🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇷 Iran Won't Abandon Uranium: $150–200B War + Global Economic Fallout

In the 12-day war of June 2025, Israel's daily operational cost was $725 million, covering mainly air sorties, fuel, and mobilization.

The total direct costs for the US and Israel ranged from $22–30 billion, with an average daily cost of about $2 billion when including all factors: military operations, air defense, physical damage, compensation, and interceptors.

In that conflict, Iran's missile capacity to inflict damage was limited. A new confrontation today would also involve naval forces and a vastly larger array of missiles, thousands of short-range ones that Iran certainly possesses.

Based on the numbers from the 12-day war, we can estimate that each day of operations now would cost $3-4 billion or more, especially considering that Iran has learned lessons from the previous war and is better prepared.

In 20 days of war, the figure could approach $100 billion.

But the costs don't stop there. If we take the minimum damage to a single base (like Al Udeid in Qatar), which ranged from $500 million to $1.5 billion, a massive, coordinated, and saturating Iranian attack on multiple US bases in the Gulf would cause astronomical damage.

We're talking about $80–100 billion in damage to US bases in the region alone. These figures are estimates drawn from think tank analyses (CSIS, JINSA, RAND) on Gulf base vulnerabilities and historical repair costs after attacks.

That alone would push a 20-day war toward $150–200 billion.

And remember: any prolonged escalation or impact on oil and gas, such as closure of the Strait of Hormuz, would multiply these figures exponentially.

Iran is in a comfortable position in the sense that it possesses the weapons to impose high costs in the event of a war, and, unlike June 2025, they are certain they will not be caught by surprise. It will be a hard war and it will not be brief.

🧵 Patricia Marins

🇺🇸🇮🇱🛬 — Israeli Prime-Minister Netanyahu will be moving up his trip to Washington and arriving this Tuesday to meet with President Trump on Wednesday, instead of his planned the week after.

📝The reason for this unusual change of schedule is an urgent discussion with the US President on Iran.

🇺🇸 US job openings are now at recession levels:

US job openings dropped -386,000 in December, to 6.5 million, the lowest since September 2020.

Over the last 2 months, job openings have declined -907,000, the biggest 2-month drop since March 2023.

The number of available vacancies has plummeted -5.6 million since the March 2022 peak.

This is now below levels seen before the pandemic in 2018 and 2019, at ~7.0 million.

As a result, the ratio of available vacancies to unemployed workers is down to 0.87, the lowest since February 2021, and significantly below the pre-pandemic high of 1.24.

This is also below the levels recorded during the 2001 recession.

US job market weakness is accelerating.

🔗 Kobeissi Letter