Tag: Middle East

Douhet Wept

There’s an amount of discussion of the potential ramifications for the Middle East of the Yemeni missile that was used to strike the Gezer power plant from 1,265 miles away.

The Israeli air defense failed to intercept the Yemeni missile primarily because it is capable of changing its course suddenly – Israeli Channel 12. The US Navy failed to intercept the missile in the Red Sea as well. Great possibility that this was hypersonic.

Yemen confirmed that they used a hypersonic ballistic missile in the attack on Tel Aviv Yemeni Armed Forces says it hit an Israeli military target in Yaffa (Tel Aviv) with a new hypersonic ballistic missile that traveled 2,040 kilometers. This is the first time that an Iranian-made hypersonic missile has been used in an attack on Israel.

No doubt this has some ominous implications for the prospective Israel-Iran war. But of far more concern to Americans should be the fact that the military force that just drove the US Navy from the Red Sea has just demonstrated the capacity to hit a target from long range. Which means that both Iran and Yemen, to say nothing of China and Russia, almost certainly possess the ability to sink the US Navy’s carriers at will from longer range than the carriers’ own air assets can reach.

We are rapidly entering the post-airpower age, which has considerable implications for the applicability of seapower. A considerable amount of strategic rethinking is now in order.

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Israel Invades the West Bank

Apparently the Gazacaust wasn’t enough, so the IDF has entered the West Bank in force now.

Having failed to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, Israel on August 28 began a war on the West Bank, dubbed ‘Operation Summer Camps’.

This Israeli assault on West Bank areas is the largest since 2002, with thousands of Israeli soldiers, supported by helicopters and drones, invading northern West Bank cities, particularly targeting the refugee camps of Jenin, Tubas, and Tulkarem.

I don’t know how much longer the US media is going to be able to pretend this isn’t a long-planned ethnic cleansing. I suppose the Israeli government figures they’ve gotten as much as they can out of the “helpless victims” routine and so it’s time to switch to mask off mode.

But this primarily strikes me as an escalation meant to encourage Iranian action before the Palestinians can further attrit the IDF and its US supplier.

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A Dying Outpost

Things are not looking good for Israel, which is reaping the bitter harvest of completely ignoring the sage advice of one of its greatest sons. Though respected by militaries throughout the world, especially the U.S. Marines, the great Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has been utterly ignored by the generals of the IDF and the Likud politicians as they wage precisely the sort of Goliath vs David war that he has observed tends to enervate a military.

Meanwhile, Simplicius contrasts the difference between Russia’s war on NATO and Israel’s war on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen, and concludes that very different results are likely.

Analysis continues to be churned out heralding the end of the Israeli economy:

The economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever.

It’s difficult to guess the future without going overboard with recency bias, but as the article above states, many figures have now proclaimed that the age of Zionism itself has come to an end, and a slow outflow from Israel, a kind of anti-Aliyah, will continue to take place until Israel itself falls apart and dissolves.

I’ve professed before that I can see Israel’s end resembling that of former Rhodesia. I’ve stated before that Netanyahu and Zelensky are two birds of a feather with the same desperate goals: they need to drag the US into a wider global war to save their regimes and their country. But what they don’t know is: they are doomed whether that happens or not. That’s because the US does not have the power to win a wider war against either adversary, and both Ukraine and Israel would be doomed to their fates, with US merely sacrificing itself in the process as well.

There’s good chance that by 2050-2075 Israel goes the way of Rhodesia, or at least won’t exist in its current form.

I wouldn’t give it that long, since Israel is a Clown World outpost that cannot survive support from the USA and its European puppet states, and the USA is unlikely to survive in its current form more than another decade or so. 2033 is rapidly approaching, but the USD will likely be dethroned before that, with the inevitable debt chickens coming home to roost hard.

What the war in Ukraine has revealed is that the entire basis for the Israeli military superiority necessary for its survival in a hostile environment was built on a false foundation of quality over quantity. That concept works in the small-scale series of battles in which Israel engaged during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 through 1983, and it works in the foreign adventurism in which the US has engaged for most of its military history, but it doesn’t work in real war.

Real war is existential and attritional. Doctrine doesn’t matter, elan doesn’t matter, technological advantage doesn’t matter. Four things are relevant: industrial capacity, numbers, societal morale, and leadership. And in both the Middle East conflict and the European one, Israel and the USA are severely deficient in all four aspects.

Which is why any serious observer is bound to conclude that both conflicts – which of course are different fronts of the same war – are going to end in defeat for the Clown World side. And that is why Ukraine, Israel, and the USA should all be attempting to negotiate surrenders to their respective adversaries on the best terms they can still obtain. But who surrenders when they are constantly assuring everyone that they are winning and victory is imminent in just two more weeks?

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Technology Changes War

And when it changes, those who struggle to adapt will suffer. Col Macgregor reports that an attempt to infiltrate Yemen resulted in a complete disaster courtesy of Russian satellite technology.

Andrew Napolitano: Colonel was there recently some military activity by the Houthies which resulted in about 70 deaths of IDF and some American contractors about which you can tell us?

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Well, I can tell you only what I found through open source material. I haven’t seen anything classified but I am reliably told that roughly 70 Israeli Special Forces along with some number of Americans, the total number was 70. How many were American mercenaries that joined in this operation, I don’t know what the exact breakdown was, but it was obviously mostly Israeli. They infiltrated successfully into Yemen, but they were tracked from the moment they infiltrated by overhead satellites, presumably Russian, and the Russians provided this information to the Iranians who immediately telegraphed it to the Houthis. Whatever you say about the Houthis, they’re tough hombres on the battlefield. They set up an ambush and they killed all of them, and there is footage of the dead. I haven’t had a chance to examine it carefully, clearly most of it’s Israeli, but there are some indisputably some American mercenaries, there may be some Brits mixed into it who are also employees of the same contract firm now. This is something very important for everybody listening to understand: persistent surveillance today changes everything in warfare. It not only enables precision strike on a scale that has never been the case in the past, it makes it impossible for forces to infiltrate into regions without being discovered.

We can’t know yet if this report is true or not. But there are four reasons it is credible:

  1. Yemen successfully denied the Red Sea to the US Navy earlier this year.
  2. The US Navy wants to put its four aircraft carriers in the Middle East in position to support Israeli efforts in the region, but is endangered by Yemeni land-to-sea strike abilities.
  3. Taking out the coastal missile batteries using air strikes has failed.
  4. An infantry infiltration was the only remaining option for eliminating Yemeni land-to-sea capabilities.

So, the fact that the IDF and some US special forces are reported to have attempted the obvious solution to the problem makes sense. However, I fail to see how this puts Israel on the ropes in any way; the denial of the Red Sea was already an accomplished fact and despite decades of claims to the contrary, Iran is observably not in any particular hurry to start a full-scale war with Israel.

Speaking of technology and war, I highly recommend Martin van Creveld’s work on the matter. It’s an excellent and informative book.

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Iran Has Allies Too

“We will always stand by Iran and will resolutely respond to any threat to our ally Iran…We warn the mercenaries of global imperialism, namely Israel, not to make mistakes”.
– Kim Jong Un, North Korea

One of the strangest things about WWIII to date is the apparent inability of Clown World to grasp that it cannot simply segregate its wars. And the fact that it tries to warn Russia’s allies not to help Russia, and Iran’s allies not to help Iran, even as its slave-states help Ukraine, is even stranger.

What is the threat? Are they going to sanction North Korea, which doesn’t trade with Clown World anyhow? The Clown Worlders just don’t seem to realize that Russia called their bluff and now the whole world knows that their economic power is a mirage.

China is now just openly mocking the UK by offering to send troops to maintain the peace there. The world is changing fast, but not all of the players seem to be aware of that.

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More Rumors of War

The neocons are hoping that after more than 20 years of agitating for it, they’re finally going to get the war between Iran and the USA they’ve been seeking. This appears to be the culmination of Michael Ledeen’s “Faster, Please”. But be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

The US and Israel are continuing preparations for a major attack by Iran in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, Axios reported on Saturday, citing sources. The assault is anticipated to begin on Monday.

According to two unnamed US officials, Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of US Central Command, has arrived in the region for a preplanned visit that is likely to focus on efforts to mobilize the same broad international and regional coalition that defended Israel from a previous major Iranian attack in April.

Tensions in the Middle East have reached the boiling point in recent days, after Iran accused Israel of killing Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a bombing in Tehran. While Israel has neither confirmed nor denied orchestrating the hit, it did admit to eliminating Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukr in Beirut, who it said was responsible for an attack on a soccer field in the Golan Heights that killed 12 minors.

With the Iran promising to retaliate, the Israeli military has been put on high alert, and the US – its main ally – has increased its presence in the region.

Axios sources suggested that Iran’s attack will follow the same playbook as in April, when Tehran launched a retaliatory strike on Israel in response to what it claimed was West Jerusalem’s bombing of its consulate in Syria. That assault involved hundreds of drones and missiles, but Israeli officials insisted the damage was minimal.

At the same time, officials told the outlet that the upcoming strike could be more massive and involve Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, adding that they do not know whether Iran and Hezbollah will conduct coordinated or separate strikes. They also said they believe Tehran and Hezbollah are now finalizing their plans, which must be approved at the highest political level.

The neocons wanted a war with Russia in Ukraine too, and while it has produced the expected quantities of dead Slavs, the results haven’t otherwise gone the way the Clown Worlders were anticipating. Given that Russia is now openly supporting Iran, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if things take an unexpected turn.

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Neocons are Back

And they’re rolling the dice. Now that the neocon faction that controls Harris has succeeded in pushing aside the Six Bidens and gaining control of the US military, it appears that the second front of WWIII is about to kick off in earnest. Michael Hudson comments on what looks like joint US-Israeli preparations for war with Hezbollah and Iran:

You say Israel, but it’s actually Israel in the United States. And all this has happened right after Netanyahu came to Congress and met in Washington with the Democratic Party leaders and then with Trump. So I think it’s really the policy of the neocons. They’ve worked hand in hand. And I’ve known these people for over 50 years…

So I think that the neocons in Washington believe that war is going to be inevitable. America is fighting for control of the Near East because the Near East controls the oil. And American foreign policy has been based on control of food supplies from American farms and control of the oil trade, because if you can control the oil trade, you can turn off people’s electricity, their heating, and their power. And power use for workers is the root of productivity.

And the way that the military thinks—and again, I’ve worked with them for years—is the timing, that, are we in a better position now than we will be next year or not. And I think the American military realizes that Russia and China and the other Eurasian countries are getting together. The American ability to fight militarily is going down. And to the military, that means if we don’t have war now and wait till next year in the future, we’ll be less and less and less able to win.

Well, the reality is they’re going to lose wherever they go, unless there’s atomic war and the chessboard is thrown over. And I think their feeling is the Americans are doing everything they can, from Ukraine to Israel to Iran, to try to stir up a retaliation so that they can then say, ah, we’re under attack, we’re purely defending ourselves, and once you tell your population and your voters this is a war for defense, as the Nazis know, you can always get a—as Goebbels said, you can always get a population on your side if you say it’s for defense.

So I’m very worried that the neocons are going to say there will never be a better or at least a less worse time to go to war in the Near East than right now. That seems to be what is leading the trigger, and even the military has said every way that they’ve gamed out the military sequence there, America loses. They’re not going to lose as bad now as they will in the future. And this is very dangerous, given the whole mindset that they have, and the mindset that they have to control the Near East, or else the rest of the world will not be neoliberalized.

That’s been my assumption as well. Next year is not going to be any easier. Five years from now is not going to be any easier. Time is on the side of the sovereign nations, so Clown World has to act now if it is going to act at all. I was hoping that Trump would come in to preside over a soft collapse, but that option appears to have pretty much disappeared with the assassination and the JD Vance selection.

It will be interesting to see how Russia and China react to this. Very interesting indeed. Because if the US military is sufficiently committed on this front, it won’t have much ability to interfere in Europe or in Asia.

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Green Flag Confirmed

Netanyahu and the Israeli government knew all about the planned Hamas attacks, but permitted them to take place without warning the Israeli public or permitting the IDF to stop them:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned in mid-September that Hamas was planning to invade the country and capture more than 200 hostages, Israel’s Kan broadcaster reported on Monday.

Three weeks before Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7, the IDF’s intelligence directorate compiled a report stating that the Palestinian militants were training for a large-scale invasion of the Jewish state, Kan has claimed, citing anonymous security sources. The document allegedly warned that dozens of Hamas commandos would take part in the raid, which would be aimed at bringing between 200 and 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Several thousand Hamas fighters carried out the actual October 7 assault, killing around 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages back to Gaza.

According to Kan’s sources, Hamas members had been spotted practicing attacks on mock IDF outposts, rehearsing how to capture military and civilian hostages, and training how to handle the captives once they were detained in Gaza. The document reportedly made its way to senior officials in the IDF’s Gaza Division, but was “completely ignored,” Kan stated.

Kan is not the first source to claim that Israel was forewarned about the October 7 attack. Within days of the assault, Egyptian intelligence officials said that they had repeatedly warned the Israeli government that Hamas was planning “something big” in the days leading up to October 7, but that these warnings were ignored in West Jerusalem.

As to why Netanyahu allowed the attacks to take place, we can only speculate. But Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that the Hamas attacks were permitted in order to give the Israeli government an excuse to whip up support for ethnically cleansing Gaza of the resident Palestinians.

Which raises some fascinating historical questions. After all, if the Israeli government was willing to sacrifice thousands of lives in exchange for Gaza, how many lives were the Zionists of the 1930s and 1940s willing to sacrifice in order to be granted a claim to Palestine?

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The War in the North

Despite having failed to finish off Hamas, Israel is seriously contemplating launching a war with Hezbollah, which Simplicius expects will have serious ramifications for Ukraine:

A biblical red glow torments the skies of northern Israel, which now burns with a Zionist’s zeal for Palestinian land, after a series of Hezbollah strikes. The gods of war are smiling favorably on the coming summer, as flashpoints all across the globe heat up. And the mother of all of them threatens to engulf the region in even more flame with the announcement that Israel could launch the long-awaited war against Hezbollah by mid-June, with rumor claiming the Knesset may vote to take action as early as tonight.

This happens to convolve with a host of other ponderous developments, which include Russia’s slow buildup for a large-scale escalation in the north. If Israel truly kicks off another massive war to its own north, it could be the final nail in Ukraine’s coffin.

Recall that in a short 4 months, we will have reached the 1 year anniversary of Israel’s invasion of Gaza and its meandering war against Hamas. If in almost a full year of fighting, Israel can make no real headway against the comparatively tiny Hamas, how long would it take for them to tame Hezbollah in what can only be expected to be a far more ‘high intensity’ conflict?

You can be sure that every available Western munition—particularly of the artillery variety—will be routed to Israel and Ukraine will be historically screwed at the key moment of Russia’s largest scale maneuvers. It would be the ultimate irony should Ukraine fall as consequence of Israel’s actions—but alas, Zelensky and Netanyahu appear locked into parallel fates: both require the continuation of war to survive their political crises.

And the big question remains: when will China – or in its delusions of military supremacy, the USA – elect to open the Asian front.

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European States Recognize Palestine

What’s considerably more significant is the fact that the Chinese and Russians are publicly hailing the three recognitions of the sovereign Palestinian state:

In a historic move expected to quell the flames of war in the Middle East, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced the recognition of a Palestinian state on Wednesday. The move is hailed by Chinese experts as representing an overdue correction of “a previously skewed balance,” while bringing the Palestinian question, which had intentionally been obscured before, back to the center stage.

Experts believe the decision may trigger a global wave of recognition for the state of Palestine, not only in support of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people but it will also exert significant international pressure on Israel’s aggressive practices.

However, they noted that there is still a long way to go for the actual establishment of a Palestinian state, and the root of the problem preventing the realization of the two-State solution lies in the bias and indulgence of the US.

None of this is actually about the lands historically taken by force from the Palestinians, of course, anymore than the war in Ukraine is about who rules over Kiev. But it’s another front in the global war between Clown World and the sovereign nations.

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