then traded missile barrages - which inflicted significantly greater damage on the latter - for two more days, before agreeing to a ceasefire.

So far, the ceasefire holds - in the meantime, U.S. claims of having damaged, let alone destroyed, Iran’s nuclear facilities have quickly unravelled, as have Israeli allegations the June 13th strike was an urgent necessity conducted as Iran was on the imminent verge of acquiring nukes. In fact, as the dust settles, it is becoming increasingly clear the so-called “12 Day War” was long in the making, and an unmitigated disaster for Tel Aviv and Washington, with wide-ranging ramifications for the region and beyond.

“Netanyahu wanted to incite regime change in Tehran, while drawing the U.S. into a wider war. He failed on both counts, and now Iran is stronger, its citizens more united with one another, and behind their government,” Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada cofounder, tells MintPress News. “This has enormous implications for West Asia, and the world. Israel proved itself more vulnerable than ever. Tehran, while still facing enormous dangers from determined enemies, proved itself far more resilient than its adversaries expected.” 

‘Burning Through’

“Meanwhile, as many Iranian commentators note,” Abunimah says, another deleterious upshot of the fiasco is “Western-oriented segments of Iranian society have been left disillusioned - or even discredited - by Washington’s brazen deceit.” Bragging about how Trump’s nuclear negotiations were a ruse “means not only Iran but many other countries globally will never again trust U.S. diplomacy.” Still, he believes Washington and Tel Aviv’s “efforts to destroy” Iran shan’t cease, and could intensify. 

For the time being, Tehran has made clear it will observe the ceasefire, and only strike back if it is attacked again. As Ali Abunimah records, “some have criticized Iran for not linking a ceasefire to Israel ending the Gaza genocide.” However, he believes “such a demand could’ve triggered serious U.S. aggression, rather than the meaningless strikes that happened, and civilians could’ve ended up in the firing line.” Besides, Abunimah concludes:

“Tehran has never envisaged direct defeat via a single blow, but wearing Israel down. The Resistance, including Iran, is the weaker side in an asymmetrical war, facing the full might of the US-led Western empire. Ironically, although Israel started this war, it advanced the Resistance's objective. Israel appears weak, unstable, and unsafe, while totally reliant on foreign support in a world where it is more hated than ever after nearly two years of its livestreamed genocide in Gaza.”

Tyler Weaver, a U.S. military veteran who runs a popular ‘X’ account publishing military analysis and commentary, echoes Abunimah’s analysis. “Iran demonstrated a consistent capability to pierce Israeli missile defenses and damage or destroy Israeli infrastructure and combat systems - several IDF air defense missile batteries were struck and destroyed,” he observes. And while Iran may not have secured an outright victory against its attackers, “Israel sure lost” the 12 Day War. 

“This was their ‘big show’ against Iran, and its results did not meet the effort expended. The most effective weapon the Israelis had wasn’t their vaunted Air Force, but instead an elaborately constructed attack network inside Iran courtesy of Mossad - which is now gone, and likely cannot be reconstructed,” Weaver tells MintPress News. “Infrastructure can be repaired, weaponry can be replaced, but they’re not going to be able to rebuild anything like that network again.” 

On the subject of replacing weaponry, Israel’s grand, catastrophic scheme to crush the Islamic Republic employed an extraordinary amount of munitions at astronomical cost. A former financial adviser to the IDF’s chief of staff estimates just the first 48 hours of Tel Aviv’s botched campaign cost $1.45 billion, with almost $1 billion spent on defensive measures alone. Meanwhile, government economists place the daily cost of military operations at $725 million.

Tel Aviv was reportedly running perilously low on missile interceptors within five days, despite the U.S. having been aware of “capacity problems” for months prior, and spending intervening months “augmenting Israel’s defenses with systems on the ground, at sea and in the air.” This in turn has created “concern about the U.S. burning through interceptors” within the Pentagon. As a July 2024 report by Department of Defense-funded RAND starkly concluded, Washington has no capability to replenish such munitions at any pace or scale.

Elsewhere, Haaretz calculates civilian and domestic financial damage inflicted on Israel by the 12 Day War could run to billions of dollars. Thousands of citizens have been left homeless, with reconstruction costs estimated in the hundreds of millions, while most industries were shuttered throughout, further enfeebling Tel Aviv’s already barely-functional economy. In sum, the ability of Israel to sustain a longer, more intense conflict against Iran militarily or monetarily, and the U.S. to supply necessary weaponry, is questionable to say the least.

‘Idiotic Decision’

Fears of a protracted war may well have stirred Trump to carry out strikes against Iran, in order to bring the conflict to a close. This interpretation is greatly reinforced by a high-ranking Iranian official claiming the White House gave Tehran advance notice of the bombings, insisting they were intended as a “one-off”, opening the door for a “symbolic” Iranian counterattack, and cessation of hostilities. Western media outlets have also reported securing an “off-ramp” for all belligerents was the President’s goal.

Despite these disclosures, Trump has repeatedly avowed in typically brash style the June 22nd attack on Iran was decisive, and “one of the most successful military strikes in history.” His bombast was gravely undermined by a New York Times article the day of the strike, quoting a nameless “senior U.S. official” as saying Iran’s “heavily fortified” nuclear facilities weren’t destroyed, but merely hit sufficiently to take them “off the table.”

Even this more modest assessment was undercut significantly on June 25th, when CNN exposed the damning findings of a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. It concluded U.S. strikes on Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz “did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months.” These observations were reinforced by multiple knowledgeable sources, who said “Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed,” having been moved prior to the attack, and the complexes’ centrifuges remain largely “intact”.

Weaver, who has studied photo and video evidence of the 12 Day War extensively, concurs “there’s little indication” the Iranian nuclear sites were “meaningfully damaged.” What can be detected from satellite imagery on-the-ground “is simply inconsistent with the use of earthquake bombs as claimed by Trump and the Pentagon.” Weaver notes there are numerous other highly implausible aspects of mainstream accounts and White House claims of how the attack was perpetrated, and what it achieved.

Satellite photo of Fordrow

For example, the strike “passed entirely under the radar of the usual nightly exchange of fire between Iran and Israel,” remaining unnoticed by either side “until Trump announced it happened.” Thus, “for the official story to be true, B-2 bombers - which the U.S. didn’t risk using in Yemen - would’ve needed to penetrate deep inside Iran to drop gravity bombs on heavily-defended sites, before returning across hundreds of miles of alerted airspace afterwards, all the while evading detection,” Weaver observes. “This, while Iran’s air defense network is still functional”:

“I think Trump tried to rescue Netanyahu from the consequences of his idiotic decision to start a war with Iran he manifestly wasn’t capable of finishing, and do so in a manner the Iranians weren’t going to be provoked into responding to in a major way. As an American taxpayer and former DoD employee, I would hope this wasn’t the most impressive attack the U.S. military could put together on a week’s notice, and it reflects deliberate restraint rather than a lack of capability.”

The flaccid outcome of Israel’s attack is amply underscored by mainstream reports Tel Aviv and the U.S. first plotted the strike under the Biden administration, and conducted war-game exercises explicitly targeting “Iranian nuclear capabilities”. Furthermore, it’s been revealed senior Israeli officials had been preparing for June 13th since March, and sought to strike before Iran “rebuilt its air defenses by the latter half of the year.” Israel’s plan to damage Tehran was purportedly “carefully laid months and years in advance” - yet backfired spectacularly.

‘Polite Fiction’

Immediately following the bombshell CNN exposé, a concerted cross-government pushback erupted against the leaked DIA report’s findings. First, a dedicated article was published on the White House website, Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News. It collated quotes from numerous high-ranking administration officials, including the President, and Israeli government and military apparatchiks, testifying to the attack’s triumph. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fulminated, “anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”

Simultaneously, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard separately issued statements declaring “new intelligence” indicated Iran’s nuclear facilities had in fact been “destroyed” by U.S. airstrikes. Neither provided any evidence to support this bold conclusion. Before June 25th was over, Politico revealed this aggressive flurry of disavowal was a determined “blitz” by the administration, “to counter media reports…the strikes had not significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program.” 

The DIA assessment’s release “infuriated” Trump, and the FBI and Pentagon are probing how the classified report was leaked. Presidents, their administrations, and U.S. government agencies are characteristically averse to admitting failure. Nonetheless, the unanimous determination of so many officials to repudiate any and all suggestions the Iran strike wasn’t a historically ruinous cataclysm could point to a different motive than covering for Trump’s lies, or being forced to admit Washington’s military machine isn’t what it once was. 

Sticking to the fraud Tehran’s alleged nuclear weapons program was destroyed negates the need for further talks on the question - which prior to the 12 Day War erupting were seemingly going nowhere, and are today likely permanently dead in the water. Following Tel Aviv’s attack, Iran immediately cancelled nuclear talks with the U.S. scheduled for June 21st in Oman, on the basis Israel’s “barbarous” Washington-sponsored actions made the summit “meaningless”. 

If it’s true negotiations were all along a ploy the U.S. never intended to conclude, and successive administrations possessed intimate foreknowledge of Tel Aviv’s scheme, Tehran has no incentive to recommence dialogue. Moreover, IAEA inspectors will never be permitted on the Islamic Republic’s territory again. On June 12th, Press TV published documents exposing how the Association previously provided Israeli intelligence names of several Iranian nuclear scientists who were subsequently assassinated, and its chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials.

Under the terms of Tehran’s July 2015 deal with the Obama administration, the IAEA was granted unimpeded access to Iran’s nuclear complexes, to ensure the country was not using the facilities to develop weapons. Its inspectors collected a wealth of information on and in the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents. It is an open question whether this intelligence bonanza was shared with the U.S. and Israel, and played any role in the 12 Day War. 

Iranian lawmakers aren’t waiting for proof, on June 25th unanimously passing legislation to suspend cooperation with the Association indefinitely. Exiting the Non-Proliferation Treaty is being openly debated in the Islamic Republic too. Hence, maintaining the lie Iran’s nuclear weapons program was eradicated is of obvious urgency for the Trump administration. Washington can claim there is no longer any need for a nuclear deal with Tehran. As Weaver observes, “the polite fiction that Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz were destroyed is helpful to keep the peace.”

‘Beyond Themselves’

The question of what happens next is likewise an open one. Alex McKay, of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute and Decline & Fall, notes while “this latest regime change attempt is over, plots against Iran by the Anglo-American empire, and its Israeli proxy, will continue,” as “the imperialist powers cannot countenance Iran being a sovereign, independent nation.” However, he believes the “total failure” of the recent operation against the Islamic Republic cannot be understated, and left US/Israeli weakness and vulnerability writ unambiguously large.

“Once it became clear the hoped-for palace coup or color revolution wouldn’t materialize, the US was left without many options, and a number of unpalatable choices. To actually destroy the Islamic Republic would take a long-term military campaign, possibly including a ground invasion. The US has avoided wars as dangerous as this would be, ever since their defeat in Vietnam,” Mckay tells MintPress News. “Imperialist powers of the world prefer to wage their wars via air power, terrorist acts, proxy armies, espionage and cultural subversion.”

A large-scale air war against Iran “also carried enormous risks,” such as the Iranians closing the Strait of Hormuz, “or targeting oil infrastructure across the Gulf states hosting US bases.” Either approach would’ve “led to a spike in oil prices, and plunged the economies of imperialist nations into a deep recession,” McKay observes. As it was, the 12 Day War did lead to a brief explosion in oil prices, which reversed when the ceasefire commenced. Meanwhile, vessels traversing Hormuz remain subject to “intense levels of GPS jamming”.

GPS jamming in the Strait of Hormuz, while the 12 Day War was ongoing

Such moves suggest while Tehran’s missile onslaught may be over, the Islamic Republic is under no illusions it effectively remains at war with Israel and Tel Aviv’s Western puppetmasters, and must remain ever-vigilant resultantly. It is clear too this perspective is shared by Iranian citizens. Far from destabilizing and fracturing the country and triggering the revolutionary government’s collapse, the population is more united than ever against Western powers. As a patriotic Iranian celebrated on ‘X’:

“We are now aware of our shortcomings more than ever and in dire need of some changes. Iran’s biggest achievement or gift wasn’t on the battlefield but at home amongst the people, becoming as one. Younger generations who had not experienced…the Revolution or the [war with Iraq] now tasted something beyond themselves. It gave them the identity they were longing for.”

Should Israel again attempt to foment all-out war with Iran, it will be up against an adversary far more prepared than this time round, with nigh-universal domestic support for total victory, which may mean Tel Aviv’s final destruction, and the vanquishing of U.S. bases across West Asia. Tehran could also be better armed, given on June 26th, China convened an emergency meeting with Iran and Russia’s defense ministers. It is now up to Netanyahu to make the next move - which might be his very last.