Immediately following American air strikes, Iranian military officials flew to Beijing to negotiate the purchase of J-10C fighter jets and AWACS from China.
Pakistan's air force is equipped with Chinese-built fighters and missiles, and in a recent air battle against Indian forces shot down several top-line Western-built fighter jets and drones.
Chinese defense firms build equipment that is comparable or superior in quality, at considerable cost savings head-to-head against gear from NATO countries or Russia.
What's more, other militaries are struggling to build weapons at all, given that supply chains for the most advanced munitions and systems run through China for rare earth metals, and the other BRICS countries for raw materials.
If China agrees to supply Iran, it will remake the military and diplomatic landscape of the Middle East, for decades to come.
One can only hope that this means the Russaboos will finally stop spamming their grotesque narratives surrounding the Su-35 and S400 sale, and by extension quietly drop the pretense that Pooty is, in the shadows and with a selfless heart, working against International Jewry by building up Iran as a regional superpower through both weapon deliveries and underpinning its Axis.
The opposite obviously was and is true. For clarity's sake and worth repeating, Kosher Vlad has rugpulled the ayatollahs about half a dozen times in the last decade alone, with noone apparently ever noticing that miraculously Israel seemed to be benefiting from P's shenanigans the most. The latest to one chutzpah: after Egypt cancelled its Su35 order the Russians simply dumped the excess airframes in Algeria - even though the Algerians never made such a request as they instead have an Su57 order standing out. Putin being Putin however, just needed an alibi as to why Russia wasn't able to keep its end of deal with the Iranians. To add insult to injury, Russia is now offering fasttracked Su35s to India. Conclusion: no modern Russian airframes for Tehran, Iran will be kept waiting until the end of the decade and maybe when Israel has its 6th generation fighter the bucks with turbans will get some crumbs to suckle on.
Meanwhile the Kremlin simps just keep on BS-ing, like never ending broken records with a quota to fill. Read the other day in this thread that in the near future Russia will simply hand over its S400s to Iran, because reasons. Instant face-palm, it's like dealing with an alcoholic uncle who just keeps finding ways to bamboozle. The latest chutzpah which like most bad news went unreported in this thread: on day 11 of the war the Iranian FM Aragchi concluded his Geneva trip and travelled to Moscow for a last ditch attempt to garner Russian support. Man literally begged for the Kremlin's backing citing the 2024 Strategic Partnership. Big P. just sat there and calmly stated that Russia has no obligation to help anyone, which is in layman's terms a polite F off.
Tehran a day later signed on to a US imposed ceasefire. The only correct decision left, internationally isolated and in a downwards spiral as it was.
Yet the show must go on and so does this circus. Now it's the Changs who apparantly have promised to step up and into the limelight. Big question marks on those assertions, there is a lot of wishful thinking and projection there. But at least the Chinese have a widely known love for shekels, which makes a future deal a lot more probable.
Not that it matters much though. Any deal on the acquisition of J10s will take years to materialize, and that's a rather big problem noone seems ready to address. Airframe production, crew training, preparation of facilities, necessity on integrating to be acquired AD and radar systems, and so on. Calculation below is under the condition that a contract will get inked before the end of the year, something which none of the dozen or so linked sites allude to. Military channels mention a likely 4-5 year gap period. Cut that in half for the argument's sake and then ask yourself whether the current trajectory indicates that Iran can sit out the next 2+ years fully exposed.
In short, Iran is kinda cooked. With each confrontation, whether by proxy or direct, the pendulum swings further away from the centre and therefor starting position 21 months ago. Iran has by now lost its proxy deterrent, it has lost its nascent nuclear deterrent, its ballistic missile deterrent is not enough to hold back let alone degrade Israel's military capabilities, and has proven to become less effective in a relative short timeframe. Iran's Airforce, AD umbrella and radar network are all destroyed and will take years to restore. Tehran's military leadership is dead, and its main institutions and organizations exposed as flawed and riddled with enemy infiltrators. Iran's economy is in the gutter and its currency is the world's worst performing. Iran's only ace left up its sleeve is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, yet that banger has been preliminary shot down by the Chinese on whose oil sales the ayatollahs depend for their direct survival.
Iran is dominated on the escalation ladder and isolated on world stage. Only in English language Dissident Right echochambers do the chuds still pump out feel good stories on some form of 'BRICS solidarity', it's as if June 13-25 never happened. Classic case of falling for the memes and grifter BS artists.
The few red lines that were left standing were trampled in the dust. For reference, just remember how both BS artist and full time clown Tucker Carlson
and the IRGC bigwigs promised their respective audiences 1000s of dead US servicemen if Iran's nuclear facilities were attacked and destroyed. Well, that just happened and all DC had to deal with was a telegraphed Iranian fireworks show on a emptied out al Udeid AB, with only 1/14 missiles fired hitting their target. That's called resetting the power dynamics in your favor.
It's grim and if it were up to the Israelis the Twelve Day War will only serve as a stepping stone towards an even more destructive and eloborate campaign. Their fingers are itching, and the bought off media channels are already attempting to re-build doomsday narratives on Iranian ambitions, just like the Likudniks are using their lobbygroups to get Trump to unblock his June 25 ceasefire call.
Ergo the only thing standing between an even harder Israeli delivered asswhooping is DC's conviction that 1. immediate regime change is not likely delivered from an extensive Israeli air campaign and that a long term grind doesn't warrant volatile and unstable financial markets, nor a ballooning oil price, 2. that the Indo-Pacific needs increased attention whereas grinding Iran will deplete stocks and redivert resources away from DC's newly assigned core business, and 3. that the Iran case has lost its urgency after Fordow and the destruction of Iran's nuclear program.
If that equation changes, which most likely will happen somewhere down the line, Iran is in deep sh*t.