Fog Lights
Early thoughts on the war between Israel and Iran
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” – Jeannette Rankin
In February 2024, we opened “Cogent Analysis” with an important distinction worth repeating here in full:
“How can you tell the difference between an analyst and an advocate? It is all in the handling of data that runs counter to assertion. To an analyst, being wrong is disappointing, but it is primarily an opportunity to learn—an expected element in a feedback loop of continuous improvement. When knowledge is your only objective, there is no such thing as a bad fact, only one which you do not yet understand. Not so for the advocate. The advocate has tied their hopes (and often their livelihoods) to a specific outcome and feels compelled, whether consciously or not, to rationalize away or attack inconvenient realities. It is advocacy when every perturbation in the weather is tagged as evidence of climate change, each squiggle of unfavorable price action is declared market manipulation, and no act or utterance from a favored politician is disqualifying.”
Few events blur the line between analysis and advocacy as thoroughly as war, especially for those with strong personal or ideological ties to the combatants. The challenge is compounded by the relentless flood of propaganda from both sides, making it difficult to distinguish signal from noise. The rise of social media and the growing sophistication of AI-generated images and videos only deepen the confusion, allowing partisans to inhabit parallel realities. In such an environment, even attempting impartial analysis risks drawing ire from those fully invested in their chosen worldview.
Last week, when Israel preemptively struck Iran’s nuclear facilities and attempted a decapitation strike against its senior leadership, we were surprised. Back in October, we had predicted such an attack was unlikely. That admittedly contrarian call followed an effective retaliatory strike by Iran on the night of October 1, when videos posted to social media showed missiles slicing through Israel’s vaunted air defense system. Our prediction was thus grounded in the following four axioms:
“First, we assume Israel’s sophisticated air defense systems are no longer able to protect the country as comprehensively as they have done in the past. Second, as has been widely reported, Iran has thousands of ballistic missiles in its inventory, and we assume the majority of its stock has been kept in reserve. Third, at least some of the missiles in Iranian possession appear to have high-precision targeting capability, whether it be with the help of the Russians or not. Finally, we assume senior Israeli political and military leaders are aware of the first three axioms and will proceed accordingly.”
The piece went on to highlight Israel’s undeniable vulnerabilities—that the majority of the country’s electricity is generated by just five large power plants, most of its natural gas comes from two offshore fields in the Mediterranean, and a majority of its drinking water is produced by five desalination plants. If those axioms held, this setup would create a classic case of paralysis by mutually assured destruction.
Clearly, we were wrong:
At least one of our four axioms did not hold, and identifying which one fell seems of paramount importance for understanding how things are likely to unfold in the weeks ahead. There are no comforting answers and a few potentially catastrophic ones, so let’s sort through the events of the past several days and consider the most plausible scenarios.