🔮Why Israel Might be Waiting to Hit Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

A conversation with Ryan McBeth

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Editor's Note: Thanks for reading The Oracle by Polymarket. Our goal is to bring you news and analysis enriched by data from the world's largest prediction market. 

Today's article combines the views of one military commentator with the current Polymarket odds for various global events (marked with the 🔮emoji).  The interview was conducted before Israel’s strike on Iran over the weekend.

Got a tip, story idea, or anything else to share? Our email is oracle@polymarket.com.

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Ryan McBeth is a former anti-armor infantryman, who pivoted to writing targeting software for US government contractors, with side hustles in cybersecurity, intel analysis, and drone-based blood delivery.

McBeth’s YouTube channel, which now has nearly a million subscribers, pivoted from software to military analysis following the start of the Ukraine war. His content includes everything from how many aerial refueling tankers Israel needs to strike Iran, to takes on why the “military-industrial” complex does not exist. 

But McBeth does not consider himself a “geopolitics guy.” Instead, he prefers to center his analysis on the specs of weapons systems, logistics, and other physical limiting factors often glossed over by the YouTube generals. 

The Oracle caught up with McBeth over a post-run cigar to discuss multiple ongoing conflicts and how to be a better open source analyst.

This interview with McBeth has been edited for length. All answers are his own.

The Oracle: What’s the difference between you and the guys posting stuff from Telegram?

All I do is work, I write scripts, I read books, and analyze stuff. I'm not afraid to do the work, like, actually look at Russian websites and go, all right, there was a new contract put out for 200,000 boots. And if each Russian soldier gets two new pairs of boots, then that means that they're going to bring on 50,000 conscripts this year. So that's the actual dirty work that you have to do. 

The Oracle: Are there other accounts you like for geopolitical alpha? 

Covert Cabal is certainly one. Believe it or not, the Department of Defense is pretty darn good. I'm a big fan of Preston Stewart, and Habitual Line Crosser. And what's nice about those guys is that they're subject matter experts. Habitual Line Crosser is an air defense guy, and he blows holes in a lot of what people think about air defense. Trent Telenko does some good stuff. He came to fame when he talked about Russian truck tires.

The Oracle: There are so many psyop accounts out there. How do you spot them?

I look for accounts  that were created after 2022, [when Russia invaded Ukraine], that's a really good red flag. Another thing would be the nature of the account. If all they tweet about is one thing, then they're probably not authentic. If all they tweet about is how horrible Trump is, or the Ukrainian military, or Russia then that might be an indicator that this is a bot account. And by bot, I don't necessarily mean electronic; bots can be human.

The Oracle: You put out a video arguing that World War III may have already started. Are Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran forming some kind of axis?  

China is always going to do what's best for China, and I think they want this war to go on for as long as possible because they're getting cheap oil from Russia and learning about American weapon systems in real time, and they're going to try to figure out how to counter stuff.

When it comes to trade, Russia is basically a mafia run gas station. There isn't that much for North Korea to trade with Russia or China. I'm really trying to think of something that North Korea exports to China. And really, I think it's North Koreans, right? People that'll come as cheap labor.

What about North Korea’s ability to open up another front? 

North Korea is kind of like that annoying drunk guy at the bar, “Oh, I'm gonna kick your ass, meet me outside.” They actually don't ever do anything. They might launch some artillery at a remote island or something, or launch a missile, but they never actually seem to do anything. So I don't really see them opening another front because Kim's main goal is to stay in power.

They do have nuclear weapons, but in Korea we have quite a few THAADs, and we also have Aegis ships in the sea between North Korea and Japan. And then we have further assets in Japan that can shoot down missiles. I think North Korea has maybe 80 nuclear weapons, if that, and if we can hit them in the boost phase, which we'd be able to do with Aegis and THAAD, that kind of negates North Korea's ability to successfully conduct a nuclear strike. And they also have to know if they did conduct a nuclear strike, there would be no more North Korea.

The Oracle: You follow Ukraine closely. Do any of the odds on Polymarket seem wrong? 

• Will Ukraine Hold Kursk through 2024? (🔮 62%) Yeah, that's likely. 

• Will Russia capture Chasiv Yar before December? (🔮 26%) I don’t think so. 

• Will Ukraine Join NATO in 2024? (🔮 2%). No they’re not joining NATO

• Ukraine Elections Scheduled in 2024? (🔮 9%) No, they can't. Ukraine literally can't schedule an election because it's the law. 

Note: This interview was conducted before Israel’s strike on Iran this weekend. McBeth has since published his assessment of the attack here.

The Oracle: What targets do you think Israel might hit in Iran?

The most effective target would be Kharg Island, since they control 90% of Iran's oil. The most likely target would probably be Iranian infrastructure for their nuclear program (🔮37% chance Israel hits Iranian nuclear facilities in 2024), because that's what scares Israel the most. There is a gap between effective and likely because oil facilities burn really easily. But a lot of nuclear facilities are built 500 meters underground, so you're gonna have to dig that out with bombs, and you can only carry so many bombs. But the US has made it clear they don’t want Israel to attack Iranian oil facilities because the US does not need the price of oil to spike right before an election. So we actually might see something after the election. That's certainly possible, because Israel has a window right between November and January 20 to launch where there really won't be any retribution because the outgoing president’s kind of on vacation.

The Oracle: Do you think it’s more likely the strike on Iran will be something non-conventional like the pager attack?

The pager thing was not on my bingo card - totally out of left field. One thing that Israel is very good at is Audacity. And I would also say that they have an ally in the form of the Iraqi Kurds, and Iranian Kurds. Nobody likes the Kurds and Israel can certainly use that to their effect. It could be something as simple as Israel smuggling long range drones into Kurdish held areas, and launching those against Iran, or [disguising] it as a Kurdish attack as opposed to an Israeli attack. So I don't really know exactly what they're going to do, but they never seem to lack for audacity.

The Oracle: What are the chances the US gets involved in the Iran-Israel conflict?

The US has several hundred air-to-air refueling tankers, which are the biggest force multiplier, and Israel essentially has seven. So any kind of honest to God attack would require American logistics, and we've attacked Iran before. I want to say it was Operation Praying Mantis.

I could see Saudi Arabia helping because they hate Iran, but their air force is not the greatest. So unless America helps, it's going to be very difficult to get an actual strike package to Iran, because you're going to have to fight through all the surface-to-air missiles, and for every anti radiation missile that you carry to take out radar, that's one less bomb that you can carry to actually hit a target. 

A strike would take multiple days, and you have to fly over countries that might not necessarily want you flying over them. So, unless Israel does something really audacious like take over an Iranian airfield in the middle of Iran and occupy that for several days and turn that into a forward operating base, I don't really see Israel being able to do much more than very specific, targeted strikes.

The Oracle: What about Hezbollah? Will they be able to regroup after the pager attack? 

I've often said Hezbollah is the varsity team. You don't really see any GoPro footage coming out of southern Lebanon. Nobody's really making political videos of brave Hezbollah soldiers attacking Israelis, and that's because Hezbollah is a genuine army. With genuine, honest to God armies, when your commander gets killed, the next in command steps up, so things like the pager attack will only be effective for a limited time.

I don't really see the Israelis going all the way to Beirut. What they might be trying to do is push Hezbollah behind the Litani River and establish a no man's land. And if the UN would do their freaking job, then there would be fewer attacks on Israeli infrastructure. 

Of course, Hezbollah will just build bigger rockets. But the bigger the rocket, the more fuel you need, so the less warhead you can carry. 

The Oracle: If you could create a market on Polymarket, what would it be?

One interesting market would be if the Air Force will cancel the sixth generation fighter. There is a part of the Air Force that just wants to worry about drones and not build a new [manned] fighter. And there's another part that says, No, we need a sixth generation fighter. Right now we're looking at the expense of creating one of these and there are people in Congress who are getting nervous. If the military industrial complex actually existed, this debate wouldn’t be happening.  

Another question would be on cartel activity in Mexico, it might be hard to measure, but it would be very interesting to see if it increases or decreases under the new president.

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