Ian Welsh

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

Tag: Lebanon

Vance Is Trying To Thread That Vice Presidential Needle

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On June 19, 2026

13 Comments

J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice-president has often said that his job is to support the president.

He’s also made sure that people know he was against the Iran war, the 12 day war, and so on, with careful leaks. Publicly he’s all pro-whatever Trump says or does, but he’s trying to have it both ways.

The MOU gave him a present, he was able to say that Israel are ungrateful turds who shouldn’t be so violent: nine million people can’t kill their way out of all of their foreign relations troubles, and that Trump is the only major world leader who has supported them (essentially true. In this calculus only Russia, China, Turkey and the US matter.) Israelis turning on Trump are ungrateful. (Well yes, but you didn’t expect people whose idea of making war is to kill children en-masse to have a fine moral sense.)

Anyway, here he is:

Vance has always had a very narrow road to follow. He wants to be President. He can’t directly oppose Trump on anything publicly because even if Trump is driven from office in disgrace, there’s a hard core of primary voters who will never give him up. On the other hand Trump’s becoming increasingly toxic and it’s pretty clear that he’s going to leave office very unpopular.

This issue killed Kamala. She was ahead and doing well. I still remember when she was asked on TV if there was anything she’d have done different than Biden. She said no. And it was at that moment I knew that Trump was going to win: she needed to say something, even something a bit weak “well, I admire what the President has done, but I’d like to have done even more to bring down grocery prices and to end the Gaza war” say.

Vance is attempting to get around this with his loyalty pledge: you support the President even if you disagree, but you can disagree and advise him so be hind the scenes.

He’s hoping that two-step, “I was loyal to Trump, but I would have done some things differently” will keep him electable.

We’ll see. A lot will depend on who Democrats nominate. Democrats rarely select their most popular candidate, they prefer party loyalists who can be expected to keep the corporate pork rolling and not upset important funders like the Israeli lobby.

If Democrats serve up a lukewarm candidate and if Vance makes his turn correctly, he could squeak in as the next President.

Iran MOU update: As predicted the Israelis kept attacking in Lebanon, the Iranians said they wouldn’t go to the signing in Geneva on Friday till the fighting stops, and negotiations won’t start till they do. Israel appears to be attempting to take an important strategic point Ali al-Taher hill. Hezbollah is going all out to stop them. We’ll see if the US is capable (politically, it can easily do so in principle) of discipling Israel. 

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Iran HIts Israel Over Lebanese Attacks

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On June 8, 2026

18 Comments

Since the ceasefire started, Iran has said that both it and any peace agreement must include Lebanon. America agreed, Israel didn’t, and the invasion of Lebanon has continued.

Yesterday Iran lost its patience and hit Israel. Israel responded. One set from each side.

For now.

But Iran has said that if Israel keeps attacking Lebanon, Iran will attack again, and much harder.

And more interestingly, Ansar Allah (the Yemeni Houthis) have closed their strait to Israeli traffic. This isn’t a full closure, but it could wind up as one.

I think it’s important to understand a bit of the psychology here: the people in charge before the war didn’t have strong emotional ties to Hezbollah. Old men. But a lot of the people now in charge do, they were personally involved in setting up Hezbollah. They trained Hezbollah. Some of them fought with Hezbollah.

There are strong self-interest reasons for Iran to want to keep Hezbollah strong, which means Israel out of Southern Lebanon. But there are also emotional ties and those matter, because Iran has to be willing to take hits to Iran if it wants to really help Hezbollah.

Of course one attack doesn’t mean much, what will matter is if Iran meant it when they said that if Israel keeps attacking Lebanon (which it will), they will attack again, and next time with much more force.

Threats that aren’t promises don’t mean much. Still, this attack has shown that Iran wasn’t just willing to walk away from Lebanon. They weren’t just spewing words when they said that any peace deal had to include both Lebanon (really, Hezbollah, since the central government is actually willing to let Israel occupy Southern Lebanon, since it’s full of Shi’a Muslims, and the government doesn’t include Muslims), and Iran.

Some people are saying that Trump needs to reign in Israel. That’s… sort of true. But I think what’s happening is simpler: Iran has recognized that America won’t rein in Israel, so Iran must establish deterrence over Israel as well as America. And that means hitting Israel.

Probably they should next send some ranging shots near Israel’s desalination plants, or their big nuclear reactor.

We’ll see how this plays out. Trump’s going to be under increasing pressure. I estimate that some shelves in America are going to be bare in about two to three months, as diesel for shipping to stores runs out in parts of the country. Prices will keep going up. Polling for the mid-terms will keep getting worse, and while Billionaires are so far using this as a profit taking opportunity, the cascade thru the supply chains is going to mean that soon things they care about are going to go up in price, or simply become unavailable: plastics, for example and chips, which require helium.

I don’t know how this will play out, because it depends on the psychology of a few key decision makers; it depends on what the hold Israel has on Trump is; it depends on if lawmakers are more scared of the Israli lobby than polls; and it depends on Iranian leadership’s pain tolerance and how much China is willing to keep supporting their economy.

That’s a lot of variables, and most of them are variable related to leadership decisions among people I don’t know very well.

People in leadership matter. When Israel jerked Kissinger’s chain in the 70s , he convinced Nixon to halt weapon shipments to Israel until they came to heel. But Israel’s lobby was weaker then and Kissinger and Nixon were both hard men: actual “alphas”. Actually dominant. Not pussies. Trump is a classic weak bully who folds under real pressure. They weren’t.

The bottom line, though, is simple. Iran beat America. Now it has to defeat Israel. If it can’t, or won’t, Southern Lebanon and Hezbollah as screwed.

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Look, Israeli Ground Forces Suck & Their Country Is Postage Stamp Sized

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On October 5, 2024

22 Comments

Any time Iran wants, they can over-saturate Israeli missile defenses, turn off the power and destroy the military bases. That was proven this week.

Israel’s ground forces are incompetent and cowardly. They had grave trouble fighting Hamas. Hezbollah whipped them back in 2006 when they dared attack on the ground. Hezbollah’s troops are seasoned war vetrans, and extremely motivated.

What Israel has is airpower, good intelligence, and the USA.

And nukes.

Airpower’s nice, but it doesn’t win wars. And if all your airbases are destroyed or under constant attack, a lot of it goes away. Neighbouring countries have said they won’t base Israeli airplanes.

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The reason that Israel spends most of its time assassinating leaders and mass-murdering civilians is that it knows it can’t actually win on the ground. It can “clear” areas of Gaza, but it can’t hold them, and Hamas has only a shadow of Hezbollah’s strength.

Without nukes, in a conventional war, Hezbollah might win against Israel: by which I mean that invade and conquer the country. It too has tons of missiles and has been holding back. If Iran went all-in, Israel’s defeat in a conventional war would be certain.

The two things stopping this from happening are America and that Israel has nukes and everyone thinks they’ll use them.

The time of elite Israeli ground forces is gone. It was gone by 1990 or so.

And military technology has changed. In the old days if you didn’t have an air force, that was it: but drones and new missile tech has changed that.

These aren’t your grandfather’s Israelis, and these aren’t  your grandfather’s Muslims.

The Future Of Hezbollah and Israel’s Conflict

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On September 28, 2024

12 Comments

Nasrallah is dead, assassinated by the Israelis. There have been significant bombings in Beiruit, and escalation between Hezbollah and Israel are clear.

First, let’s state the obvious. Israel’s intelligence has seriously comprised Hezbollah, much more than they ever did to Hamas. I suspect this is a result of not taking Hamas particularly seriously and the differing nature of Lebanon and Gaza. Gaza, by all accounts, was a fairly tight knit community, united in their opposition to Israel. Lebanon is not, it’s a sectarian state with a great deal of internal divisions.

There was a lot of anger in Iran and Hezbollah that Hamas did not forewarn them of October 7th, but it’s clear they were right not to. If they had, Israel would very likely have found out, and this is especially true if Hezbollah had been told.

As for the assassination, it’s much less important than people make out: decapitation strategies don’t significantly degrade strong ideological organizations like Hezbollah. The real question is how much knowledge Israel has of the actual military infrastructure. Nasrallah was a well loved leader, but he was a very cautious man and much less interested in fighting Israel than many make out. The new leadership, and given Israel’s success at assassination, it is almost all new, will be far more willing to fight.

Intelligence, airpower and its alliances with American and other Western nations are Israel’s strengths, and they are not small matters.

 

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That said, those who are panicking, often hysterically, are premature. Hezbollah defeated Israel militarily in 2006, and before that when it won a guerilla war against Israel’s occupation and forced them out. They are much stronger now than they were then. They have more missiles, more men, who are well seasoned fighters, and they have dug in to a far greater degree than Hamas ever could.

Israeli intelligence and the airforce are impressive, but the actual ground forces Israel have are weak: not in equipment, but in morale and competence. To accomplish Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon they will have to go in on the ground, and when they do I very much doubt their ability to win.

Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah’s supply lines cannot be cut: the posturing about Beiruit’s airport is ludicrous, the supplies come in by land and there is no possibility of interdicting most of them.

If Hezbollah does need reinforcements, they will have them, from Iraq’s militias and from Iranian “volunteers.” Manpower will not be an issue, though Hezbollah is unlikely to ask for many men at first, since they are not trained to operate in the Hezbollah manner.

Nasrallah was a cautious man, and Hezbollah has been holding back. Their missile force can output far more and better missiles than they have been using in the past, and the end of the old leadership almost certainly means the gloves will come off.

Further, Hezbollah has done great damage to Israel already. The reason Israel is turning to Lebanon is that Hezbollah has displaced hundreds of thousand of settlers, causing an internal refugee problem, and combined with Yemen’s naval blockade, has massively damaged the Israeli economy. And this is with them holding back, because they did not want a general war.

But the only way to truly defeat Israel is to defeat their military, and the best way to do that is for them to attack into Lebanon. Hezbollah, hopefully, will ramp up its attacks to force Israel to do just that, if it isn’t intending to already (which they almost certainly are), and if it is already intending to, to make it happen sooner.

The war, then, is still in its early stages. Do not fall to doom and gloom (if you support the resistance), nor optimism (if you’re pro-genocide). Wait, and see. The real battles, which will determine the outcome of the war, have not yet happened.

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