Israel - Iran and regional players | Please post respectfully and stay on topic
- Thread starter Raoul
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So according to the IDF, Hezbollah was planning an October 7th style attack from the areas they attacked. I have a feeling that it won't be the last time that future attacks are use to justify Israel's aggression.
They've launched multiple wars before based on this premise. It's also no different than the US invading Iraq based on fictional WMDs Saddam possessed.
He's got a major popularity surge after the killing of Nasrallah. He knows his country, how it ticks and what it feeds on.
The Israeli society in its majority doesn't give a flying feck about what's happening in Gaza or Lebanon and are vehemently opposed to any kind of two-state solution. Their only concern was the hostages but that went down the drain and the recent IDF successes, if you want to call them that, made it irrelevant.
He'll be most likely re-elected when all of this is over.
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There'd have to be a collective effort from European nations to effectively sanction them as an economic bloc, but really no one wants to blink first and be the ones to take on all the heavy political capital that comes with holding Israel to account, not with the threat of the US essentially blackmailing them. But many of them are on board with it anyway - the UK pretty much follows through with whatever the Yanks want, Hungary because they're governed by a proto-fascist, and Germany - projecting their own historical guilt? A fetish for always being on the wrong side of history? Take your pick. The Ukraine parallels are irrelevant because unlike Putin, Israel/US are not considered adversaries.
As for the UN, at the highest level (the Security Council) its pretty much been rendered obsolete because of the US vetoing any resolution that so much as looks at Israel funny. Giving hegemons like Russia, China and the US a veto has pretty much doomed it to becoming an ineffective body.
The only possible way things change is if this becomes an electoral issue in the US where vehemently opposing Israel goes from being political suicide to a vote winner. This is why there's been such vicious crackdowns, both physically and via the media on the student protests, as they can't have the narrative of Israel being an aggressive genocidal colony perpetuate.
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That happens to anyone who dives into the conflict and its real causes with an open mind.
Then watches how Israel has proceeded in the region since its unilateral declaration of Independence in 1948, after a massive ethnic cleansing and mass murders, and how cynical the US and international community have been all along, and still are.
I personaly have to take a break from time to time from this thread or Palestine's because it's emotionally incredibly draining.
Another precise, targeted strike on a known Hezbollah operative.
Not going to happen as aside from the US, France, the UK, and especially Germany will undoubtedly vote against it.
They are much, much worse than Russia.
So should we expect another decades long occupation of Lebanon?
A de facto annexation of a part of Southern Lebanon is more likely if Israel has it its way.
Then the US will officially recognize at some point, just like it did with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, in direct violation with international laws.
If Israel goes in and it doesn't turn into a second 2006 War, there's no way it's pulling out.
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Decades long? I'd expect settlements to start popping up all over the south within years. So when they're subjected to rocket fire from militias further inland Lebanese territory, Israel will consider it an attack on their territory and push their (undeclared) border up further north. How people haven't realised this is beyond me.
I wouldn't be surprised at anything now, they've been given the go ahead to do exactly as they please.
Israel's campaign of rape and butchery will continue for as long as the US handouts do. As with all colonial brutes, their barbarity can not be sated.
It is going, however long it takes, to take an enormous toll within Israel itself. You cannot justify this number of obviously unjust acts (however external you perceive them) without it firing backward. This is basic history. They, collectively, are making themselves a "less than human" cocktail that will hit down the line. And they think it smart. They are completely, the zionist led governments, fecking idiotic.
These governments have all been been democratically elected.
The overwhelming majority of the Israeli society is onboard with what's happening. 10% of the Israeli population consist of illegal settlers with a notable amount of them being now in key positions in the IDF as well as in the government.
It's by definition a colonial, racist and militarist society and anyone thinks Israel will change course if Netanyahu is removed, they are completely deluded. And they have the unconditional backing of the biggest hypocrites on the planet.
Not the point I was making. I'm looking twenty years or more down the line. There will be a reckoning. A society that will rip itself to pieces.
Perhaps it will. So far it is being patched together by dollars, bombs and spoiled parenting from a degenerate political class in the US.
Israel society theoretically could be brought back into the relatively civilised world, just as South Africa was able to emerge out of a brutal apartheid regime and modern Germany was build on the ashes of the Nazis. As platitudinous as it may be it's worth remembering: as ugly and as brutal as the face of Israel is right now, they are still only people, like the rest of us, and they could be saved. However the West in general and particularly the US have shown no appetite for a civilised Israel.
This reckoning, this societal ripping apart, would only take place if Israel suffered a major defeat or an international intervention puts a decisive halt to this madness and force them to the table of negociations. Then yes, I'd fully agree with you. But that ain't happening anytime soon, in my opinion.
The current Israeli generation is much more radicalized than its forefathers, thanks to an incredibly high level of indoctrination beginning from the kindergarden, the high militarization of the society, and the full absolution given by the West, as brown lives simply don't matter. They are more than ever convinced of their god given rights on the land which justifies anything they do. And there's no one out them to prove them wrong or call them out. On the contrary.
So why would they change? Israel is winning. Voices of reason in Israel are going extinct. The settlers and their supremacist mentality are the future of this country. Netanyahu will look like a moderate compared to what's coming.
The way things are going, in twenty maybe thirty years, Palestine might very well be a distant memory, and everything that happened today will be either quietly swept under the rug or slowly rewritten. After all, Israel wouldn't be the first country that build itself on the genocide and mass ethnic cleansing of another people.
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There won't be any reckoning in 20-30 years, I don't think.
On a longer timescale, I do suspect that history's most put-upon people and most infamous scapegoat are cashing too much on establishing a nation-state in an area of the world that will be absolutely ravaged by global warming within 200 years.
On a longer timescale, I do suspect that history's most put-upon people and most infamous scapegoat are cashing too much on establishing a nation-state in an area of the world that will be absolutely ravaged by global warming within 200 years.
Not in the long-term. It will explode, one way or another. They are in charge now, though, and that's clear.
The 'base' in Cyprus being an annexed British colony. Ironically.
Israeli and US policy has guaranteed Iran will be a nuclear power sooner rather than later. The only way to stop that would be for the US to invade and ruthlessly occupy Iran, with it's 88m people, for decades, with no solution in sight.
Zero chance of it being a "limited operation" even at the start.
War mongering and propaganda till proven otherwise.
I know it's a sideshow but the passivity of the BBC reporting seems ridiculous. This is their entire sidebar and it is completely made up of "he says, she says" (mostly he says):
"In what the Israeli military calls", "an Israeli security official tells", "but a military spokesman later tells", "the Lebanese Prime Minister says", "the IDF says", "officials in Lebanon say", "The Israeli military also says." Not a single paragraph contains a simple independent observation.
"In what the Israeli military calls", "an Israeli security official tells", "but a military spokesman later tells", "the Lebanese Prime Minister says", "the IDF says", "officials in Lebanon say", "The Israeli military also says." Not a single paragraph contains a simple independent observation.
I know it's a sideshow but the passivity of the BBC reporting seems ridiculous. This is their entire sidebar and it is completely made up of "he says, she says" (mostly he says):
"In what the Israeli military calls", "an Israeli security official tells", "but a military spokesman later tells", "the Lebanese Prime Minister says", "the IDF says", "officials in Lebanon say", "The Israeli military also says." Not a single paragraph contains a simple independent observation.
BBC tries hard, sometimes too hard, to try and seem impartial to anything.
Both Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine people have attacked the BBC for siding with the "other."
Same for the Ukraine war.
I know it's a sideshow but the passivity of the BBC reporting seems ridiculous. This is their entire sidebar and it is completely made up of "he says, she says" (mostly he says):
"In what the Israeli military calls", "an Israeli security official tells", "but a military spokesman later tells", "the Lebanese Prime Minister says", "the IDF says", "officials in Lebanon say", "The Israeli military also says." Not a single paragraph contains a simple independent observation.
They get absolutely slated if they do; calls for them to lose the licence fee, for the DG to be sacked. I can understand their reticence.
That's never going to happen. It would be like Iraq except there would be no Greenzone capitulation (which won't continue over the next few decades anyway).
Vietnam (and worse than that, most likely) is what an Iranian invasion would look like. You'd be up against a regime which has been in power, and has grown, not diminished, over forty odd years. 90 million people and half of them under the age of 35 iirc. There will be no invasion of Iran unless there is to be a third world war.
I agree that Iran will continue to move toward nuclear status and I don't blame them. They are subject to raids against them from the US and Israel continuously and each of those is, of course, a nuclear armed state. If I were Russia, I would do a Pakistan-North Korea and just give them the capacity (they won't do that because it will set off a ripple across the Middle East - the Saudis will want nukes, too, as you'd expect; also part of Iran's calculus regarding its hesitancy with respect to nuclear weapons). It has to be remembered that the US entirely ripped up the agreement -- factual now -- whereby Iran would not pursue enrichment and in exchange would have various sanctions removed. That was an Obama admin for. pol. achievement which Trump burned on arrival.
The position of the current theocracy is the weakest that is has ever been.
Disagree. Look at the forecast moving forward into the next two decades. Positioned to be a top ten, global, economy. I predict a liberalization akin to Saudi Arabia (with whom they are back in meaningful dialogue) which will not weaken the state but will strengthen it.
I don't mean to be callous but have you been following what's been going on in Iran in the past few years?
If Saudi Arabia is "liberalization" to you then I don't know what to say.
I'd still expect more from them than simply relating choice quotes from press officers. It's not reporting so much as framing and even that feels like it's outsourced. I reckon I somewhat agree with @NicolaSacco, the timidity is understandable but still feels rather pathetic.
Closely. I know what you mean, regarding popular discontent, but have you been following Saudi Arabia and comparable states? Egypt? The Arab/Mid-East world is, on the whole, undergoing, at different paces, a very similar phenomena. Some regimes will go (usually the ones least protected, internally, against other states, as it has been in the past) but others will remain in some form or another.
I don't mean to be callous but have you been following what's been going on in Iran in the past few years?
Of the arab states you've listed, all of them remain theocratic or completely dictatorial puppets in one form or the other. Ask an Egyptian how Egypt has been under General Sisi. Saudi Arabia being a comparison to Iran is ridiculous, Saudi Arabia doesn't have the domestic dissent that Iran does. Saudi Arabia can afford certain domestic policies whereas Iran cannot.
The only country out of the Arab spring to have come out more democratic and liberal is Tunisia. Everywhere else is still the same shit just layered with a different colour of paint.
I guess the plan to deal with a nuclear Iran is to hope the threat of nuclear retaliation will stop them being used.
Anyone that claims to know with certainty what will actually happen is an idiot, they don't. And all because the US has given Israel unconditional support to do whatever they want to do, when the US could have used their position to push for a fairer solution.
Anyone that claims to know with certainty what will actually happen is an idiot, they don't. And all because the US has given Israel unconditional support to do whatever they want to do, when the US could have used their position to push for a fairer solution.
I haven't been active much here for a few months, and forgive me if I'm mistaking you with another poster, but in my memory I recall that you were often relatively defensive of Israel's actions (never blindly so, always with limits) and this seems to have quite dramatically changed. If this isn't mistaken poster identity then do you mind if I ask what it is that caused such a shift? The answers are probably obvious but I'm intrigued to know.
Can you share that forecast?
The current sanctions are crippling the country, with inflation at 30-40%. Iran is nothing like Saudi Arabia, Egypt or any other country in the middle east - purely because it is a pariah state forced to sell it’s oil to China for cheap, locked out of international banking systems and closed off to all foreign investment.
However, it is highly literate and could easily get to the level of Turkey if constraints were removed - you just need a lot to happen for that to become reality. The biggest and main thing being a change in regime. Until that happens, Iran isn't going to be anywhere near a top 10 economy.