I’m really unnerved by it. What are the potential consequences?
I honestly think Iran is too defanged to make a difference with escalation. Israel flexed their capability heavily and eliminated part of Iran’s C&C and a lot of their military and nuclear assets in one go, and they’re still continuing with strikes for any mop up.
It’s a win-win situation for them because they’ve got the US to defend them and they can go almost full force on whatever they deem a threat.
It might technically backfire for Netanyahu if Iran fails to mount any serious counteroffensive, at which point he won’t have any escalation path to stay in power, but it’s still a big win for Israel’s interests.
Also not related to the question, but this proves HTS in Syria is just another CIA project that will follow Washington’s demands no questions asked since they clearly allowed Israel to operate within their airspace.
Thanks mate. What do you think Netanyahu really wants?
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
History’s like that too. People took their best guesses, but nobody knew for sure.
It really depends on how far both sides are willing to escalate.
Israel appears to be emboldened for a variety of reasons. Nobody is stopping their genocide. Hezbollah is on its back foot. Netanyahu sees political gain in a war with Iran. Trump is reckless enough to not reign Israel in.
However, Israel cannot wage all out war without the backing of the US. Iran knows this which is why I think their responses to past Israeli attacks have been fairly measured. These attacks are a serious escalation though and it’s hard to say how Iran may decide to respond.
If they seriously think the US is ready to back Israel in an all out war then we’re going to face consequences globally. Iran has the capacity to obliterate much of the middle east’s oil infrastructure, which the US is heavily invested in. That could cause energy prices to spike and create all kinds of downstream havoc for the global economy.
I fully expect Trump to say something like “Israel has the right to defend its newly earned territory from Iranian invaders”
No, that sentence is too complex
True, it would be Stephen Miller or some other Yes Nazi
It’s also way too coherent
Ah good point, there’s all the other outcomes that aren’t just military.
It has implications for nuclear armament. Netanyahu needs a forever war to stay in power, and Iran is now further incentivized to arm itself to deter that.
Other countries in similar positions are seeing how having agreed to a non proliforation deal in the past with the US has panned out for Iran.
So more nuclear armament is probably more attractive to certain countries who don’t want to be the Iran or Ukraine of their regions.
That’s an excellent point, there’s a massive incentive and they can see how things are playing out.
How has Irans deal with the US played out?
For many years Iran was enriching uranium and various other countries were like, no pls.
This is a massive oversimplification but basically back in 2014-15 Iran agreed to stop trying to build nuclear weapons capabilities (and have increased surveillance of what it was doing) in exchange for lifted sanctions.
Trump of course undid all that, Biden tried to reinstate it, Trump seems to prefer to let Israel bomb Iran instead.
So in my view what has just been proven here (and in Ukraine) is if you trust the US and don’t arm, you will get attacked by your enemies.
Oh that’s a betrayal. Lord that destroys trust.
Oh lol, there is no trust between the US and Iran. We have been fucking them over and murdering their people for a long time now
There will be no fallout from it. Israel has too many ties to Europe and Americans for Iran to do anything about it.
One day I hope Israel will be held accountable for their actions but that day will not be until after we all are dead.
70/30 this is right. Too many in middle east are friends to US to side too hard with Iran. Only Russia is a strong enough ally to destroy Tel Aviv, but most of US approaches to Russia have involved US statements that “Russia agrees that Iran should never have nuclear weapons” which means it is their primary concern with Russia discussions, even though Russia never mentions it in their statements.
Tolerance for Israel seems high, and world seems to have bigger priorities.
Well, it could be really bad, or it might only be a little bit bad.
Israel has nuclear weapons, Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapons and probably has them, and both sides believe God is on their side.
Meanwhile, God’s over here saying “Woah there guys, don’t bring ME in the middle of this. I told all y’all Thou shalt not kill.”
That’s glossing over the many times he tells people to kill each other.
Yeah, but those guys were real assholes.
Honestly theres a path to WW3 here. But it could not be that serious. It would be interesting to see how the US cozies up to Russia while its ally is attacking their ally Iran.
We are already “in” ww3, except because the US and Israel and their allies are the bad guys, it’s not marketed as such.
I’m curious to learn your take on who the “good guys” are in this context.
I truly don’t think there are any except for working class factions trying to push back colonialism and genocide - and specifically regarding the US/Israel, the reason it’s not marketed as a world war is because there is documented proof they are doing the evil here.
I have to admit I was expecting some garbage take straight out of russian propaganda, but congrats on being reasonable I guess.
“Ain’t no war but class war, baby .”
Right it could either be a huge fuckin problem or life will just go on
Potentially very bad, but probably not. Iran has previously vowed to retaliate with full force against any attack, including ‘targeting all US military bases “within our reach”.’ If they launch attacks at Israel that will escalate, but if they make good on that last part it could get very bad very quick.
But right now i have no way to gauge how serious Iran was about those claims or if it intends to make good on them, so the ball’s in their court.
Edit: I just read that according to Germany’s foreign office Iran is ‘responding with hundreds of drone attacks on Israel.’, so some escalation seems likely.
Thanks mate, realistically how much will other nations intervene?
Israel will definitely retaliate (for the strikes that are retaliating against its strikes, it just goes round and round.) The US is moving naval assets into the region so they’re apparently taking the threat seriously. It was a combination of the US, UK, France, Germany, and ~50 other nations that voted to declare Iran in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty so they likely have a vested interest as well, but Europe isn’t nearly as gung-ho about this sort of thing as the US is so they’re likely to let us take the lead if it goes that far. Iran’s neighbors have been trying to normalize relations with Israel for a while now but Israel doesn’t have puppet strings on them like we have on Israel so they likely won’t get involved either way. This is probably going to stay an Israel-Iran(-US) thing for a bit, but again it depends on how serious Iran wants to take this. I expect their losses in enrichment facilities were something baked into the cost of the program so they’re probably not too stuffed over that, but they’ve lost at least two high-ranking military commanders that I’ve heard of so far and that thing does tend to get them cranky in the pants. I suppose the Houthis in Yemen are kind of a wild-card considering they’re supported at least to some extent by Iran and have no compunction against bloodying Israel’s nose (see all the ships they’ve attacked in the Red Sea recently), but also they’re not likely to be able to accomplish much more than a token effort.
Honestly it’s all speculation at this point. And I’m by no means an expert on geopolitics nor do I have the latest information on the region, so that’s particularly wild-assed and largely-uninformed speculation to boot, so I’m not going to try to lay odds on it. My gut says it will probably just be an exchange of blows and settle down like these things tend to do, but the rhetoric is in high gear so there’s definitely the potential for more trouble coming down the pike.
Thanks for taking the time to explain that, I’ve got my head round it more now
Be sure to remember that I don’t really know what I’m talking about and any predictions I make are likely to be wildly inaccurate, but otherwise I’m happy to help explain the situation a little bit.
Well you clearly know enough to explain it to the level you have! But yes I understand you’re not an expert
I just mean I have strictly a layperson’s understanding, wanted to make it clear I’m not claiming to have any insider information or any ability to actually predict what’s likely to happen. I just read a lot of news.
Ahhhh I’m with you. You’re really informed and just get it, so it’s been really useful for me
Worst case, world war three. If enough other countries back Iran, they might retaliate in a way that triggers something like the nato treaty and you get some combination of countries compelled to do something, which could set off a series of conflicts that might spread.
More likely, some skirmishes and back and forth attacks happen, but nobody outside the region becomes involved directly.
Or, Iran could just posture and use it as political leverage to strengthen their position with allies and the various blocs around the world.
Obviously, there’s variants of those, and plenty of really unlikely options. But based on how iran has acted in the past and how little anyone is pressuring Israel currently, it doesn’t seem like it will escalate unless something else changes
It can’t trigger the NATO treaty, as neither Israel nor Iran are NATO members
That’s true enough, and that’s why I said that if Iran was backed by others and that retaliated in a way that might.
Let’s say Iran blames the UK, so they explode something there. Or one of their allies decides to pull fuckery in Germany.
That’s what I was talking about.
Edit: the relevant section
might retaliate in a way that triggers something like the nato treaty and you get some combination of countries compelled to do something, which could set off a series of conflicts that might spread.
See the multiple mights and coulds? And that it said something like the nato treaty, not specifically that treaty or only that one.
I’m kinda curious how all those italicized conditional terms and the “like” in there didn’t indicate the idea. There certainly wasn’t anything anywhere in it saying that Iran our Israel were members of NATO. So it’s confusing as hell how you got that as what I was saying
Sorry,I just understood it different and wanted to clarify. I didn’t mean to contradict you!
No worries, thank you for responding so quickly :)
Thanks that’s really easy to understand
Realistically I am less worried about a proper military to military engagement and more of an asymmetrical response.
They don’t need to have a nuclear program to do a dirty bomb or other similar attack on a civilian population. It doesn’t even have to be an official Iranian response directly, there are enough proxies around there that could fuck shit up for a lot of people.
As for the likelihood of this, its a crapshoot. Someone with more connections or experience can tell you that.
I dont think we know yet and that uncertainty isn’t making it any better
Ahhhh I see thanks
There is literally a large land war in Europe with one side having large nuclear stoke pile…
Israel does these PR stunts every few months to distract peasants from the genocide.
Israel can’t do shit about Iran, even US would not be able to invade it without having to go into war economy.
This is just a circle jerk to hit some iranian assests and earnt Israel brownie points with Zionists in the US.
Probably it will escalate for a bit and then die down again. Iran has been attacking Israel through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas for years. More recently after Israeli strikes they have sent waves of drones and missiles toward Israel. We’ll see another attack like that and then things will calm down.
Iran has been attacking Israel through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas for years.
an interesting way to word this lol
Israel surely is a passive actor in the region, israel dindu nuffin, my goyim
I don’t think a passive actor at all, both Israel and Iran both back people and kill people, the scale is debatable though.
the language original comment used downplayed israeli agency and implied that hamas and hezbollah are merely iranian proxies, which removes their agency and glosses over the reason why they are hostile to israel.
even without iranian support they would do their work. also, don’t they get support from gulf arab states like UAE and Qatar?
I know Lindsey Graham is waiting to laugh at Gretta when she tries to go into Iran to feed whoever might be left. Maybe something like “oh I hope they know how to ride donkeys!” That’s what we can expect now from those politicians.
