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Killing of Hamas leader 'doesn't help' ceasefire talks, says Biden
Is Israel Deliberately Provoking an Escalation That Might Drag the U.S. Into the Conflict?
Does Netanyahu actually want to drag the US into a much larger war with Iran? Or is he content to strike humiliating blows against them, safe in the knowledge that the US's aegis protects them from massive retaliation, and Iran lacks the ability to pursue more fine-grained responses. Biden certainly doesn't seem to be happy either way, as his response to a wanted terrorist leader being eliminated, in a fairly elegant and collateral-minimizing way, shows.
I am armchair general and know nothing of war. Keep that in mind.
Larger war with Iran is impossible I think without Iran really pissing off the US. And that means nuclear tests or 9/11 style attack. The country is too big, too much coastline from which to fire on US ships, too much mountains. Teheran is far away, tucked near mountains, and there are limited ways to resupply. Also it is not a complete desert like Iraq so guerilla warfare will be way nastier. And Iran is a bit more disperse that Iraq and Afghanistan.
Without risking american lives - only bombing and missile campaign is possible, and destruction of the coastal facilities in the gulf.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Browne-8/publication/277020426/figure/fig1/AS:294521754669056@1447230866774/Topographic-map-of-Iran-shows-various-physiographic-regions-source-wwwworldofmapsnet.png
here is topological map of Iran. Looks quite unpleasant. Not as bad as Afghanistan, but at least there you had a somewhat easy and cheap supply road trough Pakistan. Here - Turkmenistan won't help, Afghanistan is closed, from pakistan - it seems you can bring supplies to Chabnar - but you would have conquered that on first turn anyway. Turkey will probably assist half assedly - but once again mountain passes. The kurds will gladly help - but the mountain passes once again rear their ugly head.
And to get everything going you need quite some time - so it will be probably after the inauguration of the next POTUS
But Israel wouldn't mind couple of US missile strikes on Iran soil. And of course any strikes in support of Israel will cost some votes and gain some. I think we are far away from everything 2024 has in store for us.
Nobody wants to mount a ground invasion of Iran because the Iranians have a large military with a great deal of ideological commitment (unlike Saddam).
However, bombing Iran’s oil industry into the Stone Age is pretty doable. Iran’s navy and Air Force would get wrecked very quickly.
What’s tricky is that Iran learned from Iraq and Syria and built their nuclear facilities inside mountains. So there’s no way to destroy the program without boots on the ground.
I don’t know what contingency plans Israel has for enforcing their red line that Iran cannot achieve a nuclear weapon.
I’m not sure. Gas prices are already a contentious issue in the USA, and taking a good chunk of oil (about 10% per Google) would spike gas prices by several dollars which would be a political crisis.
Well sure, war has consequences.
Consider that it might be Israel doing it and not the US. If Iran conducts a major missile/drone attack on Israel and does real damage then Israel has said they’re going to take the gloves off. I believe them.
I don’t think the US would attack non-mil infra unless Iran picked a fight with us directly and did some real damage.
Iran would be a failed state pretty quickly if its oil revenue dried up and Israel can destroy that infrastructure from the air. I’m not sure exactly how many strikes it would take to say eliminate half of Iran’s oil output for ~months+, but oil fields, refineries, and pipelines are easy targets that can’t really be hardened.
Of course, the more pressing threat for Israel is if they need to invade Lebanon to attack Hezbollah and its missile sites, in which case they’d be devoting the vast majority of their air power to that operation.
What would be the Israeli game plan for invading Lebanon, I’m genuinely curious?
Like Hezbollah is more than competent enough to assume they’ll take 40% of the country back after Israel leaves. They’ve survived Israeli occupation before. You’d have to get rid of the Shia population that provides their demographic base somehow, and I guess Syria and Iraq might be far enough away for comfort but you’ve gotta assume that Hezbollah will just set up shop again.
I’m not saying Israel won’t regard this as a future problem. But, well, they’re surely aware that a) Hezbollah is too entrenched in Lebanese society to get rid of without restructuring that society and b) lebanon’s population mostly hates them and so won’t cooperate in that endeavor.
Israel’s game plan in the event of war with Hezbollah is to attack as many facilities and kill as many leaders and combatants as they can from the air and then see if they can prop up anyone else in Lebanon who isn’t Hezbollah at that point. If they can’t, they’ll leave and the cycle will repeat itself.
But yes, the general reality that the Sunnis are deeply internally divided grifters, the Christians are all lazy kleptocrats with French passports who want to make their bag and retire to Paris / the South of France and the Shias are the only ones with the discipline and will to make a play for the actual country remains the case. Lebanon lurches from crisis to crisis, but as long as Hezbollah continues to be well-funded by Iranian oil money it has enough funds to buy large amounts of support (which is often more financial than ideological when it comes to many Lebanese, even Shiites).
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