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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?
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