Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Iran Page 1 of 3

The Czechloslovakia Analogy Is Overused, But It Fits Israel

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On October 9, 2024

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Yesterday I wrote an article about how lack of aggression has allowed Israel to control the initiative and choose the time and place it wants to fight. If you haven’t read that article, please do so now.

Back in 1938 the Allied powers agreed to let Hitler cut up Czechloslovakia. At the time the Czechs had a huge army, and if supported, they were willing to fight. They weren’t supported and, soon enough, France and Britain had to fight Germany minus a massive central European army at their side.

Woops.

October 7th took the Israelis by complete surprise. For two days Hamas roved free. After that, the Israelis systematically bombed the hell out of Gaza and then invaded. They were incompetent and Hamas fought well, but Hamas was vastly outnumbered and out-equipped. To this day they haven’t been able to stop Hamas entirely, but they’ve done a lot of damage and certainly killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

During all this Hezbollah just launched missiles. Oh, they did damage, for sure, and they caused hundreds of thousands of internal refugees and an Israeli economic crisis. Iran supplied Hezbollah and Yemen but unless hit, did nothing directly.

Hezbollah could have hit far, far harder. They could even have invaded, especially during the period when much of the army was tied up in Gaza.

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There’s a concept in military strategy and tactics called “initiative.” The side with the initiative is forcing the other side to react to it. Hamas started with the initiative, but soon lost it and the Resistance sat back and let Israel do what it wanted, when it wanted. Israel mapped out Southern Lebanon, took its time setting up assassinations and figuring out where the missile stocks were: then it struck.

Israel was gifted the initiative by the Resistance (well, not so much Yemen, they did what they could).

Hamas wasn’t ever very strong, to be sure. Not Czechloslovakia, but no joke. Their hope was always that if they provoked a war, the Resistance would join in and they could win.

But the Resistance, who were resentful that Hamas didn’t warn them of October 7th, half-assed it, and didn’t strike when Israel was most vulnerable. (It’s clear Hamas was right not to tell Iran and Hezbollah about October 7th given how compromised they both are by the Mossad.)

Now Hamas, though still fighting, is no longer a serious threat to Israel and Hezbollah was caught on its back foot though I hear at least one credible report that they’re recovering fast.

To go back to the Nazi analogy, Israel is a genocidal power with wants lebensraum.

If the shoe fits.

You don’t play around with Nazis, and so far the Resistance has been doing just that. And even more than Hezbollah, this means Iran.

Surrender, or fight. Stop the half measures.

Iran Hammers Tel Aviv & Israel

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On October 1, 2024

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Just eyeballing it, but it seems that more missiles are getting thru than are intercepted.


Iran has said this is punishment for the Israeli assassinations. It has also said that it will defend Lebanon. And, as Nate pointed out, the missile attack is widespread:

 

All of Israel is covered by air alerts

Seems Israel isn’t going to have everything its own way.

Meanwhile the US has sent thousands of troops to Israel to “defend.” The US has been an active participant, for a while, as have been Germany, Britain and others, but this is a step beyond.

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Let’s make this really simple. If you’re trying to stop a genocide, you’re a hero. If you’re enabling a genocide, you’re a villain. Hezbollah and Iran have been trying to put pressure on Israel to stop their mass murder, and most of the West, with a few honorable exceptions like Ireland, have been helping them.

But what’s clear now is that if there’s a real war, it isn’t going to be one-sided. In the past the Israelis would bomb the shit out of their enemies, and be almost entirely safe. No longer. Israel’s not a large country, and Iran has plenty of missiles.

The main thing I’d want to see now (though I doubt it will happen) is for Russia to put Iran under their nuclear window: announce that use of nukes against Iran will be considered use of nukes against Russia.

This conflict, which threatens to become general war, is far from over.

Edit: initial reports of Mossad HQ being taken out appear to have been wrong. My apologies.

The Senders stumble into the Terror Dome

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On October 1, 2024

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Soundtrack for this post.

William S. Burroughs postulated four political parties in his 1959 novel Naked Lunch: Liquefactionists, Senders, Divisionists, and Factualists.

Per Wiki:

The city is contested by four rival political parties: Liquefactionists, who want to merge everyone into one protoplasmic entity; Senders, who want to control everyone else through telepathy; Divisionists, who subdivide into replicas of themselves; and Factualists, who oppose the other three.

The Senders are a metaphor for mass media propaganda as practiced by Edward Bernays, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Goebbels, and American political consultants.

The Democrats and their allied Never Trumper Republicans are the heirs to this legacy.

The rise of the Internet, then the World Wide Web, and finally social media initially threw them for a loop and played a role in Trump taking over the G.O.P.

Their reaction was to impose a surveillance and censorship regime using the tech monopolies as bottlenecks:

Essentially the Biden administration’s communications policy has been to relentlessly and flagrantly spin, distort, lie

Unfortunately, combining surveillance and censorship with slick media campaigns using the power of celebrity to encourage supporters to form parasocial bonds with politicians is way too much power for anyone to handle.

Because there’s no way not to get high on your own supply.

As YouTuber History Legends said of the Ukrainian war effort:

The propaganda was too strong and too effective.

We have an entire army of NAFO trolls (on) Reddit and Twitter. People that believed 100% everything that was being said by Ukraine.

The Ukrainians will only show their successes to their population as if the Ukrainians are constantly winning.

At the same time we have a million Ukrainian men abroad. We have countless Ukrainian soldiers and enlisted personnel that are not at the front.

We have people in Kiev partying as if there’s no war happening.

The problem for Ukraine is that they haven’t managed to create (a) national feeling of it’s now or never. They always try to portray the war as ‘oh we’re winning. It’s fine.’

So everybody kind of kept their life going because everything is going well at the front but it’s not true and now it’s too late.

The disorientation goes to the top, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s new piece for Foreign Policy illustrates.

The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago. [Really??] But our work is unfinished. The United States must sustain its fortitude across administrations to shake the revisionists’ assumptions. It must be prepared for the revisionist states to deepen cooperation with one another to try to make up the difference. It must maintain its commitments to and the trust of its friends. And it must continue to earn the American people’s confidence in the power, purpose, and value of disciplined American leadership in the world.

Meanwhile, air alerts over Israel:

All of Israel is covered by air alerts

Eyeless in Gaza, indeed.

Ryan Grim tweets:

This is either a complete and total failure to contain the conflict by the Biden administration -- or this is what the White House wanted and it's the most egregious lie told to the public since WMD. Either incompetence or duplicity--no 3rd option. Malevolent in either case.

Incompetence or duplicity? What do we think?

Israel’s Gunning To Lose US Support

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On April 6, 2024

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When you lose Nancy Pelosi:

Israel went too far. Dems love celebrities and the NGO workers they killed were essentially Democratic party affiliated.

Then there was the attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. A blatant violating of centuries old immunity of embassies. This is so bad that…

Through a series of messages exchanged via third parties, the United States and Iran have come to an understanding. Iran assured the Americans it will not target U.S. facilities, and in turn the U.S. says it will not get involved if Iran retaliates against Israel. Israel carried out the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, without consulting the United States.

We’ll see if the walk gets walked, but this looks bad for Israel. To be fair, Israel once sunk a US warship and got away with it, so I suppose they can be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing the US won’t swallow, but they appear to have misacalculated.

As for Iran, the news is that they will retaliate, and that they will do it directly, not thru proxies. Israelis are paralzyed with fear: GPS has been jammed for days, and store shelves are bare as Israelis stock up.

This is a bad situation. If Iran hits too hard, Israel will hit Iran. If they do that, Iran will retaliate again.

Can you say “escalation spiral?”

And if war breaks out, well Hezbollah and Syria will likely join in. Once that happens, no matter how pissed the US is at Israel, well, they may feel they must intervene. Why? Well…

Nuff said.

Let’s hope this isn’t the start of WWIII, because China and Russia are not likely to let Iran be taken out by the US, and if Iran starts winning conventionally against Israel (and if the US doesn’t intervene, that’s where my money is), well the Israelis have always claimed to be trigger happy with their nukes.

All because some Zionists wanted to steal land and have now decided to commit a genocide.

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Iran’s Likely Response To The Attack On Their Embassy

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On April 3, 2024

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So, in violation of red letter international law and norms, the Israelis bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus. This is a literal causus belli as a consulate is the land of the nation occupying it.

What will the consequences be?

Well, the best take I’ve seen is this, from Elijah J. Manjier (part behind a subscriber wall):

the 2020 assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani was a pivotal moment, marking a significant escalation in the conflict. Before his death, Yemen’s arsenal was relatively limited, lacking medium and long-range surface-to-surface precision missiles, advanced drone technology, accurate hypersonic missiles and long-range capabilities. However, under the leadership of Major General Ismail Qaani, Soleimani’s successor, the Al-Maqtumah axis has acquired a wide range of advanced long-range missile systems in significant quantities. These improvements have significantly enhanced Ansar Allah’s military capabilities in Yemen and imposed new limits on the freedom of action of the US and British navies, as well as Israel, within the constraints set by Hezbollah – a key player in initiating the conflict in support of Gaza.

The targeted assassination of Hezbollah Shura member Iranian Major General Abu Mahdi Zahedi raises questions about his replacement and the possible development of Hezbollah’s military capabilities under new leadership. The future of Hezbollah’s arsenal and strategic posture remains a subject of speculation, with the arrival of a new leader likely to increase the capabilities and intensity of the conflict.

In other words, give Hezbollah (and, I would suggest, Iraqi militias) more advanced weapons and let them use them. Syrian/Iraqi militias firing on Israeli bound ships would expand the Israeli blockade significantly, wouldn’t it?

The point, of course, is that assassinating Soleimani led directly to the current humiliation of the US by Yemen, and the blockade against Israeli ships in the Red seas.

Poking the lion, just like poking the bear, has consequences.

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China Leads A Successful Middle East Summit

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On March 16, 2023

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Something which has slipped past most people’s radar is that China recently acted as the intermediary for peace talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two countries have been at each other’s throats for decades, funding and running operations and proxies against each other. Elijah Manjier has a decent summary (part is behind a subscriber wall) from a pro-Iranian point of view.

It’s also interesting that in this conference no English was used!

Now it’s obvious why the US couldn’t be involved: it hates Iran and doesn’t intend to change that any time soon. But that China was reached out to indicates that it has good relationships with Iran and Saudi Arabia and that it’s considered powerful and prestigious enough to be involved a region far from its core.

On the Saudi side this shows the continued movement away from being a US ally. It suggests continued movement towards China, and that the petro-dollar really is under significant threat.

For Iran, it suggests that the days of the US being able to coordinate sanctions over it are likely numbered. If the Sauds break out of the US bloc, one can expect the Gulf States to follow if Iran is also in the Chinese bloc: these are the regional and cultural great powers. As Chinese/Russian payments expand and with petrochemicals priced in Yuan or Rubles, and with the most important Middle Eastern powers friendly to China, the US is reduced to its core allies. These are important countries, no doubt—Europe, Japan, South Korean, Taiwan and so on, but it is a minority of the world and is filled with countries terrified of US sanctions, looking for a way out under the potential hammerlock.

I don’t want to over-state how important this mediation by China was, but it was important and it’s one of those milestone moments. It wasn’t the US or Europe who the Sauds and Iranians went to, and just as importantly, they didn’t feel they needed US approval. Saudi Arabia using China, whom the US has declared an enemy, to move towards peace with a country the US has been hostile to for about 45 years is an earthquake.

Whether the peace will really happen is more dubious, but if movement, even hesitant 2 steps forward, one step backwards movement continues, it will be worthwhile. I am most interested to see if this will mean some sort of peace can be worked out in Yemen, or if it means the Iranians will abandon the Houthis, which would be sad.

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Iran Isn’t Going to Let Itself Be Kicked to Death Without Fighting Back

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On January 7, 2020

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As expected, and very cleanly and clearly. No attempt to obfuscate:

At least two airbases housing US troops in Iraq have been hit by more than a dozen ballistic missiles, according to the US Department of Defence.

Iranian state TV says the attack is a retaliation after the country’s top commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike in Baghdad, on the orders of US President Donald Trump.

As I noted when Iran general (and war hero) Qasem Soleimani was assassinated, Iran pretty much had to retaliate.

Soleimani was effectively the most powerful General in Iran. Think of him as a combination of Eisenhower and someone who fought on the front lines: to Iranians, a genuine hero. The man who actually was most responsible for defeating ISIS, among other things.

You could regard him as the second most important man in Iraq.

If the US could kill him without consequences, no one in Iran’s leadership was safe, except possibly Khameini (the Supreme Leader) and maybe not even him.

Retaliating is a matter of personal survival for Iran’s leadership. Personal.

But Soleimani was also tremendously popular. So, as often happens when attacked by outsiders, even Iranians who dislike the Iranian regime have rallied around. (Americans may remember something similar after 9/11.)

I note that Iran has retaliated by hitting military targets. Which is to say: The US killed someone in their military, they have retaliated by attacking the US military. I would say that this is legitimate.

Only bullies think that their victims are obligated to sit still while being hit and not punch back. Oh, and a lot of Americans.

Trump threatened that if Iran retaliated he would hit multiple targets, including cultural ones. Iran has said that if he does so they will escalate, including hitting Israel and Dubai.

What they are trying to indicate is that they are not going to be Iraq. It isn’t going to be some nice clean war where the victim sits still while bombed to shit by US forces and only a few American soldiers die, which no one actually cares about who matters. (No, no, don’t pretend that American leaders actually care about American casualties, their actions indicate they do not and you’ll look like an idiot and a fool.)

Remember that Iran is an ally of both Russia and China. China needs Iran in order to complete its Belt and Road Initiative (the centerpiece of both their economic and alliance strategy and Xi Jinping’s signature policy, upon which his legacy rests). Russia is run by Putin, who has made not allowing the US to destroy any more Russian allies the centerpiece of his foreign policy. It’s why he went into Syria, and it’s why he hates Hilary Clinton so much, as he regarded her as the prime US actor in destroying Libya.

So this war has a real chance of serious escalation. Iraq was isolated and had no friends. Iran is somewhat isolated, yes, but it does have powerful friends who believe it is in their self-interest to keep Iran from being blown into failed state status by the US.

Again, the logic here is the same as Iran’s as regards escalation: If Russia (and China) let the US take out their allies whenever the US wants, then what is to stop the US from just doing that until these countries have no allies left?

This is a dangerous moment, and the US is not in the right here. The US unilaterally caused this problem by assassinating a senior government official. All the whinging on about how Soleimani has been involved in Iranian proxy attacks on the US is ludicrous: The official US policy is to fund and aid terrorists attacking Iran (look it up.) US officials, certainly including every President since Bush, have made decisions leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and other countries’ military personnel.

This is realpolitik, not some morality play. There are no good guys here, there are just people who are acting on orders or in what they think are the interests of their country. (Or, in Trump’s case, his own interests.)

The correct action right now is to not escalate again. Escalation will lead to a lot of dead people, for no gain for either Iran or the US.

Note that I despise Iran’s regime. I am a left-winger who believes in the equality of men and women, kindness and universal humanity, not in theocratic government. If Iran’s government were to fall tomorrow, I’d be OK with that.

But that’s internal Iranian business. It’s not America’s business to start a war with Iran. It will not make anything better, any more than attacking Iraq did, or attacking Libya (which now has its famous open air slave markets).

It should also be noted that, if the war happens, the Europeans are going to get slammed with another bunch of refugees. Perhaps they should pre-empt this by sending some troops to Tehran, so that if Trump attacks, he has to kill Germans and French.

Kidding, kidding. I know that the EU has no actual morals and not enough guts to do this. But, y’know, in an alternate universe where they actually had the bravery to stand up to the US either in their own interests, or in something approaching a desire to do the right thing…

We’ll see how this plays out.

But remember, Iran isn’t planning on sitting still and taking it. This isn’t going to be Iraq of Afghanistan. If this turns into a real war, they will hit back with everything they have, rather than hoping that if they just lie there and let the US kick them, the US will stop before kicking them to death.

And China and (especially) Russia don’t want them kicked to death.

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Is Trump Trying to Start a War with Iran?

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On January 2, 2020

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Qasem Soleimani

And maybe with Iraq, too.

Trump has had the second most powerful man in Iraq, the leader of the Qods force, Qasem Soleimani, killed. This is like someone assassinating the Joint Chief of Staff combined with the Leader of the House.

Qasem Soleimani was also very close to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader–a personal friend.

On top of this, US forces in Iraq have arrested the leaders of two of Iraq’s most important militias.

These are, well, acts of war. Iranian sources are saying that there will be retaliation, no question.

Iran has far more power and influence than the US in Iraq, if a real war starts, it is very likely that it will be the US against Iran, Iraq,, and possibly Syria.

Iran and Syria are, effectively, allies of Russia.

Iran, like everyone else who fears the US and has enough resources, has spent the last 20 years preparing specifically for war with the US. They have built a fearsome missile force, designed to hit US ships and bases, and to be too large to shoot down and stop. They have stated that, in war, they will shut down the Gulf, meaning that oil prices around the world will soar, likely causing a financial crisis and severe recession–possibly a depression.

Putin is determined, moreover, to not allow the US to destroy any more Russian allies. One of his huge regrets was allowing Libya to be destroyed. He will want to keep Iran from being defeated.

The funny thing about this is that killing and arresting leaders will make far less difference than the US imagines: In organizations where everyone believes in the mission (like militias and Qods), those leaders will just be replaced. The person who replaces them will be competent, and will want revenge. The US always overestimates the importance of leaders, because a US leader’s job is to get people to do things they don’t really believe are worth doing.

This is an amazing clusterfuck. The Iranians are in a bind: If they do not launch some sort of savage reprisal, then the message is clear, the US can kill any Iranian they want–if they can kill the second most powerful man in Iran, who’s off the table?

Iraqi militias and the government face a similar quandry: If they do nothing, it is clear their independence is a complete sham, and they are still ruled by America.

On the other hand, if they escalate at a symmetrical level, they will have to do so much damage that the US will rally around Trump and scream for Trump to strike them again–and even harder. Various American Rambo-patriots are already flexing their muscles and making threats.

It isn’t hard to see how that could quickly lead to war, but the other option for both Iran and Iraq is essentially to lick the boots that just kicked them.

Fun stuff.

If Trump doesn’t walk this back, hard, there may well be the most serious war in decades. At the far end, though I think it’s unlikely, it certainly isn’t impossible for this to escalate into a war involving both Russia and the US, on opposite sides.

This is a profoundly dangerous moment. Don’t underestimate just how badly this could turn out.

(And remember that Obama normalized this idea, seeded by, Bush Jr., that the US had the right to kill foreigners anytime, anywhere, subject only to the President’s discretion. Not only an evil idea, but a profoundly dangerous one. The US’s entire drone assassination program needs to be shut down, now and permanently.)

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