Behnam Ben Taleblu

If you were a local commander, you're going to send less, not more out.

And I think that number for the decline, there's also a local Iranian targeting reason for that.

And the third thing is just because there's less volume does not mean there's less lethality.

One thing that we're seeing that is a continuation from the trend of the 12-day war

particularly at the last quarter or the last third of the 12-day war, which is as the missile math kicks in for both sides, interceptors for Israel, medium-range ballistic missiles for the Islamic Republic,

As that kicks in, the reason the Islamic Republic still stands to gain a short-term advantage is because the less the number of interceptors exist for Israel, for example, the more the regime actually has been able to land blows against civilian infrastructure because you have a less number of interceptors available for a wider amount of geography.

And you have to prioritize higher value military strategic political targets to be defended.

So that means there's less of the well-layered air and missile defense infrastructure to intercept an incoming projectile towards, as we saw the strikes in Beersheba at the end of the 12-day war, or some of the strikes, again, also in southern Israel during this war, which means that they can land simply more strikes against civilian centers that are probably less well-defended.

So all of these reasons get to a different rationale and paint a slightly different picture of declining Iranian missile launches.

But to the heart of your question about the political versus the military, the political is I don't think it's possible to have a conversation about Operation Epic Fury without what happened in Iran in January.

And you and I had spoke about that at length, which was the biggest wave of anti-regime protests and the mass killing, 40,000 plus.

The president last night mentioned 45,000, if I'm not mistaken, of these Iranian protesters.

And absent a regime change in that country, if any kind of rump regime, national security, deep state lives along in that country,

post-conflict, we're going to be getting ready for a Middle Eastern version of North Korea.

And that's what I mean by avoiding the political win or robbing us of a political win, because there is no Delcy Rodriguez in Tehran.

The stakes are so high that it's high risk, high reward.

It's go big or go home.

And the model we're trying to carve out is a potentially limited war model where we defang and neuter the adversary.

But the question is, what is the political strategy that we bring to bear?

And I'm not claiming that I'm some kind of prophet here, but I do believe I was one of the first ones in the middle of the 12-day war last year.