International events

[TheLastWolf]

I got exams in two weeks, the world better end well and good by then. Nothing worse than being annihilated after having to prepare for shit which was meaningless anyway. (Lars Von Trier's Melancholia)

Meanwhile I'm having fun being torn between remaining silent (read: doing damnedest to stfu) and voicing my vehement opposition against the right wing fundamentalists who are sure to return to power with an even higher majority, encroaching into the last bastions of democracy, thus virtually alienating myself from about nine tenths of the so called friends, family and acquaintances in my social circle. 

Yippee 

Edited April 14 by TheLastWolf

[Consigliere]

46 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

That’s exactly it imo. Israel attacked Iran’s embassy, Iran responded in a measured way I guess? This should be the end of this specific back and forth. But it won’t be if Netanyahu decides he has to retaliate. And since everything points to him wanting a broader war and to drag the US into it so he can stay in power, yeah, that’s what we should be worrying about. 

Yeah, all this pearl clutching over the danger posed by Iran is rather funny. They've tried very hard NOT to escalate things into a wider conflict going back to when the US assassinated that Iranian general and Trump trying his best to antagonise them. The Ayatollah and co. are theocratic nutjobs but not ones without any sense of self-preservation it would appear. They seem to understand that they would be out of power and hanging from meat hooks very quickly if they step out of line. Israel are the ones who are far more likely to escalate things in the Middle East or drop a nuke since it's been proven time and again that Israel has free rein to act with impunity with any disapproval amounting to nothing more than a little tut-tutting while continuing to receive billions of dollars in aid.

Edited April 14 by Consigliere

[kissdbyfire]

8 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Yeah, all this pearl clutching over the danger posed by Iran is rather funny. They've tried very hard NOT to escalate things into a wider conflict going back to when the US assassinated that Iranian general and Trump trying his best to antagonise them. The Ayatollah and co. are theocratic nutjobs but not ones without any sense of self-preservation it would appear. They seem to understand that they would be out of power and hanging from meat hooks very quickly if they step out of line. Israel are the ones who are far more likely to escalate things in the Middle East or drop a nuke since it's been proven time and again that Israel has free rein to act with impunity with any disapproval amounting to nothing more than a little tut-tutting while continuing to receive billions of dollars in aid.

Agree wholeheartedly. And can the US be any more hypocritical? I mean, to veto any type of condemnation of Israel’s attack on the Iranian embassy that killed roughly 50 people? Can you imagine the outrage and racist & xenophobic & Islamophobic rhetoric we’d be hearing had Iran attacked an Israeli embassy killing 50 people? 

[Heartofice]

Why do people imagine Israel is targeting Iran? Has Iran just been sitting around minding it's own business for the past decade?

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Why do people imagine Israel is targeting Iran? Has Iran just been sitting around minding it's own business for the past decade?

It's less "targeting Iran" than escalating with Iran by killing 50 people in the embassy attack.  

 

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

It's less "targeting Iran" than escalating with Iran by killing 50 people in the embassy attack.  

 

Definitely an escalation, but the framing I’m seeing here suggests people seem to think that Iran haven’t been engaged in a  proxy war with Israel for quite some time. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

It's less "targeting Iran" than escalating with Iran by killing 50 people in the embassy attack.  

 

Iran played a significant role in the October 7th attacks. That's the escalation. 

[Clueless Northman]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

That’s exactly it imo. Israel attacked Iran’s embassy, Iran responded in a measured way I guess? This should be the end of this specific back and forth. But it won’t be if Netanyahu decides he has to retaliate. And since everything points to him wanting a broader war and to drag the US into it so he can stay in power, yeah, that’s what we should be worrying about. 

Trump didn't retaliate when Iran bombed in retaliation a (warned, iirc) US base in Iraq after Suleimani was killed. So one now has to wonder if Netanyahu is more unhinged or is as "sane" and "sensible" as Trump - which is quite the low bar.

Edited April 14 by Clueless Northman

[Toth]

24 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Definitely an escalation, but the framing I’m seeing here suggests people seem to think that Iran haven’t been engaged in a  proxy war with Israel for quite some time. 

We are also in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and I don't see France blow up the Russian embassy in Mali. The whole idea of a proxy war is to not directly attack the other one for fear of uncontrollable escalation. Therefore the Israeli attack was mindbogglingly stupid. If they hadn't done that, we would not have the risk of war at hand now. I just hope for once Netanyahu can swallow down his ego and everyone's temper can calm down. The ball is in his court. Eye for an eye needs to end right here.

Edited April 14 by Toth

[Larry of the Lawn]

48 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Iran played a significant role in the October 7th attacks. That's the escalation. 

Ok. 

Try plugging in 'Israel' and 'Hamas' into HoI's post that I quoted and see how it sounds:

Quote

Why do people imagine Hamas is targeting Israel? Has Israel just been sitting around minding it's own business for the past decade?

Can you see why that kind of framing is kinda lazy and fucked?

[kissdbyfire]

47 minutes ago, Toth said:

Therefore the Israeli attack was mindbogglingly stupid. If they hadn't done that, we would not have the risk of war at hand now

It was stupid if escalation was not precisely the goal.  

[Toth]

35 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

It was stupid if escalation was not precisely the goal.  

The only end goal for that that I can think of would be to settle things with Iran once and for all, but that is also an inherently stupid thing to start, because the reaction of other Muslim nations really can't be anticipated there. Being the aggressor there nukes decades of normalization which were the only reason why so many Muslim nations have reacted to the Gaza war with verbal protest only. There is a good chance they'd exchange a situation with only one openly hostile neighbor left with one where almost everyone is hostile again.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It doesn't sound like Iran will take this much further, face is saved. There is also a school of thought that it would not be able to escalate a lot more than this anyway. 

Iran can escalate massively beyond this. Iran used a tiny percentage fraction of its total missile stockpile, which exceeds 3,000 ballistic missiles alone in twenty-fire classes with the range to hit Israel. Five of those classes can reach Europe and one can reach the UK. None can reach the United States, but dozens of US bases in the region are in range. Iran also has twenty-one distinct types of cruise missile, with an inventory believed in the range of 2,000-4,000 (by some counts, more than the US and even more than China).

The one thing it did use a lot of was Shaheds, and whilst they have a couple thousand more in stock, they don't have much more than that because they've sent them to Russia. But Shaheds are also easier to build than cruise missiles or ballistic missiles.

If Iran went all-out, it could easily launch a thousand to two thousand missiles in a single wave, which would likely completely overwhelm Israel's missile defences and cause widespread devastation and damage in a single strike, followed by vast numbers of drones.

Iran is also believed to have contingency plans to deploy enormous numbers of troops to Syria, crossing Iraq (likely with a token complaint by the Iraqi government but nothing done to stop them), where they could muster on the border with Israel, for an operation to retake the Golan Heights. That is very much an improbable military outcome and Iranian forces would be exposed to air attack all the way, but it is doable (though they are more likely to send smaller forces to coordinate with Syrian and Lebanese ground forces in a coordinated invasion of northern Israel).

Obviously if Iran was going to take action on that scale, it would probably trigger Israel's existential failsafe and all of Iran's major cities would cease to exist in short order, and obviously we're all then waking up in a very different world the next day.

But even granted that Iran doesn't want that, it could easily have mustered a considerably more challenging attack than last night. It could have kept up the same kind of sustained pressure continuously for 2-3 days in a row; Israel would have likely continued to shoot down the drones but it would have used up a lot more of their AA stocks and pushed maintenance of CAPs around Israel's orders for its allies. It could have fired twice the number of missiles and drones in the same period. It could have launched heavier ballistic missiles, perhaps to detonate in empty areas of the Negev as a greater demonstration of force. It could have coordinated a much heavier attack by Hezbollah and the Houthis, and launched attacks on US forces in Iraq, even if just "spoiler" attacks designed to irritate and tie up forces.

Don't get me wrong, Iran's military strength is sometimes overplayed (especially by Russia) and it would lose any serious all-out conflict with Israel alone, let alone Israel plus allies, but it would cause immense damage in the process. It would not be Iraq 2003. And it could have done much more than it did last night.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, Toth said:

The only end goal for that that I can think of would be to settle things with Iran once and for all, but that is also an inherently stupid thing to start, because the reaction of other Muslim nations really can't be anticipated there. Being the aggressor there nukes decades of normalization which were the only reason why so many Muslim nations have reacted to the Gaza war with verbal protest only. There is a good chance they'd exchange a situation with only one openly hostile neighbor left with one where almost everyone is hostile again.

Iran has moved to stabilise relations with its Arab neighbours, but the distinction between the Arabs and Persians in this context, and especially between Shia and Sunni, is very strong. Arab countries are extremely distrustful of Iran and Iranian motivations, and are not natural allies of Iran. At the most there is an "enemy of the enemy is my friend" thing going on regarding Iranian attitudes towards Israel, but even that is not overwhelmingly powerful.

There can be real enmity between Sunni and Shia, because they have different takes on the same core religious belief; it can be easier to actually deal with people completely outside the framework then people who half-get-it-but-are-"wrong." There's also Iran/Shia "meddling" in Iraq, an Arab country with a Shia majority but a strong Sunni minority (whereas every other Arab and Muslim country in the world bar Azerbaijan has a Sunni majority). Islamic State picked up significant support because it was an ostensibly Sunni organisation (although with some pretty big caveats) protecting Sunni Muslims against Shia persecution, or so they said.

As a result, Arab countries are very quick to see Iran as an enemy, and in recent years (pre-October 7th) the movement was towards Arab countries being more willing to tolerate, work with and even ally with Israel versus Iran, exemplified by the Saudi-Iranian Cold War (which most people seem to agree is on hold, not fully resolved) and Türkiye's complex relations with Iran. But the Arab street is less keen on that, and more keen to put their issues with Iran on hold if it means screwing over Israel.

It should be noted that Iran doesn't always seem to "get" what its Sunni allies/proxies are doing, believe in or want; there was quite a bit of anger last night by Arab commentators at pretty big explosions and debris falling just a mile or so away from the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque (one of the reasons why more local Palestinian forces rarely target Jerusalem itself with rockets).

[Darryk]

99% of rockets shot down. Thank God for the IDF and their allies UK, Jordan (didn't expect that) and the United States — the greatest nation in the history of humanity.

Really hope it ends here and that Israel doesn't retaliate. I support Israel's right to defend itself but I don't want WWIII.

Edited April 14 by Darryk

[DireWolfSpirit]

3 hours ago, ljkeane said:

It should also be noted that Iran has said they would have been satisfied with a UN Security Council condemnation of the Israeli attack on their embassy but that was blocked by the US along with the UK and France. Biden really has been pretty terrible on anything related to Israel.

This cant be repeated enough.

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, Darryk said:

99% of rockets shot down. Thank God for the IDF and their allies UK, Saudi Arabia (?! didn't expect that) and the United States — the greatest nation in the history of humanity.

Really hope it ends here and that Israel doesn't retaliate. I support Israel's right to defend itself but I don't want WWIII.

Saudi Arabia did not take part in last night's actions. Jordan was the only Arab country which directly engaged Iranian missiles and drones overflying its territory.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

Ok. 

Try plugging in 'Israel' and 'Hamas' into HoI's post that I quoted and see how it sounds:

Can you see why that kind of framing is kinda lazy and fucked?

What's lazy is not recognizing each groups' history and stated goals. Hamas and Iran have said they want to destroy Israel for decades. The latter has said come fuck around and find out. 

[karaddin]

You can recognize that bombing another countries consulate is an escalation even if you think the country in question are awful. That is in fact how I feel about it, the Iranian regime is awful and I look forward to the day the citizens overthrow it, and at the same time I understand they were going to feel they had to respond to the consulate being bombed.

So I'll stay relieved Iran chose retaliation that could be shot down and hope Israel doesn't decide to really try trigger a regional war.

[Werthead]

That's actually a pretty big reasoning why the US and European countries are trying to restrain Israel. They know there's a huge civil opposition to the Iranian government and the Iranian government, although extremely resilient, could fall given time and momentum. Israel bombing Iran hard could pull large numbers of people behind the government and make that less likely.

The Israeli position might be that this has been "on the cards" for a decade straight and hasn't happened, and may never happen, so shouldn't be a factor. I've also seen the argument that if Israeli hits the government and military structures hard and manages to avoid civilian casualties, that may strengthen the opposition hand.

Actual Iranian opposition figures have supported both ideas, so who knows, but I think most analysts think an Israeli attack on Iran would not have a helpful impact on those hoping for the fall of the regime.