The opening salvo

The opening salvo

Gold & Geopolitics

It started around 8:30 in the morning. Explosions in Tehran. Sirens across Israel. Trump at a podium talking about “defending the American people” from a country 9,800 kilometres away – a country that had not attacked the US in any way, and that Washington had been negotiating with just the day before.

And just like that, we’re at war again.

The strikes were billed as Israeli “preemptive action”. The first wave hit Khamenei’s compound, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Defense, the Atomic Energy Agency, the presidential palace, Parchin. Two waves, rapid succession. A decapitation attempt dressed up in the usual vocabulary – precision, surgical, necessary.

What followed was anything but.

The Iranian Defense Minister and IRGC commander Pakpour were confirmed killed. The Head of the Judiciary too. As for Khamenei himself – at the time of writing, nobody actually knows. Israeli media put the odds of him having survived at “slim to none”. An hour later, Iranian state TV announced he would “speak within minutes”. That was hours ago. He still hasn’t appeared. His Foreign Minister, when asked directly, said “he’s alive as far as I know”. Not exactly the confident “the Supreme Leader is in good health” you’d expect from a functioning government.

So either Khamenei is dead and they’re managing the information, or he’s in a bunker somewhere with limited communications. Neither is great for the “this will all be over in four days” thesis.

Worth noting: Iran’s internet was cut early on. Cyber attacks hit IRNA and other state media outlets in the opening hours. The regime went dark on communications almost immediately – which tells you they expected this and had protocols for it, but also means any information coming out of Tehran right now needs to be treated with serious skepticism.

Another thing that was noteworthy: Iran’s response was fast. Remarkablyfast – coordinated strikes on US bases across seven countries within hours. Either they’re extraordinarily well-prepared – which they probably were – or they had some advance warning. China operates reconnaissance satellites that probably tracked the strike packages forming up over Israel and the Mediterranean. Beijing and Tehran share intelligence. Add to that the number of countries whose airspace US and Israeli aircraft transited, the communications that would have involved, and the known history of intelligence penetration in this region, and I wouldn’t rule out that Iran had foreknowledge of the timeline. Someone, somewhere, may have talked.

What’s not in doubt is the scale and speed of what came back.

Within hours, ballistic missiles were in the air. Not a trickle. Wave after wave after wave – at Israel, at Bahrain, at Qatar, at Kuwait, at the UAE, at Saudi Arabia, at Jordan, at Iraq. An Iranian parliamentary official put it succinctly: “We set fire to US bases in seven countries – and that was only a warm-up”.

The US Navy’s 5th Fleet “Jufair” headquarters in Bahrain burned. A Shahed-136 kamikaze drone took out a radar dome inside the base before the ballistic salvos landed, leaving air defenses partially blind before the heavier hits came. Multiple confirmed impacts.

In Qatar, the Al-Udeid Air Base – home of CENTCOM – was hit:

And then the strike that matters the most strategically: the IRGC announced the complete destruction of the AN/FPS-132 Block 5 early warning radar.

This is not a piece of equipment you replace next Tuesday. It cost $1.1 billion. Its range: 5,000 kilometres. Its sole function: detecting ballistic missile launches from deep inside Iran, Russia and China. It gives you the few precious minutes to scramble interceptors before the heavy ordnance arrives.

Kuwait wasn’t spared either. Ali Al-Salem Air Base confirmed hit. Kuwait International Airport struck by a Shahed drone (see below). The US Embassy in Kuwait issued an immediate “Shelter in Place” order. Kuwait – supposedly the logistical rear of any Gulf operation – is now in the middle of it.

Then the UAE. Explosions near the Marina. A missile hitting a hotel on the Palm. Loud bangs over Abu Dhabi, debris falling across Saadiyat Island, Khalifa City, the Bani Yas area. The UAE Ministry of Defense confirmed “successfully intercepting” a second wave – though what they called success involved debris raining on residential areas.

What happens overnight matters more than what happened today. The blinding phase was preparation, not conclusion. Once you’ve confirmed the eyes are gone and the interceptor stocks are degraded, you bring in what you’ve been holding back. We’re almost certainly looking at an escalated barrage in the coming hours – into Israel, possibly at the remaining US naval assets in the Gulf. Iran has explicitly threatened to sink the USS Abraham Lincoln. US warships have reportedly been pulling back toward the Indian Ocean. That tells you something about how the US military is reading the situation.

More...