A newly released 90-page monograph from the National Intelligence Academy (Millî İstihbarat Akademisi, MİA) titled "The 12-Day War and Lessons for Turkey" offers, from Ankara's perspective, an unvarnished autopsy of the 13-24 June Israel-Iran clash and sets out a checklist of "urgent, non-negotiable reforms" for Turkish policy makers.
Battlefield in Four Dimensions
The Intelligence Academy argues that the war was decided in the electromagnetic spectrum as much as in the skies. "Kinetic and electromagnetic combat occurred simultaneously" and showed that the spectrum has become "another primary theatre of war alongside land, sea, air and space". Within 72 hours, coordinated airstrikes, electronic deception, and cyber-intrusions left much of Iran's radar network blind. One passage puts it starkly: "Iran's air-defence umbrella dissolved after the first day; afterwards it could display no meaningful presence".
Airpower proved decisive. Israel surged almost its entire fighter order of battle—45 F-35I "Adir" stealth jets, 25 upgraded F-15I "Ra'am" strike aircraft, and 97 F-16I "Sufa" multirole fighters—to establish "near-total air superiority". Iran's answer—mass salvos of ballistic and hypersonic missiles—scored some hits on Tel Aviv and Haifa, yet the Israeli-US air-defence umbrella picked off most projectiles. Even then, the report notes, "Israel failed to intercept every hypersonic round, underscoring residual gaps".
Cyber, Info Ops and the "Invisible Front"
Unit 8200-directed cyber raids and Gulfstream G-550 "Oron/Şavit/Etam" electronic-warfare aircraft "created a silent force-multiplier" by jamming communications, spoofing GPS signals, and dumping false orders into Iranian command nets. Tehran's response was asymmetric: hacktivist botnets flooded Israeli social feeds with deep-fake videos and bogus evacuation SMS alerts. Yet the Academy judges Israel's information-shielding better: "Israel activated rapid rebuttal and public-warning mechanisms that smothered panic within minutes".
Why Iran's Defences Crumbled?
Four structural flaws emerge:
1. Air-defence nodes were "static, centralised and mapped in advance".
2. An ageing fighter fleet—"largely legacy F-4s and F-14s from the Shah era".
3. Civil-defence infrastructure was thin. "Unlike Israel's shelters and sirens, Iran lacked wide-area alerts, which led to more than 1,100 civilian deaths".
4. Chronic dependence on smuggled dual-use components became a "supply-chain choke point readily exploited by foreign intelligence".
Lessons for Turkey
An entire chapter is titled "Conclusion and Steps Turkey Must Take". "Its language is blunt: "Modern war can no longer be won with prototypes and slogans; stockpile depth wins wars as much as technology".
• Air-fleet modernisation must accelerate. The indigenous TF-X fighter, F-16 Block-70 upgrades, and KIZILELMA unmanned combat aircraft "cannot afford further slippage."/
• Multi-layered air defence is vital. Israel's Arrow, David's Sling, and Iron Dome lattices still leaked hypersonic shots; Turkey is urged to push SİPER and HISAR's high-altitude phases "while hedging against glide- and boost-phase gaps."
• Secure the tech stack. The study warns that commercial apps, foreign cloud services, and imported chips "provided backdoors into Iranian decision loops" and calls for "national-origin hardware in critical C2 nodes".
• Civil defence saves lives. "Whole-of-country early-warning networks, mass-access shelters and public drills are indispensable; the sledgehammer never lands where you expect".
• Counter-espionage must go mainstream. Iranian insiders allegedly aided Mossad for as little as "$250 per month". Ankara, the authors say, should immunise vulnerable demographics via economic inclusion and civic outreach.
One of the report's most quoted paragraphs reads: "Intelligence, civilian technology, military method, and public diplomacy now intertwine. Understanding this fusion is critical for a country encircled by war". The Academy recounts how field agents armed with remote-controlled Spike missiles destroyed Sevom-Hordad batteries at point-blank range and how covert cells used mini-drones to assassinate senior officers inside Tehran in the war's opening hours.
Diplomatically, Israel fought with "near-unconditional" US, UK, French, and even Jordanian sensor sharing, whereas Iran's notional partners, Russia and China, stayed neutral. "BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation offered no operative security guarantees". Turkey is therefore advised to "repair frayed NATO ties while deepening pragmatic bonds with Pakistan, Qatar, and Azerbaijan to avoid strategic orphanhood".
Future Scenarios
Looking beyond the smoke, the Academy sketches three scenarios:
1. Renewed US-Iran nuclear talks that freeze enrichment for five years in exchange for sanctions relief.
2. A stalemate of tit-for-tat strikes and mounting economic pressure.
3. A larger US-Israeli air campaign that triggers Iranian missiles. Saturation, possible Strait of Hormuz closure, and "in extremis, an Iranian sprint for a nuclear device".
Each track has spill-overs for Turkey—refugee surges on the Van frontier, spikes in Brent crude, drone and missile proliferation. "Energy diversification and border hardening are no longer contingency plans but standing requirements," the report concludes.
Core Warnings
The document is peppered with headline-ready sentences. Among them:
• "The surprise attack factor accounted for a substantial part of Israel's success".
• "Civilian technologies employed on the battlefield demand strict oversight; domestic alternatives must be widespread wherever feasible".
• "Electromagnetic dominance now functions as the strategic opening move of modern war".
The report devotes a final section to what it calls "defence-industrial counter-intelligence." Israeli gains, it says, rested on "long-term penetration of Iran's security organs, collaboration with MEK cells and front-company access to dual-use tech start-ups in third countries". Turkish drone and EW manufacturers, now high-profile exporters, should expect more phishing, talent-poaching, and hostile takeovers.
Echoing the Iranian experience, the Academy warns that "economic stress and social polarisation ease the recruitment of local agents" and calls for "nationwide alert sirens, hardened metro stations and annual shelter drills akin to Japan's earthquake rehearsals". Public awareness campaigns—through "conferences, adverts and TV dramas".
The Intelligence Academy judges that the "12-Day War compressed a decade of military-technical evolution into less than a fortnight". For Turkey, the conflict is both a warning and a roadmap: success in any future regional showdown will hinge not only on fifth-generation jets and SAM batteries but on the fusion of sensors, shooters, cyberspace, and alliances under a resilient political umbrella. Or, as the authors phrase it, "Modern war is won as much in cables and code as in cockpits".
About the National Intelligence Academy
Established in Ankara in 2019, Millî İstihbarat Akademisi serves as Turkey's government-affiliated think tank and graduate school for intelligence and security studies. It trains civil servants, publishes open-source analyses, and "aims to raise national awareness in an era when security is no longer the sole domain of the uniformed few".
Map: Wikimedia Commons