Tehran and its Lebanon-based proxy blame Israel for attack in Damascus that killed Quds force leaders. The airstrike in Syria killed Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who led the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Lebanon and Syria until 2016. It also killed Zahedi’s deputy, Gen. Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi, and five other officers.
Faced with ongoing attacks by the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Shiite militias throughout the Middle East in the wake of Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre, which sparked the war in Gaza, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iran-linked terror targets in Syria, killing numerous IRGC operatives, as well as members of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy groups.
The Quds Force is a branch of Iran’s military that supports Hezbollah, Syrian militias, Hamas, PLO and the Houthis in Yemen. It is Iran’s foreign terrorist militia operations. The Quds Force trains and equips foreign Islamic revolutionary groups around the Middle East.
Iran creates and uses proxy militia forces to attack across the middle east.
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This situation is getting really complicated and really hairy, really fast. A direct attack by Iran could escalate out of control really quickly. The Iranians seem like they might be dumb enough to go that route. They were previously sitting back comfortably hiding behind Hezbollah and Houthis. Direct attack by Iran will certainly lead to direct retaliation by Israel. When Biden and Congressional Democrats are just now starting to tell Israel to cool it off or face cutbacks on arms shipments, then any direct military action by Iran would instantly heat things back up and boil them over the top.
Trump as corrupt psychopath wanted to get something to smear his opponent. Ukrainian president was not corrupt and stood up to him. That lead to impeachment of the corrupt and rich elitist Trump.
Trump doesn’t forgive and hates Zelinsky and Ukraine. That is one of the reasons he manipulates the fellow republicans to punish Ukraine for standing up to corrupt psychopath and doesn’t want Ukraine to get help. Helping Ukraine is the right thing. Limiting Russian aggression is the right thing. Helping Israel was the right thing, because they have so many muslim enemies around them. They should stop sooner(Israel offensives), but the attack on them was an act of terrorism.
Only if Iran has a death wish. Hey, Iran’s military is no slouch, but take on Israel? Israel has the most advanced weapons (mostly ours, from the USA), and the best training of any military on Earth. Plus they have one major advantage. They can’t afford to loose, when their enemy’s only “terms” if they surrender is extermination. That’s one hell of a motivator.
Israel has never known a better time to co-opt, re-align, and de-fang the Middle East. Almost universally supported in its goals, if not in its means, of sterilizing immediate threats in its palestinian feedlot of Gaza and adjacent areas.
The greater forces of ‘corrupted Islam’ (a strict value system not supported by the majority of good muslims) have failed to capitalize on this blatant (and appropriate) cleansing of the local terrorists and thus pick away at semite land, resources, and influence. Since the 2020s wil be the last decade that meaningful manned land and air forces will be able to influence major international borders (as drone warfare will be overwhelmingly controlled by the master chip designer/builders and their sophisticated centralized controlling/communicating systems), the Middle East can do nothing but decay further within its own borders as Israel establishes unimpeachable borders and ultimate control of those regions still beholden to its influence.
I look forward to the middle of this century being relatively conflict free as the various world cultures bifurcate into military technology haves and have-nots as chip tech will be the only means of non-nuclear dominance/ deterrence in all things surveilance and military.
Just as North Korea is now a de facto nuclear power, likewise Iran is close on its heels and has enough material to build a bomb.
Netanyahu’s governing coalition is breaking up over the end of Orthodox carve outs (welfare, draft-dodging), which he promised but are broadly resented by the rest of Israeli society. He attacked the Iranians because he can only stay in power and forestall prosecution if Israel remains in a state of permanent war. I doubt Iran will rise to the bait and help him stay in power.
I hate terrorists so much that I don’t want to make any more of them. Having said that, nobody in Israeli society has done more to fund Hamas or help it recruit new terrorists than Netanyahu himself. He’s made several public statements directing donations to Hamas to defund Fatah. Hamas recruits its terrorists from the pool of orphans created by war and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are now more Hamas members in what’s left of Gaza than there were when all this started. Netanyahu has persistently destroyed moderates in both Israeli and Palestinian society to profit off the chaos caused by radicalization.
This last terrorist attack used paragliders, rockets and guns. Next come drones and lasers. The cost of lethal technologies is coming down rapidly. If measures aren’t taken soon to foster an enduring peace, this mutual retaliation will escalate beyond anyone’s control. You can’t complain about the lawlessness of the Palestinians without wanting them to be subjects of their own state, since states enforce laws. You can make them Israeli citizens or you can make Palestine a nation, but you can’t continue with a “no state” solution without the lawless violence getting worse. Laws require states to enforce them. Lawlessness is a consequence of a lack of sovereignty over an area.
The death of the peace process in Israel over the last thirty years should really be seen as the first post-Soviet eruption of Russian nationalism, which is now on abundant display in Ukraine. When the Soviet Union broke up in the ’90, the control that communist ideology exerted over Russian nationalism also ended. A flood of secular Russian Jews left for Israel bringing with them virulent Russian nationalist attitudes towards Muslims which fed into the settler movement. In many ways, “Russia” is an internally colonized ethnic patchwork dominated by Russian speakers, built up by conquests over the centuries. Several historians have described Russia as the last great landed empire of Europe. Those fractures can be seen in the recent Muslim terrorist attack on Moscow, but they go back in recent times to unrest in places along the southern Russia border like Chechnya and Ossetia. Russian fears of national breakup are quite real and well-founded, but so too is their internal repression of ethnic minorities (as it is in China).
Those new immigrants to Israel carried this venomous form of Russian manifest destiny with them in the ’90s. Combined with the explosive population growth in Orthodox Jewish communities, this gave Likud the power to finish off the old secular consensus of Labor (and the Oslo Accords). Around the same time, the electoral laws were changed to undermine the center in Israeli politics and promote energized fringe elements, which threw fuel on the fire. This placed a thumb on the scale for minority governments built on radical fervor, similar to the racial gerrymandering in the U.S. that has titled congressional control to the Republicans since the early 1990s. In many ways, Netanyahu’s attack on the independence of the Israeli judiciary was a fait accompli by the time it finally showed up – just like the Dobbs (2022) decision. The shock that sent moderates protesting in the streets only reflected their deep denial about the long slide.
I suspect that segregationist playbook is coming to the end of its road, but what comes next is anybody’s guess. The world has no more appetite for new empires based on the Russian soul or Zionist soul or Islam than it did for an American empire in Iraq. There seems to be little energy for embracing universal human rights and democracy (much less nonviolence).
Judging by the frightened comments, America firmly holds the palm in two categories: the most cowardly world empire, the most useless military ally
Iran’s main card in war with Israel would be mass rocket attacks from Hezbollah – on a much larger scale than anything Hamas could ever manage. If they did that though, they’d give up their main deterrent to an attack by Israel.
Netanyahu may well want to provoke this attack because it would drag the U.S. in further and solidify his shaken hold on power. Iran does not want to be baited into this which would likely result in everything it’s been building being destroyed, nuclear program, missiles, drone industry, oil terminal.
Iran has close ties with Russia.
A hot Israel vs Iran conflict is a step closer to global nuclear conflict.
China and US could cool things off by threatening to slow oil purchases from Russia and slow weapons sales to Israel, respectively.
Nobody else is in a position to do anything useful here.
The better question is how do those of us who are American citizen/tax payers with no personal ties to the region benefit from military involvement in the region.
https://youtu.be/OkvsjOEzhzQ?si=BTB9C2ptY-x-KucT
The venue of the inevitable war is better located in its origin than in the U.S.A.
Israel is going more and more rogue. Even the US is trying to distance itself from Israeli actions by abstaining from a UN Security Resolution on Gaza.
America’s Démocrát Party is especially beholden to immigrants. It has been pushing-pushing-pushing the entry of as many people into the United States as the US is capable of handling. One consequence though is that immigrants tend to vote for whatever party is more aligned to the sentiments of the culture they left, to immigrate here.
In this case, the Démocrát party’s managers have come to realize that some of the States of the United States are very close to the ‘edge’, in voting slightly more Démocrát than Repüblıcan, or vice versa. Very close. And, when those states have significant populations of expatriates from all points in the Mideast, well … such immigrants will favor whatever party is ‘easy’ on Hamas, and ‘hard’ on Israel.
The terrible events of October 7th, and ALL that has followed, is actually less a consideration, than mainly “are the Démocráts or the Repüblıcans more likely to aid and assist our remote cousins in Gaza”. And with the idea of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, there’s a bit of that too. Israel is the enemy of Muslims worldwide primarily through outstanding anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda, so the enemy of Israel is by definition preferred pölïtically over the friend of Israel.
Sad, but true.
Hence America’s public kind-of / sort-of distancing from massively supporting Israel. Turning America away from being the ostensible friend of Israel (and thus a Muslim enemy) to a not-very-convincing neutral … being thus neither enemy nor friend.
We’ll see how this plays out.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Bro, what’s with all the diacritics?
trying to avoid the censors
Perhaps Russia is behind the attack on Israel. They benefit from it. The attention and resources are diverted from Ukraine to Israel. Iran also benefits.
Who knows.
Two air burst nukes in succession should allow the third and fourth to penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome. The genocide cult would not be mourned.
And what about the 250 or so nukes Israel will be popping over Iran and friends?
No you and your terrorist allies will not be morned.
What a vapid comment.
Iran does that and it gets converted into a parking lot, real fast.
You are clearly an antisemite and should refrain from taking in part of the conversation on this forum.