More Egregious Disinformation Regarding Iran

One of Iran’s Underground Missile Cities

Sy Hersh is out with a sad new article — Inside Trump and Netanyahu’s Meeting on Iran — that contains three ridiculous, nonsensical paragraphs, which were fed to him by one of his sources. This is an article that Sy never would have written in his prime because he would have tried to corroborate the outlandish assertions. Here are the paragraphs:

Another threat not mentioned between Trump and Netanyahu is Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal. It was one of the major targets of the US-Israeli bombing attack last June. It was wiped out last year but is currently being rebuilt at a rapid rate.

During the war last summer Iran’s missiles had less than a ten percent chance of getting through Israel’s Iron Dome and other air defenses. Iran was able to fire off about 550 missiles at Israeli targets during the war, but the forty-five that got through, even with minimal payloads, caused enormous damage in Tel Aviv and terrified the population. Israel has watched since then as Iran concentrated on manufacturing more and larger missiles

I was told that the upgraded missiles now being manufactured at plants throughout Iran will have enough range to hit targets in Southeastern Europe, where there are little or no air defenses.

Where do I begin? I don’t know if Sy’s source was an Israeli or someone from the US intelligence community, but the info he or she fed Sy is not accurate. Which leads to the next question… Did the source really believe the information was true or was the source using Sy to salt social media with propaganda?

Let’s start with the first claim, i.e., the Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal was wiped out last June. Iran stopped firing missiles at Iran on June 24 because of a deal negotiated with the US to end the war… Not because Iran had run out of missiles. Iran’s ballistic missiles are stored in massive secure underground caves. We have seen no credible evidence that Israel or the US destroyed any of those facilities. Remember all of the predictions about Russia’s missile capability in the Spring and Summer of 2022? We were repeatedly informed that Russia was running out of missiles and that their inventory would soon be exhausted. I think we are seeing a repeat of this delusion with respect to Iran.

The next whopper fed to Sy is that Iran fired 550 missiles but only 45, i.e., 8%, got through and hit a target. That claim comes from the Israeli Defense Forces. Would they have any reason to lie? (That is a sarcastic question.) Let me repeat the list of documented damages from the missiles that Iran launched last June, which I wrote about last week:

Hundreds of buildings in major cities such as Tel Aviv suburbs (Bat Yam, Ramat Gan) were damaged — with some buildings so badly hit they were later demolished. In Tel Aviv alone, analysts mapped damage to around 480 buildings across multiple strike sites.

Iranian missiles damaged key public facilities, such as theSoroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, which was hit by an Iranian missile, causing structural damage and chemical leaks; the affected wing was evacuated. Power and water infrastructure also were hit, contributing to service disruptions.

Iran’s ballistic strikes hit high-value facilities as well. The Weizmann Institute of Science (a major research institution in Rehovot) was severely damaged — with an estimated 90% of structures affected, destruction of dozens of labs, and suspension of about 25% of its operations.

Independent radar data and reporting showed that Iranian missiles directly hit around five Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) facilities, including an air base, intelligence center, and logistics base. Israeli authorities did not publicly confirm these hits at the time, due to military censorship. Israeli oil refining infrastructure — especially in Haifa Bay — also suffered direct hits and damage from Iranian missiles, including to critical units and pipelines at the Bazan refinery and associated casualties. The strike on the Bazan oil refinery complex in Haifa Bay, one of Israel’s most important energy facilities, heavily damaged the power generation unit and other infrastructure critical for operation.

Gee, if Iran can do that much damage with just 45 missiles after getting hit with a surprise attack, imagine what they can do with advance warning and preparation. Theodore Postol, an MIT professor emeritus and longtime critic of missile defense systems (known for debunking exaggerated claims about Patriot missiles during the 1991 Gulf War) has looked at the data from June 2025 and concluded that the interception rates were far lower than officially reported, estimating only about 5% success against ballistic missiles specifically—meaning roughly 95% penetrated defenses. I find Ted far more credible. Too bad Sy didn’t ask him (and Sy knows Ted).

The last problematic paragraph in Sy’s article is the claim that Iran will have enough long-range missile to hit targets in Southeastern Europe. And why would Iran attack Europe? This ridiculous claim is a repeat of previous CIA propaganda that was intended to ignite fear in Europe in order to convince the Europeans into going along with an attack on Iran. Iran is not going to waste missiles on Italy, Greece, Bosnia, or Serbia… It will use them on Israel.

If Trump, despite warnings from JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard, chooses to launch an unprovoked war against Iran, I would not be surprised if Iran decides to launch its retaliatory strike before the US bombs and missiles hit targets in Iran. I am not talking about a preemptive strike, rather I am assuming that Russia and China will alert Iran when US attack aircraft take off on their first mission and that Iran will in turn fire off its first salvo of drones and missiles while the US planes and cruise missiles are headed towards targets in Iran. If this goes hot we will be staring into the gaping yaw of a major regional war and the US may suffer more casualties then it incurred in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. So much for Donald Trump’s promise to not get America into a needless foreign war.

I had the privilege of chatting about Iran and the war in Ukraine on Wednesday with my good friend, George Galloway:

Garland Nixon and I also discussed the upcoming attack on Iran:

And Rasheed Mohammed and I had a forty minute chat on the looming disaster: