Iran launched an attack against Israel last night. I guess it was intended to be totes devastational. Something like three hundred drones and missile flew toward a country roughly the size of New Jersey. It all sounds incredibly fearsome except for one small fact: Almost nothing of note happened:
The strikes caused only minor damage to one Israeli military base, and most of the airborne threats were intercepted, Israeli military officials said. The United States said it had helped to shoot dozens of drones and missiles.
But the large-scale attack, aimed at targets inside Israel and the territory it controls, opened a volatile new chapter in the long-running shadow war between Iran and Israel.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement broadcast on state television that it had launched “dozens of drones and missiles” toward Israel from Iran “in reaction to the Zionist regime’s crimes.” It later said on social media that it had hit military targets in Israel, warned the United States against getting involved, and threatened more strikes if Iran or its interests were hit.
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Here’s what we know:
A total of 12 people were brought in to the Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel overnight, according to a hospital spokeswoman, Inbar Gutter.
One of the areas targeted was the Golan Heights, a strategic area bordering Syria that Israel annexed nearly 60 years ago. Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran, said it had fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli barracks there. But it was not immediately clear if that bombardment was part of the wider Iranian attack.
In the hours after the attacks, as Iranians gathered in Tehran to celebrate them, more air-raid sirens sounded across vast swaths of southern Israel, the West Bank and Golan Heights. The Israeli government also sent out warnings about possible missiles arriving in the Negev Desert, where there are several military bases. And the airspaces of Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon were closed.
President Biden cut short a weekend at his vacation home in Delaware to huddle with his national security team. He also spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting at 4 p.m. on Sunday to discuss Iran’s attacks on Israel, the council’s president said. Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, had requested the meeting.
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That’s what you’ve got, Iran. This is the mighty Islamic Republic that’s supposed to have us all wetting our beds? The best you could do was a little structural damage and twelve casualties? With this you’re going to bring the Great Satan (yes, that’s us the US) down? Guy, you couldn’t overwhelm the missile defenses of a country the size of our fifth largest state.
This is why Iran fights proxy wars. The Iranian military is a joke. We could invade their country and bring the Ayatollah’s head back on a platter in a month and they don’t have the strength to shut down an Israeli airbase.
Let me say this much though, and I am a supporter of Israel, both having some Jewish ancestry and also being an Evangelical Christian. It seems a bit hypocritical to me for Israel to complain to the UN about Iran’s attack against them.
Let’s face it. The Israeli military hasn’t exactly been quiescent lately. And while every bit of that action, while not popular in many quarters, has been necessary, it hasn’t been pretty. I guess it had to happen for diplomatic reasons, but I did kind of choke on it.
I’m not sure what comes next. I haven’t heard anything from Israel that would lead me to believe that they plan on striking Iran directly again. I haven’t heard them say they won’t either. I get the desire to keep a lid on the current conflict, but direct action between Iran and Israel might be the only way to put a lid on this thing long term.
Proxy wars suck. They accomplish nothing. If this were a repeat of the Cold War there might be a point in keeping things they way they are. The Soviet Union, after all, was too poor to keep up with US spending long term. When their leftist economic system failed, the whole country collapse but I don’t see that happening here.
Israel has a well built economy. Their GDP is continuously growing. They’ve established economic ties with enough of their neighbors to be able to continue to grow it in the future. The only threat to their existence seems to be Iran and its proxies. In short, Israel doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Iran, for its part, has an oil based economy with sixty-nine percent of their export revenue coming from “mineral fuels.” Their economy won’t collapse unless the left gets its dream of a petroleum-free world economy and I don’t see that happening either. There appears to be no threat to Iran’s existence as their only real enemies are Israel and the US. Both would prefer for Iran to leave them alone. And let’s face, Iran has an old civilization. These are the descendants of the ancient Persians. They’re not going to just go away. They have a justifiable pride in their colonialist past.
In short, neither side is going to just fade away into the dustbin of history. When two powers (and Iran and Israel are both regional powers) butt up against each other conflict is the most common result. England/France, France/Germany, Japan/Korea, and Japan/China are all conflicts that have been fought and re-fought throughout history. At the end of the day the only thing that seems to stop the fighting is either a decisive victory or an alliance between the warring parties. The Allies threw Germany out of France and Japan out of both Korea and China in World War II. England and France are now allies.
The thing is that there is almost zero chance for Iran, a Muslim theocracy that thinks Muslims have the right to Jerusalem based on twisting the language of the Camp David Accords, to work with Israel. Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital. She won’t be returning Jerusalem to Muslims. The Al-Aqsa Mosque (Islam’s third holiest) and the Dome of the Rock (where Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to heaven) are both located in Jerusalem. Given the fact that both are located on Temple Mount, the site of both ancient Jewish temples doesn’t make things any easier on the Israeli side. The site has religious significance for them too.
Of course, I have my own agenda here. I won’t go into all the details, but as a Christian I believe that it is necessary for Israel to rebuild its gates and the Temple itself to usher in the return of Christ. That’s not going to happen if Muslims take it back.
(That’s how you reveal your bias folks. Libs take note.)
The only solution to the problem, and I know it will be painful for all involved, seems to be to have this out. It’s going to mean piles of casualties like the current conflict can’t come close to. The amount of money it will cost is going to be staggering. But here’s the thing: I respect human life.
The sooner this is settled, the less people who are going to die long term. It’s going to be painful for those are killed and wounded. It’s going to be painful for those who lose their loved ones and who have their lives upended by the damage the war causes. That’s not going to change as long as it goes on though. Prolonging the conflict will eventually kill more than stopping it now saves. It may be time to bite the bullet.
Of course, that’s assuming that it doesn’t lead to mass death in nuclear fireballs because that does change the equation. Iran is a proxy for China and Russia just like Hezbollah and Hamas are proxies for Iran. I wouldn’t call Israel a proxy of the US, but we certainly support it. I’ve mentioned this on this Stack before, but if we’re not ready to fight Iran then we need to pull out entirely and leave Israel on its own. And we’ve got President Bubble Brains in charge. God help us.
I haven't heard anything from the Pro-Palestine Democratic "nut-cases" but I've wondered how they stand on this little fight.