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.