Iran is prepared for a war lasting 6 months: Analysts

Timeframe contrasts starkly with days-long operation Netanyahu pitched to Trump

- Borzou Daragahi For The Straits Times

Within secret caverns carved out inside formidable mountains and out of sight of spy planes and satellites, Iran is likely turning out new missiles and drones ahead of what it anticipates to be the next round of fighting against the US and Israel.

Iran is prepared to fight a much longer war — as long as six months or even longer - if peace talks this weekend break down and clashes with the US and Israel resume, Iranian insiders and analysts said.

“Tran has built a very large industrial base specifically to keep manufacturing the military equipment it would need to keep fighting,” said Mr Ali Ahmadi, a Tehran-based geopolitical analyst and strategist who previously served as an adviser to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

“From the Iranian standpoint, the fear isn’t the war dragging on. The fear is the war ending and then starting back up again in six months when the US has managed to get its wits about it and thinks up a new military strategy,’ Mr Ahmadi, of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told The Sunday Times.

An international official based in Tehran said he was told by sources within the Islamic republic that it is ready for a conflict lasting until at least September.

“There are no shortages of anything,” said the official, who declined to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media. “Tran is prepared for a long war. It anticipated this scenario and has enough food to feed the population for a maximum of six months.”

That timeframe contrasts starkly with the days-long regime-change operation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pitched to US President Donald Trump, according to The New York Times. It would also outlast Israeli and Gulf Arab state stockpiles of interceptors, according to a report in March by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.