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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/world/middleeast/iran-military-defense.html
How Tough Is Iran? A String of Military Losses Raises Questions
(New York Times) Vivian Yee - Iran is often cast as one of the world's most dangerous villains, but in the year and a half that followed the attack by Hamas on Israel in Oct. 2023, Iran has suffered blow after blow. This accelerated on Friday with the start of the Israeli campaign, which has shown, as never before, just how compromised and weak Iranian forces really are - and how few ways they have of hitting back. "Iran has basically demonstrated that it was outgunned and outsmarted again by Israel," said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. For years, Iran's strategy for self-protection rested on a combination of its armed partners in the region and its own missile capabilities to deter attacks on Iranian soil. Instead, Israel demolished Hizbullah - which sat on Israel's northern border with an arsenal of rockets - during a war in Lebanon last year.