Speculating: Iran, Oreshnik

There are furious discussions going on regarding why Trump backed down from attacking Iran, and what comes next. Did the US military and intel brass somehow get to Trump and talk some sense to him? Is Trump engaged in an elaborate ruse and still intends to attack Iran?

For my own part, I keep coming back to the hard fact that there are many thousands of US service personnel in harms way at Middle Eastern bases, and there’s really no way to protect them from any determined Iranian attack. Of course, that’s not news—that was clear as day after the 12 Day War last June. So, in that event, what are we to make of the initial and now the continuing US military deployments? Larry Johnson argued strongly today on Judge Nap’s show that Trump really did intend to launch a US led decapitation strike at the Iranian leadership, on the presumption that the Mossad/CIA/MI6 led insurrection were bringing the Iranian regime to its knees. LJ contends that the Russian (and maybe Chinese) intervention to help Iran shut down Starlink—and the insurrection—is what led to the cancellation. But he also argued, just as vociferously, that most of the US military somehow—in the face of the evidence from June—that they are able to thwart Iranian missile attacks.

To buy into some of the speculation—such as that Russia forged some sort of non-aggression pact between Israel and Iran—requires a suspension of one’s rational faculties. The idea that Jewish Nationalists have decided to accept the need to coexist peacefully with Iran defies rational belief. Likewise, the idea that Jewish Nationalists are ready to agree to disagree with a Trump who has opted for peace with Iran also defies rational belief. In fact, the head of Mossad has flown to the US for unspecified consultations. I’m willing to buy LJ’s argument that would imply that these consultations are to re-up plans to attack Iran—which had to be cancelled in the form that they had taken up until Trump’s backing out. In other words, we’re looking at a tactical reset.

I think we know from 9/11 that massive US casualties would be an eventuality devoutly wished by Jewish Nationalists. It might be a political catastrophe for Trump, but they believe that it would lead to American commitment to full out war on Iran.

YMMV.

On to Oreshnik.

Today Will Schryver provided a link to a totally must read substack by Mike Mihajlovic—a Serb who has a deep understanding of modern warfare:

Oreshnik vs Lviv Targets [i]

Deep attack on critical infrastructure

This is a very lengthy substack article but, although it does get into technical aspects, is geared to the general reader as well. The author begins with an extensive explanation of what Oreshnik is and what Oreshnik is designed to accomplish. Here’s the short version. There’s no point in using Oreshnik against surface targets—that can be done with other less expensive hypersonic or other conventional weapons. Oreshnik, by its very design, is intended to be used in attack deep targets—deeply buried underground bunkers and control centers.

He explains that Soviet era industrial sites often incorporated such deep sites, intended to survive attacks from the US. A good example is the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol, which had extensive underground facilities of exactly that type. Without those facilities the Russian conquest of Mariupol would have been quickly completed. We also saw the repeated Ukrainian use of mines and factories in the Donbas—often connected by networks of tunnels—as defensive fortifications.

Mihajlovic points out that these types of facilities are widespread in Western Ukraine. He argues from this that the airplane repair center that was targeted by Oreshnik is likely to have such deep bunkers beneath it. (Reminder: Oreshnik carries 6 ‘warheads’, so multiple targets are possible.) Given that Oreshnik is specifically designed to reach such facilities, Mihajlovic argues—citing also reports that the UK minister of defense had visited the site mere days before the Oreshnik strike—that what was actually targeted was an underground NATO command and control bunker. And he goes into detail describing how those facilities work.

I would add that Russia has specifically stated that the Oreshnik strike was retaliation for the attempted assassination of Putin. It seems to me that if the Oreshnik strike was retaliation for an attack on a specific person, a proportional response would involve an attack on personnel, not just a factory or a gas storage site.

OK, this is based on circumstantial arguments, but to me it seems plausible. Here are the first few paragraphs to hopefully whet your appetite for the full article. Remember, the US has no defense against this weapon.

On January 8, 2026, Russia carried out another Oreshnik strike. This event unfolded not only as a military action but as a carefully observed spectacle that left a deep impression on both witnesses and analysts. Video recordings that surfaced shortly afterward captured a sequence that appeared almost unreal in its contrast: an otherwise silent winter sky over a snow-covered landscape suddenly pierced by descending points of intense light. As the hypersonic penetrators broke through the cloud layers, each was enveloped in a luminous plasma sheath, producing brief but violent flashes that momentarily illuminated the surrounding atmosphere. These flashes were not explosions in the conventional sense, but visual signatures of extreme velocity, friction, and compression as the warheads tore through dense air at hypersonic speed.

Observers on the ground reported an unsettling soundscape that followed the visual phenomenon. Rather than a single detonation, there were sharp, cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain, as if the ground itself were fracturing under stress. Audio recording confirmed that as well. This auditory effect, delayed slightly from the initial flashes, added to the sense that the strike was not a single-point event but a rapid sequence of high-energy impacts propagating through the subsurface. In several recordings, the camera image visibly shakes at the moment of impact, not from a blast wave sweeping outward, but from localized shock transmitted through the ground.

What made the event particularly striking was the setting. The impacts occurred against the backdrop of an idyllic winter landscape: fields and forests blanketed in snow, small settlements dimly lit, and a horizon that, moments earlier, conveyed calm and stillness. Against this muted palette, the light generated by the strike stood out with almost surreal intensity. Reflections danced across the snow, briefly turning the ground into a mirror that amplified the event’s brightness. Witnesses described the glow as unnatural, a cold, shimmering illumination that lingered just long enough to be noticed and remembered.

Reports from distant locations indicated that this glow was visible from many kilometers away, a detail that quickly became a focal point of discussion. Such long-range visibility was not the result of a massive surface explosion, but rather the extreme energy release associated with hypersonic atmospheric entry and terminal impact. The plasma formed around the penetrators acted like a transient light source in the upper and mid atmosphere. At the same time, reflections from cloud layers and snow cover further extended the strike’s visual footprint. In this sense, the event was as much an atmospheric phenomenon as it was a ground impact.

The footage leaves an overall impression of controlled violence rather than chaos. There is no towering fireball, no expanding mushroom cloud, and no prolonged surface conflagration dominating the scene. Instead, the strike manifests as a brief but overwhelming intrusion of energy, arriving with little warning, saturating the senses for a few seconds, and then vanishing, leaving behind a disturbed but largely intact landscape. This visual restraint, paradoxically, heightens the psychological impact. The absence of familiar markers of destruction forces the viewer to confront the idea that enormous damage can be inflicted without the traditional imagery of warfare.

In narrative terms, the January 8 Oreshnik strike illustrates a shift in how modern high-energy weapons are perceived. The scale of the blast does not define the spectacle; rather, it is the speed, precision, and eerie aesthetics of physics pushed to extremes. The flashes in the clouds, the cracking sounds through frozen ground, and the ghostly glow over snowbound terrain together create an image that feels less like a conventional attack and more like a sudden rupture in the natural order. It is this combination of technical reality and almost cinematic appearance that made the event resonate so strongly, both within the immediate region and far beyond it.