Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Middle East Page 1 of 16

And Iran Retaliates For the Embassy Attack

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On April 13, 2024

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It’s on!

Looks like Iran wasn’t a paper tiger wimp who wouldn’t strike back.

Waves of drones right now, as I understand it the idea is to degrade air defenses, then send in the missiles. Some suggestions this will go on for at least three days.

American naval and air assets are helping Israel defend. I wonder if Iran will hit American bases too? Or, perhaps, tell its allies in Iraqi militias to do so, and stop playing around with small drone attacks: really hit them.

To my mind this attack is 100% justified. Embassy immunity is no joke, and Iran really had no choice but to strike, or nowhere would be safe.

Hezbollah is also hitting Northern Israel hard with missile attacks.

There’s some chance of this escalating into a large regional war if Israel counter-strikes, then Iran counter-counter-strikes and so on. Israel wants to draw the US in.

Remember, though, that war games tend to show the US losing a war with Iran. And if it goes that far, they WILL lose their bases in Iraq and the Persian Gulf WILL be shut down. Wouldn’t be surprised if they lose an aircraft carrier if they get stupid and try for too close support, as far as that goes.

Stay tuned. Slight chance this will turn into WWIII–remember, Russia is a close ally of Iran, and China has good ties as well. If Iran starts losing, they will help, especially Russia, who remembers that Iran was one of the only countries to step up and help them in a big way against Ukraine. At the very least, if Israel uses nukes on Iran, Russia is likely to respond, only possibly held back by the presence of Palestinians.

Interesting times to live in!

Update: And Iran apparently also seized a ship near the Straight of Hormuz. A warning that they can, indeed, play Yemen and shut down even more maritime traffic.

Update 2: Israeli air base Nevatem being hit:

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Israel’s Gunning To Lose US Support

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On April 6, 2024

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When you lose Nancy Pelosi:

Israel went too far. Dems love celebrities and the NGO workers they killed were essentially Democratic party affiliated.

Then there was the attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. A blatant violating of centuries old immunity of embassies. This is so bad that…

Through a series of messages exchanged via third parties, the United States and Iran have come to an understanding. Iran assured the Americans it will not target U.S. facilities, and in turn the U.S. says it will not get involved if Iran retaliates against Israel. Israel carried out the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, without consulting the United States.

We’ll see if the walk gets walked, but this looks bad for Israel. To be fair, Israel once sunk a US warship and got away with it, so I suppose they can be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing the US won’t swallow, but they appear to have misacalculated.

As for Iran, the news is that they will retaliate, and that they will do it directly, not thru proxies. Israelis are paralzyed with fear: GPS has been jammed for days, and store shelves are bare as Israelis stock up.

This is a bad situation. If Iran hits too hard, Israel will hit Iran. If they do that, Iran will retaliate again.

Can you say “escalation spiral?”

And if war breaks out, well Hezbollah and Syria will likely join in. Once that happens, no matter how pissed the US is at Israel, well, they may feel they must intervene. Why? Well…

Nuff said.

Let’s hope this isn’t the start of WWIII, because China and Russia are not likely to let Iran be taken out by the US, and if Iran starts winning conventionally against Israel (and if the US doesn’t intervene, that’s where my money is), well the Israelis have always claimed to be trigger happy with their nukes.

All because some Zionists wanted to steal land and have now decided to commit a genocide.

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Iran’s Likely Response To The Attack On Their Embassy

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On April 3, 2024

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So, in violation of red letter international law and norms, the Israelis bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus. This is a literal causus belli as a consulate is the land of the nation occupying it.

What will the consequences be?

Well, the best take I’ve seen is this, from Elijah J. Manjier (part behind a subscriber wall):

the 2020 assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani was a pivotal moment, marking a significant escalation in the conflict. Before his death, Yemen’s arsenal was relatively limited, lacking medium and long-range surface-to-surface precision missiles, advanced drone technology, accurate hypersonic missiles and long-range capabilities. However, under the leadership of Major General Ismail Qaani, Soleimani’s successor, the Al-Maqtumah axis has acquired a wide range of advanced long-range missile systems in significant quantities. These improvements have significantly enhanced Ansar Allah’s military capabilities in Yemen and imposed new limits on the freedom of action of the US and British navies, as well as Israel, within the constraints set by Hezbollah – a key player in initiating the conflict in support of Gaza.

The targeted assassination of Hezbollah Shura member Iranian Major General Abu Mahdi Zahedi raises questions about his replacement and the possible development of Hezbollah’s military capabilities under new leadership. The future of Hezbollah’s arsenal and strategic posture remains a subject of speculation, with the arrival of a new leader likely to increase the capabilities and intensity of the conflict.

In other words, give Hezbollah (and, I would suggest, Iraqi militias) more advanced weapons and let them use them. Syrian/Iraqi militias firing on Israeli bound ships would expand the Israeli blockade significantly, wouldn’t it?

The point, of course, is that assassinating Soleimani led directly to the current humiliation of the US by Yemen, and the blockade against Israeli ships in the Red seas.

Poking the lion, just like poking the bear, has consequences.

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No Mass Rapes By Hamas On October 7th/Open Thread

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On March 2, 2024

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In fact, no evidence of even a single rape.

I noted, repeatedly, that I doubted these rape claims and was correct, as usual.

Now if you believed them you need to think very carefully about why. Every war always includes reports of fake atrocities and this is especially true at the start of the war, in order to gin up support. My “favorite” is that when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we were told that Iraqi soldiers were bayoneting babies in incubators.

Never happened.

Note that the primary purveyor of the mass rape claims was the New York Times, who also were the primary purveyors of fake nuclear weapon scares in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

The New York times is Hasbara from the top, intensely dedicated to Israel and the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide. I cannot recall any war it didn’t support. It also has a record of intensely political editorial decisions: for example in the 2004 election it decided not to publish revelations of mass spying on American citizens, against the law, because it would effect the election (hurt Bush, help the Democratic candidate.)

If you believe the New York Times without running what they claim thru a common sense filter (do they have reason to lie about this or to twist it?) you’re a fool. This applies to the media in general.

The fact is that whatever you think of Hamas, they were first elected because they had a reputation for incorruptability, as opposed to the PLO, which had becoming a sewer of corruption as well as servants of the Israeli state. They have no record of using rape as a weapon, none, and no reason to mass rape. We even had eye-witness reports from Israelis that they had treated women well, from October 7th and 8th.

There was a possibility that a few rapes had occurred, but even that turns out to not be true.

If you fell for it originally, you should have become suspicious quickly, because there was so little evidence. Haaretz noted that they couldn’t find any hospital admittances, there was no flood of claims (which there would have been) and so on. There was virtually no evidence to back up a very few claims from extremely biased sources.

If you trust the media, you are a fool. That’s understandable. You were brought up to think that authority figures were trustworthy (even though they’re the ones who do almost all the harm in the world). But at some point you have to grow up and notice that the much of the media is your enemy, just like most corporations, rich people and governments. They want your support, they want to take as much from you as they can, and they want to use you for their purposes and most of them don’t care how much you are hurt as a result.

Don’t be a fool.

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The Rate Of Child-Deaths In Gaza Are About To Soar

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On February 21, 2024

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From the start of the conflict I have been most concerned, not with the bombing, as bad as it is (6x as much as the US dropped on Iraq during the last war in postage-stamp sized open-air prison) but by the cut-off of food and water. Israeli protesters have been blocking much of what little humanitarian aid is sent, the main aid agency has been defunded by the largest donor countries, most Gazans are starving and most of what little water they have is dirty.

UNICEF now reports, and these numbers are from January and thus almost a month out of date (meaning the current situation is wrose), that:

The report finds at least 90 per cent of children under 5 are affected by one or more infectious disease. Seventy per cent had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, a 23-fold increase compared with the 2022 baseline.

We don’t tend to take diarrhoea seriously, because we have medicine and enough water and we aren’t malnourished and underweight to start with, but historically diarrhoea is a mass killer. Without hospital care (and there is almost none left in Gaza), water or medicine, Gazans, and especially children, are going to start dropping like flies.

I am also seeing that due to malnutrition new mothers can’t breast feed, and there isn’t much if any formula meaning death of newborn babies will be astronomical.

Moving on to the military situation: the Israeli military remains unable to destroy Hamas, but destroying Hamas has never been the goal: the goal is ethnic cleansing.

Egypt is building camps in the desert near Gaza. Egypt has, in the past, refused to allow ethnic cleansing into their country, on the grounds it would be destabilizing and they can’t afford it (and a pretense of caring about ethnic cleansing, which is true of the population but not the ruling caste), however it appears a deal between Israel, the US and Egypt may have been cut.

If this is so, Israel will win the war unless Hezbollah and Syria attack before the ethnic cleansing. Remember, the real Israeli  goal is, and always has been, to get rid of the original occupants of Palestine by any means possible. Once the Gazans are pushed out, the Palestinians in the West Bank, who don’t even have a Hamas, will be dealt with: indeed settler, police and military violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and seizure and bulldozing of homes is way up.

There are multiple players here, but unless the war expands or I’m wrong about Egypt, which I could be, I don’t see how this doesn’t end in an Israeli “victory”.

They learned well what the Nazis taught.

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The US & Nine Other Nations Now Helping Israel Starve Gazans

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On January 29, 2024

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So, right after the ICJ enjoined Israel to stop genociding Palestinians, ten nations decided to suspend payments to UNRWA, the agency which feeds Palestinians in Gaza. The excuse is that Israel has accused eight of the 15,000 employees of being complicit in the October 7th attacks.

Yeah.

The only way to win the war is to starve Gazans out, because the Israeli military is too incompetent to win. The countries are major donors and are sufficient to cause real harm to the program:

The countries who have cut funding are: America, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Italy, Australia, Finland and Japan.

The leaders of all these countries are guilty of aiding and abetting a deliberate famine meant to cause a genocide, and all should be tried for crimes against humanity and hung from the neck till dead

The total funding involved is about 700 million dollars out of a 1.1 billion dollar budget. That’s peanuts, and other countries could easily step in and fund UNWRA. We’ll see if any of those who are wringing their hands about genocide do so.

Politically it’s a very cheap way for countries to make big points, but, of course only a few countries in the world who have actually been willing to do anything real: Yemen, South Africa being most prominent.

“Never Again”, it turns out, means, “how can we help commit genocide?”

(Oh, and all those years I was saying the EU was evil? I was right.)

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Will Israel Invade Lebanon? Will They Win If They Do?

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On January 27, 2024

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Hezbollah’s Flag

Lots of reports coming out that an attack is imminent.

Israel is caught in a bind. The constant attacks on settlements and military targets in the north of Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced settlers to leave. There’s are at least a quarter million internal Israeli refugees, and they can’t return until Hezbollah stops firing. The ongoing war, the problems with trade, the refugees and so on are causing massive budget and economic problems.

Hezbollah won’t stop firing until Israel leaves Gaza, stops bombing it and stops the blockade.

Israel, or rather Netanyahu, needs a win in Gaza or his political career is over.

Hamas won’t give up the hostages until there is a permanent peace and all Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza, but the Israeli project is to occupy at least part of Gaza permanently.

The only way Israel can end the Hezbollah strikes is thus to, in effect, lose the war with Hamas. Such a loss isn’t just the end of Netanyahu’s career, it’s a massive strike to Israel’s legitimacy, and to the myth that Israel is powerful.

And it’s the end of the settler project in the North, since any new settlers (or old ones) will know that they’re there at the sufferance of Hezbollah, which wants them gone and will eventually try and force the issue. Settlers will leave and stop coming if the IDF can’t protect them, and protecting them means having deterrence over Hezbollah

So Israel needs to force Hezbollah to stop attacking without meeting Hezbollah’s demands. They need to prove they can still force Hezbollah to what they want. The threat of force isn’t working any more, so like a bully whose victim won’t give them what they want, they now have to go all in.

Problem is Israel can’t even win against Hamas, who are far weaker than Hezbollah. Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles, many of which can reach Tel Aviv. Israel won’t be able to defeat Hezbollah and they won’t be able to stop the missiles, so to “win” they’ll have to devastate Lebanon’s civilians: mass destruction, like in Gaza.

Problem is, again, that Hezbollah is a LOT stronger than Hamas and has enough missiles with enough range to launch absolutely massive attacks against Tel Aviv. They can take out Israel’s power, their water: everything. Anything that Israel does to Lebanon with air power, Hezbollah can do in return. And Israeli civilian morale is likely to be a lot weaker than Lebanese civilian morale.

Worse, though I don’t believe the Israelis understand this, if they lose the war on the ground, Hezbollah’s strong enough to advance into Israel and take and hold ground.

Israel’s in a bind, and unless they’re a lot stronger than I think they are (they aren’t) or Hezbollah’s a lot weaker, or the US mobilizes for war against Hezbollah, they’re marching into a war they can’t win; a war which will destroy their internal legitimacy by proving the IDF can’t protect civilians and can’t win wars, and which will badly damage and possibly even destroy the settler project and thus the “River to the Sea” for Israel.

Could happen to a country who deserves it, but only with a lot of looking.

The price of expelling Israel from Palestine will be huge, but Israel is on that road.

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The ICJ Ruling On Israeli Genocide In Gaza

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On January 26, 2024

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So, the ICJ has ruled:

THE COURT ,
Indicates the following provisional measures:
(1) By fifteen votes to two,
The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:

– 25 –
(a) killing members of the group;
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part; and
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

The state of Israel shall ensure WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT that its MILITARY does NOT commit any acts described in point 1.

The court will rule on whether or not a genocide is occurring in a month, at which point a lot more Palestinians will be dead, including from the Israeli engineered famine.

When Russia invaded the Ukraine, the ICJ ordered Russia out one month after the original invasion.

Of course, Russia ignored the ruling, just as Israel will—the genocide will continue, evidence will be destroyed and humanitarian assistance will not be provided.

The ICJ ruling matters because Israel survives due to support from the US and Europe. When that support goes away, so will Israel. Their crimes are not possible without the US shipping them arms 24/7, and their economy needs assistance from the West.

Anything that chips away at the support of various internal political groups in Western countries for the Israeli project thus matters because Israel support is a domestic issue.

Although people don’t like to come out and say it, there are a lot of rich Jews (no, don’t, this is backed up by the statistics) and a lot of them are Zionists, and money is political power. In the US evangelical Christians also support Israel. There is a lot of money and a lot of votes for politicians in letting Israel ethnic cleanse and genocide Palestinians.

(This does not, obviously, mean Jews are bad, or even Evangelical Christians. It means Zionists are bad, and there tend to be more Zionists in those two groups.)

Domestic political support in places like the US, Germany and France for Zionism is what matters. Anything that cuts away at the legitimacy of Zionism is thus dangerous to the ethnic cleansing and genocide program. Europeans, in particular, like to think they support international law and even the US drones on about the “rules based order” constantly.

Elites, at first, were unified in support of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The reason is simple: it’s seen as career and political suicide to oppose Zionism, and this perception is largely correct. Over time, however, Israel’s actions became so grossly disproportionate and their targeting of civilians, schools, hospitals and even children and babies, that more and more members of the elite felt they couldn’t support Israel.

But that doesn’t mean they’ll speak out against genocide, it means, in practice, that they are mostly silent: caught between the fact that opposing Israel is career suicide and that supporting an obvious genocide may also come back to haunt them.

Still, if they have cover, many of them would like to just abandon Israel. They don’t like being put in this position, and Israel has been particularly naked about its crimes: screaming them to heavens for all to see and making plausible deniability all but impossible.

So, the ICJ ruling is still a good thing, not because it can or will be enforced, but because it makes the cost of supporting Israel just a little higher.

And the day the West won’t or can’t support Israel, is the day their little apartheid state is done.

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