July 11, 2026: The American-Israeli war against Iran proved more complicated than expected, and its most critical combat zone was outside Iran. The Americans and their allies showed how they could strike Iranian targets, and Iran made them pay for it.

All the firepower expended on Iran soon revealed another problem: the Americans and Israel were using up all their readily available weapons. The war against Iran brought forth a lot of support from America, especially in terms of weapons, ammunition, military equipment, fuel, and much more. These shipments included thousands of missiles of several types, as well as smart bombs and autocannon munitions, and have increased, but keeping them coming may be a problem. All these shipments came from existing stockpiles, known as War Reserve Stockpiles. Over the last decade, NATO members have been copying the American efforts to build sufficient reserves of key weapons and munitions just in case.

The basic idea is to rebuild stockpiles of ammunition and equipment for use against a large, well-equipped force in a war. These stockpiles are also referred to as the War Reserve, as they consist of large quantities of munitions and spares stockpiled to keep troops going during the initial 30-60 days of fighting until production can be increased to sustain the fighting. These stockpiles must contain the most useful munitions and other supplies and be positioned so they can be moved to the combat zones as quickly as possible. Without adequate logistics, as in the right supplies delivered in time, wars or at least battles, are often lost early and often. The Americans must keep the weapons coming to keep the Iranians down until a long-term peace agreement can be secured.

Once the Iran War began, there were suddenly many decisions to make and preplanned operations to implement. All participants were embroiled in these masses of details. The Americans and Israelis were able to handle. The Iranians, suffering from major losses of upper and middle management military, political, and economic leadership, were suddenly paralyzed and improvising in fits and starts as best they could. Allied disruption of Iranian communications was another major factor.

Trying to negotiate with Iran was complicated because several groups claimed to be the supreme authority, with communications disruption being a factor there too, plus the Allies could and did detect where the communications were coming from and promptly bombed those again. The IRGC\Islamic Republican Guard Corps and the allied Basij militias were scattered across the country to keep the population under control. Destroying or severely reducing the IRGC/Basij ability to keep the Iranian religious dictatorship in power was a major Allied objective. There is only one Ayatollah left, and he was rarely heard from. Iranians had already learned that Islam was the problem and mosque attendance was down 80 percent from a decade ago. If Islam disappeared from Iran in the wake of the war, it would be a victory for Iranians and the world.