[Yodel]

After israel has striked the iranian consulate in damascus, the islamic republic has vowed to respond.

What retaliations could realistically take place?

[AFS_Nemesis]

Their cyber is pretty good... Mostly DoS coordinated with kinetic attacks. They also have a robust assassination program. They'll probably just fire enough long range rockets to overwhelm the iron dome so Iran can politically cover their asses internationally. Fire from Syria, Iran, and Yemen. US & UK Navy can only help shoot down from 1 of those places. If Iran goes the route of targeting civilians, this will get much worse for everyone involved. Escalation would be nearly instantaneous.

CIA likely got their "48 hour" window from either taps, informants, or satellite tracking. If rockets are moving around and getting turned on, you can see that from space. If it's a tap, then it's likely from tracking mobile phones and layer 4 traffic analysis. Reminds me of hedge funds using mobile phone tracking data to predict quarterly output at different Tesla factories.

The info could be from more traditional surveillance methods, which brings me to the assassination program. They'll likely target any Israeli in a diplomatic unit in any country that they can get close enough.

One way or another, I pray for all the civilians on both sides of this. Humanity deserves better.

[maranz]

Honestly? I see this as another one of their empty threats.
Let's go back to the moment Qasem Soleimani was assassinated. All those things the Islamic Republic said they would do in retaliation ..
Did something happen? No. They were, and still are, scared of taking any sort of action whatsoever.

[littleHoney]

maybe war 2 is on the way