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

Taking the Hit For Stopping Genocide

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On December 11, 2024

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I’ve noticed something interesting. Every time I write about what might be done to stop the Israeli genocide, actions which would require serious fighting, people say “well I understand whey they don’t want to do that because Israel will bomb the hell out of them.”

And that’s true (though not as true when it comes to Iran, which has plenty of effective AD.)

The issue here is that there’s a genocide going on. My estimate for casualties is over half a million, and other people are starting to make the same estimates. For the past two months Israel has basically let no food into Northern Gaza. The number at the end will probably be over a million dead.

So you’re either willing to do what it takes to stop it, or you aren’t. Both Hezbollah and Iran pulled their punches and let Israel set the tempo of engagement, choosing when and where to fight, instead of engaging it when Hamas still had a viable fighting force. Iran had the missile capacity to wreck Israel’s air defense and air bases. Instead they let their proxies fight alone, and that went very badly for them.

With the fall of Syria, well, it’s no longer possible to stop the genocide. Senior Iranian leadership told their juniors they were going to intervene, then didn’t.

At least half a million people are going to die because no one was willing to do what it took to stop it.

It’s unfair this was on Iran and Hezbollah. It’s an amazing indictment of every great power in the world, and the local Arab states that none of them did anything meaningful to stop a genocide and that many helped the genocide along.

As for Iran, they themselves have pointed out that one has to resist America and Israel wherever they attack, because the plan is to end up taking out Iran. Khameini, if he hasn’t already, needs to get his head out of his ass and build nukes. And if Russia and China want to keep Iran as part of their great alliance, they need to take action.

As for Hezbollah, well, they’re cut off from land resupply from Iran. Israel and America will get to them. Playing everything cautiously did not work.

America is falling, there is no question about that. But Empire’s rarely go quiet into the night. The Age of War and Revolution continues.

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The Generational Divide Inside Iran’s IRGC

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On December 9, 2024

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The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp) is the most important part of the military. It’s supposed to guard the revolution: put down any internal revolts or coups. But it’s also the primary arm involved in places like Syria and Lebanon.

Among the information coming out after the fall of Assad one of the most interesting bits was on internal tensions inside the IRGC. It seems that the younger members are far more radical than the older guys currently in charge of the Republic. Khameini changed recruiting to invite only and upped indoctrination to 50% of training time, and, well, it worked. The younger members are true believers. They wanted to go into Syria and save it. They want more military action against Israel and find the missile strikes inadequate and pathetic.

Iranian leadership is renowned as cautious and conservative. They move slowly and think everything thru and risk little.

But the people who keep them in power aren’t like that: they’re happy to smash heads because they are true believers.

To make things worse, Khameini is 85. He has to arrange for a transition. And if he picks someone the youngsters won’t follow, Iran’s regime will be in great danger.

I’d say that the great problem with Iran during this last year and a half has been that it has been too cautious. Caution has served Iran well, but there are times for caution and there are times when for swift and decisive action. Iran has fumbled the war. They proved their missiles forces can break through Israel’s defenses, but have barely used them. They could have taken out Israeli air defenses and airfields directly if they were willing to be involved and not just operate thru proxies. Once they did so, Hezbollah’s strikes would have been much more effective.

The youngs were chomping to go fight and so were many of the Iran supported Iraqi militias, but they didn’t allow that. Khameini has repeatedly refused to get a nuclear deterrent, and Iran needs one. All along they have let Israel, the US and Turkey hold in the initiative and choose when and where the fighting would occur, only reacting, not forcing their tempo on the enemy. The result has been the massive weakening of Hamas and Hezbollah and the loss of Syria.

The youngs are right, and the olds are wrong. Iran needs to fight because just sitting their letting its proxies be taken out makes it look weak and untrustworthy and has degraded its actual strategic situation.

The best thing for Iran would be for the generational change to happen sooner, not later. Iran has enemies and it needs to fight, because those enemies are re-shaping the Middle East to massively reduce its power.

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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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