Israel sent a drone into Beirut a couple of days ago to kill a senior Hamas commander. Hezbollah has said it will retaliate. Today the US sent a missile into Baghdad to kill a militia commander linked to Iran who had claimed responsibility for attacks on American troops. In the Red Sea, it seems only a matter of time before the US Navy takes aim at Iranian ships that are providing targeting information for Houthi attacks on Western cargo freighters. If that happens, Iran will undoubtedly launch reprisals.
President Biden has been an unshakeable ally of Israel in the Gaza war, but he's also desperate to keep the war from widening into a regional conflagration. It's starting to look less and less likely that he can thread this particular needle.
If shipping starts avoiding the Red Sea and going round the Cape won't this take a chunk out of Egypt's revenues? Aren't they interested?
Egypt has just built this thing, the largest military office complex in the world,
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1741420144709021936
Is it actually for nothing?
Of course it is for something: surpassing The Pentagon in the United States...
I think you've got it.
@cld, isn't Egypt the home of the pyramids, the largest make-work project in the ancient world?
I read somewhere that if Egypt loses the revenue from the canal, they will be close to broke.
speaking of threading the needle...
trump would love to criticize biden without appearing to support iran/hamas/hezbollah/isis
I guess if we are going to pay for all that military stuff we may as well use it, amirite?
yeah, and i'm pretty sure DoD sees these low-grade engagements as live-fire training exercises
I think you are exactly right, @lower-case.
Someone said that the reason that the US military is so good at breaking things, especially compared to any other country's military, is that they try to stay in constant practice.
DoD is definitely getting valuable information about Russian military strengths and weaknesses, and is effectively "buying" a weakening of their overall capability. It would, however, be a lot more cost-effective to give Ukraine a boatload of decent B-grade artillery shells, rather than giving them state-of-the-art stuff that is expensive and time-consuming to replace, and which they then fire with C-grade Russian artillery.
Israel/Netanyahu (there's no difference anymore, is there?) has long been trying to get the United States to go to war against Iran for the benefit of Israel. Some years back, Dr Juan Cole noted that Iran would be a better partner in the Middle East for the US than Israel, and enumerated the reasons.
But US foreign policy keeps closing that door.
Reality disagrees with you.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-finds-netanyahu-would-be-pummeled-by-gantz-were-elections-held-today/
There is a galactic scale difference between throwing out Bibi and throwing out Bibiism. Israel is moving right, not left.
Because Iran is ruled by unaccountable psychotics who think everyone else should be just like them?
You mean, kind of like Bibi, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir?
No, I mean the Revolutionary Guard, psychos who think they're talking to god and a national policy of female enslavement.
You're being a smidge hard on Iran. If the CIA hadn't royally fucked them over in 1953 at the behest of British Petroleum it would be a completely different country.
They'd be the same country like everywhere else in the Middle East, lunatics would have come to power by election instead of revolution.
Yes, we get it, we know you're a rabidly pro-Israel bullshitter who finds concerns about the truth or falsity of a proposition to be misplaced ... at best.
Props for pointing out that Israel has let a bunch of lunatics come to power by way of election, though.
Seriously out for revenge for your traumatic potty training.
I mean I am, for you. I'm doing it for you. Because the world can get past that.
Gotta disagree on some of Kevin's points:
1) I don't buy that it is "only a matter of time" before the US Navy takes aim at Iranian ships. Ships firing on each other is kind of an act of war and is not done lightly. And I am not sure the Iranian Navy is providing the Houthis with targeting information --- it is possible but I had not heard that until Kevin said that.
2) What I am seeing more is Iran trying to piggyback off of the unpopularity of the Israeli actions against Hamas to build its power up and probe for advantage. I think neither Iran nor the US want a much bigger escalation and thus it is unlikely that there will be some regional conflagration.
3) And Biden has put a little daylight between the US and Israel, calling for more safeguards for civilians in Gaza and coming out fairly explicitly against Israeli policies in the West Bank. Although not a lot of people are listening to that part among the noisier other stuff.
Iran, for all its faults and sometimes over-the-top rhetoric, has proved very good at playing the long game. With infinitely less resources and effort than the US put into the ME, but much more patience, it strengthened its hand in: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. So Netanyahu may well try to realize his dream of fighting Iran to the last American soldier, but I don't think either the US or Iran will bite. There may be some armed conflict. But it won't go very far, I think.
Note that ISIS - strangely enough - may have given peace a chance, by claiming responsibility for the recent terrorist bombings in Iran. A timely reminder that the West and Iran should be on the same side against Sunni jihadism.
“ So Netanyahu may well try to realize his dream of fighting Iran to the last American soldier…”
I don’t see much appetite in the US for reinstating the draft or for committing lots of troops to yet another Middle East war. So I think “last American soldier” will come pretty quickly unless Iran manages to bomb something in the 50 states.
could we declare anything north of US route 98 but more than 175 feet south of woodbridge road in palm beach to be un-american territory?
Not sure there is a needle to thread.
Keeping shipping lanes open and retaliating for attacks on US troops is unrelated to support for Israel.
The U.S. would like to think that, but as lot of the people on the ground believe otherwise, and they can make them connected.
Iran doesn't want to get into a war with the US, they want to project power and control the Middle East. That's the reason why they want the US out of the Middle East.
If you really thought Iran was itching for a war with US, well, they had the chance to do so after Soleimani was assassinated by Trump and didn't.
And now Biden restarts the drone wars. What an ass. I hope his hug of Netanyahu is worth it.
“A U.S. Special Operations drone strike in Baghdad on Thursday killed a senior figure in an Iran-linked militant group that is part of Iraq’s security apparatus, drawing sharp criticism from the Iraqi government, as well as allied groups. The Pentagon acknowledged responsibility for the strike, saying in a statement that U.S. forces had taken “necessary and proportionate action,” adding that the attack “was taken in self-defense” and that no civilians had been harmed. A missile fired by the drone struck a vehicle carrying three men near the logistics headquarters for the 12th brigade of the group…”
Sounds like it was a pretty good strike. What's the issue?
Why do the bible thumpers call israel and neighbors the "holy land"? Nothing all too holy in my eyes.