Oy Vey! Iran is Showing More Strategic Acumen Than Israel

Surprising no one the United States attacked Iran a few nights ago. They dropped a few bunker buster bombs on three nuclear sites and went home.

I was wondering how Iran would react and I suggested they would be smart not to, instead focusing on Israel. That would have been the best strategic move.

In the end they attacked some US assets in the Region but not before announcing the time, place and nature of the strikes to the Americans and the host countries. In other words, they launched a token retaliation and then went back to pounding their true enemy in this conflict.

It should be obvious that the US cannot really hurt Iran unless they commit much more than what they are willing to commit, including ground troops. That could get lost in the heat of the moment and then the Iranians would play into the hands of their primary enemy by shifting their focus to attacking a country they have no hope of defeating.

They did not do that. We in the West are made to believe that Iran and Israel's Arab neighbours are backwards boobs, completely out of their league with regard to taking on Israel and the US. Iran just proved that they can think strategically.

Too bad Israel has lost that ability.

The only saving grace for the Israelis is Iran does not have any ability to destroy the state of Israel. But then again Israel does not have the ability to destroy Iran. So instead they will continue to pound each other until they exhaust their ammunition. 

They will eventually stop and start to rearm for the next round. The key difference is between then and now the Iranians will acquire nuclear weapons, which the Israelis will be unable to prevent because they wasted their efforts in a pointless conflict this time. 

Iran has had the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons for a couple of decades. They have not done so up to now and took steps beyond being part of the Non-proliferation treaty to prove that they were not making them and allowing outsiders to keep making certain it stayed that way. By just sticking to the status quo Israel could look forward to having a nuclear monopoly in that region for the foreseeable future. They blew that. 

I stated in my previous post that Iran cannot lose strategically in this conflict. The only way they might have lost that advantage was to allow themselves to become embroiled in a war with the US. They have avoided that so now it is just a matter of ending the current conflict and preparing for the next one.

PM Netanyahu and his Government Really are that Blind

We are less than a week into the war between Israel and Iran and something about it has jelled, even when how the rest of it will play out is still unclear. It would appear that the Israeli government completely underestimated the ability of Iran to hit back at their country.

Which is really astounding.

Iran is a country with more than 10 times the population of Israel. It has about 100 times the geographical area, with all sorts of access to natural resources within the country and from other parts of the world (sanctions be damned). It has been preparing for war with Israel for over 30 years, basically since the Israelis bombed one of their nuclear facilities in the 1980s. Further, their good friend George W. Bush eliminated their only threat of land invasion in 2003 when he destroyed Iraq as a functioning country. So, Iran has had the luxury of exclusively preparing for war with Israel since then. It should surprise no one that they did so with a sense of urgency and are now more than capable of hitting back at Israel with enough force to hurt them.

Now Israel finds itself in a situation they have not been in since 1973. An enemy that can hurt them as badly as they can hurt that enemy. As well, since they cannot use their ground forces to bring this conflict to a conclusion they will have to continue to endure the pounding they have been receiving.

The fog of war prevents us from knowing the full extent of that damage. However, there is no denying that there are videos coming out of Israel showing Iranian missiles raining down on them with increasing frequency. The war has become a battle of missile attrition. The Iranians have a limited number of missiles they can fire but the Israelis have a limited number of missiles with which to intercept them. As well, it appears that the Israelis have to use three interceptor missiles to take down one Iranian missile, on average. If that is the case it would seem that the Israelis are burning through their defensive missiles at a faster rate than the Iranians are using theirs.

Now the Americans are involved but they are irrelevant. They cannot stop the Iranian onslaught any more than the Israelis can. Sure they can use some special munitions to try to take out Iranian nuclear facilities but that does not help prevent the continued destruction of Tel Aviv.

If the Iranians are smart they will ignore the Americans and focus on Israel. All the Iranians can do to the US is threaten some US servicemen in bases around the Persian Gulf. They can do real damage to Israel however. This would have the added benefit of showing the US just how powerless and irrelevant they have become in the Middle East.

So how does this impact things in the medium to long-term.

First, the Iranians are going to acquire nuclear weapons, either by making them themselves or by buying them from the Chinese or Russians. They currently do not have them because if they did they would have announced that to the world, mostly to inform the Israelis that they now live under a Mutual Assured Destruction situation. Incidentally, that is why the Israelis want to prevent the Iranians from acquiring them. They have a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region and want to keep it that way. They have just guaranteed that they will lose it, probably before the end of this decade.

Second, the Iranians and much of the rest of the Global South are going to move towards aligning themselves with the Chinese. Their influence on the global order will increase at the expense of the United States and the West.

In the short-term it is a race to see who will run out of missiles first. If it is the Israelis they will have no choice but to ask for the cease-fire and the old aura of invincibility of the Israeli military, security and intelligence services will take yet one more hit. If it is the Iranians then they will suffer some short-term pain but that will not impact their relations with their allies.

Really, the Iranians can suffer a tactical defeat during this war but not a strategic one. Regardless of how the fighting finally stops the Iranians are going to come out on top strategically. How the Israelis did not figure this out before they started the war is astounding.

Perfection is the Enemy of the Good

Since Parliament resumed I have been watching some progressive commentators lamenting that Mark Carney is "governing from the right". That is not true of course. He is governing from the centre but after 10 years of Justin Trudeau it just seems that Mark Carney is right wing.

I have said it many times before that Justin Trudeau was the most progressive PM, who lead the most progressive government, since his father and he will be the last progressive PM for at least the next two decades, probably longer. 

However, that did not stop many progressive commentators and voters from turning on him as much as the Conservatives did. Scratch that, the Conservatives never liked him but progressives did not take long to join them. 

"But he bought a pipeline" progressives cried. 

He also brought in the CERB and other supports for citizens during Covid. If anybody besides Mr. Trudeau would have been PM they would have followed the old government playbook of shoveling 10s of billions of dollars at big business to encourage them not to lay people off. Of course, those same businesses would have given big dividends to their shareholders and bonuses to the company senior management and then they would have laid off 10s of thousands of workers. The reason why Canada came out of the pandemic so well, economically, is because the progressive government of Justin Trudeau put people over corporations.

"He broke his promise on electoral reform" progressives lamented. He also brought in national childcare, national dental care and other programs that directly assist Canadians in raising their children and taking care of themselves.

His reward in 2019 and 2021 was for progressive voters to desert the Liberals for the NDP in large enough numbers to deny them a majority government. And in 2024, if you believe the polls, it looked like enough would abandon him to allow the Conservatives to form a majority government. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

It is ironic, after the Liberals got rid of their progressive leader and elected a more traditional, centrist leader, progressives deserted the NDP and the Greens in droves for the Liberals. You guys were one election too late and now you have to live with the consequences.

Progressives had it great with Justin Trudeau. He brought in so many of the policies and programs that progressives had been calling for since Brian Mulroney began dismantling PET's progressive programs. There was no one else besides Justin Trudeau who would have done so. None of those who were pegged as his likely successor, before Mark Carney came on the scene, were as progressive as he was. So his replacement was always going to go back to the right.

That did not seem to matter to many progressive because he was not the perfect progressive. He pursued just too many policies and programs that they did not like so many decided he had to go.

Now, after contributing to forcing him out, they complain about the new government not being progressive enough. *Slowly butts head against a wall*.

Too freaking bad! The Conservatives can be forgiven for not liking Justin Trudeau and his government. It was a matter of profound ideological differences for them. For progressives they were just too stupid and short sighted to realize how good they had it and that is on you if you were one of them. I have no sympathy for you.