- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- chat
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Couple things regarding the Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria:
a) Israel's move was not borne out of desperation. It was actually quite brilliant. They had nothing left to lose, with their reputation already been in tatters. What did they gain? They killed the 3 most important Iranian military officers for coordinating the region against the US and Israel: The coordinators with Syria, Lebanon/Palestine and with Yemen. They were there in an unprecedented meeting to plan their next moves. Israel got whiff of it and immediately bombed them. Iran made a tremendous mistake by placing them all in the same room within missile range of Israel.
b) Iran has basically lost its tactical/diplomatic leadership in the area with the deaths of these 3 officers. Retaliating militarily right now would be a mistake and it's exactly what Israel wants. Iran would be unable to coordinate effectively with its allies. Meanwhile, the US would feel obliged to intervene on behalf of Israel, which would lead to direct war between US and Iran, a war that Iran might win, but Yemen and Palestine would certainly lose. Such a war would also remove the public eye from Palestine, allowing Israel (and its Arab collaborators like Jordan and Egypt) to finally evacuate Gaza.
Iran (and Lebanon) should avoid retaliating at this moment. The best thing they can do right now is to maintain the moral high ground, and continue working diplomatically to isolate Israel politically, while letting Hamas do its own thing and let Netanyahu grow truly desperate.
On the other hand, if Israel attempts to invade Lebanon, in an effort to distract its people from Palestine and save Netanyahu's reputation, then neither the US, nor anyone else will be willing to join in with Israel. And Hezzbolah, with the help of Iran, will utterly destroy Israel, possibly liberating all of the Syrian and Lebanese lands up to Galilee.
For these reasons, as well as the other things going on mentioned in the article, Iran should retaliate politically and not militarily.
Iran should definitely retaliate militarily, the international community has proven to be useless so far. Bombing an embassy and killing Iranian leadership is an act of war and Iran has every right to retaliate militarily, failing to do so expresses that Israel can do whatever they want and face no consequences.
Its laughable to even talk about "retaliate politically" when all the international institutions have done absolutely nothing to stop Israel from engaging on crimes against humanity. Iran already endured the murder of their general, and the international community did jackshit.
The US will spin any major military action as pretext for joining with Israel against Iran. Israel is on a path of self-destruction right now. Giving Netanyahu the chance to declare himself a "hero" for defending Israel against Iran will avert that.
The attack on the Iranian embassy was not just a random act. Israel has decapitated Iranian military leadership in the region. Much like how ISIS framed Syria for the gas attacks in civilian centers, this attack is aimed to provoke Iran into a trap. And this was probably planned alongside US strategists.
It isn't laughable to talk about political retaliations at all. Just look at what happened after the attack. Europeans are silent or condemning, where before they'd support Israel in a heartbeat. The US is in an uneasy position where what remnant of leverage it had over the global south has evaporated after they tried downplaying the attack. Russia has pulled even further away from Israel and outright condemned them.
We need to look at this materialistically and not emotionally. Iran by the way, understands this. It is using its threats as diplomatic tools to primarily destabilize Israel rather than to invade or inflict major punitive damages.
We need to look at this materialistically and not emotionally. Iran by the way, understands this. It is using its threats as diplomatic tools to primarily destabilize Israel rather than to invade or inflict major punitive damages.
Exactly that's why they should retaliate military and do material damage to Israel. Europeans thoughts and prayers are meaningless, Israel is in a bad spot not because European peaceful protests or condemns, it is because the Palestinian resistance is doing damage to Israel military capabilities, it is because Yemen is preventing shipments to reaching Israel, it is because Lebanon is targeting their military capabilities in the north, actual MATERIAL STRUGGLE.
I am not saying that Iran should retaliate recklessly, but they definitely have to.
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Protests at the scale they are happening are important, because they are putting their governments on notice regarding the issue of Palestinian statehood. For the first time in decades, the Palestinian self-determination issue seems close to being resolved. That's not to say that Hamas is immaterial here. That's not the issue at all. What is happening is happening because of them. But support for Palestine is at the highest it's been in 77 years. If it wasn't, do you know what would happen? The US carrier group that was dispatched to the area would be busy bombing Palestine, and then it would be busy ferrying Palestinians all over the Middle East.
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If Iran gets embroiled in a global war, who is going to support it? Russia won't. They started forming closer ties only 2 years ago, and Russia is busy fighting another war. China won't either. Both of them will instead urge Iran to seek diplomatic solutions and they will probably pledge to assist it in that avenue, but nothing more. Furthermore, there's BRICS to consider. BRICS brought Iran and Saudi Arabia on a path to rapprochement just a year ago. And this meant that Saudi Arabia also stopped attacking Yemen. Which is what actually allows Yemen to support Palestine in the way it does now. If BRICS' position in the global economy is jeopardized due to to war, you can be sure that Saudi Arabia will go return to the Western fold. And then Yemen will be busy fighting against it, once again, instead of inflicting economic harm on Israel.
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The only reliable allies Iran has in a war, are Hezzbolah and possibly Syria. Syria is in no position to materially support a war after what has been done to it. Lebanon will be the first target of a joint US-Israel operation, and is also in no position to defend itself against both.
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If a war between Iran and the US breaks down, and is fought in the Middle East, the global economy will be destroyed. Do you really think Europeans will sit idly by? They will rush to join the US in its adventures once more. And European citizens will hail them as they do so, because their interest will no longer be a free Palestine, but it will be having cheap fuel.
So what is the result of all this? Palestinian statehood will sink and will never be salvaged again.
The current situation is leading to a Palestinian self-determination. Why destabilize that? Is the goal here to free Palestine, or is it to teach Israelis a lesson?
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I don't know much about Iran's chain of command, but I find it hard to believe that killing 3 guys completely obliterates their ability to communicate and coordinate with their allies. This is some real big "Great Man History" stuff going on right here.
It'll be a shakeup but if Isn'trael doesn't make any more big moves militarily, then the replacements (whether fresh blood of promoted from the deceased generals' respective staff) will have more than enough time to get a handle on things.
No it really isn't. The 3 generals who planned every operation and move for the region are dead. That means operational planning, coordination and leadership need to be undertaken by replacements who have barely been on the job for 2 weeks, who possibly don't know their own assets, and who do not have relationships with the Syrian, Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni leadership they need to coordinate with. If you don't understand why that last bit is important, then I don't know what to tell you, besides read up more on how all these forces operate in the region.
Let me put it simply: You want Iran to enter in a war with the US, possibly NATO, while a vital part of the military leadership that will lead this war is new and inexperienced, its allies busy doing other things, and this war could possibly destroy both every gain Iran has made diplomatically and the momentum for Palestinian independence. And what does it get out of it? Israel gets to learn not to do it again.
You're not being very convincing, and you're assuming a lot about what I "want." I agree with your analysis overall, but this one part doesn't seem to make much sense to me, and reiterating what you said instead of expanding upon it doesn't help.
I stated that I don't think it is likely that 3 people are the only people in the region capable of coordinating with Iran's allies. You've just reiterated that these three are the only ones ever possibly capable, I doubt this a lot. It's not like Iran has only ever sent these three guys to the region and there is literally no one else in Iran capable of working with their allies. I think it's pretty unlikely that Iran's entire military hinges on 3 fucking people to make every decision and communicate with their every ally. I'm not saying this isn't a setback, but you seem to be acting like this is some video game shit, where Iran's "main characters" got killed and they're incapable of conducting any more operations in the region. Stop this overly-simplistic lib shit in your analysis.
additionally: if Iran's military capability hinged on 3 individuals we'd have heard their names years ago, endlessly, as the Western Media relentlessly demonized them to justify murdering them. And they'd have been murdered a lot sooner.
Was each generals' entire staff also killed? Unless NATO is planning on starting a boots on the ground invasion or massive covert operation/terror campaign really soon... maybe it will take less time to get things normalized than our pessimism wants us to think.
I would agree, and even maybe argue, that Iran may not be preparing a military act against Israel over the strike. They've been teasing it for 2 weeks and without having done anything yet, it's driving the Zionists mad. There were reports (I don't know how true they are) that they used 2 million $ missiles against Hezbollah's rocket attack in the north as they thought they were Iranian ballistic missiles.
Israel's situation is not a good one right now, both economically, demographically and politically. The strike on the embassy, while I can agree it was useful to them, is ultimately destroying them further instead of boosting the popularity of Nethanyahu as expected. As we've seen from the Palestinian Resistance, taking out high officers does not inflict much damage on them. They can be replaced and retrained. I expect the same is true for Iran (though I don't know if the IRGC works the same way internally).
Keep in mind people have been storming Nethanyahu's residence and settlers are refusing to move back to the north and near Gaza. Many of them have left the country since October (I don't remember the number but I think it's above 10,000) and have no plans to come back.
To me, sending a hail mary exactly because your reputation is already destroyed is the ultimate desperation move; it's saying "if I'm going down, I'm taking you all with me".
Likewise I don't see the US pulling in if Iran strikes. The mood in the Western world right now is to try and appease Iran, pleading with them not to attack. This could be a 4D chess psyop (I don't doubt they fed Israel intel on the embassy meeting), but as we see from the barrage on the US base last year and the concessions made to Ansarallah, I think they know going up against Iran would be a terrible, terrible idea. Getting bogged down into another conflict while they are depleting everything to Ukraine and need to build something against China is simply not in NATO's interest.
Downside to this... the killed generals were a known quantity. Any new replacements will possibly have an advantage in that Isn'trael may not know much about them, how they think, how they typically respond to things.
If Isn'treal was already in an open war with Iran/allies this could give them an advantage. If they were about to begin a multifront war with Iran/allies this could give them an advantage for the initial battles.
If Isn'treal killed the generals... and then waits a year to do anything militarily, whatever issues with command and control between the various countries/militarizes/governments should probably be handled well enough.
Not sure about the political pressure by Iranians on their government to retaliate but so far in recent history, westerners/allies killing very popular Iranian generals was unable to push Iran into making a military move so big to throw them off balance.
Goofy. I'm not gonna even explain bc others in the thread did a better job than me
