Summary.

As if this hasn't been clear before. 

1. For "journos"--"explosions in Tehran" don't mean "explosions IN Tehran". Most of the time those are the work of air defense and "explosions in the skies OVER Tehran";

2. Salvo model and issue of "leakers" describe perfectly any SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense). Israel has NO resources to conduct this against Iran;

3. Whatever "leakers" there were--they were very few and, sadly, managed to kill 4 Iranian servicemen;

4. Whatever Israel launched--most of it was intercepted. I don't know the percentage but it is very high. NATO is reeling from recognition of the effectiveness of the Iranian AD, as is Israel;

5. Deterrence worked, that much is clear--Israel never recovered from tour de force of Iranian strike capabilities on October 1st, and now Iran demonstrated that it can defend herself--this is not what NATO and Israel are used to when killing defenseless civilians;

6. US President Joe Biden has expressed hope that the IDF strikes mark the end of the escalation in the Middle East.“It looks like [Israel] didn’t hit anything other than military targets. My hope is this is the end,” he told reporters in Philadelphia. He added that he’d been briefed on the matter by the American intelligence community.

That's right, the only thing which is left for Israel and Washington is hope that Iran doesn't retaliate because it could be much worse than October 1st and Israel better hope that Putin is engaged and is calming things down with his Iranian counterparts. 

That was feeble from Israel, to put it mildly--militarily it is not in the same league. I wonder if Iranians want to get THAAD which will be provided to Israel, if they decide (hopefully not) to retaliate. 

And here is the post in comments from evidently hugely successful discussion yesterday between Nima, Larry and me.   

As a Sunni Muslim, Andrei is correct about what’s going on in the Sunni world. About half are doubling down in their hatred of all things Shia and getting more entrenched in secular nationalism, but half are seriously considering a united Muslim world under the leadership of Iran. We Sunnis are starting to think Allah has blessed Iran.

Many people still cannot grasp a gigantic mental shift in Ummah against the background of Iran not talking but coming out swinging. It is really metaphysical. It is so gigantic that I cannot find proper terms to describe it--the Arab street took a note... big time.

Even People With Half-Brain Knew It All Along.

I don't think that MSM revealed anything here that hasn't been known for awhile to anyone with even basic logic. It was a PR sham all along. 

Defector says thousands of Islamic State fighters left Raqqa in secret deal 

  ...he told Reuters in an interview that the number of fighters who were allowed to go was far higher and the account of a last-ditch battle was a fiction designed to keep journalists away while the evacuation took place. He said a U.S. official in the international coalition against Islamic State, whom he did not identify, approved the deal at a meeting with an SDF commander.

Even pathetic neocon rag Newsweek reported on that. What is interesting here is how this whole thing will go with Israel's almost open support for takfiris and with Trump, in effect, declaring Jerusalem a capitol of Israel. I defer it to Colonel Lang who is a professional in the area:

IMO there will be no peace for Israel ... 

One phrase stands out in his piece:

Will the Muslims ever trust the US again to act as an honest broker? Dennis Ross badly damaged our credibility.  Is it completely gone - perhaps forever?  

Syria (after Ukraine), in my very humble opinion, changed not only regional, Middle East, but global dynamics and it is inevitable that many Arabs do turn back to Russia as I type this. In general, Umma seems to be in a rather welcoming mood, once one considers that couple of RUAF (VKS) TU-95 strategic bombers just two days ago were greeted in Indonesia--the largest Muslim nation in the world. So, a lot is going on right now.

Remember what Russia "sells" today--it is not just oil, gas, fighter planes, nuclear power plant, or space stations. Russia's main export today is (geo)political stability--the price of this product cannot be easily calculated in money, albeit monetary, and gigantic at that, value is there too. This is an extremely hot commodity in the world today--from Middle East to Asia-Pacific. It is a dramatic turn of events and there are many buyers for that commodity--some want just part of it, others want a Full Monty. This is how the new world order emerges.