In my opinion, the spirit of international justice doesn't rest in a global institution or a court. International justice is personified by a Hamas fighter blowing up a Merkava tank, or a Yemeni missile flying towards an Israel-bound vessel, or a Hezbollah ATGM hitting an Israeli radar.

With that being said, we have a timely Simplicius article on the overall situation in the Middle East. If you've been on the bloomer side of the news megathread this whole time - AKA, my side - then you'll basically see all your opinions being said right back at you, which is quite nice. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the West has absolutely no idea how to salvage this abysmal situation and we are looking at the tangible breakdown of US hegemony in the Middle East in real time. It'll still take several months to play out, but we're past the point of uncertainty where it wasn't fully clear if the Resistance was strong enough to, well, resist. Those doubts have now been fully cast aside.

Iranian Axis Grinds Down US' Will as Israel Suffers Stunning Setbacks

I'm not quoting the full piece, just bits and pieces of it.

Firstly, to set the stage we turn to Israel, which appears to be concealing an operation that has gone off the rails, and is not yielding any of the expected results—and in fact has done little more than turn the world against them, creating a shockwave of anti-Israeli fervor that will steer sentiment for generations. As we now know, Israel has withdrawn many of its brigades from the north, citing ‘rest and rotation’ when in reality it appears to be ‘reconstitution’, as the brigades took major attritional losses. Now in the wake of that, the latest bombshell reports state that resistance fighters have re-infiltrated the entire north... even ISW admitted it...

All we can do is infer from a variety of objective observations, such as the distinct lack of any mass eliminations or captures of resistance fighters, which is very telling.

In the meantime, Israel has continued to press into Khan Younis in the south. But yesterday they suffered what was unanimously called the biggest ‘tragedy’ of the entire conflict thus far. During one of the IDF’s routine mining operations, consisting of rigging explosives on civilian buildings, resistance fighters were able to trigger a detonation with dozens of IDF still inside the building. This led to ~24 IDF killed in a single blast.

This is only a symbolic culmination of what appears to be turning into a fiasco. If I didn’t know any better, I would surmise that Israel’s operation is mirroring Ukraine’s doomed Khrynki assault: where an inability to admit grave miscalculation has led to a sunk cost fallacy induced comedy of errors. Israel obviously can’t pull out now to save face, so it almost leaves one with the impression they’re floundering around, secretly panicking internally as to what to do because they’ve reached the conclusion that ‘Hamas’ is an intractable shadow they cannot brute-force their way through.

Recall that just last month Kirby admitted that Hamas had not been attrited at all, and an Israeli reserve colonel gave a tearful account of piled up IDF bodies which seemed to imply that they are taking far heavier losses than they’re admitting to. There are increased reports from Israeli insiders that sound hopeless or give credence to theories about the operation being a failure. Now, on top of the releases of soldiers and withdrawals of brigades, Israel has reportedly offered an unprecedented two-month pause in the fighting.

There is more and more commotion within society, disagreement and in-fighting in the government over what direction to take. Earlier in the week the Knesset erupted with angry parents of hostages who are outraged at the government’s inability to get them back or negotiate their release... a slain IDF soldier’s brother reportedly tries to attack Benny Gantz at the soldier’s funeral... Such scenes are becoming increasingly common—society is really boiling over, while Israel steadily loses support even among its allies.

The UN and the world increasingly call for a two state solution, but Netanyahu has vocally rejected this as impossible. In fact, his Likudniks continue to call for outrageous relocations and forced ethnic cleansing of Palestinians; for instance, Israel reportedly briefed European ministers with a video proposing an artificial island for Palestinians off the coast of Gaza, which Israel tried to quickly downplay and shush after the negative reception...

Moving them all to Sinai? Failed. Moving them all around the world? Failed. Moving them to various African countries? Failed. Moving them to a new island? Maybe THIS one will work!

Now, at the worst possible time, Iran has decided to turn the screws on Israel, creating extremely unfavorable conditions by locking down the maritime chokepoints, as well as putting unprecedented pressure on Israel’s top ally of the US, militarily, all across the region. Even as of this writing, a new US-flagged ship, the Maersk Detroit, was said to be attacked by the Houthis in the Red Sea, though US CENTCOM claims the three missiles were all repulsed. The US Navy has been relegated to a glorified escort, but since the al-Mandab strait has effectively become a warzone, it has nonetheless crippled commerce. Even the top pro-American analysts and commentators are appalled at the prestige loss the US is incurring as consequence.... the situation has gotten so bad that the US is forced to shame-facedly beg China to intervene in de-escalating Iran’s unleashed fury... US officials are looking for any possible vector that can buy them a breath or two of relief... With everything quickly going south, and the US finding itself increasingly drawn into a quicksand-like mire, there are now some shocking reports about what it could all entail.

...two days ago came a rumor that the US was considering talking its Kurdish allies in Syria into ‘working with Assad forces’ to combat ISIS.’ This immediately set off speculation that the US was getting ready to abandon Syria once and for all, and was looking for a way to securely fill the vacuum. Naturally, many scoffed at this, and refused to believe US would possibly withdraw from the region. But then came today’s Charles Lister-penned bombshell for FP: America Is Planning to Withdraw From Syria - and Create a Disaster. The shockwaves the article sent are still doing their laps through the world. As usual, it cites unnamed sources in the DOD and White House.

The Pentagon was quick to release a statement denying that such a thing is actually being planned. However, that means very little as they wouldn’t admit to discussing humiliatingly face-saving retreats of this sort anyway—not until the script-writers have hammered out the exact angle and narrative that will be used to stage-manage such a withdrawal. In short: they’ll need to find a way to spin it as some major victory for Biden. For those who may still be skeptical, there are additional adjacent reports which seem to at least imply something is afoot on this account. Most shocking of all are new reports that US is in discussions to end its occupation of Iraq entirely:

Reuters, citing sources: Initial talks between America and the government in Baghdad about ending the presence of coalition forces in Iraq against the backdrop of developments that took place as a result of the war in Gaza. The United States of America made the end of its presence a condition that it stop strikes by resistance factions on its bases in Iraq. The United States expressed its readiness to begin talks with the Iraqi government in a letter delivered by the United States Ambassador to Iraq, Alena Romanowski, to Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein on Wednesday.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Alina L. Romanowski is reported to have delivered a memo today to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry regarding ‘preliminary steps’ to begin the withdrawal of US and Coalition Forces from the country. This comes amid public calls by members of the Iraqi government for US forces to depart the country due to the war in Israel and continued attacks by Iranian-backed forces.

The US claims these are long-planned talks and have nothing to do with the recent attacks, but that is clearly not the case. The Reuters article above provides one key line:

In doing so, the U.S. had dropped preconditions that attacks against it by Iran-backed Iraqi militant groups in Iraq first stop, three of the sources said.

You see, the US previously had preconditions for talks of ending its occupation; one of the conditions being that Iran-backed Iraqi groups first had to stop bombing US bases. But now, the US has apparently dropped this significant precondition, as per the Reuters report. That tells us that US is making concessions out of desperation.