Israel has put Mt. Trump in a tough situation. Israel has no hope of defeating Iran without nuclear weapons. It needs allies, in this case America, to embark on another Middle East adventure that will likely result in more failed nation-building in the name of defending an ally. Trump has broken out the typical bluster, offered a few tells, even been convinced to move a few pieces on the geopolitical board, but he ran on ending wars, and he isn’t the one who wants to join another one.
The blob wants it, though.
The Nimitz Group is on station and milling about in preparation for more than a military feint. The problem is that Iran probably knows things neither Israel nor the US has told their citizens. In a conventional missile-for-missile throwdown, even with US air cover, Iran has more ordinance and the capacity to replenish it that neither the US nor Israel has.
Short of an internal rebellion by the people backed by the military, the mullahs can sit on their hands and toss missiles at cheap drones at Israel until it has been pounded to dust. Iron Dome will run out of anti-missile ordnance.
The US lacks the supplies or infrastructure to replace its own ordinance in a protracted engagement, which could be as soon as a few weeks. Joe Biden gave it to Ukraine or left it in Afghanistan.
Put another way, Israel’s decapitation maneuver can only lead to a significant nuclear response to a fight it started, to which Pakistan has said it would retaliate.
Short of a brokered solution, which Mr. Trump has been after in between his saber-rattling, Israel has committed suicide.
I did not arrive at this conclusion lightly or independently. Extensive reading across a wide range of thought leaders suggests that this is the most likely outcome (unless a peaceful agreement is reached beforehand, preventing escalation).
The one thing I’ve not seen is who provoked it and why, if these things are known to the community that is supposed to know before someone pulls a trigger.
I need to do more reading, but the supply and infrastructure issues are real and impossible to address without America declaring war on Iran – and Trump asking Congress for Permission.
The latter contradicts his no forever wars campaign promises and diplomacy since, and will cost him part of his coalition needed by his predecessor, not to mention midterm fallout.
The former, infrastructure, is also something Iran is reportedly in better shape to address. Post-war reconstruction. Something it probably had to do, given all the sanctions and diplomatic games requiring it to find paths to self-sufficiency.
An internal civil war in Iran or Israel would do the trick, but at depth, that looks like Deep State CIA/Blob objectives “achieved.” It is, after all, most likely that the secret branch of government responsible for the drone raids in Russia and Israel’s “hard to come back from” a decapitation maneuver.
Israel is getting its domestic shit kicked hard and cannot sustain the back and forth for much longer with few options given where things appear to stand. Assuming all the chatter is even correct.
One more point. If the US exhausts its resources here, how soon will China move on Taiwan, knowing we’re not only not there (we’re in the Arabian Sea) but also that the US may not have the ordinance for a protracted conventional defense in the South China Sea?
