Iranian leadership seems to betting that a strategy of controlled attrition will eventually erode the coalition’s appetite for prolonged conflict, while Washington could be believing that its campaign is approaching its military objectives and could end sooner.
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On the eleventh day of the war, the conflict in the Middle East is shifting into a phase of sustained attrition — one in which Iran appears determined to exploit endurance, lower operational costs and employ a network of proxies to offset the technological and financial advantages of the United States and Israel.
Though the kinetic activity across the main theatre has remained comparatively limited during the past 24 hours, the effects of the operations continue to be strategically significant.
Until now, Iran’s striking of Israel’s Haifa refinery complex a couple of days ago with Shahed-136 drones, in retaliation for Israeli attacks on oil depots around Tehran, remains the most consequential single event shaping current Israeli strategic calculus.
Firefighting crews have now reportedly contained roughly 95 per cent of the blaze at Haifa, but several primary storage tanks have suffered structural damage and operations at the facility are expected to remain suspended for at least two weeks.
On the other side of the battlefield, fires triggered by earlier coalition strikes on oil depots in the Tehran and Alborz region are still burning, sending toxic black carbon plumes into th
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