Unfortunately Israel's approach is very strong on tactics and very weak on strategy. You can kill as many Islamists as you like but they just get replaced from the radicalised population. It's a sterile doom loop which leads to major problems if the US ever pulls out of the region, which it will certainly do once oil becomes unimportant.
Israel - Iran and regional players | Please post respectfully
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
Unfortunately Israel's approach is very strong on tactics and very weak on strategy. You can kill as many Islamists as you like but they just get replaced from the radicalised population. It's a sterile doom loop which leads to major problems if the US ever pulls out of the region, which it will certainly do once oil becomes unimportant.
What an idiotic way of framing things.
‘Everyone’s an Islamist and the population is radicalised.’
Not a surprise Netanyahu feels emboldened to carry out the most reckless action in the region for decades. You literally have a president in the US who does not even know what day it is so why not ratchet the war up in the final months of his presidency.
Sigh.
Yeah because bombing Hezbollah has worked out so well in the past.
Israel sees everything as a nail that needs to be hammered: Eventually the hammer becomes worn.
I think it's more of a case of him knowing that Biden does not want to get involved with 42 days to go until the US election day.
If Biden calls for restraint, he will be accused by Trump of being anti Israel. If he backs Netanyahu, then he creates issues with pro Palestinian voters.
I had high hopes for this guy, but it turns out he is a meathead.
The whole interview he did on Meet The Press yesterday was embarrassing.
Nah, that cheap ship has sailed a long, long time ago.
He had one fecking year to do so and he never wanted to. By choosing to unconditionally support that racist, supremacist, genocidal government hell bent on war, Biden constantly emboldened it . He drew no red lines, on the contrary. His stuttering lip service fooled no one. Everyone knew, for months, that Israel was going to attack Lebanon.
This is all on him.
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The narrative that US is there for oil needs to die.
This was maybe true 30 years ago.
Over 60% of the OPEC global oil reserves are in Iran and the Middle East. Without them the world economy collapses. Why else would they be there? I don't think it's because the Jews control Hollywood.
The Biden administration already backs Netanyahu, there is no 'if' here.
Yeah and it'll be the same regardless of which spineless clown gets elected next (and beyond)
Harris is a hawk wearing dove clothes, make no mistake about that.
She'll do nothing, absolutely nothing, to promote the two state solution and will tacitely endorse anything Israel does with the usual "concern" we hear so much about. There will be no peace, normalization or any kind of accords with Iran under her tenure.
Trump is well... Trump, i.e. a racist piece of shit. His presidency was the catalyst for 10/7 and the current situation in the region.
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US produces more barrels per day than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar combined.
They are a net exporter of oil and only import because their refineries are set up to process Heavy Crude (OPEC Basket) and the transition to producing sweet hasn't happened yet.
Of the oil they do import, 52% is from Canada and a further 11% is from Mexico.
Of the OPEC countries, 5% of imports is from Saudi Arabia.
The US has weaned itself almost entirely off Middle Eastern Oil and only remains to do so at a very small rate because...it's still cheaper.
Indeed the US is a net oil exporter. But the price of oil determines the health of the world economy. It's not simply about domestic oil supply. To think the Middle East is not strategically vital seems like an odd reading of the world energy market.
Fast forward thirty years and oil will matter far less. Global warming will most likely have decimated large parts of the region, especially Iran and the poorer areas that cannot access desalination technology. It will be a very different picture, but getting from here to there will involve a lot of people killing each other over scarce resources, water being very high on that list.
This is absolutely true. Water has always been key in the region.
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The question you stated wasn't the benefit of the global economy - it was why US had such a strategic interest in the middle East.
It's not oil. There's a lot of interests the US has there that far exceeds the importance of crude oil.
The main interests are stable regional allies, prevention of external regional powers from exerting too much influence, the creation of reliable diplomatic and military partners, to hold control over some of the world's most important shipping channels (mostly not even for oil) and finally....Israel.
My bet on this is that de-salination will become cheaper and cheaper.
Otherwise there's just not sustainable solution going forward and everyone is screwed. I saw the analysis on Saudi de-salination costs and it's absurdly expensive.
The health of the world economy is a US strategic interest. If middle east oil became a chinese controlled resource that would be a disaster for the West.
The two biggest desalinators are Saudi Arabia (who can throw money at it) and Israel (who can throw high tech at it.) Doubtful either will share their water with anyone else. But the long term future of the Arabian peninsula may be bleak even if they have water though. It may simply become too hot to live outdoors if we get to 3 degrees of global warming.
I would say water has already been weaponised as a tool of ethnic cleansing across the entire region and that will only get worse. It's the key determinant of the tribal breakdown of the region going forward.
I wouldn't bet on it.
The control of water resources has been a thing for thousands of years in the Middle-East. It's no surprise that Israel already has made strategic moves towards water reserves in the region and always oggled at the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank, and the Litani River Basin in South Lebanon. Look at how it uses water as a weapon of war in Palestine both in Gaza and the West Bank.
If you think that any actor in the region wouldn't let their adversaries in the region die of thirst, think again. Anything goes.
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Nor would I. If the Israeli right does want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians (and I'm sure that they would love to if it could be done without bad publicity), depriving them of water under cover of a global environmental catastrophe would be a far more efficient mechanism than any other. I imagine that's how it will go, not only in the occupied territories but in every conflict zone around the sub tropics.
I do think unlike Biden, Harris herself doesn't seem to have a strong vested interest in Israel. So she is more susceptible to change track or policy if public opinion keeps shifting against Israel. Especially it can become a bigger issue for Dems in mid terms compared to current election.
Its not about the US needing middle eastern oil since the US is now the world's leading producer and any oil it needs from the outside is largely imported from Canada. The primary reason the US is in the middle east is because 90% of the world's goods travel by sea, and that includes a lot of petroleum products. And since the world's largely interdependent economy benefits from middle eastern oil and gas, there is a strong incentive to make sure the US has a broad presence in the region to deter one or two regional dictatorships or theocracies from disrupting global commerce. This is also why the US has bilateral trade or military basing agreements with Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi - to codify bilateral relations on trade and security.
There is also a bit of great power competition involved in all of this. For instance, the new US-Saudi cooperation agreement is based on the US providing technology to the Kingdom, who in turn are promising to stop importing weapons and technology from China.
She is a hardcore supporter of Israel, always was. Contrary to Biden and given the circumstances, she just doesn't want the publicity. Netanyahu is a too noisy ally, that's it.
She's paying lip service to the pro-Palestinian crowd to at least keep them in the expectative, purely for electoral purposes. There's no danger of Palestine becoming a real issue in the US for decades, the current generation, sensible to the matter, being nowhere near of any position of power. AIPAC does the rest. And she knows it.
Be assured that if she's elected, it will be business as usual. Anyone expecting from her any major change in the US policy towards Palestine or Israel is utterly deluded.
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Regarding the quote on troops numbers, I thought it was 31k in 2024?
Furthermore, a lot of those troops are not "conventional" forces but trainers, engineers, mechanics and specialists to train the native countries how to use and maintain the weapons that they bought.
How many "Combat ready" outfits in the Middle East is pretty classified information. What they're going to bring in is probably a battalion or two's worth of combat duty soldiers.
She will be worse, those zionists like her and Biden love to outdo each other and Israel's depraved actions over the past year are giving them the best platform.
The internet is wild over videos of the explosions.
Everyone is making shit up and claiming all sorts of wild stuff just to suit their agenda.
Everyone is making shit up and claiming all sorts of wild stuff just to suit their agenda.
I don't think I really have the words to describe how tragic this is, or what this country of orcs are doing. It's funny that they try to claim that in Palestine or Lebanon "There are no civilians" when in fact it is their society that is full to the brim with bloodthirsty monsters.
This fecking jet fighter's been flying over my house for the last 5 hours. Annoying sound, just feck off 
I do agree. He should have done more last year.
My point is now so close to the election, he won't say anything about this recent escalation into Lebanon and I think Netanyahu is taking advantage of the situation to the fullest.
We will see. I think she is far more pro Palestinian than Biden and obviously Trump.
This fecking jet fighter's been flying over my house for the last 5 hours. Annoying sound, just feck off
Is the jet visible, out of curiosity?
No its night time now.
During the day you only see the trails in the air. Sometimes they do a sonic boom just for a laugh