I get the impression that Israel is making bloody hay while the sun shines. They have an extremely favorable political climate to engage in some extreme military actions. Russia's stalled invasion of Ukraine and the election of Donald Trump have pretty much ensured that they will not have to deal with blowback from their aggression.
They don't have to worry about sanctions from the USA led coalition. The don't have to worry about Russian reinforcement of Iran. So they pretty much have a free hand at this point to completely demolish Iran's military and nuclear capability.
It's amazing how many factors lead to situations like this. The current geopolitical climate is total chaos.
everybody in the neighborhood hates the guts of the iran. iran was major sponsor of terrorism in the middle east for past 40 years and blackmails entire middle east
this is what you call "better geopolitically positioned" ?
Yeah, I don't live in a slice of the multiverse where Iran is trustworthy in any sense. I'm no fan of Israel's government, but Iran is ground zero for terrorism training worldwide.
Did you read about how the IDF arms settlers and escorts them into the West Bank, where they harass residents? How about how they arbitrarily arrest and detain Palestinians and torture them without cause? Does this qualify as terrorism or is the US designation all that matters to you? If so, I wonder if you regard the US' documented sponsorship of AQ affiliates as an indication that their heuristic may be flawed. Cute deflection, though.
“Arab / Muslim states” is a clear attempt to craft a concise label that includes the states that are both Arab & Islamic, Lebanon which is Arab and explicitly multiconfessional, and Iran which explictly Islamic and very much not Arab, and also very clearly crafted by someone unfamiliar with the proper usage of Muslim (noun for a person who is a follower of Islam) and Islamic (adjective modifying a noun to indicated that it is associated in some way with Islam.)
The label is entirely separate from my point and apologies for the generalization. Middle eastern counties would have avoided all this and stuck to my original point. Neighboring enemies of Israel is probably the most correct description in that regard.
> It's not clear to me why the USA would join forces with Israel instead of Iran. Iran arguably is better geopolitically positioned and an alliance with Iran would buy the US much more of the ME
Sure, the U.S can also join forces with Russia and dump Ukraine . Why not ?
America has a history of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Before September 11th, it was a part of the country but not part of the core American identity. Since then it has become a defining characteristic of our politics.
> Of course it was wrong and no wonder things are 100x worse (if that) as a result.
OR you could say the pro U.S phase of Iran kept things alright (relatively to after the Islamic revoltion) until it was over and we have the freak show we have today. It is true that the Shaa was a corrupt dictator , but it is not clear to me that the U.S should have disengaged from him. Qatar, Saudi Arabaia, Egypt and Jordan are all different kinds of dictatorships that are relatively pro Western and that the U.S engages with (sometimes even by supporting the regime financially/militarily as with Egypt and Jordan).
All in all, pro U.S/West Arab governments are in much better shape than Iran is today.
The Iran nuclear deal was a good faith and somewhat effective attempt to de-escalate.
America voted for less de-escalation and more threats and rule by fear and war, which is funny since they repeatedly insisted they were voting for "No more wars" by voting for the guy that very clearly wanted to go to war with Iran.
The deal Trump has been offering the last few months, which Iran has rejected, is pretty much similar to the previous one.
So you could say Trump shouldn't have pulled out of the Obama deal, that may be true, but you could also say Iran should have taken this deal instead of trying to drag negotiations forever.
It's clear to all intelligence orgs out there no country with a civilian only nuclear program enriches Uranium to the level Iran has.
it was always said that attack on the iran will lead to a regional war, as iran will activate it proxies: hamas, hezbollah, houthis, various militias in iraq. maybe syria.
now all those pieces are mostly out of the game and the major factor that led to this is October 7th attack on Israel.
October 7th is looking more and more like a disastrous move by Israel's enemies.
Sounds like every time Israel enemies attack it they end up losing more ground, and yet they never stop to try another way. They handed Israel the perfect pretext for devastating blows.
All of the recent geopolitical events really drive home one conclusion: Trump is an incredibly weak president, entirely controlled by non-US interests on international matters. Furthermore, actions that can be credited as his own also mainly just hurt the US and its allies.
It's state secrets all the way down. None of us plebs know what is happening deep in Fordo. Similar strategy was employed when the US went after Saddam, and it will work again whether they are arguing the evidence is one way or the other.
Just so we're clear every time they said this, they also did something to prevent it from actually happening, whether that's stuxnet, targeted assassinations, other forms of sabotage, they always found a way to push that timeline out, but they couldn't do it indefinitely.
No, some of it was to complain about the nuclear deal Iran had with the west and try to prevent it. Deal that saw Iran stop development and stop some of its research.
Now when I see what happened to Ukraine, Libya/Irak and what might happen to Iran, and compare it with NK/Pakistan, my position on nukes is: get nukes. Especially if a western country say you have nukes: get them.
I'm not sure I agree with that totally, but for sure threat of force from the US is worse for the middle east stability than Iran getting nukes.
My point was that preventing countries from getting nukes used to be an acceptable, if not a majority opinion, and a lot of countries more or less accepted it. From now on, I feel that that opinion will become a minority opinion, even on the anti-nuke/hippie left. And if the hiipies start agreeing with the tankies on a point, you can be sure it's the majority opinion in the non-west world.
Meanwhile, as that same US intel correctly called out that Russia was gearing up to invade, and plenty of other countries insisted that was needlessly provocative to claim and Russia would never.
So maybe we shouldn't treat the US intel community as a monolith, or uniform in its competence.
Meanwhile people in this comment section are talking about "They are always 2 years away" as if Israel hasn't been striking them and assassinating nuclear engineers that whole time. Usually that sets your project back a bit.
They have multiple tons of sufficiently enriched Uranium. My understanding was that they were basically sitting "3 months" away from a bomb as a bargaining chip; They could clearly present they didn't have a bomb, but if they were attacked they could rush build a bomb as deterrence.
We shall see I guess.
Even adversary nations were straight up unprepared with the breakdown of American norms with this presidency though. I don't think Iran expected this situation.
What a clown show. But I'm not surprised, USA intel is now controlled by the religious sect member, who also vocally supports Putin's war.
The easy control question to this news is this - did Iran had multiple uranium enrichment centrifuges or not? If yes, then Iran was obviously actively developing A-bomb and was close to it by any possible metric. If no, then Israel with its famed intelligence agency has now started an open war for nothing and bombed empty (no centrifuges, remember) bunkers and facilities.
To me it is pretty clear who is lying and who is right.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadThey don't have to worry about sanctions from the USA led coalition. The don't have to worry about Russian reinforcement of Iran. So they pretty much have a free hand at this point to completely demolish Iran's military and nuclear capability.
It's amazing how many factors lead to situations like this. The current geopolitical climate is total chaos.
this is what you call "better geopolitically positioned" ?
(and if you are going to reply to it, please, explanation how all of those organization are not terrorist organizations)
Sure, the U.S can also join forces with Russia and dump Ukraine . Why not ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
Some might say the US laid the ground work for an extreme swing to the Ayatollas by delibrately overthrowing a democratically elected government.
Yeah, the current regime has so much regard for the locals ... Whatever the U.S did wrong, perhaps it has, things are 100x worse now.
None of the post WWII fat thumb on the scale messing with proto democracies for fear of losing resources or ears to communism worked out well.
OR you could say the pro U.S phase of Iran kept things alright (relatively to after the Islamic revoltion) until it was over and we have the freak show we have today. It is true that the Shaa was a corrupt dictator , but it is not clear to me that the U.S should have disengaged from him. Qatar, Saudi Arabaia, Egypt and Jordan are all different kinds of dictatorships that are relatively pro Western and that the U.S engages with (sometimes even by supporting the regime financially/militarily as with Egypt and Jordan). All in all, pro U.S/West Arab governments are in much better shape than Iran is today.
America voted for less de-escalation and more threats and rule by fear and war, which is funny since they repeatedly insisted they were voting for "No more wars" by voting for the guy that very clearly wanted to go to war with Iran.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/01/03/faith-on-the...
now all those pieces are mostly out of the game and the major factor that led to this is October 7th attack on Israel.
Sounds like every time Israel enemies attack it they end up losing more ground, and yet they never stop to try another way. They handed Israel the perfect pretext for devastating blows.
It's state secrets all the way down. None of us plebs know what is happening deep in Fordo. Similar strategy was employed when the US went after Saddam, and it will work again whether they are arguing the evidence is one way or the other.
edit: Here we go: https://i.imgur.com/3vIr5dE.png (I have not verified the accuracy tho)
Now when I see what happened to Ukraine, Libya/Irak and what might happen to Iran, and compare it with NK/Pakistan, my position on nukes is: get nukes. Especially if a western country say you have nukes: get them.
My point was that preventing countries from getting nukes used to be an acceptable, if not a majority opinion, and a lot of countries more or less accepted it. From now on, I feel that that opinion will become a minority opinion, even on the anti-nuke/hippie left. And if the hiipies start agreeing with the tankies on a point, you can be sure it's the majority opinion in the non-west world.
So maybe we shouldn't treat the US intel community as a monolith, or uniform in its competence.
Meanwhile people in this comment section are talking about "They are always 2 years away" as if Israel hasn't been striking them and assassinating nuclear engineers that whole time. Usually that sets your project back a bit.
They have multiple tons of sufficiently enriched Uranium. My understanding was that they were basically sitting "3 months" away from a bomb as a bargaining chip; They could clearly present they didn't have a bomb, but if they were attacked they could rush build a bomb as deterrence.
We shall see I guess.
Even adversary nations were straight up unprepared with the breakdown of American norms with this presidency though. I don't think Iran expected this situation.
Gabbard: Putin wants me to say they don't.
The easy control question to this news is this - did Iran had multiple uranium enrichment centrifuges or not? If yes, then Iran was obviously actively developing A-bomb and was close to it by any possible metric. If no, then Israel with its famed intelligence agency has now started an open war for nothing and bombed empty (no centrifuges, remember) bunkers and facilities.
To me it is pretty clear who is lying and who is right.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/iaea-report-says-iran-had-1059147...