Iran

Sidelining partner Israel, USA makes humiliating arrangements with Iran, after a round of war that professionals considered unserious.

Sometimes one must check in with the other side, such as it is. So this is “Prof. John Mearsheimer on the Fall of Assad: Syria Will Be in CHAOS For the Forseeable Future” on Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground Vimeo channel. With Mearsheimer’s erudition, University of Chicago credentials and light New York area accent, now I understand why he is taken seriously, yet even he must politely push back against this charlatan Rattansi with the constant bitter laugh, who signs off with:

Continued condolences to those surviving UK/US/EU-armed genocide here in this region. We’ll be back on Monday with the legendary Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.

It was worth having 28 minutes on just for that. What twaddle.

John Podhoretz wonders what can explain Obama-Biden policy towards Iran. Michael E. Ginsberg has an answer in American Greatness: “The Biden Administration and Iran: DEI Manifested as Foreign Policy”:

Iran is DEI catnip. For the DEI crowd, Iran today is a non-Western, Third World country, the alleged victim of Western meddling and colonialism that threw off its supposedly Western-imposed chains and established a government whose defining characteristic was hostility to the West. It was the perfect petri dish for a new foreign policy rooted in Western self-abasement, guilt, and deference to “indigenous” voices.

The resulting behavior is a vivid example of the cul-de-sac you go up when you willfully defy reality this way. And when you are responsible for the security and flourishing of the free world, it’s a scandal for the ages.

Unpleasant but necessary: this fellow Pataramesh provides sober intel on Iranian capabilities. He seems to think they are the good guys. He’s arguing that Iran’s missile strike was calibrated and limited and sends signals that it can do more.

On Twitter, Dan Linneaus writes (he’s pinned this one to the top of his profile):

Taking out Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities puts the cart before the horse..

He provides more detail here and here. This all makes sense to me: defang them first; this has the added benefit, apart from being smart, of doing what Biden asks: not hitting the oil nor nuclear facilities. Yet.

Israel just pulled off this snake-charming trick against Hizballah, degrading them for a year before delivering a hammering burst of coups de grâce; can it be done again. You know, I bloody think so.

Khamenei’s sermon translated in English at his homepage.

Good piece looking at things more from Iran’s perspective in Asia Times, “Iran has everything to lose in direct war with Israel” by Shahram Akbarzadeh.

Fighting Israel is very much a pillar of state identity in Iran. The Iranian political establishment is set up on the principle of challenging the United States and freeing Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. Those things are ingrained in the Iranian state identity. So, if Iran doesn’t act on this principle, there’s a serious risk of undermining its own identity.

Things have come down to the wire, as they do. Reportedly, the Israeli cabinet has decided on its response after a 4-hour meeting. Going by experience it will be shock and awe.

Stories like The Wall Street Journal’s “Israeli Response to Iran’s Attack to Set Course of Widening War” are faintly ridiculous in their discourse of retaliation and restraint. A typical quote:

“Israel will seek to reinforce the idea that its technological superiority and military skill allow it to strike any target in Iran,” said Norman Roule, who served as the top U.S. intelligence officer on Iran from 2008 to 2017. But Israel is likely to avoid striking targets that could spark a full-scale war with Iran, Roule said.

Wrong. Israel is no longer playing the game of retaliation ⁠— and has stated so explicitly, as least vis-a-vis Hizballah ⁠— nor of message-sending. Whatever happens next is not retaliation but simply the next move in an existential conflict that is therefore indeed all-out war, albeit less visibly so than most due to the complexity of the theater. Further quotes in the article are more on track: “In the end, decision makers in Tehran settled for the idea that restraint would not help to avoid a bigger confrontation anyway,” they quote Walter Posch, a senior researcher with the National Defense Academy in Vienna.

Remember, Netanyahu gave what is in retrospect the most credible wartime speech ever at the UN, one that demands being pored over given that even while he spoke Nasrallah was being assassinated at his order. Much of that halo remains for a subsequent video Netanyahu made to the Iranian people, in which Israel’s long-serving Prime Minister tells them they’ll be free “sooner than people think”. I choose to take this not as credibility-spending bluster but rather with credibility-maintaining seriousness.

After all, Israel had spent much strategic energy on the devastating, ingenious take-out of Hizballah ⁠— We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for years, was the IDF’s line ⁠— but Hizballah is merely Iran’s proxy. It strains credulity therefore that the forthcoming operations against Iran will be any less historic and gob-smacking. Israel would not have begun Operation New Order with the pager attack against Hizballah’s fighters without having in place the plan for Tehran.

Netanyahu: “When Iran is finally free ⁠— and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think ⁠— everything will be different.”

I had to search for this, Hizballah’s own statement on Nasrallah’s death.

As I awaken here in Hod Hasharon to the news of Ismael Haniye’s assassination ⁠— in Teheran, and with a rocket! [Update 2024 Aug 3: Apparently not a rocket but a pre-planted bomb] ⁠— I’m almost weepy with glee at this humiliation of the mullahs. As I survey media reactions, I see the BBC’s take by their “diplomatic correspondent” in Jerusalem:

While details of the attack slowly emerge, its political consequences are also coming into focus. The most obvious is the likely damage to fragile efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. … American officials had recently suggested that ceasefire negotiations might soon succeed, although a meeting in Rome last weekend did not result in a breakthrough. But it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake of the assassination of Haniyeh. All of which begs the question: if this was, as everyone assumes, an Israeli operation, why was it carried out? Beyond the desire to exact revenge on anyone associated with Hamas, what was Israel hoping to achieve? Turkey’s foreign ministry has already summed up the likely reaction of many in the region ⁠— accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of having “no intention of achieving peace”.

While this hack does qualify his analysis with “it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake…”, grudgingly alluding to the fact that the opposite is more likely true: that putting the leaders themselves in danger is likely to make them pressure Sinwar to indeed come to a deal in order to preserve themselves, the tone and subtext nonetheless remains true to BBC form: if only Israel could control its murderous inclinations, they’d be alright.

Fuck the BBC ⁠— though even as I write that, I recall the profound love I had for that word growing up, seeing it on the credits of Camberwick Green and whatnot.

It’s also of note that he chooses Turkey’s government as the voice of authority, even while disdaining to bother with their requested name change to Türkiye. The Turks were so deluded thinking the Anglosphere would bother with umlauts ⁠— about as typographically likely as not serving beer down the local.

“Helikopter, Helikopter”. As someone says in the comments, it’s the new Iranian anthem.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder speaks to and takes questions on the missiles that the USS Carney shot down:

There were no casualties to U.S. Forces and none that we know of to any civilians on the ground. Information about these engagements is still being processed and we cannot say for certain what these missiles and drones were targeting but they were launched from Yemen, heading north along the Red Sea, potentially towards targets in Israel.

The US has now had to defend Israel in this war. On Iran’s part, might firing from so far away have been a strategic mistake?

The increasingly indispensable Michael Doran points out that:

If the goal of the Biden administration were to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, then [US Ambassador to Israel Thomas] Nides would either avoid any intervention whatsoever in Israeli domestic politics, or he would urge Lapid publicly to put forth practical proposals that could lead to a constructive compromise. Nides has demonstratively done neither.

Great to see that this post about a mural in Nazareth memorializing the heroes of the Iranian uprising is met at the NewIran subreddit with only sympathetic and grateful comments.

Finally, Congress will pass a resolution expressing solidarity with and support for Iran’s protesters.

At Charlie Hebdo’s brave beautiful #MullahsGetOut competition “every contestant won a place in hell”.

This tweetstorm by Heshmat Alavi points out how the MSM glorified IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, no doubt at least partially because it was Bad Orange Man who ordered him killed. Most egregiously, MSNBC compares this methodical murderer to Princess Diana and Elvis Presley!

At the Washington Institute, Rahim Hamid and Ruth Riegler argue that the Iranian uprising must have a plan for the various ethnicities.

Tony Badran explicates the terrible maritime deal that Israel signed with the Lebanese. It seems to me they just locked in Bibi’s reelection.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is back, now opining fruitfully on the Iranian protests in The Wall Street Journal [subscription required]:

What is most striking about the regime’s response so far is its relative lack of violence … Like all declining dictatorships, the clerical regime has had a failure of imagination ⁠— in this case, about how to handle protesting women.

Watch these Balochi Iranian schoolgirls stomp on the classroom pic of the Dictator Khamenei. Amazing.

Some Twitter accounts posting frequent videos of the courageous protests by young women in Iran:

• @1500tasvir
• @IranIntl
• @IranNW
• @HeshmatAlavi
• @Afshin_Ismaeli

This, it seems to me, is inspiring, world-historical stuff.

Thrilling, emotional coverage by Israel’s Channel 12 on Iran’s street protests, including secret footage from a local stringer.

For the first time, Iranian protests are nationwide, multi-ethnic, political and non-clerical, so much so that this could finally be the end for the mad mullahs.

Kudos to the Biden Administration: Musk’s Starlink is legally permitted by the US Government to supply internet to Iranians.

In an interview on Israel’s national broadcaster Kan, this is a fair-minded well-informed backgrounder on Temple Mount tensions (Hebrew).

Ehud Yaari reports for Israeli TV that Iran claims it can build offensive atomic weaponry after all. Yaari doesn’t understand why this u-turn is not a global headline.

Is this a new method of diplomatic forum? Israel seems to have hosted its own mini-United Nations Security Council meeting by presenting to a gathering of ambassadors from the sitting UNSC countries; it’s bloody genius. Is that Lapid taking his current job seriously and imaginatively? Looks like it.

In “The Realignment” authors Michael Doran and Tony Badran are forthright about the egregious and insensible Iran-appeasement policy that the Biden Administration is continuing from the Obama era, despite years now of experience both bitter (Syria) and sweet (Abraham Accords) demonstrating its utter folly.

China bails out Iran with $400b deal as part of a Turkish-Iranian-Pakistani alliance, explains house favorite David P. Goldman.

This lengthy interview with Secretary-General Sayyid Nasrallah may be useful for insight into Hezbollah’s perspectives. There are some bizarre connections, such as the notion that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 because of deep concern regarding Iran’s “liberation of Khorramshahr” in the Iran-Iraq War.

Seeming US President-elect Joe Biden “has said openly for a long time that “he will go back to the nuclear agreement,” warns Israel’s Settlements Minister and long-time soothsayer Tzachi Hanegbi. “I see that as something that will lead to a confrontation between Israel and Iran.”

“Recognizing that the Arab and Jewish peoples are descendant of a common ancestor…” ⁠— Let us savor the text of the Treaty of Peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Blessed are the peacemakers…

Dore Gold explains that Arab nations have long held common cause with Israel. This is part of Mosaic Magazine’s symposium on the Israel-UAE peace accords, and contains links to the other essays.

In his report of what we know so far on the Beirut explosion, David Wurmser unsurprisingly surmises that what exploded was a Hizbollah weapons cache. Perhaps the whole terrible tale will come to be known as FatimaGate and that we are witnessing, as Wurmser concludes, what “may indeed be the beginning of the end for Hizballah and the Syrian-Iranian Quisling government.”

Bahaa Hariri: “It is crystal clear Hezbollah are in charge of the Port and the warehouse where the ammonium nitrate was stored.”

This is gold. For Bar-Ilan University’s BESA Center, Kenneth S. Brower pens a blunt bracing comprehensive assessment “Israel Versus Anyone: A Military Net Assessment of the Middle East” with conclusions aplenty. Here’s one:

The Israeli political-military leadership has over-responded to the current tactical threat posed by Iran and its non-state forces and has all but ignored the looming potential strategic threat of renewed hostility with Sunni Arab nations.

“The Soleimani Killing: An Initial Assessment” [PDF], a study by Hillel Frisch, Eytan Gilboa, Gershon Hacohen, Doron Itzchakov, and Alexander Joffe at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

From “you can’t do anything” to “a severe revenge”: Khamenei fumes regarding “that guy” Trump as US kills Iran’s Al-Quds Force leader Soleimani in a missile attack at Baghdad Airport.

What a gorgeous country revealed in this photo essay of contemporary life in Iran.

VDH provides a bit of actual strategy for the USA on the China, Iran, and North Korea fronts:

The most dangerous moments … are predictable. They follow when one side, arrogant from previously being exempt from any consequences for its aggression, believes it’s starting to lose a conflict that it prompted and cannot afford to lose.

With hundreds shot dead, Iran’s Islamic Republic is undergoing its worst unrest to date.

“Guidelines for Israel’s National Security Strategy” by Gadi Eisenkot and Gabi Siboni [PDF] published October 2019 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

I support every clause and every irony in this best Victor Davis Hanson piece in a while. VDH must even resort to a consistent use of italics, his points are so pertinent. My one qualm here is that Israel is surely uneasy with America’s seeming passivity vis-a-vis Iran’s attacks. But this qualm is quelled because Israel is only Little Satan, whereas Big Satan has economic pressures it can and is bringing to bear on Iran that are just not in Israel’s wheelhouse.

George Friedman is impressed by Iran’s recent attack on Saudi oil infrastructure, which “imposed a price on the Saudis for their alliance structure that, if it continues, they cannot pay. The attack also drove home to U.S. allies that their interest and the United States’ interest on oil diverge.” Yes but conversely while they lash out violently and the US responds only economically, they appear increasingly desperate, a not-good look with real-world consequences.

An interview with Bibi Netanyahu.

China breaches US oil export sanctions against Iran, Debka reports. Oh dear.

Harvard’s Belfer Center has produced an English translation of the Israel Defense Forces’ 2015 formal defence doctrine directed mainly against Hizbollah. This is the first such publication, which is worrying because pieces of paper now comprise at least some elements of the country’s deterrence.

Thank you JINSA for this bracing, worrying overview of the situation between Israel and Hezballah: “Israel’s Next Northern War: Operational and Legal Challenges” [PDF].