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Since I sort of semi promised a post about the previous war and then didn't really follow up on it I had hoped to at least provide one for the inevitable next one, but since Trump likes wars on weekends because of the stock markets and I do not use my phone/computer on Saturday you don't get anything too live, sorry. And frankly might know more than me since I'm only now catching up on the news.
The first war was a pretty big shock, we were woken up by an earthquake siren (Israel has been overdue a major earthquake for a few centuries now) which was followed by a text message clarifying that there was no earthquake, but we had attacked Iran.
This time around was, uh, well they evacuated the embassy Friday so it wasn't really a big surprise. On the other hand it's already been a month of will they won't they. We had a siren early morning, went down to the bomb shelters, came back up, went back down, came back up, went back down, came back up. "Iran trying to raise our average life expectancy by forcing us to do some cardio" was the joke (perhaps funnier for the people not doing eight flights of stairs each time...). At some point in the afternoon the early warning systems came up (I don't know why they weren't initially up) so we were able to have advance warning that a siren might be coming shortly instead of having to run immediately each time.
One of the things I realized trying to write a post about the previous war and am running into again with this one is that aside from the personal angle there's not so much of interest I can share because we just don't know anything. Like this would be a more valuable post if I had interesting geopolitical takeaways rather than just "wow I don't know what's going to happen guess we'll find out haha".
I still remember the Iranian protests in 2009 and how they came to nothing, and the many many protests between then and now, so it would be pretty incredible if finally 16 years later something actually changed.
(The timing is, uh, interesting from a Jewish perspective since we're celebrating a prior defeat of a person from Persia who tried to wipe out the Jews this Tuesday/Wednesday. In the moment it does mean the celebrations planned for tomorrow in the schools are all cancelled since everything is closed)
I wondered why the attack happened on a Sabbath, but it being the week of Purim makes sense. Per Google:
Trump’s team is doing a Pascal’s Wager that it’s worth supporting Israel religiously, as well as politically. This will make the anti-Zionists and antisemites “big mad” as the kids say. I do wonder if this strike counts under the original Persian decree of Xerxes that the Jews be allowed to defend themselves; in the Book of Esther, a decree written in the king’s name and sealed with the royal signet ring cannot be revoked.
As for the direction of the Middle East and Levant going forward, I want to see Iranian blood money dry up and see the region incentivized to peace by the siren song of capitalism.
The people in the middle east are not going to like Israel more after another Israeli war of aggression. Meanwhile the rest of the world gets a continued reminder of what a warmongering and alien state Israel is. More Americans supported Palestine than israel in a poll for the first time in the US. That number is going to take a big jump.
The people in the middle east aren't going to like Israel more if they do nothing either, so that's something of a moot point. Iran is also not particularly popular with large sections of the middle east due to religious differences and the fact that Iran has been funding proxies and trying to destabilise the region to their advantage for decades now, to the detriment of Israeli/US interests as well.
You are nakedly a partisan on this issue and therefore probably emotionally obliged to try and spin this as both a massive blunder and an act of unprovoked evil from Israel, but what they are doing now is entirely logical from a military/geo-political perspective given the circumstances, Iran is probably Israels greatest long term enemy and they're on the ropes, they would be stupid not to attack now.
As a wise man once said, "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight".
How popular do you think dragging the middle east into a major war is? People hate Israel from the start, now their tourist business in Dubai is shut down because of Israel.
I would guess that the leadership of the UAE is pretty ecstatic about the relatively modest price they are paying as a result of two powerful nations attacking and damaging Iran.
People have this fantasy that without Israel, the Middle East would be all peace-love-dove. The reality is that the UAE correctly perceives Iran to be a significant threat.
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Agreed, given that Iran has been relentlessly attacking Israel (through proxies) for many years now, it's difficult to see how anyone could reasonably see this as "another Israeli war of aggression." To be sure, many people will (unreasonably) see it that way, but those people already hate Israel and there's nothing Israel could do (short of disappearing) which would change their minds.
Will this activity make Israel less popular? For the same reason, I tend to doubt it. But even if it does, it's far more important for Israel to be feared than to be loved.
Hasn't everybody and their dog been propping up militias in the region for decades? I'm pretty sure I remember reading a headline about the US fighting the very insurgents they've been funding, for example.
I think that was during the ISIS saga, and it was that the Army and Air Force backed different militias materially
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I would imagine that's true for some definition of "propping up" and "militia" and "everybody" But I doubt Israel has been doing what Iran has been doing, namely having an organization like Hezbollah, which is effectively controlled by Iran, to engage in terrorism against Israel.
But in any event, assuming for the sake of argument that, as you say, everyone and their dog has been propping up militias in the region for decades, the claim on the table is that the recent strike constitutes a "war of aggression" by Israel. To me, "war of aggression" means military activity which is substantially unprovoked against an enemy which poses no substantial threat. Pretty clearly this was NOT a war of aggression by Israel.
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The actual quote from Sun Tzu, is "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding."
I was about 50/50 on where that link was going and I was not disappointed ;-)
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"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight"
And how do they know it's sure to result in victory?
The Israelis and Americans seem to operate in this Star Wars school of warfare where they just have to blow up the bad guy, the Death Star, the Emperor and that's it, war's over and they can go home.
That's not how it works. Israel has blown up all these Hamas leaders, they've bombed the hell out of Gaza... and yet Hamas is still running Gaza. Years of intense bombing and no regime change of the smallest, closest easiest possible target Israel could have. America bombed the Fordow nuclear facility, said they totally destroyed it... and that did nothing, 6 months later they come back and say Iran is about to acquire nuclear weapons, need a new deal, new disarmament... Bombing is not going to be effective this time either.
To win real victories you need to win a ground campaign that actually destroys and crushes the enemy force from the bottom up, secures the territory and directly installs a new administration. Bombing an enemy from the top down looks impressive, doesn't work. They just replace the Ayatollah or whoever else it is that gets blown up. Only very fragile states can be endangered by bombing alone and despite all the breathless media coverage of Iran, it's not a very fragile state. Unlike Venezuela, they know how to maintain their own oil infrastructure, they can make their own weapons. Even in Venezuela, there's been no fundamental change to the state, just a change of faces.
A ground campaign is not going to happen, Trump lacks the desire and the means. So this war isn't going to work out.
And bombing will impede hopes of regime change in that dissidents are going to be tarred as Israeli assets, the enemy within subverting the nation when the country is under attack.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
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Especially since Iran is also retaliating in the UAE and other Gulf states that are aligned with the US. It's a naked attempt to get them to apply diplomatic pressure. These countries don't like Iran, but here in the US we don't have to worry about air raid sirens. A place like Dubai that has spent decades trying to reinvent itself as a hub of international commerce and banking is in a tight spot if it becomes a target.
Leaning on other Gulf states like that works, until it doesn't: at some level of retaliation, they presumably will think it's easier to rip the band-aid off and support regime change.
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Alien? You mean, alien as in unlike the famously peaceable USA and other countries well-known for spending their prime doing absolutely no wars of aggression?
It bears repeating that in no world is Israel ever going to be more alien to "the rest of the world" than the Muslim countries, save for perhaps other Muslim countries. The fargroup-outgroup distinction is in full force, and Israel is, as always, not the so-alien-they're-not-really-thought-about fargroup.
Having been to both (as a rootless piece of Euroslop who spent close to a decade in the US), I would say Turkey felt much less alien than Israel, and the latter's pervasive militarised Manifest Destiny frontier society vibes had everything to do with this.
You didn't get a 'militarized manifest destiny frontier society' vibe in the US?
Course not. We finished our conquest and settled in behind our comfy double moat so we could switch gears to becoming Leviathan II.
Unless someone finds an uninhabited island with guano deposits.
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