This post is going to cover my thoughts on the war in the Middle East as it enters its second month.
- Just because you contain a monster, it doesn't mean that the monster isn't still there. Or to use another metaphor, hornets still go out and sting, which Iran has been doing for decades under the three Ayatollahs. Also, what is the difference between containment and appeasement? Does it depend on which side is doing it?
- For Israel, Iran getting a nuclear bomb is an existential threat. It would likely result in a situation where they would feel they have no alternative but strike first and international opinion can do go do one. In 1996, the ICJ famously split 7-7 on the legality of using nukes if state survival was at stake, that part only being carried by the President's deciding vote.
- Declaring that the desire was to overthrow the Islamic regime was a stupid move - it set up an unrealistic winning condition.
- Donald Trump lies so often that he won't be believed even when he is telling the truth. Aesop had a few things to say about that.
- Iran is playing a similar game to Germany in both World Wars - unable to defeat the US militarily, it hopes to cause the global economy so much pain that it gives up. This is a move that risk the GCC going from defence to offence.
- The US armed forces, especially the navy, have been badly run down by underfunding and the twenty-five years of the war on terror. This is now showing in a major way.
- Reopening the Straits of Hormuz will require diplomacy or armed force likely to produce a level of US casualties that would cause massive damage to the Republicans politically. Vietnam ultimately, bar the one-term Carter presidency, kept the Democrats out of power for over two decades and their 1992 victory wasn't exactly convincing either.
- A popular uprising will not happen during the bombing campaign. It might later, but these things are notoriously difficult to predict.
- So much for a "short, victorious war".
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