Israel confirms daily that it has extensive war plans against Iran and its allies. Recently Naftali Bennett, former prime minister of Israel, said: “Israel now has the biggest opportunity in 50 years to change the face of the Middle East. We must act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and its central energy facilities and deal a fatal blow to this terrorist regime. We have the excuse. We have the means. Now that Hezbollah and Hamas are paralyzed, Iran is vulnerable.”
Is it really so? Or are Israel and the US in trouble in the Middle East?
Israel’s war aims are well-known and far-reaching. In a recent article the Jerusalem Post describes Lebanon as part of Israel based on messianic-religious texts and therefore this country should be conquered. The Ministers of the War Council constantly refer to Greater Israel, in fact Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says shamelessly that:
“…there are no Palestinians and our struggle is for Greater Israel. Our goal is to conquer not only Lebanon, but later the entire region.”
For Israel to realize its regional ambitions, it must engage the US in a war with Iran. To achieve this goal, Israel must attack Iran with overwhelming force to provoke a violent and devastating counterattack. The USA having as a pretext (their real target is China, as we mentioned in our recent analysis titled “The High Significance of Iranian Oil on the US Geopolitical Chessboard“) that Israel is in trouble, will rush to its rescue.
It thus goes without saying that Israel must launch a challenge large enough to achieve the desired result. In short, as oxymoronic as it may seem, Israel’s real goal is to give the US the excuse to intervene, that is, to be forced to wage Israel’s war against Iran.
Iran for its part has been preparing for war with the US for over two decades and is ready to do so. With the recent acquisition of hypersonic missiles (apparently of Russian know-how), hypersonic missiles that the US Pentagon does not yet have in its arsenal, it significantly changes the balance of power. If the US attacks Iran, it risks a crushing blow that could end its dominance in the region and beyond.
The US Pentagon knows this, as do many in the intelligence community. They know that a war with Iran can have an uncertain outcome, which is why Israel has delayed retaliating against Iran for so long. Yet Israel’s leadership assumes, probably correctly since it has the support of the deep state in Washington, that the US will bail out Israel if its survival is seriously threatened by an Iranian missile attack.
But the problem for the US is that it cannot win a conventional war against Iran, and if it tries to do so, its military bases in the wider Middle East and a significant number of its soldiers will be pulverized. We remind you that the USA did not succeed in fighting for 20 years to neutralize the “barefoot” Taliban (formerly the Viet Cong) as a result of which they suffered a shameful defeat and left Afghanistan badly. Former UN weapons inspector and US Navy intelligence officer Scott Ritter explains what is likely to happen, reminding us:
“When Trump was president, the Iranians shot down a Global Hawk drone worth over $100 million, which angered Trump. And he said we should attack the anti-aircraft facilities that shot down the Global Hawk. The Pentagon told him that “if we do that, you’re going to start a cycle of escalation that will end with Iran destroying every one of our bases (in the region) and there’s nothing we can do to stop them, and it will result in closing the Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the world’s oil supply, which will lead to the collapse of the world economy. And you will order us to invade Iran. But we can’t do that now. It would take us months or years to gather the forces necessary for the action you mentioned, and even then there is no guarantee of victory. Are you sure you want to do this, Mr. President?’ Trump’s answer was negative.”
What is certain is that the US cannot defeat Iran with conventional weapons. If the US and Israel want to play the nuclear game, then Iran will reconsider its stance on nuclear weapons. Iran may not have nuclear weapons today, but it is only a matter of days before it can assemble the individual parts of such a weapon and acquire a functioning nuclear bomb, place it on a missile (of the approximately 2,000 it has) and launch it against of Israel or an American target in the region.
Conclusion: The times when the US could blackmail Iran are long gone, the US Pentagon knows the risk and therefore hesitates. But the ruling American-Israeli elite, which needs a way out of the nightmarish crisis (also due to Ukraine) in which it has fallen, does not hesitate. The same is true for Israel and this is the reality it faces.
