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First off, does Hamas really care about what happens to Assad or Iran? They take Iranian weapons but they also backed the Syrian rebels against Assad, they aren't exactly a full on proxy of Iran like Hezbollah. If anything the fact that Iran was ultimately dragged into the fight despite desperately trying to stay out of it directly is a Hamas W.
Second, the damage to the AoR seems pretty overblown:
Syria is a real loss but Assad was always the weakest link and his fall had more to do with his own incompetence than Israeli brilliance, otherwise they would have rolled southern Lebanon the way Al-Jolani rolled Syria.
Assad, no. Iran and Hezbollah, yes. One needs supplies.
Hamas is Sunni, not Shia, but the shared devotion to destroying Israel gave them an otherwise strange set of Islamic allies.
Sure, they wanted the whole Islamic world to rise up. The more the merrier. Except for the part where Iran and Hezbollah got their ass handed to them. That's not the result one wants for one's allies.
This is not true. Israel was largely considered to be the loser in that conflict, or at least having underperformed. In 2025, Israel blew the fuck out of Hezbollah after demonstrating that Hezbollah was almost entirely militarily ineffective.
Hezbollah is much weaker than in 2006, and will remain that way if the Israelis aren't exaggerating about their intent.
They are doing pretty well, yes. But they are overall the least important bit as demonstrated by the fact that they're having a great time while their allies get wrecked.
Thanks to Trump, so far yes the regime survives. However, it's in a much weaker position than it was before, and longstanding problems like the economy continue to worsen. I've seen some credible-sounding reports that moderates/reformers are rising in power/prominence due to the embarrassing defeat, and how much Khamenei is in touch with reality is hard to know. His succession will be much more fraught than it would have been if it had happened without the 12-Day War.
Iran's missile production and launching capacities were hammered pretty hard, so you really have to squint to see the silver lining in the dark clouds of "we launched a bunch of our prized military capability at Israel and had nearly zero military effect."
It remains to be seen what Israel's red lines will actually be for e.g. Iran rebuilding certain military capacities. But the IAF demonstrated the ability to conduct air strikes at will and there's little hope for Iran that they can suddenly acquire or develop top-tier air defense systems. And assassinations on the ground are also always a fun fear for Iranian leaders.
Who suggested otherwise? Israel was not the primary factor there. The Turks did more, I think. Plus the fact that Iran and Russia both had to back off the level of support given their other military priorities.
It's not a great time for Iran. They spent decades preparing to put up a good fight against Israel and/or the U.S. and in a matter of days they were revealed to be a paper tiger against Israel, with just a dash of U.S. involvement. They can try to pretend they did more damage to Israel than they actually did, but they can't deny their own high losses, or that Israel could do it all again.
The overwhelming majority of Hamas's supplies are made in Gaza, though. There's a blockade, after all.
Yet the ceasefire imposed after 2006 and resulting situation, other than the assassination of Nasrallah, was identical from Hezbollah's perspective. They were bombed one-sidedly after the ceasefire was signed, they were repressed by the Lebanese government and they were portrayed as being incapable of fighting again. If anything the Lebanese government of 2006 was both more powerful and more explicitly anti-Hezbollah than the current one.
To this day the majority of Israelis from northern communities have yet to return and a significant proportion have stated they'll never return. Considering that the goal of the Lebanon War was to return Israelis to the border I'd call that a failure.
When Israel actually blew the fuck out of the PLO their ground forces weren't held up at the first villages they entered, they pushed all the way to Beirut, forced the PLO out of Lebanon and occupied all of southern Lebanon for the next two decades. Whereas this time around they were unable to even conquer the first frontline villages of Khiam and Al-Naqoura without getting, as you say, "blown the fuck out".
All the credible reports I've heard from Iran are that the hardliners are the ones rising in power while the reformers were humiliated by getting betrayed in the middle of negotiations. If your story were accurate we would expect new concessions in negotiations whereas in reality Iran hasn't moved an inch and has refused to even reopen negotiations.
An odd comparison, how is Israel's economy doing? Last I checked the Houthis had entirely shut down the Port of Eilat, the Bazan Gas Refinery is still partially shut down more than a month after eating Iranian missiles and the Israeli deficit is gigantic. And this is in a world with unlimited American and European backing, what do you think happens to Israel's economy in a world where it's trade partners turn hostile?
Iran's missile production and launching capacities are quite literally underground. There's zero evidence that they took significant losses in that respect, whereas the fact that it took less than 10 missiles on day 12 to land hits when on day 1 it took more than a hundred proves that Israel's air defenses were collapsing. If anything it's the Israeli strikes that had zero military effect.
clearly you missed the funeral where half the "dead IRGC hardliners" miraculously turned up alive. Again: if the hardliners lost big then where are the diplomatic concessions?
Israel has demonstrated that it can launch missiles from over the horizon and hit targets in Iran, but they don't have the ability to actually fly directly over Iran dropping bombs, something that would be necessary to inflict any damage to their underground strategic infrastructure.
If anything, the fact that Israel barked so hard about the possibility of resuming strikes is another indication that they lost. Because Israel doesn't bark when they want to bomb Syria, they just do it. Syria actually has zero air defenses, and there is actual footage of Israeli jets flying freely over Syria dropping bombs. There is no such footage of Israeli jets over Iran.
Again, if Israel didn't receive an ass-whooping from Iran they would still be bombing Iran. Remember, Trump also told them to stop bombing Syria and Lebanon and they were ignored.
You think those tunnels to Egypt were for tourists? This is a decades-long relationship.
They were "unable" or that wasn't their plan? I'm just aware of what the general sentiment was about how things went in 2006 vs. 2025 and in the latter it's widely agreed Hezbollah got beaten to an embarrassing degree. The fact that Israel could do it without a major ground invasion adds to Hezbollah's embarrassment.
I haven't seen a good story on things for like a month now. It's funny to see the sentence "hardliners rising in power" since that's their default position for the last very long while, minus a bit when Rohani looked like he might be succeeding. My belief is that it's pretty unlikely Iran goes the pragmatist route and we see a renewal of the conflict.
The real negotiations with Iran tend to happen in secret. That was true of the JCPOA and I imagine it will be true for anything else. They have until almost the end of August to deal with the E3 re: snapback sanctions.
I will say shit like this is hilarious in that Iran's secular nationalists used to run the place, but were friendly with Israel. If the theocracy goes there's no reason to be in conflict with Israel! That article is also funny because it never seems to mention the fact that your average would-be protestor knows that they're likely to get gunned down right now if they try anything for any reason, so the lack of protests might not be because of greater solidarity.
Do you have any idea how weak Iran's economy is? Israel is orders of magnitude better off, which is why it can win a war against a country nearly 10x its size.
Two survivors is not "half" of what was claimed, lol. There were a lot of coffins.
Ok now you're just being delusional and I have to doubt you know what a "credible" source is here. Iran's launchers are not all underground. That's total nonsense. You have to believe that the IDF is just lying I guess and that all those bombs they dropped didn't do much.
So the IAF is just lying about this? Also they were dropping JDAMs and bunker busters. There are photos of the damage.
You're confused about how Israel decides to do things in light of U.S. pressure and risk. Israel does not want to piss Trump off about Iran.
Oh so you don't believe the footage of Iran shooting down F-35? The IAF had drones over Iranian airspace, which are much easier to shoot down. Hard to believe they didn't have faster combat aircraft dropping munitions. I'd imagine that the aircraft stayed much higher in Iranian airspace because of the risk being much higher than in Syria.
In your mind Iran came out better here? Israel called off aircraft mid-flight because Trump demanded it, but you think Israel was actually glad to stop.
That's incredible. What are you reading that causes you to credulously believe Iranian propaganda like this?
If we're to believe the IDF those have been out of commission since they took over the Philadelphi Corridor over a year ago. Also, both Israeli casualty reports and Qassam combat footage overwhelmingly shows the use of indigenous IEDs and other weapons that could only be manufactured locally. It would be silly for a cell based organization like Hamas to depend on imports.
The IDF very clearly tried to take Al-Khiam for a photo-op at the former detention center and failed. The primary difference between 2006 and 2025 is expectations: they both featured failed ground offensives but in the former case Netanyahu avoided making big promises about destroying Hezbollah forever like Ehud Olmert did (though I do recall him claiming he'd occupy everything south of the Litani, a goal he fell well short of) whereas Hezbollah set a goal beyond simply surviving that they weren't able to meet.
T&P claims that JDAMs were used but the citation used to "prove" this is an article which only ever claims that jets took off carrying JDAMs, with none of the strikes identified as using bunker busters or even regular bombs. Nearly all were above ground soft targets like buildings and the strikes on underground facilities were aimed at entrances rather than the repeated direct strikes on bunkers one would expect if Israel actually had total freedom of operation over Iran. Ironically even your own pro-Israeli sources basically support my thesis.
So far your only source is the IDF and people who uncritically believe claims made by the IDF. And yes, the IAF is definitely lying because by day six they were reduced to reposting footage of destroyed missile launchers from day one. If they actually owned the skies and were picking off Iranian launchers all war then why did all the footage come out right at the beginning and then get reused?
If Iran were legitimately totally defenseless then why would Israel care about what Trump thinks? Again, they've had no problem pissing him off about Lebanon and Syria. If anything Trump has been significantly more friendly to Jolani than the Iranians so you'd think pissing him off about Syria would be more risky. For that matter, why would he care? Every indication is that he had no problem with Israel one sidedly bombing Iran forever, it was only when Iran started landing counterpunches that he became interested in deescalation.
On the flipside, they had drones that were shot down so it's just as easy to imagine that Netanyahu simply didn't bother taking the risk. In this case the burden of proof that Israel was dropping bombs in Iranian airspace is on you, since basically all of the identified strikes look like the result of air launched missiles, not bombs.
On the first day Israel went for a decapitation strike followed by regime change while the Iranians were totally caught with their pants down. Yet the regime did not collapse and after a few hours of chaos they reorganized and proceeded to return fire in sufficient volume to break Israeli AD nearly every day. They hit strategic sites at will, including the Weizmann Institute, the Bazan oil refinery and Camp Moshe Dayan. Not with piddly Hamas bottle rockets but seriously destructive ballistic missiles, a single of which was able to destroy enough real estate in Tel Aviv to leave 2000 Israelis homeless.
In contrast, the quality of Israeli targets fell considerably; on day 1 they were wiping out commanders with ease, on day 12 they were reduced to hitting a giant clock in Tehran and hitting a prison, killing a bunch of dissidents and achieving the nearly impossible feat of making Iranian dissidents cheer for the IRGC. America blew through nearly a quarter of the GLOBAL ballistic missile interceptor stockpile, suggesting that Israel would already be defenseless by day 12 if not for American help.
Had the war continued it would have continued to get worse and worse for Israel. Fortunately Israel was able to leverage the threat of direct American offensive involvement beyond choreographed bombings that result in zero injuries, otherwise the Iranians would have had little reason to agree to a deal.
Right off the bat, let's see if you can admit a clear factual error or two. I really should have done this before writing the rest, but ah well.
Do you acknowledge that Iran's ballistic missile production facilities and launchers are not all underground? This is a very easy one.
Do you acknowledge that the volume of Iran's launches against Israel dropped off considerably? Here's a clue: https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Iranian-Ballistic-Missile-Estimates-6-26-2025-6.pdf
Frankly it's remarkable to see someone try to flip the script on one of the most one-sided wars in history, but then I suppose the Egyptians tried to pretend they had won the Yom Kippur War.
Never did I say the majority of their stock was Iranian. But Iran has been a major supporter for decades.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/19/hamas-used-iranian-produced-weapons-in-october-7-terror-attack-in-israel/
https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/captured-documents-reveal-how-iran-smuggles-weapons-via-syria-and-jordan/
That's not particularly relevant in evaluating the overall status at the end of the conflict, where Israel overwhelmingly kicked Hezbollah in the nuts by killing its leader, a bunch of its personnel, maimed a shit ton more of them, and also significantly reduced their missile stockpile, all while taking relatively light casualties and rendering the missile threat mostly ineffective.
Tellingly, they didn't do much to help out their pals in Tehran. Weird way to behave if actually they weren't hurting so badly. Kinda defeats the point of having an alliance.
Why would Israel care about what it's single most important ally thinks about a conflict it has been assisting with? Seriously? The stuff in Syria is small potatoes.
The most retarded bit of logic here is that if we, for the sake of argument, grant that you're correct about only IAF drones poking around Iranian airspace then, wow, the IAF is really capable of doing a lot of damage to buildings using air-launched missiles at scale. Also, hitting the Mashhad airport at 1400 miles strongly implies operating within Iranian airspace even with ALBMs.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israels-air-superiority-lets-strike-191600442.html
So all those photos of IAF aircraft loaded with bombs were just for propaganda purposes? Why? Who are they trying to convince? The U.S. and Iranian militaries know the reality regardless.
There's no good reason to believe the IAF is lying here, but you need it to fit your highly evidence-challenged view that actually Iran was the one winning this conflict. The real irony here is that the Iranians don't contest that the IAF was operating in Iranian airspace, they just pretended to shoot an F-35 or two down. You're doing more work than even the Iranian propagandists!
Why send drones on obvious suicide missions if air defenses are not suppressed much at all?
The IAF demolished large buildings and took out at least one command bunker, we know. Hard and expensive to do that with merely missiles.
How many missiles do ya reckon this took? Would the IAF really use its fancy LORAs on a TV broadcaster?
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/israel-iran-missile-attacks-photos-irib-cfc83190c9bc8f84db79f7624c1309b0
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-us-weapons-prove-themselves-in-iran-strikes-1001512893
There's plenty of evidence Israel dropped bombs in Iran, just none you find compelling enough that you have to accept it. You resist the obvious because your narrative collapses if actually the IAF did have air dominance and you can pretend they were going to run out of ALBMs before Iran ran out of its ballistic missiles.
Trump's change in preference came right after the U.S. strikes on the nuclear facilities, obviously. The volume of Iranian missile strikes was going down and Israel was not taking meaningful damage relative to Iran.
Israel did not expect to get regime change that easily. Come on now. As far as we know, the Supreme Leader was not targeted (whether by impossibility or choice I'm not sure).
No, they very much did not. All those missiles, so few strategic sites hit. Blowing up grandmas doesn't win wars, even when they were able to do that.
This is backwards logic. The IAF could afford to start hitting secondary targets on day 12 because they had been so successful the previous 11 days. It's not like they suddenly couldn't hit Tehran, as you've pointed out.
There was no "deal" here. It was just an unofficial ceasefire. If Iran was on the verge of really turning the tide against their main enemy who did a surprise attack and killed a bunch of its top leaders and destroyed a bunch of their military and nuclear sites, why would they have stopped instead of getting even? They knew the U.S. really did not want to get drawn in beyond the attack on the nuclear sites. Why would Iran let Israel get away with it?
The vast majority of their ballistic missile assets are underground. The fact that they have a handful of aboveground production facilities (mostly holdovers from before they developed their underground capabilities) doesn't change that.
I never claimed otherwise, but this doesn't contradict my point which is that Iran launched exactly as many missiles as they needed to hit their targets and to maximally exhaust Israeli AD. Iran had to operate under the assumption that the war could last for months and potentially involve the US, they couldn't just blast off everything they had right at the beginning of an attritional war.
Yet they somehow made even less progress on the ground compared with 2006 despite all this. The rate of rocket fire actually increased towards the end of the war. They assassinated plenty of Hezbollah leaders but historically that hasn't made much difference; the day Nasrallah's predecessor was assassinated one of the Israeli papers (I want to say Maariv) ran the headline of "HEZBOLLAH DEFEATED". As Obama discovered, assassinations don't win wars.
There is a different way to read Hezbollah's inaction when Iran was hit, namely that they recognized that their help wasn't necessary. Had they pulled off a coup on day 1 then Hezbollah would have made no difference and otherwise it was clear that Israel lacked the ability to win in an extended exchange.
Hitting Mashhad proves that they didn't control Iranian airspace, because it's known at this point that Israel was attacking Iran from the north by crossing Azeri airspace to reach the Caspian. From that distance Mashhad is just 550 KM or less than 350 miles, well in range of ALBMs, potentially closer if they were willing to go through Turkmenistan.
Here's a question: if Israel actually controlled that airspace then why didn't they fly over the most fortified and valuable targets dropping dozens of bunker busters the way they did to get Nasrallah? Instead all of the satellite imagery matches up with the theory of missile strikes on soft targets. If the Mashhad airport strike is your best evidence that the IAF had air supremacy then that basically proves they didn't.
You think air defenses are suppressed but the political cost of being wrong and an IAF pilot getting taken hostage is unlimited, so you send drones first. The drones get shot down, confirming that AD remains operational. You then agree to a ceasefire, having confirmed that you can't just bomb them without.
Makes more sense then "non-operational air defenses miraculously down drones and then you agree to a ceasefire for no reason"
If you thought that blowing up the TV broadcaster would cause the Iranian people to spontaneously rise up then a few ALBMs would be a small price to pay. The goal was clearly regime change, not a war of attrition. As soon as they failed they called in Trump to give them a face saving exit before the cost of using fancy missiles to blow up clocks, jails and TV broadcasters became apparent.
On my side, literally all of the OSINT satellite evidence, strike location and damage assessments matching up with my explanation. On your side, the Israel government making claims with zero proof of any kind.
It's good to see you understand why this is such an important dispute, though,
They hit took out a lot of military leaders assembled for exercises but as far as I know nobody confirmed that it was an actual command bunker or even that the IAF was responsible. Most of the confirmed assassinations have been ascribed to Mossad drones, Mossad Spike missiles and the occasional Mossad bomb, all of which could plausibly have taken out the assembled generals just as easily as an IAF bomb.
Alternatively, penetrating a bunker is within the capabilities of the higher yield Sparrow variants like the Silver Sparrow and the Golden Horizon. The damage assessed from the (failed) attempted strikes on Arak and Natanz were performed by such missiles so it wouldn't be farfetched to assume that the successful assassination was their responsibility too.
Still, lets be generous here and assume it was the responsibility of the IAF, and that it was a bomb and not just a missile (or several). Why did this only happen on day 1? Why weren't they able to replicate the pace of assassinations for the remainder of the war, or to take out comparably valuable targets like the missile cities? Even if it were true, this seems more suggestive that they had temporary access to Iranian airspace granted by Mossad blowing decades of assets to give a few hours of access rather than actual aerial supremacy.
So Iran was defenseless, Trump decides to call off Israel for no reason thereby saving Iran, Israel decides to obey Trump despite having previously had no problem disobeying him regarding Lebanon and Syria. Today, Iran is openly defying Trump by continuing nuclear enrichment and Trump is threatening to restart strikes, yet Israel is still doing nothing to Iran while continuing to bomb Syria in active defiance of Trump. I dunno, I still think the explanation that he was saving Israel rather than Iran makes more sense.
Also, fact check, Israel took billions of dollars in losses over just twelve days, and that was with Israeli and American AD operating at peak efficiency. I've yet to hear what "meaningful damage" done to Iran makes that comparatively not meaningful, since they recovered from the assassinations pretty easily.
It's been made abundantly clear within Israeli media that they never had a shot at Khamenei regardless of the bluster, they just assumed that taking out a significant portion of the top military leadership combined with direct threats to murder their families if they didn't rise up would cause the regime to collapse. Instead the older and more cautious elements were instantly replaced by young IRGC hardliners, pretty much the exact opposite of the intended result. It increasingly seems like your arguments only make sense if you unquestioning believe Israeli claims and also assume they would never unwittingly do something stupid and shortsighted.
90% of those missiles were basically chaff designed to drain Israeli AD. The higher quality ones actually intended to hit something had no issue getting through and obliterating Israel's highest value targets. The longer the war lasted, the less "chaff" needed and the more effective strikes on target, particularly since several of the more accurate and higher yield (but slower and easier to intercept) missiles weren't even brought out once.
The nuclear program wasn't gone and neither were the missile cities. If the IAF actually had total air control then they wouldn't be sending missiles at clocks, they'd be Nasrallah-bunker-busting every Iranian fortress and knocking out those capabilities for good.
Yes, the US didn't want to get drawn in. But if Iran had responded to Trump's ceasefire offer by humiliating him Putin style and continued pounding Israel indefinitely then it's pretty hard to imagine Trump not getting drawn in. Beating Israel is easy but beating America is not. Their only options were to risk an existential war immediately or to take a ceasefire and to prepare for the day when Israel no longer has American backing. There are arguments for the former but it's easy to see why they chose the latter. On the flipside there's no reason why Trump or Israel would cut a favourable truce with their worst enemy at their weakest only to impotently threaten to return to fighting by the end of the month because said worst enemy continues to defy them.
So, in your view:
The IDF is just doing these photos with various JDAMs and whatnot linked in this article for pure propaganda? Why?
We know why Iran would lie about having shot down an F-35 or two. But why would Israel need to lie about dropping JDAMs vs. blasting things with ALBMs? They certainly were blowing things up.
You can argue that it doesn't prove the IAF did; you can't argue it proves they didn't. Elementary logic.
Here's a funny (bit)[https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/tensions-erupt-did-israel-use-azerbaijani-airspace-to-strike-deep-into-iran/]:
What was their goal this time? Was it the same as 2006? (No.)
For "exercises"? AYFKMRN? We know who the dead generals are.
Well at least you're willing to acknowledge one part of the Israeli government did a good job.
Because the Iranians got a lot more cautious about things. Obviously. Targeting people is hard when they know they're being actively targeted.
This is not what "spontaneously" means. Quite the opposite.
No reason? He has a whole wing of advisors who wanted the U.S. to take no part. As far as Trump is concerned, the nuclear program was bombed, so mission accomplished.
Those are not the same situations. (After all, you seem to believe Iran remains a significant threat to Israel right now.) Bibi will only test Trump so much.
The Iranians have formed a war council because they expect the war to recommence. Israel is, one presumes, presently plotting for such an eventuality. As they did that last time.
Trump is not a particularly rational actor. He is wildly inconsistent and easily influenced by his advisors; who often have conflicting views. Many people predict great catastrophe if the regime falls. So if it's defanged why not let it live. I think this is wrong, but I know why they think it.
Again, no truce was "cut." Nothing was negotiated. It's a de facto ceasefire.
Do you deny that Iran's economy was massively impacted during the conflict because of the reliance on the oil industry, or is that also propaganda?
Had the conflict continued roughly as it had, who was going to run out of money first?
Here's the core of the issue: you claim bombs were used, yet none of the strikes documented by satellite imagery are consistent with bombs, let alone the repeated bomb strikes one would expect if the IAF actually had total control of the skies. That being the case, it doesn't matter what Iran does or doesn't choose to dispute. If Hamas makes some outlandish claim and Israel doesn't directly dispute it are we supposed to automatically assume it to be true?
You're saying that Israel was not defeated, they just chose not to deliver further damage to Iran despite failing to have destroyed their nuclear program or their ballistic missile capabilities after securing total control of their airspace.
Again, the decisive factor here is the US. Iran doesn't want an existential fight against the global hegemon and Israel can't maintain an extended exchange if the US doesn't directly intervene. That's really the only explanation that covers why neither side has resumed fighting yet.
It was to force Hezbollah north of the Litani and to allow Israelis in the northern communities to return. The IAF is still bombing territory south of the Litani and somewhere between 20% and 50% of the former inhabitants of said communities have left permanently so that's a failure on two counts.
Israel has always been excellent at assassinations, the trouble is that assassinations don't win wars.
Yes, the Iranians were conducting missile exercises when Israel struck.
Yes, that explains why Trump would step out, but why would Israel? In your world they had Iran totally at their mercy yet they still had nuclear material and ballistic missile capabilities. Why would they step back and allow the Iranians to restock, resupply and rebuild their defenses moments after securing total control of their skies? They bomb Syria regularly (who hasn't fired a shot back in return), they even bombed Qatar, why did they stop bombing Iran?
He just bombed Qatar! How in the world would bombing supposedly defenseless and hostile Iran cause Trump to do anything that bombing one of his biggest financial backers wouldn't?!
Netanyahu would love to try again if he thought Trump could be dragged into doing the dirty work but there's little indication that Iran fears Israel on its own.
Massively impacted, sure. More massively impacted than the country that has been fighting multiple wars nonstop for two years using reservists? Probably not.
Israel has an unlimited line of credit with Uncle Sam so of course they're never running out of greenbacks but in an extended war of attrition the real question is who would run out of valuable infrastructure.
The entire country of Israel has just a few dozen major sites containing the critical national infrastructure: power plants, water desalinization, refineries, etc. The Iranians hitting the Bazan refinery alone stressed their entire supply chain; given a few months of daily strikes Israel would be unlivable, though the US would come to the rescue before then.
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