How Iran Changed the International Power Balance, Last Night, April 8th

9 April 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

——

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZD6h-QRDI

“Iran CUTS Israel’s GPS Signal, F-35s FLY BLIND, IDF Loses Air War, U.S PANICS | Douglas Macgregor”

9 April 2026, US Power Analysis and Ryan Mercer Insight

0:00

Welcome back to US Power Analytics. What you are about to hear is not a hypothetical war game exercise conducted

0:07

in some Pentagon basement. What happened in the skies above the Middle East in the past 72 hours represents a rupture

0:14

in the foundational assumptions of modern aerial warfare. A rupture so complete, so humiliating, and so strategically consequential that the

0:23

governments in Tel Aviv and Washington are currently doing everything in their power to suppress its full implications

0:29

from reaching the public. Israel’s F-35 ADIR is the most expensive, most technologically sophisticated combat

0:38

aircraft ever mass-produced. The jewel of the IDF’s air dominance doctrine, the platform that American defense

0:46

contractors spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars perfecting, went blind. Not metaphorically blind,

0:53

operationally, navigationally, lethally blind. Iran’s electronic warfare architecture, refined across years of

1:01

sanctioned isolation and strategic patience, reached out across hundreds of kilometers of contested airspace and

1:09

severed the GPS lifeline that Israel’s entire aerial combat doctrine depends upon. And when those F-35s lost their

1:17

positioning certainty, they lost everything. Missions were aborted, strike packages dissolved mid-flight.

1:25

Pilots operating the most advanced avionic suite in the world, suddenly found themselves flying expensive

1:32

aluminum into an electromagnetic void where coordinates shifted. Targeting solutions evaporated, and the safe return

1:40

corridor became a question mark rather than a certainty. The IDF’s air superiority, the strategic cornerstone

1:47

that has underpinned Israeli military dominance across seven decades, did not collapse under enemy fire. It collapsed

1:55

under enemy electrons. Tonight, we are going to tear apart exactly how Iran executed this operation, what it means

2:04

for the future of aerial warfare, why the F-35 program’s most dangerous vulnerability was hiding in plain sight

2:11

for years, and what the loss of air superiority means for Israel’s ability to sustain this conflict at all. We will

2:19

trace the full chain from Iran’s indigenously developed electronic warfare systems, to the geopolitical

2:28

implications of a world where a sanctioned nation just demonstrated it can blind the most advanced air force on Earth without firing a single missile.

2:38

The truth being suppressed in the briefing rooms of Tel Aviv and Washington tonight is this. The age of

2:45

GPS dependent aerial supremacy just ended, and Iran ended it. Before we go

2:52

further, if this analysis is reaching the depth and honesty that mainstream coverage refuses to provide, hit like,

2:59

subscribe, and leave your perspective in the comments below. Your support keeps this channel operating at full independence. To understand the

3:07

magnitude of what Iran accomplished, you first need to understand what the F-35 actually is and what it actually depends on. Western defense marketing has spent

3:17

20 years building a mythology around this aircraft stealth, sensor fusion,

3:22

network warfare, fifth generation dominance. And in many respects, those capabilities are genuine. The F-35

3:30

represents the pinnacle of integrated avionics engineering. its ability to synthesize radar data, infrared

3:38

signatures, electronic emissions, and communications intercepts into a single coherent tactical picture for the pilot

3:46

is genuinely revolutionary. But beneath all of that technological sophistication lies a dependency so fundamental, so

3:54

deeply embedded in every system aboard the aircraft that when it is compromised, the entire edifice of F-35

4:04

capability begins to crumble. That dependency is GPS. The global positioning system underpins the F-35’s

4:13

navigation architecture, its weapons guidance calculations, its formation coordination protocols, its target

4:22

handoff procedures between aircraft, and critically its ability to safely execute the low altitude,

4:29

high-speed terrain, following flight profiles that constitute its primary strike delivery method. Remove GPS with

4:38

sufficient precision and persistence, and the F-35 is no longer a fifth generation strike platform. It becomes an

4:46

extraordinarily expensive aircraft that its pilot cannot fully trust to be where its instruments say it is. Uh Iran spent years preparing exactly this capability.

4:58

The electronic warfare architecture that Tehran activated in the hours before dawn was not improvised. It was the

5:06

product of a long-term developmental program that combined Russian technical knowledge of GPS signal structure,

5:12

Chinese expertise in signal processing and jamming waveform design, and Iran’s own IRGC, electronic warfare commands,

5:20

operational experience accumulated across years of testing against American systems in the Gulf region. The

5:28

operation began not with jamming but with something more sophisticated: GPS spoofing at scale. Spoofing is

5:36

categorically more dangerous than jamming, because it is invisible to the target. When a GPS receiver is jammed,

5:43

the aircraft systems recognize the signal loss and alert the pilot. Uh emergency navigation protocols activate

5:52

the mission profile changes. But when GPS signals are spoofed, when counterfeit positioning data is injected

5:59

into the receiver with sufficient fidelity, the aircraft systems register nothing abnormal. The navigation suite

6:06

continues operating. The weapon systems continue calculating. The pilot has no indication that every coordinate his

6:14

aircraft is processing is a carefully constructed lie. Iranian electronic warfare teams deployed spoofing transmitters across a distributed

6:22

network of mobile platforms positioned throughout western Iran, eastern Syria,

6:28

and the Bekka Valley in Lebanon. The network was designed to create an overlapping zone of corrupted GPS signal

6:34

coverage extending deep into Israeli airspace, a region where F-35 pilots conducting strike missions would fly

6:42

through a bubble of false uh coordinates without any system-level warning that their navigation data had been

6:49

compromised. The first indication that something was catastrophically wrong came from Israeli mission planning

6:56

centers rather than from aircraft. As the initial wave of F-35s prosecuted their assigned strike corridors, weapons

7:05

release solutions were generating anomalous results. Precisiong guided munitions that should have been tracking

7:12

7 cleanly toward pre-designated coordinates were deviating from expected impact points. The sophisticated joint direct

7:20

attack munitions and small diameter bombs carried by these aircraft use GPS as their primary guidance input during the terminal phase of flight. When that

7:28

7 minutes, GPS data is falsified, the weapon follows the false coordinates with perfect fidelity, striking precisely

7:36

where it was told to go, which is precisely nowhere near the intended target. Mission commanders watching the debrief data understood within minutes

7:45

that they were dealing with a GPS compromise of unprecedented scale and sophistication. But by the time that recognition propagated through the

7:53

command chain and abort orders were transmitted, multiple strike packages had already released ordinance. Some weapons impacted open terrain. Others

8:02

impacted locations that created serious secondary complications for Israeli operational planning. The strike

8:10

missions of that night did not destroy Hezbollah infrastructure. They generated confusion, wasted munitions, and exposed

8:17

the most sensitive vulnerability in Israel’s air warfare architecture. Then the jamming began. Once Iran’s

8:24

electronic warfare command assessed that the spoofing phase had achieved maximum confusion within Israeli mission planning, the network shifted modes.

8:34

Broadband GPS jamming was activated across the same geographic footprint,

8:39

now deliberately alerting Israeli systems to the signal denial environment. This phase was psychological as much as technical. It

8:46

forced Israeli air commanders to make an immediate choice. Continue operations using degraded inertial navigation

8:53

systems with sharply reduced accuracy, or stand down and absorb the strategic cost of losing offensive air capacity during

9:02

a critical operational window. The answer that came back from Israeli command that night was the one that no western defense planner had publicly

9:10

admitted was possible. The answer was stand down. F-35 sorties were curtailed.

9:16

Strike missions were postponed. The aircraft that the Israeli Air Force treated as the unchallengeable guarantor

9:24

of its regional dominance, were pulled back from the operational envelope where their GPS dependency made them tactically unreliable. For the first

9:32

time in the modern era, Israel’s air force lost its ability to project offensive power on its own timeline. Not

9:40

because enemy fighters intercepted its aircraft, not because surface-to-air missiles denied its airspace, but

9:48

because an adversary reached into its navigation architecture and made its most advanced weapons untrustworthy.

9:56

The IDF had lost the air war without a single dog fight. Understanding how Iran built this capability requires

10:03

confronting a deliberate and sustained Western intelligence failure that spans more than a decade. American, Israeli,

10:12

and European defense analysts consistently underestimated, and in many documented cases actively chose to

10:20

dismiss, the depth and sophistication of Iran’s electronic warfare development program. The assumption embedded in

10:27

Western threat assessments was grounded in a form of technological arrogance. A nation under comprehensive economic

10:34

sanctions, denied access to Western micro electronics, cut off from international defense procurement

10:42

channels, simply could not develop electronic warfare systems capable of threatening fifth generation aircraft.

10:50

That assumption just died in the skies above the Middle East last night. Iran’s electronic warfare capability did not emerge

10:57

overnight. Its roots trace back to 2011 when Iranian forces captured an American RQ170

11:06

Sentinel reconnaissance drone almost entirely intact. The United States government initially attempted to claim the drone had malfunctioned and crashed.

11:15

Within weeks, it became apparent that Iranian engineers had executed a GPS spoofing attack that caused the drone’s

11:23

navigation system to believe it was approaching its home base in Afghanistan while it was actually being guided to a soft landing inside Iranian territory.

11:34

That single captured platform gave Iranian engineers direct access to American GPS receiver architecture, the

11:41

signal processing logic that governs navigation systems in American military platforms, and critically the exact

11:49

fidelity thresholds that GPS receivers use to authenticate incoming positioning signals. Iranian reverse engineering

11:56

teams worked on the RQ170 systems for years, extracting every technical insight available. What they learned

12:03

about American GPS dependency informed an entire generation of electronic warfare system development within the

12:10

IRGC. Over the following decade, Iran developed what military analysts who have subsequently reviewed the evidence

12:17

are calling a layered GPS denial architecture, a system that operates across multiple modes simultaneously,

12:25

can be deployed from mobile platforms that are difficult to target and destroy, and is specifically engineered

12:32

against the GPS signal authentication protocols used in American and Israeli military systems. The core of the system

12:40

12 minutes, 40 seconds

is a high power spoofing transmitter network operating in the L1 and L2 GPS frequency bands. The specific

12:47

12 minutes, 47 seconds

frequencies used by military-grade GPS receivers in aircraft like the F-35.

12:54

12 minutes, 54 seconds

Iranian engineers developed what appears to be a signal generation capability that can produce spoofed GPS transmissions with sufficient timing

13:03

13 minutes, 3 seconds

accuracy and signal structure fidelity to defeat the authentication checking built into military GPS receivers. This

13:11

13 minutes, 11 seconds

is not simple jamming. This requires precise knowledge of GPS signal architecture and sophisticated real-time

13:19

13 minutes, 19 seconds

signal generation capability that Western analysts assumed was beyond Iran’s technical reach. They were wrong.

13:27

13 minutes, 27 seconds

The navigation denial system is complemented by a broader electronic warfare suite that Iran has deployed across its regional network. The Merced

13:35

13 minutes, 35 seconds

and Kashef radar systems developed indigenously over the past decade uh provide Iran with detection and tracking

13:43

13 minutes, 43 seconds

capability against low-observable targets including aircraft with reduced radar cross-sections like the F-35.

13:52

13 minutes, 52 seconds

These systems operate on frequencies and waveform designs that are specifically chosen to exploit the gaps in the F-35’s

14:00

14 minutes

radar warning receiver coverage. When Israeli F-35s entered Iranian electronic warfare coverage zones last night, they

14:09

were not invisible. They were being tracked by systems specifically engineered to see them while simultaneously being fed false GPS data

14:17

that degraded their ability to respond effectively. The satellite dimension is equally critical. Iran’s navigation independence from American GPS was

14:26

sealed through its partnership with Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation system and China’s BeiDou constellation.

14:33

Iranian military platforms, including the electronic warfare transmitters deployed last night, use navigation derived from GLONASS and BeiDou positioning

14:43

rather than GPS. This means that while Iranian systems were systematically corrupting Israeli GPS data, their own

14:50

targeting and positioning systems remained fully operational and fully accurate. Iran was navigating with precision while Israel was flying blind.

15:00

The asymmetry of that situation on an active battlefield is almost impossible to overstate. The mobile deployment architecture of Iran’s electronic

15:08

warfare network deserves specific attention because it represents the primary reason why Israel has not been able to simply destroy the capability

15:16

with air strikes. The transmitter platforms are mounted on heavy military trucks, constantly repositioned,

15:23

operating on pre-planned emission schedules that limit their detectable signature windows to minutes at a time.

15:29

When Israeli signals intelligence attempts to geo-locate an active spoofing transmitter, the platform has typically relocated before a strike mission can be planned and executed.

15:39

This cat-and- mouse dynamic has been playing out for months, and Iran has been winning it. What makes the capability even more dangerous is its

15:48

scalability. The GPS denial architecture that Iran deployed last night against Israeli F-35 operations is not a fixed

15:57

installation that can be destroyed in a single strike. It is a distributed mobile redundant network that can be

16:05

degraded but not eliminated through conventional air attack. Destroying one node simply shifts the coverage map

16:13

slightly. The operational effect, the corrupted GPS environment over Israeli airspace, persists. The implications of

16:21

what Iran demonstrated last night extend far beyond the immediate tactical situation over Israeli airspace. What

16:29

Tehran has proven in live operational conditions against actual F-35 combat

16:36

missions is that GPS dependent aerial warfare, the foundational model upon

16:42

which the entire American military power projection architecture has been built for 30 years, carries a systemic

16:51

16 minutes, 51 seconds

vulnerability that can be exploited by a determined adversary with the right technological invest. investments. This

17:00

17 minutes

is Washington’s nightmare scenario and it has just become operational reality.

17:05

The American way of war since the Gulf War of 1991 has been built on a simple foundational

17:12

concept: precision. GPS guided munitions replaced the carpet bombing doctrine of previous eras, enabling small numbers of

17:20

aircraft to achieve targeting effects that previously required hundreds of sorties. The F-35, the B2, the F-22, and

17:30

the entire family of precision-guided munitions in the American arsenal, assume GPS availability as a baseline

17:37

operational condition. Mission planning software assumes GPS. Logistics coordination assumes GPS. Joint terminal

17:45

attack controller communications assume GPS. The entire integrated joint warfare architecture that makes American

17:53

military power so lethal, assumes that the positioning data flowing through every system is trustworthy. Uh Iran

18:00

just demonstrated that this assumption can be defeated, not theoretically defeated, operationally defeated, against

18:08

the most advanced aircraft the United States has ever exported to an ally in an active combat environment with results that forced a mission stand-down.

18:17

The Pentagon’s response to this demonstration has been characteristically institutional acknowledgement of the challenging electronic warfare environment in

18:26

classified briefings followed by silence in public communications.

18:32

The reasons for this silence are understandable. Publicly acknowledging that Iran has developed GPS denial

18:40

capability sufficient to neutralize F-35 strike operations would trigger a cascade of strategic consequences that Washington is not prepared to manage.

18:52

Allied nations across Asia and Europe that have purchased or are purchasing F-35 aircraft would immediately begin

18:59

reassessing the capability guarantees they received during the procurement process. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea,

19:08

Poland, and a dozen other nations whose defense planning depends on F-35 performance in a GPS contested

19:17

environment would be forced to ask uncomfortable questions about what exactly they paid for. The international defense procurement market for American

19:26

fifth generation aircraft would face serious turbulence. More immediately,

19:30

the deterrence calculus in every active theater where American power projection depends on GPSG guided precision strike

19:38

would need to be recalculated. If Iran can do this, the analytical question that every serious defense ministry on Earth is now asking is: who else can?

19:48

Russia has been developing GPS denial and spoofing capability for years. The evidence from Ukraine demonstrates Russian electronic warfare teams

19:57

routinely degrading GPS accuracy for Ukrainian forces. China’s electronic warfare investment program is arguably even more sophisticated than Iran’s.

20:08

North Korea has demonstrated GPS jamming capability that has affected civilian aviation in South Korea repeatedly. The

20:17

answer to the question of who else can execute GPS denial operations against American forces is multiple adversaries

20:24

in multiple theaters with varying but growing levels of capability. What Iran did last night is not a unique Iranian

20:32

achievement. It is the most publicly visible demonstration of a vulnerability that American military planners have been quietly acknowledging in classified

20:40

assessments for years. The American defense establishment’s response to this vulnerability has been the development of alternative navigation technologies,

20:50

inertial navigation system improvements, terrain referenced navigation,

20:56

uh, anti-jam GPS receivers with more sophisticated authentication protocols.

21:04

Some of these technologies are already being retrofitted into existing platforms, but the timeline for full-fleet integration across the F-35

21:12

program runs to years, not months. The vulnerability that Iran exploited last night will persist in operational Israeli and American F-35 fleets for a

21:21

significant period, regardless of whatever emergency technical measures are now being accelerated. In the immediate operational context,

21:30

Washington is providing Israel with emergency technical guidance on alternative navigation protocols and GPS anti-jam equipment. But the fundamental

21:39

problem cannot be solved with a firmware update and an emergency equipment delivery. It requires a comprehensive

21:45

rethinking of how precision aerial warfare is conducted in a GPS contested environment. And that rethinking will

21:53

take years to translate into operational doctrine and equipment. Iran took that time away from the equation last night,

22:01

and Washington is still processing exactly what that means. Israel’s military doctrine is built on a specific

22:07

and carefully calibrated logic. Given the Jewish state’s geographic reality, a small nation surrounded by adversaries

22:15

lacking strategic depth with a civilian population concentrated in a narrow coastal corridor, the IDF has always

22:23

understood that it cannot afford to fight long wars of attrition. Every conflict must be ended quickly,

22:30

decisively, and on terms that restore deterrence for the next confrontation.

22:35

The instrument that makes this rapid decisive warfare doctrine possible is air power. Israel’s air force has historically served as the great

22:43

equalizer, the capability that allows a small nation to project force far beyond its borders, strike targets deep inside

22:50

adversary territory, and create the conditions for rapid ground operations by eliminating enemy air defense,

22:58

logistics, and command infrastructure before infantry and armor ever cross a line of departure. For this doctrine to

23:05

work, Israel’s air force must be able to operate freely. It must be able to plan strikes with confidence, execute them

23:13

with precision, and achieve the effects that justify the enormous investment in fifth generation aircraft and precision

23:20

munitions. Lose that freedom of operation, lose the ability to strike with confidence, and the entire rapid decisive warfare architecture collapses.

23:30

Iran just collapsed it. When Israeli F-35s cannot be trusted to navigate accurately, cannot release weapons with

23:39

confidence that they will strike intended targets, and must be pulled back from operational strike envelopes to protect them from mission failure and

23:47

potential loss, Israel’s military doctrine enters a state of paralysis that its adversaries have been working

23:54

toward for years. Hezbollah can continue launching rockets from Lebanon without fear of the precise sustained Israeli

24:03

air interdiction campaign that would normally suppress the threat within days. Iranian linked forces in Syria can

24:11

continue operating logistics routes that would normally be targeted by Israeli air power operating under full GPS reliability. The entire architecture of

24:20

Israeli forward deterrence, the ability to reach out and strike any target anywhere in the region with confidence

24:27

and precision, is thus degraded. The psychological dimension of this paralysis compounds the tactical one.

24:35

Israeli society and the Israeli political establishment have been conditioned by decades of IDF performance to expect rapid decisive

24:43

military results. When the Air Force cannot deliver those results, when missions are aborted, when strike

24:51

packages are pulled back, when the morning news cannot report uh successful strikes against enemy infrastructure,

24:59

the political pressure on the war cabinet intensifies rapidly. Prime Minister Netanyahu and the security

25:06

cabinet are now facing a situation where the military instrument they have relied upon most heavily is operating at

25:14

reduced effectiveness against an adversary that is not reducing its own offensive pressure. Hezbollah’s rocket

25:22

campaigns continue. Uh Iranian supplied precision missiles continue reaching Israeli territory. The GPS degradation

25:31

that is limiting F-35 effectiveness is not affecting Hezbollah’s launch operations, their weapons use, inertial

25:38

guidance, and terrain matching rather than GPS. Specifically, because Iranian weapons designers anticipated exactly

25:46

this kind of navigation warfare environment and designed their export weapons accordingly. Israel is absorbing incoming fire while its primary

25:54

counter-batter instrument is grounded or operating at significantly reduced effectiveness. This is not a situation

26:01

that the Israeli war cabinet can sustain politically or militarily for an extended period. The options being

26:08

discussed in Tel Aviv’s emergency sessions are all painful. Continuing to fly F-35 missions with degraded

26:16

navigation means accepting reduced strike accuracy and the risk of high-profile mission failures that would further damage deterrence credibility.

26:26

Shifting to older F-15 and F-16 aircraft that use different navigation systems and are less GPS dependent provides

26:34

partial relief but sacrifices the stealth and sensor fusion capabilities that the F-35 uh brings. Requesting emergency American

26:43

intervention to suppress Iranian electronic warfare transmitters requires committing American forces more deeply than Washington’s current risk calculus

26:52

appears to support. None of these options restore the strategic situation to the baseline that existed before Iran

26:59

activated its GPS denial network. The damage to Israeli air power doctrine is not a problem that can be solved this

27:07

week. It is a structural recalibration of what Israeli air power can and cannot do in a conflict against an adversary

27:15

with sophisticated electronic warfare capability. And that recalibration has implications that extend far beyond the

27:23

current fight. What Iran demonstrated in the skies above the Middle East last night is being analyzed not only in Tel

27:31

Aviv and Washington, but in every serious defense ministry on Earth. The strategic significance of this demonstration cannot be reduced to its

27:39

immediate tactical outcomes. What Tehran has shown is that the technological monopoly on advanced warfare capability

27:46

that the United States and its allies have held since the end of the Cold War is no longer absolute. And that the

27:54

pathway to challenging that monopoly runs not through expensive aircraft carriers and ballistic missile programs,

28:02

but through precisely targeted investments in the electromagnetic spectrum. Electronic warfare is the

28:09

great equalizer of 21st century military competition. It does not require massive industrial capacity. It does not require

28:19

the kind of advanced manufacturing base that produces fifth generation aircraft.

28:24

It requires deep technical knowledge of adversary systems, sophisticated software engineering capability, and the

28:31

strategic patience to develop and refine capabilities across years of iterative testing. All of these are things that a

28:39

sanctioned nation with a strong engineering culture and a clear strategic objective can develop and Iran has now proven that definitively. The

28:48

implications for global power competition are profound.

28:52

Russia has been watching the Iranian demonstration with close professional attention. Moscow’s own electronic

29:01

warfare programs are more advanced than Tehran’s and uh the operational lessons from Iranian GPS denial operations

29:09

against F-35s will be incorporated into Russian doctrine for potential conflict in European theaters. Chinese defense analysts are equally attentive.

29:21

Beijing’s investment in electronic warfare and space-based navigation denial capability has been substantial

29:27

and sustained, and the Iranian proof of concept against American GPS dependent systems validates the strategic logic of

29:37

that investment. The United States is now confronting a world in which its military power projection model, built on the assumption of GPS availability

29:47

across every theater, faces credible denial threats from multiple adversaries simultaneously. This is not a problem

29:55

that can be solved by building more F-35s.

29:59

It requires a fundamental architectural rethinking of how American and allied military power is structured, equipped,

30:06

and operated. For smaller nations in the developing world that have been watching this conflict, the Iranian demonstration

30:13

carries a different but equally significant message. The path to credible self-defense against technologically superior adversaries

30:22

does not require matching them platform for platform. It requires identifying the dependencies that make advanced

30:30

platforms vulnerable and investing in the capability to exploit those dependencies. GPS denial, cyber operations, anti-satellite weapons, and

30:39

electromagnetic spectrum control are all instruments that a determined nation can develop at a fraction of the cost of the

30:46

platforms they can neutralize. Iran has written a strategic manual last night and uh it will be read carefully in

30:54

Pyongyang, in Caracas, in Harare, in every capital where a government is trying to figure out how to defend its

31:01

sovereignty against potential American military pressure. The lesson is stark and clear. Find the dependency, attack

31:08

the dependency, and the most expensive military machine in history can be made to malfunction. The Gulf Cooperation

31:16

Council states are watching these developments with profound anxiety.

31:20

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have all made enormous investments in American military equipment, F-35s,

31:29

Patriot batteries, uh, THAAD systems, predicated on the assumption that American technological superiority would

31:36

be decisive in any regional conflict. Uh the Iranian demonstration last night is forcing a fundamental reassessment in

31:43

Riad and Abu Dhabi of whether those investments provide the security guarantees that were implicit in the procurement decisions. This reassessment is already producing diplomatic tremors.

31:56

Back channel communications between Gulf capitals and Tehran, which have been ongoing at low intensity for months, are

32:03

reportedly intensifying as Gulf leaders reconsider the wisdom of being positioned on the wrong side of a regional power shift that Iran appears

32:12

to be winning on multiple dimensions simultaneously.

32:16

The broader geopolitical consequence is the acceleration of the multipolar transition that has been underway for years. A unipolar world order depends on

32:25

the credibility of American military power. That credibility depends on the operational effectiveness of American

32:33

military platforms and the systems that make those platforms lethal. When a sanctioned adversary demonstrates in

32:40

live operational conditions that the most advanced American export platform can be made ineffective through electronic warfare, the credibility

32:49

foundation of American unipolarity takes a direct structural hit. Moscow and Beijing are not celebrating overtly.

32:59

They are doing something more dangerous.

33:01

They are learning, incorporating, and preparing. Every operational lesson from Iran’s GPS denial campaign is being

33:09

absorbed into Russian and Chinese military planning. The next time American or allied F-35s fly into a GPS

33:18

contested environment, they will face adversaries who have studied the Iranian president in detail and have the

33:25

industrial and technical capacity to implement it at far greater scale. The electromagnetic spectrum has become the decisive domain of 21st century warfare.

33:36

Whoever controls it, whoever can freely use it while denying its use to the adversary holds the initiative in modern

33:42

conflict. Iran just demonstrated that this control is not the exclusive property of wealthy Western nations with

33:51

massive defense budgets. It is available to any nation with the intellectual capability, the strategic clarity, and the long-term patience to develop it.

34:01

The F-35 that flew blind last night over the Middle East is a symbol of something larger than one aircraft on one mission.

34:08

It is a symbol of a world order in transition, a world where the assumptions that have structured international security for 30 years are

34:16

being overturned, one electromagnetic pulse at a time. As dawn breaks over a Middle East that has been permanently

34:24

changed by one night of electronic warfare, the questions accumulating in war rooms from Tel Aviv to Washington to London carry a shared and urgent weight.

34:34

What comes next? Can Israel recover its air superiority?

34:40

Can the United States provide a technical fix? And most fundamentally,

34:46

has the military balance in the Middle East shifted in a way that cannot be reversed regardless of what resources are committed?

34:52

——

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.