Garrison Davis

Many U.S.

analysts had treated for years 1,240 miles as if it represented an actual hard limit on Iran's striking capability based on what their missiles could reach, as opposed to what it really was, which is a political decision made by Iranian leaders to limit the scope of conflicts.

When the Trump administration launched an unprovoked series of joint strikes on Iran, killing the Supreme Leader and many senior officials, we violated one of the unstated agreements that had held for over decades of conflict.

The president's supporters and major hawks on Iran argued that these self-imposed limits were allowing Iran's leadership to support terrorism abroad with impunity.

The strike on Diego Garcia proved that military analysts had been wrong about the top range of Iran's best ballistic missiles, but it also served as a statement from Iran's new leaders.

You've taken the gloves off and thrown out the rule book.

Now we have too.

Hudson Institute senior fellow Khan Khosropoglu said,

published an analysis that made this same basic argument.

Quote, "'A strike profile extending into the Indian Ocean demonstrates not merely extended range, but Iran's deliberate abandonment of strategic ambiguity.

Iran is no longer signaling restraint.

It is signaling reach and doing so under live warfighting conditions.'"

It also more subtly signaled something else.

U.S.

planners didn't know as much as they thought they did about Iran's capabilities.

This has been evident since the war began.

Despite Trump's claims to have totally annihilated Iran's offensive capability, on March 27th, a combined missile and drone attack hit Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, injuring more than 10 U.S.

soldiers, two seriously, and damaging several aircraft.

One of these, which we have pictures of, was an E-3 AWACS, aka the planes with those huge radar dishes on top.

And at least one AWACS was destroyed.