"Government suddenly and confusingly starts acting accordingly to what everyone's already know for a long time." This is really quite scary when you think about it. Why now all of a sudden?
Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Israel keeps actively going against US goals. The beginning of the conflict generally had both sides in general agreement. The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement, and now continues promoting conflict while the US admin is pushing hard for a peace deal is showing the cracks
> The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement
The plan was fucked from conception. Not having a strategy for safeguarding the Strait made virtually any strategy that required persisting after decapitation half baked.
The issue wasn't a lack of planning by the military it was a lack of commitment on the goals by the administration. If it was just a desert storm style campaign (hit them very hard over a month then leave without finishing off Saddam) then they should have left already when Iran offered to open the strait, and it could have been sold as a success.
If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now, which neither the president nor the public seems to have an appetite for and Iran knows that. So now it's mostly deadlocked on both the US demanding Iran lose face by giving up Uranium immediately, while Israel wants to keep up an air campaign to further neuter Irans combat capabilities to free up their own strategic goals against Hezbollah and Hamas. But neither options are properly aligned, especially with fanatics in IRGC taking over.
It's either a short air campaign or a war, but they can't seem to decide so we are left with an blockade.
When did this happen? The problem with a decapitation strike is you no longer have a single party to negotiate with.
> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now
It's genuinely unclear if America has the military power to project into Iran to the degree a ground invasion would require. (Like, short of carpet bombing the country's infrastructure and industry out of existence.)
Missiles, drones and aerial and space-based surveillance have tilted the balance in favour of defenders, at least on the ground. American firepower can constrain Iran to within its maritime borders. But even if it made sense to, it's questionable whether we can influence much within them.
Because now the manifestation of all this crap has reached a nuclear stage of undeniability.
It has literally been simmering for a long time and now it finally comes out. Taking it out on Israel is not wrong and that's not to say that they (the Israeli government) hold the sole responsibility for this. The US had a say in this as well. But now the US is questioning the benefits of this complete and total asshattery and rightly so. Better late than never I suppose.
Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of how much influence Israel has over US foreign policy. For Netanyahu, the propaganda that he manipulated Trump into waging a war against Iran boosts his political image with some Israelis. (And it is near election season in Israel).
It's simpler than this: Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development. Getting a larger country (the US) to create those money sinks (in the form of a broadly unserious conflict) achieves that outcome.
(The irony being that this is Iran's strategy w/r/t Hormuz as well.)
Netanyahu avoids domestic issues and stays in power through the continuation of the conflict. Israel continues to receive US money and weapons, and can continue to run a wartime economy, which has been lucrative for many.
It’s not a win for Israel. It’s a win for him. The stronger Iran is, the more you need him.
Netanyahu is Trump like - his core constituency is whack job Americans and the Israelis whom they firehose money at.
The commentators and idiots running the government miss the forest for the trees. Iran is radically stronger than they were, even with the destruction rained down. The entire American military supremacy story is toast. The strategy of them and North Korea with respect to ballistic missiles and drones works.
It’s Vietnam with missiles and drone. The US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, “never lost a battle”, yet got whooped.
more like weaker iran than ever, now that the central command are gone, no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC.
> no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC
One could argue a junta makes for a stronger Iran than the previous gerontocratic autocracy. Of course, we don't know. And I think it's silly to say Iran is stronger today than it was at the start of the war. But relative to America? At least in the region, I'd say one could argue that sensibly.
It is stronger. The weapons capabilities only matter if people are willing to man them. The obvious interference in otherwise organic protests and the threats and the multiple bombings during negotiations united the people against outside threats. Without an enemy, they will fight each other as long as sanctions pressure is continued and internal conflicts are amplified.
Certain figures are gone but political and military organization appears mostly intact. Iran also emerged as potent enough to deliver stalemate to combined force of CENTCOM and Israel. Its standing certainly had improved next to the lows after decimation of its proxies and the fall of client regime in Syria.
The argument is interesting, because it happens to repeat administration's assertions. It also is interesting, because the argument itself attempts make peace with the idea that wiping out central command & leadership did not put US in a more favorable position in general.
I guess I will just point out that 'weaker than ever' is doing a lot of work here without being specific on what strength means here. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
It is quite ridiculous to watch though. There are ( well, were ) reasons as to why IC was very vocal about not doing what Trump admin's decided to do. And now they are looking to find a reason, any reason that can deflect the blame..
Why? No one likes a loser politician.. not even Trump's electorate. And it is hard to spin lost war AND higher gas prices AND higher inflation.
I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in..
So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc).
The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny.
IRGC specifically was put in place to protect the regime and it only responds to the Supreme Leader. Neither the president or the parliament control it.
The mosaic system was started few years back after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (though it possibly dates further, I can't confirm this).
The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war. Their motto is "Every day in Ashura, every land is Karbala".
There is a potential for bias among Iranian converts to Christianity, but for those whose stories I've listened to, the common answer is yes, there is an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran.
> Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran?
It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.
> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).
> The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population. I get that president's war powers are pretty expansive, but everything has limits.
Why do people buy this bs is beyond me. Let's review actual warfare and its requirements.
Logistics. You can mosaic your heart out but you need to provide arms, food, water, electricity, medicines, parts, fuels ... for each of these high level cells. None of that is "distributed" or "independent" or quite frankly given the kleptocracy that is IRI is even given. All that the so called mosaic has achieved is that when the leadership cadre was killed this did not affect a loss of operational readiness as each high level cell had independent command authority. Read that again: operational readiness.
US military could trivially end this shit show. The question is why is this strange war being dragged on like this. For example, we are told "they have dug out the entrances to the missile cities". Now besides the fact that most of those videos of the missile cities scream CGI, even assuming they do exists, this nation is supposed to have a fucking "space force" and was reading license plates back during cold war from outer space. Are we to believe Centcom is incapable of burying those entraces yet again?
The "who would have thunk it!" b.s. about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, everybody and their mommy knew this was a strong possibility. Equally, most knew if US used its bases in the area the host nations would be targeted. I am convinced part of this shit show is to make Arabs sweat. US "provokes" IRGC and some parts of Arab infrastructure is smoked. "They need to all agree to be on board with Abraham Accords" said the Orange front man, the other day.
The "we now toll Strait of Hormuz". Aha. Let's see: we live in a planet where great powers started and fought world wars to decide exactly this sort of matter: who controls what parts. Are we to assume that the funky IRI regime and the IRGC have now achieved what world powers achieved after sacrificing tens of millions of casualties with just some stupid surface to surface missile batteries in northern shores of the Persian Gulf? Bullocks, as they say in the isle of perfidy.
From where I sit, US removed all obstacles for the succession of Khamenei's "gay" son. The other day one of these cheeky IRI embassy twitter accounts (who have a pretty good propaganda chops these days) were self congratulating since the Orange frontman who used to m.c. "pro wrestling matches" said "I'd be honored to meet him!". Will he bring a cake in the shape of a 'Pink' Dildo? One wonders.
If the United States permits IRI to actually have a control over the well being of the entire global economy, then folks, you must realize this is all a plan that we are not privy to. There is no way, none whatsoever, in any reasonable reality, where a middle tier nearly bankrupt, socialy unstable, and isolated theocracy can have the lever to dictate terms to Superpowers armed with atomic weapons.
IRI dictating terms to whoever needs the spice to flow from the Persian Gulf -- and that includes China, India, Japan, S. Korea, EU ... -- without the great powers saying 'no you dont' simply does not compute in any rational universe.
As to Karbala and Ashura. Well, 2023 came by and then "ready to die" martyrs of the fabled "Shia" weren't exactly lining up to fight Israel. Also, I can not think of any slogan that does more to cheapen the martyrdom of Hussein son of 'Ali than to claim that anywhere, anytime and anyone is equivalent to where, when, and who of the actual Karbala.
p.s. US was already worried in 70s about the Shah of Iran controlling the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons they got rid of him, as a matter of fact.
Read this short story that was published in 1976 in New York magazine. This was the psyops back then ! that was used to scare the Gulf Arabs to accept US bases. It's a fun read. The Shah takes over the Persian Gulf and controls the Strait of Hormuz. Atom bombs are involved ...
considering Trump's personality, i don't think this is a win, his followers certainly wouldn't like that as well. I'm pretty sure this idea isn't even part of their stream of thoughts that trump is a puppet of bibi and this whole war was conducted following the command from Netanyahu.
Or, because different factions in the regime are at odds with eachother - there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants, and who spearheaded the idiotic war with Iran, and there's the entire military, which thinks that this war is by far the dumbest thing they've been asked to do... This year.
Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?
MAGA has split hard. it's now MIGA vs AF. With MIGA being mostly boomer evangelicals and AF being younger, either outright fuentes antisemites or just anti Zionists that lean right. There is a huge astroturfing campaign to make it seem like MAGA is unanimously pro netanyahu, but it's simply fake.
Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran.
The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Jews have been the official scapegoats for the Middle East and Europe for what... 1500 years now? That doesn't just go away, and the political expediency of Trump covering his ass and the ass of his Saudi/UAE sources of billions (through Jared, Ivanka, Eric, etc) can't be thrown under the bus to do it.
Meanwhile Israel is being run by a universally loathed man who can't shut up, so it's just easier to pretend that's it all their fault.
While it is true that the Saudis are hostile to Iran and do want Iran's power to be curtailed, they were never in favour of the current war because they knew the plan was ill-thought and suicidal for it, as they knew how Iran would respond (and how ill-prepared they and the American military was to defend them). Iran's foreign policy with its Arab neighbours is based on the blunt but simple principle - "Peace for all. Prosperity for all." Implied in it is that if any of the Arab neighbours upset the public peace in Iran and / or attacked its economy, it would retaliate to ensure they too wouldn't have any peace or prosperity. And that's exactly how it played out ...
They literally bombed Iran themselves in the midst of a ceasefire, they also are on record pushing to finish Iran off. It just doesn’t get as much coverage as anything with Israel in the headline.
The Saudis have only done "tit for tat" bombing, and are especially cautious to ensure that there is no escalation. Yes, they would prefer if this war could curtail Iran's power but they don't want it at the cost of their economy. Saudi Arabia Built a Private De-Escalation Track With Iran. - https://houseofsaud.com/saudi-helsinki-bilateral-iran-de-esc... (The whole of the https://houseofsaud.com/ provides an interesting Saudi perspective on the war and their relationships with the US).
Seems like MSB has pushed for it together with kushner and netanyahu. As we know, kushner received billions of Saudi money for a fund, netanyahu literally stayed at in his house when visiting the US and slept in his bed, yet he somehow is the negotiator the US sends to negotiate with Iran?
It's Israel's immediate history (as in the last year or so) that's made it an easier scapegoat.
That and the Saud's, despite an appalling human rights record, are politically difficult to blame for anything (including Bin Laden), because of their (brilliant) petro politics - playing the Eastern bloc off against the West incredibly well.
Fighting over that patch is one of the older continuous activities of the species, and while anything is possible, I would never bet in favor of MENA peace.
Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area. This is just dumb ideas piling up upon one another.
> So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Well, it is clear to see that this is Netanyahu's ploy, but the thing is that Trump constantly lies about this. "There are negotiations", but then the US bombs again. To me it seems as if Trump operates in a way that makes it impossible to have anything else but drop bombs onto Iran. In this way he resembles Putin, who tries to occupy more and more land belonging to Ukraine. Putin has no alternative to this either, similar to Trump. (Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it. I don't see how he can stop it, without having achieved officially stated goals of his genocidal invasion.)
Nah. There are always face-saving offramps... And examples like Saddam doing just fine after his failed invasion of Iran.
If the war ended tomorrow, and Russia withdrew from Ukraine, Putin would still be enjoying ~50% organic support among Russians.
Just like Trump has a ~35% approval floor of complete idiots standing behind him as he sends inflation and gas prices and cost of living through the roof...
Putin enjoys fairly wide actual support for generally developing the country over his tenure. Whether someone else would have done better is not the hypothetical people are engaging with.
How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.
Makes the MAGA military look incompetent. The US has a history of botched wars around the globe, most of which have little to do with Israel. If I'm drawing from data, then the Iran conflict is consistent with the post-war military movements of the US.
Now that the communists are no more, Israel is the next best scapegoat. The way I see it, Israel's current leaders are happy to be scapegoats because the war benefits Ben Gvir and a radicalized Likud. It allows them to consolidate domestic power and pursue aggressive foreign objectives under shadow of the Iran conflict.
I hope Netanyahu has thought this through. He has burned through 100 years of western guilt in the span of 3 years. To break even, Israel's military excursions must secure outsized outcomes, to the tune of decades of security. Because, I believe we are entering a couple of decades of bipartisan & unprecedented* anti-semitism.
* Figuratively speaking. Historically ofc, anti-semitism is pretty precedented.
> How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.
You don’t need to influence a nation, you only need to get one guy on board.
When you have ready access to the ego-driven and cognitively limited man in charge, either directly or through his sycophants, and that man has enormous executive authority to do mostly whatever he wants, this becomes very straightforward.
Israel has been looking for a sucker in the White House for 40 years, and they finally found one.
Right. That"s why Epstein wired millions of dollars to Russia, had a Russian bodyguard, gave away his estate to some Belorussian woman, and so on. Obviously, Mossad at work here!
It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country.
And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.
It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible.
There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.)
The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.)
The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state.
>It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change
They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.
> if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure.
That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...
> Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too
Iran probably couldn't have, not without being intercepted and having its launchers neutralised every time it fired. But Tehran would have kept on credibly threatening to, which would have meant America essentially taking on air defence responsibility for the entire Gulf.
> We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
I see this repeateded a lot but it doesn't follow to me that the facility that was bombed in midnight hammer was created and begun operating after that agreement was cancelled. It seems clear to me that Iran never stopped using that facility.
It seems to me that Iran's goal is to develop a nuclear weapon and there isn't a piece of paper that will stop them. I don't really fault them, it's a very sane thing to do to secure your border a la North Korea.
I'm not sure there is a non-military way to influence Iran to not develop a nuclear weapon.
That facility was a nuclear research facility for civilian, military and medical use. Note that military doesn't mean weapons. Iran getting nuclear submarine would increase their threat level. In any case, Iran have a fatwa against developing nuclear bombs (a fatwa is a law edicted by a religious leader, and not respecting it would make you sinful and rebellious, and in a theocratic regime, often end in prison). The fatwa isn't reversed yet afaik, but the US killed the mufti who declared it, so I don't know how it applies.
But anybody saying Iran was working on a bomb is probably misinformed or lying imho.
You might be right on the regime change being fantasy but those things are not predictable and we don't know the details.
Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement, the agreement was time bound and not indefinite (and would have already expired anyways), and it enabled them to sell oil and raise a lot of money to fuel their wars, missile programs, nuclear programs and other ambitions.
> Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement...
No, actually it is you who is wrong. Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA. It is after US withdrew from the agreement that they pursued enrichment further.
Yup. "The U.S. certified in April 2017 and in July 2017 that Iran was complying with the deal. On 13 October 2017, President Trump announced that he would not make the certification required under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, accusing Iran of violating the spirit of the deal..." [1].
I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k.
You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.
Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient.
> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.
Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days.
I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.
Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)
Hogwash? More like state-backed propaganda disseminated by so-called objective and professional media organizations in order to justify an offensive war against Iran; a war that has achieved virtually none of its stated aims.
I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
> I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
This seems far less likely than the most plausible scenarios, which is that most deaths were the result of IRGC terrorists opening fire into crowds of protesters for the purposes of ensuring they remain in power.
It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc.
Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.
So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.
You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt...
Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent.
Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
So you're arguing the crusaders brought peace to the middle east?
This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak
Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam.
The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492.
It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.
Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?
>let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years
That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.
isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?
Israeli newspaper quoting NYT article with sources within Israel intelligence confirms this:
> The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists.
> But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year
I would not classify myself as anti-Israeli, fwiw. I just think wearing the military uniform of a foreign nation to your job governing our nation is despicable and borderline treasonous.
Elections. The Trump administration joined the war hoping that any positive outcome in the Iran war would boost its mid-term prospects. Netanyahu attacked Iran and Lebanon because he faces elections in a few months and he wants to prolong all his wars till the election is over - apparently Israeli electorate don't tend to vote out a PM during a war. Trump has now realised the Iran war has been a political disaster and is looking to extricate out of it, through temporary ceasefires (which means he can resume the war later - which is standard US policy with a weaker foe). That doesn't work for Netanyahu because if he loses this election, he could also find himself behind bars due to some corruption conviction. Thus, he is working to sabotage Trump's ceasefire deals as he needs the wars to go on till October, when the elections will presumably be held ...
The government already considered them a threat. Just like everyone else, including themselves (the gov isn't a single entity).
What changed is geopolitics. Official and publicly calling them a threat.
What this also changes is how gov works with companies. How these companies can subcontract and to who. Which, let's be honest, most companies don't give a rats ass if they are hacked. Sure, they lose money, but it's almost always a slap on the wrist and since every company works this way there's no market signal to express that you care even if you do. (I'd still encourage people to install apps like Signal, degoogle, and all that. Your individual choices still do matter, even if it's only us nerds)
Between Israel and Russia is anyone surprised that all of the memes about a certain party being infiltrated by the Russians and then also all of them being bootlickers of Israel have merit to them?
I've worked for a couple Israeli startups and what I will say is: never again. I've experienced all of the stereotypes and more, firsthand.
They sure do, but looking at recent events, you can make an educated guess on which country has more influence over the other. Part of it can be attributed to spying and knowing dark? secrets.
As much as they don’t, that’s why it’s spying. But given the budget for spying agencies the guess is they might be doing something and it wouldn’t be intelligent not to spy on Israel, something I don’t believe to be true even for this administration.
It's hilarious listening to CIA insiders talk about spying.
John Kiriakou [1] will spend 3 hours talking about the CIA's torture program (illegal) and NSA spying on Americans (illegal). In the same conversation, he will insist that the US would never spy on Israel because it is illegal.
Who is this fooling ?
[1] Senior ex-CIA official, whistleblower & internet meme phenomenon.
Since the 1951 Angleton-Harel Secret Pact, there has been an unwritten agreement that CIA and Mossad will not spy on each others countries. Kiriakou (who is a wonk) confirmed as much in recent remarks.
That speaks to my comment (which was not sufficiently specified I guess) but it does not speak to “the USA spies on Israel” which is what I was replying to
Okay, but I don't think Kiriakou would explicitly admit if the US spied specifically on Israel.
I think at most we get a indirect "confession" like Andrew Bustamante gave in some podcasts like here, where he answers to the question if the US spies on the Mossad that everybody spies on everybody and than distract to the case were the US was caught spying on (it's ally) Germany:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZklvHVsaT4
PS: I guess at the end you didn't spy until you were caught spying.
He has CIA experience but his word shouldn't just be taken at face value. The man has unsettling views on buying pardons and excuses some other things away as well. Kiriakou shouldn't be trusted, IMO.
That said, he probably isn't wrong at all about this particular thing.
I think he said in that interview that the CIA does not spy on Israel. It does not apply the other way around. Based on policy decisions, this seems very believable to me.
One reason is that blaming Israel for the Iran FUBAR situation is very convenient, especially for keeping MAGA on board.
The right wing pundits are already working overtime on X and elsewhere to blame Israel and concoct all sorts of explanations why Trump authorized the strike (the most amusing is that he "was possessed by demons").
Blaming Israel may have been coordinated with Netanyahu, who has nothing to lose and is probably perfectly fine with the blame as long as he gets his war and parts of Lebanon.
Blaming Israel has many historic precedents from Clinton to Trump, often through planted leaks or deliberate hot mics.
Support for Israel is present in the entire establishment, Democrat or Republican. Whenever Israel goes too far, a president suddenly leaks Netanyahu criticism like Biden on the hot mic where he said that he'd tell Netanyahu to have a "come to Jesus" moment or Trump leaking that he shouted at Netanyahu during a phone call.
This admin is special in that it blames proxies for wars that it started or provoked. Biden owned the Ukraine war, Trump blames the EU for wanting to continue the Ukraine war while Anduril and Eric Schmidt (https://www.techradar.com/pro/ex-google-ceo-is-key-to-ukrain...) are selling and testing their new drone tech.
In the case of Israel, you can say that there is direct influence from Kushner, Witkoff and Mark Levin. We'll see if Congress and Senate will get a 2/3rd majority to stop the war agaist a potential Trump veto. I don't think so. Until they do, I consider all resolutions with a simple majority to be theater for the midterm elections.
Among USA evangelicals, support for Israel (and specifically the country’s belligerence) has notably little to do with Judaism itself or the Jewish people.
Don't miss the attempt of the removal of Section 224 of the US NDAA at the same time, a polarizing development in discussions on Israel, to put it mildly.
I don't think I've ever seen in all of my wide understanding of history, such a tiny state successfully make an empire its vassal. Truly an astounding feat. It would be highly entertaining if it didn't bode poorly for humanity.
I don’t agree with the assessment, but in terms of a great power being very interested in the interests of a small country, consider Serbia and Russia before WWI.
I agree vassal is the wrong term... but we are currently committing global economic suicide on behalf of Israel's interests. I'm not sure what word is appropriate. Perhaps we need a new one.
Israel spends billions of dollars influence who gets elected in this country. More than any other special interest group.
We aren't running targeted ads through geo-fencing campaigns on Israel's places of worship so they get pro-american ads on Instagram.
I think it would be highly illegal for me to go serve in Lebanon military as a US citizen, not illegal for me to go serve in the IDF.
Duel citizenship for Israelis needs to be ended. Their assets need deposed. Israeli's need to be banned from the country, and many of them preferably sent to early retirement on a concrete floor.
If the US declared war on Israel today, there'd be a line of people around the block of the nearest strip mall waiting to enlist. You'd think it was the midnight release of the PS2.
I was reading about Israel interfering with US elections and spying on the US decades ago.
Why is this news now?
Us gives Israel money, Israel uses that money to buy people in power in the US, those bought people then ensure US taxpayewr money flows to israel to...and so the cycle continues.
Nothing explains the US being subservient to Israel than this.
The reason it's news today is because intelligence services, which are venerated by american journalism, brought the issue forward.
...but in general, the conflation of Israel with Jewishness, and the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism, has allowed the entrenchment of Israel's interests in broad daylight against our best interests.
> Top U.S. officials often take extra care when traveling to Israel, sometimes using burner phones and computers and taking extreme caution when speaking in hotel rooms during official trips, the current and former U.S. officials and experts said.
> Israel has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis.
That's a big reason why they're "allies" - if Israel can identify which US politicians are pro/against Israel, they can promote or impede their rise to power accordingly.
This could be 'curiosity' about negotiation with Iran, as there is what could be considered an AI merger between the 2 countries ; the FY2027 NDAA (H.R. 8800) bill text was officially released by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) on May 26, 2026.
- House Armed Services Committee markup was set for June 4, 2026. https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser...
Section 224 of the FY2027 NDAA, titled “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is a draft provision sponsored by Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Adam Smith. It aims to deeply integrate U.S. and Israeli defense industries and militaries through joint R&D, testing, manufacturing, technology sharing, training, information-sharing, network integration, and data fusion. AI is one of several technologies included, not a standalone “AI merger.” The provision is still a House committee draft, not final law, and may be amended before passage.https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser...
Protection from the risk that the tide might turn on them despite their extensive political lobbying? Just taking a guess here but probably not far off.
"The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said."
So Israel wants to know what Trump is going to do next.
One of the YouTube "CIA former spies" explained it very well (paraphrasing): "we shared the F-35 with them, but we kept about 10% of the technology to ourselves and sold them a variant. That wasn't enough for them, they ran an espionage operation to get the remaining 10%".
The well publicized disagreements are just diplomatic cover. The USA can look tough. Israel might back off for a little bit. Everyone looks good for a moment. Reason has prevailed. Then it'll all go back to Israel's criminal "gaza policy" in South Lebanon, continuing the wanton murder of 1000s of civilians under the guise of "they use children as shields". Well yeah, it's endless guerilla warfare and now hezb has drones. Diplomacy is the only way.
I mean, they did just start a war with iran as a joint venture with trump.
I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.
> A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that it is “completely false” that Israel spies on the U.S. “Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials,” the spokesperson said. “Israel intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated.”
Not even a teeny weeny bit of spying on your allies?
I believe it’s in reference to the humor TV show Letterkenny which has a beer brand called Puppers. Characters on the show often ask for another fucking puppers.
It's important to not frame this as a US vs Israel thing. Israel is, at best, the last of the Western world's settler colonies, and as such, is serving a purpose, a so-called landed aircraft carrier. [0]
The fact that there is tensions in the government regarding Israel means that the entities that found value in Israel are losing out to those that don't. So-called America-first powers no longer see 1st-tier support of Israel as in the interests of the US.
This will not go well with Zionists, who are still supported by massive backing and financial interests. They will spend a LOT of money to keep Israel the US's "top ally" despite it being no such thing in any meaningful way. Israel is a tool of the Western imperial forces.
The fact that this story is breaking means that Zionism is getting more-and-more toxic to people in power.
> Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward
Or at least starting with ceasing financial aid to Israel. If they want our weapons, they should have to pay for them. This has broad, bipartisan support in a way sanctioning Israel doesn't yet.
I had a few GS15s sit down with me in 2019 and explain to me directionally the vibe on Israel. Changed my viewpoint forever.
For ~50 years America has subcontracted to Israel a portion of its intelligence operations and sometimes largely for plausible deniability, other times because we cannot spy on our own citizens - the last part wasn't said explicitly - but what I could grok.
IMHO, the Israeli apparatus has gone far off the reservation in their operations and have lost favor in the past 5 years, especially in DC.
Israel's intelligence apparatus has historically participated in cleaning dirty narco cash via affiliates to finance intelligence operations back home (mostly thorugh hapoalim, safra, leumi, and signature bank), sold hacking tools to narcos, running guns, cleaning blood diamonds, and running kompromat where they deemed it is needed.
Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides probably wouldn't have happened to the stunning degree if the Israelis weren't illegally selling munitions into both. Also hard to get clarity if they were doing this as our subcontractors or going off the reservation.
Signature Bank's collapse was a sign that your local Israeli-intelligence agency linkedin money laundering apparatus was going to have volatility that there would be volatiliy in the middle east.
2023:
500k Israelis protesting against Netanyahu, blood diamonds going down in value b/c of lab grown diamonds, and the implosion of their money laundering apparatus cornerstone (Signature bank) probably was a positive signal for disruption in the Israeli way of life in mid 2023.
The large question at play amongst the GS15s that I've heard murmured in DC is if America should subcontract security operations to a non-AUKUS passport holders, and Israel is the vendor in question.
A lot of CIA seems bifurcated on their viewpoint of Israel. No idea when that happened.
Our relationship with Israel costs us $10-$20/barrel in increased fees and 50B-100B/yr to have our military in the region.
One thing that is fascinating - the Israelis are getting blamed for Iran right now - but the Hormuz volatility greatly increases their cost of living - and we are the greatest beneficiary.
We are the largest producer of nat gas, helium, methanol, LNG, and Oil.
I think the "hormuz volatility" has a terminating condition - APAC buying these US products in larger sizes. As it was explained to me, the reason the prices aren't 150 is because while maritime stuff is problematic - the surrounding 5 countries to Iran have ways to get the energy via pipeline and power line.
World is a complex place, they're our subcontractor for now....no clue if they will be in the future but the trend is no.
I really dislike when a tiny fraction of the conspiracy theories become true since it validates people who believe in them. But I have to admit I do have one of my own, pegasus and related spyware can gain a lot of power over politicians i.e. blackmail which makes me think about how much of our politics are based solely on the fact that politicians often find themselves exploiting their powers and then possibly getting caught by spyware turning them into somewhat of a tool.
I don't believe blackmail is the most effective thing. The problem with blackmail is that even if you do as the blackmailer says, they still have the threat hanging over you forever. That increases the risk that they do something desperate.
What is effective, isn't blackmail, but complicity. Doing bad things together. Then you get a shared interest. The people Epstein had blackmail on, knew that he wouldn't use it casually, because after all there would be no way to use it without implicating himself. But if he were desperate, he might. So the victims had an interest in keeping Epstein not desperate.
So it's the bad things they do together which is dangerous. Even things they do in full view of the public can work, because the threat isn't necessarily that the public finds out, it's that if one is held accountable, then all are at risk.
I think what made Epstein effective was balancing the blackmail with favors for complying. If all you do is get dirt on people, eventually it will fail. But if you give them something too, they are less resentful.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Also, please don't use quotes to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's an internet snark trope, and thus breaks the "Don't be snarky" guideline too.
Astounding to watch the mental gymnastics at play.
It’s like how Israeli lobbying orgs state that “claiming Zionist orgs control the media is antisemitism”, and then the solution is literally “we should use our contacts & supporters in the media to stop this kind of rhetoric”. Beautiful.
It's mostly about X conspiracy theory turned out to be true, so the Y conspiracy must be true! The fact that it even has to be a conspiracy theory that later gets validated is what annoys me, asking questions is okay, claiming conspiracy as fact is not.
People were smeared regularly for suggesting this less than a decade ago. You are being tripped up by recency bias since mainstream media started reporting on it.
What is and isn't considered a conspiracy theory changes very rapidly. There are a lot of things that today are considered common sense that 10 years ago would be considered a fringe conspiracy theory.
Do you blame them? If a global ring of elite pedophiles turned out to be true in spite of all the gaslighting and denial, then why couldn’t the moon landing also be a conspiracy?
Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)
Why must all conspiracy theories be bucketed together as if it's a single entity and culture. Conspiracies are real and as old as time, and treating any analysis or discussion about them as part of a greater crackpot culture just acts as cover for real ones. In fact there is evidence that the CIA is behind some of the crackpot theories to muddy the water.
I've heard very few if any "conspiracy theorists" talk about sexual blackmail because it's boring. The appeal of a conspiracy is that it grabs people's attention. And there are certain types of attention whores who will spout theories about flat earth, or fake moon landing, because it gets them instant attention and engagement. This is what I think the GP meant, that s/he hates that these people were "right" about politicians being compromised.
Every Big Tech company employs hundreds of "former" Israeli spies - Google just brought on another 900 via their acquisition of Wiz (to add to their existing 6000).
Well, I for one can’t imagine someone more qualified to work in content moderation at Meta than someone who spent his or her formative years murdering unarmed children in the Gaza Strip. These companies need morally grounded, paragons of decency to set the example for us all.
The mental gymnastics of the Israeli "splainers" will never fail to amaze me. Israelsplainers perhaps.
I want to say that it's just Netanyahu who needs to go away but it's actually much, much more than just him. The tide is shifting methinks and rightly so (and finally).
If we assume everything you say here is true, why is the US in such a bind with reopening the straits? The risk of Iran behaving exactly like this has been understood for decades.
The attack was not a a wise, measured move.
The Snowden disclosures revealed that the US was regularly spying on Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, the EU, and the UN. Also of course the CIA was spying on Congress.
One can only imagine that many of these countries were also spying on us in various capacities, albeit with fewer resources. Israel is a bigger concern because they're extremely good at it, but I'm sure it's nothing new.
>While it is commonplace for allies and adversaries across the globe to spy on each other, the current and former U.S. officials said Israel’s recent efforts have gone well beyond what is typical and expected espionage.
Trump is like the ultimate tool of corruption - whether it is Russia or Israel or whoever, you name it. Dude flops to the highest bidder. No wonder US oligarchs are currently controlling the USA.
This is pathetic. Raising this? This is the level of "intelligence" you get when you pretend to remove all DEI/wokeness and just leave the ones that cater to you. Pathetic.
Israel would be deeply impacted by the results of the negotiations, so is this surprising or unexpected? Any nation including the US would most likely do the same in a similar scenario over what is considered to be almost existential negotiations.
It would be a massive scandal if any of our other allies were conducting this level of spying on our country's senior leadership, for the sole purpose of manipulating their decision processes to the foreign ally's benefit. Israel needs to learn to play by the rules.
From its start Israel's existence has been about not playing by the rules. The days are numbered for Israel because it's not and never has been a sustainable enterprise and its exploitation of the American people and US taxpayer money is catching-up to it faster than it can damage control it away or come-up with more and more creative ways to pay people to call label criticism of Israel a hate crime.
It's sustainable as long as it's neighbours keep being so corrupt and oppressive that their GDP (total, not just per capita) can't even keep up with a country 10x smaller than them. Israel literally has a larger GDP than Egypt and Iran combined, and not because Israel is doing anything special (GDP per capita there is less than e.g. Australia or the US), but because Egypt and Iran's military dictatorships are incredibly economically destructive.
Israel has a modern military and 200+ nuclear weapons that they would absolutely use in a last resort scenario (like all countries would). They are not going away anytime soon, nor are their days numbered.
Like geez, we can't even get rid of North Korea, how are people expecting to successfully destroy a nuclear armed power without getting everyone else in that area killed? Its delusional.
Unlike North Korea, Israel is highly globally economically integrated. I’ve only ever seen anti-Zionists propose defeating the state the same way the last apartheid state (and Israel’s nuclear weapon development partner) was: a mix of extreme economic and diplomatic pressure.
I don't think we can assume that easily that it's perfectly normal to spy on allies, especially when one ally is the biggest military power in history, & their direct sole protector
"Government suddenly and confusingly starts acting accordingly to what everyone's already know for a long time." This is really quite scary when you think about it. Why now all of a sudden?
Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Israel keeps actively going against US goals. The beginning of the conflict generally had both sides in general agreement. The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement, and now continues promoting conflict while the US admin is pushing hard for a peace deal is showing the cracks
> The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement
The plan was fucked from conception. Not having a strategy for safeguarding the Strait made virtually any strategy that required persisting after decapitation half baked.
The issue wasn't a lack of planning by the military it was a lack of commitment on the goals by the administration. If it was just a desert storm style campaign (hit them very hard over a month then leave without finishing off Saddam) then they should have left already when Iran offered to open the strait, and it could have been sold as a success.
If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now, which neither the president nor the public seems to have an appetite for and Iran knows that. So now it's mostly deadlocked on both the US demanding Iran lose face by giving up Uranium immediately, while Israel wants to keep up an air campaign to further neuter Irans combat capabilities to free up their own strategic goals against Hezbollah and Hamas. But neither options are properly aligned, especially with fanatics in IRGC taking over.
It's either a short air campaign or a war, but they can't seem to decide so we are left with an blockade.
> when Iran offered to open the strait
When did this happen? The problem with a decapitation strike is you no longer have a single party to negotiate with.
> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now
It's genuinely unclear if America has the military power to project into Iran to the degree a ground invasion would require. (Like, short of carpet bombing the country's infrastructure and industry out of existence.)
Missiles, drones and aerial and space-based surveillance have tilted the balance in favour of defenders, at least on the ground. American firepower can constrain Iran to within its maritime borders. But even if it made sense to, it's questionable whether we can influence much within them.
Because now the manifestation of all this crap has reached a nuclear stage of undeniability.
It has literally been simmering for a long time and now it finally comes out. Taking it out on Israel is not wrong and that's not to say that they (the Israeli government) hold the sole responsibility for this. The US had a say in this as well. But now the US is questioning the benefits of this complete and total asshattery and rightly so. Better late than never I suppose.
Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of how much influence Israel has over US foreign policy. For Netanyahu, the propaganda that he manipulated Trump into waging a war against Iran boosts his political image with some Israelis. (And it is near election season in Israel).
I don't see how that's a win for him since the outcome was a stronger Iran.
It's simpler than this: Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development. Getting a larger country (the US) to create those money sinks (in the form of a broadly unserious conflict) achieves that outcome.
(The irony being that this is Iran's strategy w/r/t Hormuz as well.)
> Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development.
Yeah, but the rest of the world is now going to pay for that, and more, with the $2million toll on oil through the Straight of Hormuz.
Yes, to be clear that wasn't a normative (as in "this is good") appraisal.
Netanyahu avoids domestic issues and stays in power through the continuation of the conflict. Israel continues to receive US money and weapons, and can continue to run a wartime economy, which has been lucrative for many.
It’s not a win for Israel. It’s a win for him. The stronger Iran is, the more you need him.
Netanyahu is Trump like - his core constituency is whack job Americans and the Israelis whom they firehose money at.
The commentators and idiots running the government miss the forest for the trees. Iran is radically stronger than they were, even with the destruction rained down. The entire American military supremacy story is toast. The strategy of them and North Korea with respect to ballistic missiles and drones works.
It’s Vietnam with missiles and drone. The US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, “never lost a battle”, yet got whooped.
more like weaker iran than ever, now that the central command are gone, no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC.
> no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC
One could argue a junta makes for a stronger Iran than the previous gerontocratic autocracy. Of course, we don't know. And I think it's silly to say Iran is stronger today than it was at the start of the war. But relative to America? At least in the region, I'd say one could argue that sensibly.
It is stronger. The weapons capabilities only matter if people are willing to man them. The obvious interference in otherwise organic protests and the threats and the multiple bombings during negotiations united the people against outside threats. Without an enemy, they will fight each other as long as sanctions pressure is continued and internal conflicts are amplified.
Certain figures are gone but political and military organization appears mostly intact. Iran also emerged as potent enough to deliver stalemate to combined force of CENTCOM and Israel. Its standing certainly had improved next to the lows after decimation of its proxies and the fall of client regime in Syria.
The argument is interesting, because it happens to repeat administration's assertions. It also is interesting, because the argument itself attempts make peace with the idea that wiping out central command & leadership did not put US in a more favorable position in general.
I guess I will just point out that 'weaker than ever' is doing a lot of work here without being specific on what strength means here. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
It is quite ridiculous to watch though. There are ( well, were ) reasons as to why IC was very vocal about not doing what Trump admin's decided to do. And now they are looking to find a reason, any reason that can deflect the blame..
Why? No one likes a loser politician.. not even Trump's electorate. And it is hard to spin lost war AND higher gas prices AND higher inflation.
Stronger how? The central command is gone.
I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in..
So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc).
The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny.
IRGC specifically was put in place to protect the regime and it only responds to the Supreme Leader. Neither the president or the parliament control it.
The mosaic system was started few years back after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (though it possibly dates further, I can't confirm this).
The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war. Their motto is "Every day in Ashura, every land is Karbala".
Anyway, I'll land it here for now.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala
> They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it
Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran? Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
There is a potential for bias among Iranian converts to Christianity, but for those whose stories I've listened to, the common answer is yes, there is an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran.
> Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran?
It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.
> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).
> The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population. I get that president's war powers are pretty expansive, but everything has limits.
Why do people buy this bs is beyond me. Let's review actual warfare and its requirements.
Logistics. You can mosaic your heart out but you need to provide arms, food, water, electricity, medicines, parts, fuels ... for each of these high level cells. None of that is "distributed" or "independent" or quite frankly given the kleptocracy that is IRI is even given. All that the so called mosaic has achieved is that when the leadership cadre was killed this did not affect a loss of operational readiness as each high level cell had independent command authority. Read that again: operational readiness.
US military could trivially end this shit show. The question is why is this strange war being dragged on like this. For example, we are told "they have dug out the entrances to the missile cities". Now besides the fact that most of those videos of the missile cities scream CGI, even assuming they do exists, this nation is supposed to have a fucking "space force" and was reading license plates back during cold war from outer space. Are we to believe Centcom is incapable of burying those entraces yet again?
The "who would have thunk it!" b.s. about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, everybody and their mommy knew this was a strong possibility. Equally, most knew if US used its bases in the area the host nations would be targeted. I am convinced part of this shit show is to make Arabs sweat. US "provokes" IRGC and some parts of Arab infrastructure is smoked. "They need to all agree to be on board with Abraham Accords" said the Orange front man, the other day.
The "we now toll Strait of Hormuz". Aha. Let's see: we live in a planet where great powers started and fought world wars to decide exactly this sort of matter: who controls what parts. Are we to assume that the funky IRI regime and the IRGC have now achieved what world powers achieved after sacrificing tens of millions of casualties with just some stupid surface to surface missile batteries in northern shores of the Persian Gulf? Bullocks, as they say in the isle of perfidy.
From where I sit, US removed all obstacles for the succession of Khamenei's "gay" son. The other day one of these cheeky IRI embassy twitter accounts (who have a pretty good propaganda chops these days) were self congratulating since the Orange frontman who used to m.c. "pro wrestling matches" said "I'd be honored to meet him!". Will he bring a cake in the shape of a 'Pink' Dildo? One wonders.
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/us/mcfarlane-took-cake-an...
If the United States permits IRI to actually have a control over the well being of the entire global economy, then folks, you must realize this is all a plan that we are not privy to. There is no way, none whatsoever, in any reasonable reality, where a middle tier nearly bankrupt, socialy unstable, and isolated theocracy can have the lever to dictate terms to Superpowers armed with atomic weapons.
IRI dictating terms to whoever needs the spice to flow from the Persian Gulf -- and that includes China, India, Japan, S. Korea, EU ... -- without the great powers saying 'no you dont' simply does not compute in any rational universe.
As to Karbala and Ashura. Well, 2023 came by and then "ready to die" martyrs of the fabled "Shia" weren't exactly lining up to fight Israel. Also, I can not think of any slogan that does more to cheapen the martyrdom of Hussein son of 'Ali than to claim that anywhere, anytime and anyone is equivalent to where, when, and who of the actual Karbala.
p.s. US was already worried in 70s about the Shah of Iran controlling the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons they got rid of him, as a matter of fact.
Read this short story that was published in 1976 in New York magazine. This was the psyops back then ! that was used to scare the Gulf Arabs to accept US bases. It's a fun read. The Shah takes over the Persian Gulf and controls the Strait of Hormuz. Atom bombs are involved ...
https://iranian.com/History/2002/October/Crash/index.html
They have proven to the world they have a deterrent akin to a nuclear weapon, but they can actually use it.
Not denying they're getting great leverage from that. I still don't quite understand why the shortcut is supposedly so irreplaceable.
Perhaps because modern economies are allergic to long-term planning.
They seem to be heading towards control of the strait, and the tolls from that could be a pretty good pickup for whatever new government forms?
Not sure how the gulf states on the other side of the strait are going to feel about that.
>Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of...
you mentioned what Netanyahu gained from this but what about trump?
Maybe that it's not his fault?
But that's at the price of not being in control. I don't know if he thinks that's a win...
considering Trump's personality, i don't think this is a win, his followers certainly wouldn't like that as well. I'm pretty sure this idea isn't even part of their stream of thoughts that trump is a puppet of bibi and this whole war was conducted following the command from Netanyahu.
Or, because different factions in the regime are at odds with eachother - there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants, and who spearheaded the idiotic war with Iran, and there's the entire military, which thinks that this war is by far the dumbest thing they've been asked to do... This year.
Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?
> there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants
This vastly oversimplifies even that field.
MAGA has split hard. it's now MIGA vs AF. With MIGA being mostly boomer evangelicals and AF being younger, either outright fuentes antisemites or just anti Zionists that lean right. There is a huge astroturfing campaign to make it seem like MAGA is unanimously pro netanyahu, but it's simply fake.
What is AF in this context?
Isreal wanted it. Strong and influential amrrican political actors wanted it too. Hegseth wanted it too.
Now that it is shitshow, the same people want to put blame on Israel only.
Along these lines, but with a bit more:
Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran.
The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Jews have been the official scapegoats for the Middle East and Europe for what... 1500 years now? That doesn't just go away, and the political expediency of Trump covering his ass and the ass of his Saudi/UAE sources of billions (through Jared, Ivanka, Eric, etc) can't be thrown under the bus to do it.
Meanwhile Israel is being run by a universally loathed man who can't shut up, so it's just easier to pretend that's it all their fault.
> MBS and the Saudis also want this
While it is true that the Saudis are hostile to Iran and do want Iran's power to be curtailed, they were never in favour of the current war because they knew the plan was ill-thought and suicidal for it, as they knew how Iran would respond (and how ill-prepared they and the American military was to defend them). Iran's foreign policy with its Arab neighbours is based on the blunt but simple principle - "Peace for all. Prosperity for all." Implied in it is that if any of the Arab neighbours upset the public peace in Iran and / or attacked its economy, it would retaliate to ensure they too wouldn't have any peace or prosperity. And that's exactly how it played out ...
They literally bombed Iran themselves in the midst of a ceasefire, they also are on record pushing to finish Iran off. It just doesn’t get as much coverage as anything with Israel in the headline.
I.E. https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-saudi-arabia-mbs-gulf-...
The Saudis have only done "tit for tat" bombing, and are especially cautious to ensure that there is no escalation. Yes, they would prefer if this war could curtail Iran's power but they don't want it at the cost of their economy. Saudi Arabia Built a Private De-Escalation Track With Iran. - https://houseofsaud.com/saudi-helsinki-bilateral-iran-de-esc... (The whole of the https://houseofsaud.com/ provides an interesting Saudi perspective on the war and their relationships with the US).
Yes I appreciate their... stated aims. I'm a bit of cynic though, so I prefer revealed preferences to declared ones when I'm judging people.
https://popular.info/p/update-after-sending-billions-to
Seems like MSB has pushed for it together with kushner and netanyahu. As we know, kushner received billions of Saudi money for a fund, netanyahu literally stayed at in his house when visiting the US and slept in his bed, yet he somehow is the negotiator the US sends to negotiate with Iran?
It's Israel's immediate history (as in the last year or so) that's made it an easier scapegoat.
That and the Saud's, despite an appalling human rights record, are politically difficult to blame for anything (including Bin Laden), because of their (brilliant) petro politics - playing the Eastern bloc off against the West incredibly well.
> 1500 years
I’m curious what the Lindy Effect would mean in this case
Fighting over that patch is one of the older continuous activities of the species, and while anything is possible, I would never bet in favor of MENA peace.
Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area. This is just dumb ideas piling up upon one another.
> Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area.
No, forcing the existence of a new aggressively expansionist jewish state did that.
Mind you Israel was the one that supported the partition plan in 1948. The expansion came from the other side who wanted it all
Remind me, what was in Ben gurions private coorespendece?
> So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Well, it is clear to see that this is Netanyahu's ploy, but the thing is that Trump constantly lies about this. "There are negotiations", but then the US bombs again. To me it seems as if Trump operates in a way that makes it impossible to have anything else but drop bombs onto Iran. In this way he resembles Putin, who tries to occupy more and more land belonging to Ukraine. Putin has no alternative to this either, similar to Trump. (Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it. I don't see how he can stop it, without having achieved officially stated goals of his genocidal invasion.)
> Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it
More like his life. He will not survive the end of this war.
Nah. There are always face-saving offramps... And examples like Saddam doing just fine after his failed invasion of Iran.
If the war ended tomorrow, and Russia withdrew from Ukraine, Putin would still be enjoying ~50% organic support among Russians.
Just like Trump has a ~35% approval floor of complete idiots standing behind him as he sends inflation and gas prices and cost of living through the roof...
Putin enjoys fairly wide actual support for generally developing the country over his tenure. Whether someone else would have done better is not the hypothetical people are engaging with.
The Russo-Japanese war ultimately didn't end well for the Romanovs.
A lot of people died in suspicious circumstances.
I mean, someone has to be held accountable for that, don't they?
How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.
Makes the MAGA military look incompetent. The US has a history of botched wars around the globe, most of which have little to do with Israel. If I'm drawing from data, then the Iran conflict is consistent with the post-war military movements of the US.
Now that the communists are no more, Israel is the next best scapegoat. The way I see it, Israel's current leaders are happy to be scapegoats because the war benefits Ben Gvir and a radicalized Likud. It allows them to consolidate domestic power and pursue aggressive foreign objectives under shadow of the Iran conflict.
I hope Netanyahu has thought this through. He has burned through 100 years of western guilt in the span of 3 years. To break even, Israel's military excursions must secure outsized outcomes, to the tune of decades of security. Because, I believe we are entering a couple of decades of bipartisan & unprecedented* anti-semitism.
* Figuratively speaking. Historically ofc, anti-semitism is pretty precedented.
> How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.
You don’t need to influence a nation, you only need to get one guy on board.
When you have ready access to the ego-driven and cognitively limited man in charge, either directly or through his sycophants, and that man has enormous executive authority to do mostly whatever he wants, this becomes very straightforward.
Israel has been looking for a sucker in the White House for 40 years, and they finally found one.
+1 I totally agree with this take.
Israel obviously influenced American politicians through many avenues, not the least of which is the Epstein blackmail ring.
Right. That"s why Epstein wired millions of dollars to Russia, had a Russian bodyguard, gave away his estate to some Belorussian woman, and so on. Obviously, Mossad at work here!
Oh come on. Israel and US have been allies for 80 years. Not everything is about Jeffrey Epstein.
> everyone knew was a bad idea
It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country.
And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.
It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible.
There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.)
The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.)
The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state.
This was always stupid.
>It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change
They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.
> if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure.
That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...
> Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too
Iran probably couldn't have, not without being intercepted and having its launchers neutralised every time it fired. But Tehran would have kept on credibly threatening to, which would have meant America essentially taking on air defence responsibility for the entire Gulf.
> We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
I see this repeateded a lot but it doesn't follow to me that the facility that was bombed in midnight hammer was created and begun operating after that agreement was cancelled. It seems clear to me that Iran never stopped using that facility.
It seems to me that Iran's goal is to develop a nuclear weapon and there isn't a piece of paper that will stop them. I don't really fault them, it's a very sane thing to do to secure your border a la North Korea.
I'm not sure there is a non-military way to influence Iran to not develop a nuclear weapon.
Iran was entitled to have radio active materia. Pretty much everyone involved says they followed the contract.
That facility was a nuclear research facility for civilian, military and medical use. Note that military doesn't mean weapons. Iran getting nuclear submarine would increase their threat level. In any case, Iran have a fatwa against developing nuclear bombs (a fatwa is a law edicted by a religious leader, and not respecting it would make you sinful and rebellious, and in a theocratic regime, often end in prison). The fatwa isn't reversed yet afaik, but the US killed the mufti who declared it, so I don't know how it applies.
But anybody saying Iran was working on a bomb is probably misinformed or lying imho.
You might be right on the regime change being fantasy but those things are not predictable and we don't know the details.
Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement, the agreement was time bound and not indefinite (and would have already expired anyways), and it enabled them to sell oil and raise a lot of money to fuel their wars, missile programs, nuclear programs and other ambitions.
> Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement...
No, actually it is you who is wrong. Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA. It is after US withdrew from the agreement that they pursued enrichment further.
> Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA
Yup. "The U.S. certified in April 2017 and in July 2017 that Iran was complying with the deal. On 13 October 2017, President Trump announced that he would not make the certification required under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, accusing Iran of violating the spirit of the deal..." [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal#Trump_admini...
I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k.
You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...
No one’s putting a public traffic cam in the regime’s secret detention sites.
Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient.
> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.
https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days.
I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.
Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)
Hogwash? More like state-backed propaganda disseminated by so-called objective and professional media organizations in order to justify an offensive war against Iran; a war that has achieved virtually none of its stated aims.
I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
> I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
This seems far less likely than the most plausible scenarios, which is that most deaths were the result of IRGC terrorists opening fire into crowds of protesters for the purposes of ensuring they remain in power.
> the 30k number is hogwash
30k is one estimate of actual deaths, it's expected to be higher than any verified number of deaths.
Most estimates fall into the range of 20k to 40k from my understanding so 30k is certainly plausible.
It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc.
Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.
So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.
You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt...
Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent.
Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
compare list of conflicts in europe to those in middle east over past from 1000 AD - 1900AD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
in particular state formation in late medieval and early modern europe saw immense bloodshed and turmoil.
middle east was comparatively peaceful in contrast, especially post mongol conquest.
e.g. compare 1700s and 1800s europe to middle east
So you're arguing the crusaders brought peace to the middle east?
This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak
Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam.
The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492.
It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.
Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?
>let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years
That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.
> the popular uprisings
isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?
Israeli newspaper quoting NYT article with sources within Israel intelligence confirms this:
> The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists.
> But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that...
"GOP lawmaker wears Israeli military uniform to Capitol Hill" - https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4254384-brian-mast-israel...
It boggles the mind just how egregious this was.
I would not classify myself as anti-Israeli, fwiw. I just think wearing the military uniform of a foreign nation to your job governing our nation is despicable and borderline treasonous.
"You're fucking crazy": Trump fumes at Netanyahu in call on Lebanon - https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-netanyahu-israel-leba...
Elections. The Trump administration joined the war hoping that any positive outcome in the Iran war would boost its mid-term prospects. Netanyahu attacked Iran and Lebanon because he faces elections in a few months and he wants to prolong all his wars till the election is over - apparently Israeli electorate don't tend to vote out a PM during a war. Trump has now realised the Iran war has been a political disaster and is looking to extricate out of it, through temporary ceasefires (which means he can resume the war later - which is standard US policy with a weaker foe). That doesn't work for Netanyahu because if he loses this election, he could also find himself behind bars due to some corruption conviction. Thus, he is working to sabotage Trump's ceasefire deals as he needs the wars to go on till October, when the elections will presumably be held ...
What changed is geopolitics. Official and publicly calling them a threat.
What this also changes is how gov works with companies. How these companies can subcontract and to who. Which, let's be honest, most companies don't give a rats ass if they are hacked. Sure, they lose money, but it's almost always a slap on the wrist and since every company works this way there's no market signal to express that you care even if you do. (I'd still encourage people to install apps like Signal, degoogle, and all that. Your individual choices still do matter, even if it's only us nerds)
Between Israel and Russia is anyone surprised that all of the memes about a certain party being infiltrated by the Russians and then also all of them being bootlickers of Israel have merit to them?
I've worked for a couple Israeli startups and what I will say is: never again. I've experienced all of the stereotypes and more, firsthand.
USA almost certainly spies on Israel (and everyone else) far deeper than anyone spies on them.
They sure do, but looking at recent events, you can make an educated guess on which country has more influence over the other. Part of it can be attributed to spying and knowing dark? secrets.
> They sure do
Do you have an example?
As much as they don’t, that’s why it’s spying. But given the budget for spying agencies the guess is they might be doing something and it wouldn’t be intelligent not to spy on Israel, something I don’t believe to be true even for this administration.
Given that US spies on other countries, including allies (countless examples), I wouldn't rule out them spying on Israel either.
It's hilarious listening to CIA insiders talk about spying.
John Kiriakou [1] will spend 3 hours talking about the CIA's torture program (illegal) and NSA spying on Americans (illegal). In the same conversation, he will insist that the US would never spy on Israel because it is illegal.
Who is this fooling ?
[1] Senior ex-CIA official, whistleblower & internet meme phenomenon.
Who knows who's telling the truth these days. [1] I just assume it's always spy-vs-spy every which way from Sunday.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vukPEDWaBHg
Since the 1951 Angleton-Harel Secret Pact, there has been an unwritten agreement that CIA and Mossad will not spy on each others countries. Kiriakou (who is a wonk) confirmed as much in recent remarks.
But no one without at least a TS really knows
Kiriakou also stated several times that the Mossad was known to casually try to recruit CIA agents:
https://youtu.be/R7OWqAgGzwA?t=163
That speaks to my comment (which was not sufficiently specified I guess) but it does not speak to “the USA spies on Israel” which is what I was replying to
Okay, but I don't think Kiriakou would explicitly admit if the US spied specifically on Israel.
I think at most we get a indirect "confession" like Andrew Bustamante gave in some podcasts like here, where he answers to the question if the US spies on the Mossad that everybody spies on everybody and than distract to the case were the US was caught spying on (it's ally) Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZklvHVsaT4
PS: I guess at the end you didn't spy until you were caught spying.
There's written legislation saying the CIA/NSA/etc. can't spy on Americans.
Guess what happens anyways?
He has CIA experience but his word shouldn't just be taken at face value. The man has unsettling views on buying pardons and excuses some other things away as well. Kiriakou shouldn't be trusted, IMO.
That said, he probably isn't wrong at all about this particular thing.
I think he said in that interview that the CIA does not spy on Israel. It does not apply the other way around. Based on policy decisions, this seems very believable to me.
> unwritten agreement
Ah I forgot writing has magic powers. Especially between nation states. /s
In this case the writing part is not important.
Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi
Same reason that FISA Amendments Act (2008) was passed less than two years after Mark Klein revealed Room 641A.
Same reason that CISA (2015) was passed less than two years after the Snowden revelations.
Once the secrets are open, the feds can codify them into law. They were never going to change their behavior.
The base is complaining, and they need a scapegoat.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the talking points start being ‘Israel caused high gas prices!’ soon.
Probably because Trump had a heated conversation with Netanyahu and this is some sort of “consequence”.
maybe someone in China, put 2 million and 2 million together and hired themselves a zionist genocider baby killer on the make!
One reason is that blaming Israel for the Iran FUBAR situation is very convenient, especially for keeping MAGA on board.
The right wing pundits are already working overtime on X and elsewhere to blame Israel and concoct all sorts of explanations why Trump authorized the strike (the most amusing is that he "was possessed by demons").
Blaming Israel may have been coordinated with Netanyahu, who has nothing to lose and is probably perfectly fine with the blame as long as he gets his war and parts of Lebanon.
Blaming Israel has many historic precedents from Clinton to Trump, often through planted leaks or deliberate hot mics.
> One reason is that blaming Israel for the Iran FUBAR situation is very convenient, especially for keeping MAGA on board.
Polling shows support for Israel is far greater among Trump loyalist voters than non-loyalist Republicans, so this is surely false.
Perhaps you're confusing "MAGA" with actual American nationalists, who are statistically irrelevant.
Support for Israel is present in the entire establishment, Democrat or Republican. Whenever Israel goes too far, a president suddenly leaks Netanyahu criticism like Biden on the hot mic where he said that he'd tell Netanyahu to have a "come to Jesus" moment or Trump leaking that he shouted at Netanyahu during a phone call.
This admin is special in that it blames proxies for wars that it started or provoked. Biden owned the Ukraine war, Trump blames the EU for wanting to continue the Ukraine war while Anduril and Eric Schmidt (https://www.techradar.com/pro/ex-google-ceo-is-key-to-ukrain...) are selling and testing their new drone tech.
In the case of Israel, you can say that there is direct influence from Kushner, Witkoff and Mark Levin. We'll see if Congress and Senate will get a 2/3rd majority to stop the war agaist a potential Trump veto. I don't think so. Until they do, I consider all resolutions with a simple majority to be theater for the midterm elections.
The reason for the support matters.
A lot of them think support for Israel leads to the apocalypse and Jesus’s return. It doesn’t end well for the Jews in that story.
Among USA evangelicals, support for Israel (and specifically the country’s belligerence) has notably little to do with Judaism itself or the Jewish people.
Now you're confusing maga with evangelicals which are very different parts of the party. Evangelicals have largely lost influence in a post Roe world.
Trump had to cater to them in his first term but, since he's taken over the party, they're in the backseat.
Evangelicals themselves recently brought us into this “post Roe world!” Their influence appears to be at its highest level ever.
Don't miss the attempt of the removal of Section 224 of the US NDAA at the same time, a polarizing development in discussions on Israel, to put it mildly.
https://www.aipac.org/memos/america-israel-defense-ndaa-224
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/06...
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-israel-military-congres...
I don't think I've ever seen in all of my wide understanding of history, such a tiny state successfully make an empire its vassal. Truly an astounding feat. It would be highly entertaining if it didn't bode poorly for humanity.
In part it's because they have the best intelligence apparatus in the world. I'm very impressed at how far above their weight they're punching.
I don’t agree with the assessment, but in terms of a great power being very interested in the interests of a small country, consider Serbia and Russia before WWI.
I agree vassal is the wrong term... but we are currently committing global economic suicide on behalf of Israel's interests. I'm not sure what word is appropriate. Perhaps we need a new one.
I'll look at Serbia, thank you.
Israel spends billions of dollars influence who gets elected in this country. More than any other special interest group.
We aren't running targeted ads through geo-fencing campaigns on Israel's places of worship so they get pro-american ads on Instagram.
I think it would be highly illegal for me to go serve in Lebanon military as a US citizen, not illegal for me to go serve in the IDF.
Duel citizenship for Israelis needs to be ended. Their assets need deposed. Israeli's need to be banned from the country, and many of them preferably sent to early retirement on a concrete floor.
If the US declared war on Israel today, there'd be a line of people around the block of the nearest strip mall waiting to enlist. You'd think it was the midnight release of the PS2.
I was reading about Israel interfering with US elections and spying on the US decades ago.
Why is this news now?
Us gives Israel money, Israel uses that money to buy people in power in the US, those bought people then ensure US taxpayewr money flows to israel to...and so the cycle continues.
Nothing explains the US being subservient to Israel than this.
The reason it's news today is because intelligence services, which are venerated by american journalism, brought the issue forward.
...but in general, the conflation of Israel with Jewishness, and the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism, has allowed the entrenchment of Israel's interests in broad daylight against our best interests.
> Top U.S. officials often take extra care when traveling to Israel, sometimes using burner phones and computers and taking extreme caution when speaking in hotel rooms during official trips, the current and former U.S. officials and experts said.
> Israel has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis.
And these are considered their closest allies.
What do they do with others.
That's a big reason why they're "allies" - if Israel can identify which US politicians are pro/against Israel, they can promote or impede their rise to power accordingly.
The top U.S. officials do the same when traveling to any country. Everyone does this to everyone else.
Murdering children and burning churches seems to be their main goal these days.
The lesson Israel has learned from the Holocaust is “we can do better”, and they’re being empowered to see that through.
This could be 'curiosity' about negotiation with Iran, as there is what could be considered an AI merger between the 2 countries ; the FY2027 NDAA (H.R. 8800) bill text was officially released by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) on May 26, 2026. - House Armed Services Committee markup was set for June 4, 2026. https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser... Section 224 of the FY2027 NDAA, titled “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is a draft provision sponsored by Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Adam Smith. It aims to deeply integrate U.S. and Israeli defense industries and militaries through joint R&D, testing, manufacturing, technology sharing, training, information-sharing, network integration, and data fusion. AI is one of several technologies included, not a standalone “AI merger.” The provision is still a House committee draft, not final law, and may be amended before passage.https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser...
The parasite completes its lifecycle, consuming the host.
Legitimate question, what would Israel need that we don’t already openly provide?
Protection from the risk that the tide might turn on them despite their extensive political lobbying? Just taking a guess here but probably not far off.
Dirt on anyone proposing that we stop openly providing such assistance?
"The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said."
So Israel wants to know what Trump is going to do next.
Don't we all.
Seems like he's the only one that doesn't feel any need to think about this question.
One of the YouTube "CIA former spies" explained it very well (paraphrasing): "we shared the F-35 with them, but we kept about 10% of the technology to ourselves and sold them a variant. That wasn't enough for them, they ran an espionage operation to get the remaining 10%".
The vessel state now fully controls its host, but I think public sentiment is reversing it just a little.
there's currently disagreements with Israel on their approach to Lebanon being way more aggressively and murderous than "necessary", whatever that means. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5904899-trump-ne...
The well publicized disagreements are just diplomatic cover. The USA can look tough. Israel might back off for a little bit. Everyone looks good for a moment. Reason has prevailed. Then it'll all go back to Israel's criminal "gaza policy" in South Lebanon, continuing the wanton murder of 1000s of civilians under the guise of "they use children as shields". Well yeah, it's endless guerilla warfare and now hezb has drones. Diplomacy is the only way.
New blackmail material in case Trump starts to turn on them?
Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon and doesn't fight to the last American in Iran
> Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon
Sure he does. They did it today!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0g8jymg92o
Trump doesn't let?
Trump is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room of any negotiation he's in. He's weak at best.
combat is a dynamic situation, if you have no idea what its participants can/cant/will/wont do, you cant formulate prevailing tactics.
situational awareness is best when first hand, as someone may be lying to you, or may not even know what they are doing in the first place.
I mean, they did just start a war with iran as a joint venture with trump.
I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.
> A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that it is “completely false” that Israel spies on the U.S. “Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials,” the spokesperson said. “Israel intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated.”
Not even a teeny weeny bit of spying on your allies?
They want to spy on the enemy, but they need to spy on everyone to know who is the enemy, obviously
Where did it say they consider the US an ally?
I don’t think it said anything about countries
Strange, I thought this was well known. See the leadership of most prominent tech companies.
Like him or not, Kiriakou has been saying for years that Israel is the biggest threat for spying.
I’m confused isn’t there a bill to merge Israel and US intelligence/military together in various ways?
I’m more confused by your username. Wow.
I believe it’s in reference to the humor TV show Letterkenny which has a beer brand called Puppers. Characters on the show often ask for another fucking puppers.
It's important to not frame this as a US vs Israel thing. Israel is, at best, the last of the Western world's settler colonies, and as such, is serving a purpose, a so-called landed aircraft carrier. [0]
The fact that there is tensions in the government regarding Israel means that the entities that found value in Israel are losing out to those that don't. So-called America-first powers no longer see 1st-tier support of Israel as in the interests of the US.
This will not go well with Zionists, who are still supported by massive backing and financial interests. They will spend a LOT of money to keep Israel the US's "top ally" despite it being no such thing in any meaningful way. Israel is a tool of the Western imperial forces.
The fact that this story is breaking means that Zionism is getting more-and-more toxic to people in power.
[0] https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircra...
Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward.
> Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward
Or at least starting with ceasing financial aid to Israel. If they want our weapons, they should have to pay for them. This has broad, bipartisan support in a way sanctioning Israel doesn't yet.
if your boss suddenly asks you to carry a pager, do not accept it.
Trump already accepted a gold pager from his boss (Bibi).
I wish I was joking.
I had a few GS15s sit down with me in 2019 and explain to me directionally the vibe on Israel. Changed my viewpoint forever.
For ~50 years America has subcontracted to Israel a portion of its intelligence operations and sometimes largely for plausible deniability, other times because we cannot spy on our own citizens - the last part wasn't said explicitly - but what I could grok.
IMHO, the Israeli apparatus has gone far off the reservation in their operations and have lost favor in the past 5 years, especially in DC.
Israel's intelligence apparatus has historically participated in cleaning dirty narco cash via affiliates to finance intelligence operations back home (mostly thorugh hapoalim, safra, leumi, and signature bank), sold hacking tools to narcos, running guns, cleaning blood diamonds, and running kompromat where they deemed it is needed.
Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides probably wouldn't have happened to the stunning degree if the Israelis weren't illegally selling munitions into both. Also hard to get clarity if they were doing this as our subcontractors or going off the reservation.
Signature Bank's collapse was a sign that your local Israeli-intelligence agency linkedin money laundering apparatus was going to have volatility that there would be volatiliy in the middle east.
There was a time in the 90's onwards where one could wlak into signature, hapoalim, leumi, or safra with 10M in narco cash and get it cleaned, or so I'm told. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/19/finally-the-us-is-busting-is...
2023: 500k Israelis protesting against Netanyahu, blood diamonds going down in value b/c of lab grown diamonds, and the implosion of their money laundering apparatus cornerstone (Signature bank) probably was a positive signal for disruption in the Israeli way of life in mid 2023.
The large question at play amongst the GS15s that I've heard murmured in DC is if America should subcontract security operations to a non-AUKUS passport holders, and Israel is the vendor in question.
A lot of CIA seems bifurcated on their viewpoint of Israel. No idea when that happened.
Our relationship with Israel costs us $10-$20/barrel in increased fees and 50B-100B/yr to have our military in the region.
One thing that is fascinating - the Israelis are getting blamed for Iran right now - but the Hormuz volatility greatly increases their cost of living - and we are the greatest beneficiary.
We are the largest producer of nat gas, helium, methanol, LNG, and Oil.
I think the "hormuz volatility" has a terminating condition - APAC buying these US products in larger sizes. As it was explained to me, the reason the prices aren't 150 is because while maritime stuff is problematic - the surrounding 5 countries to Iran have ways to get the energy via pipeline and power line.
World is a complex place, they're our subcontractor for now....no clue if they will be in the future but the trend is no.
I really dislike when a tiny fraction of the conspiracy theories become true since it validates people who believe in them. But I have to admit I do have one of my own, pegasus and related spyware can gain a lot of power over politicians i.e. blackmail which makes me think about how much of our politics are based solely on the fact that politicians often find themselves exploiting their powers and then possibly getting caught by spyware turning them into somewhat of a tool.
I don't believe blackmail is the most effective thing. The problem with blackmail is that even if you do as the blackmailer says, they still have the threat hanging over you forever. That increases the risk that they do something desperate.
What is effective, isn't blackmail, but complicity. Doing bad things together. Then you get a shared interest. The people Epstein had blackmail on, knew that he wouldn't use it casually, because after all there would be no way to use it without implicating himself. But if he were desperate, he might. So the victims had an interest in keeping Epstein not desperate.
So it's the bad things they do together which is dangerous. Even things they do in full view of the public can work, because the threat isn't necessarily that the public finds out, it's that if one is held accountable, then all are at risk.
I think what made Epstein effective was balancing the blackmail with favors for complying. If all you do is get dirt on people, eventually it will fail. But if you give them something too, they are less resentful.
[flagged]
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Also, please don't use quotes to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's an internet snark trope, and thus breaks the "Don't be snarky" guideline too.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Astounding to watch the mental gymnastics at play.
It’s like how Israeli lobbying orgs state that “claiming Zionist orgs control the media is antisemitism”, and then the solution is literally “we should use our contacts & supporters in the media to stop this kind of rhetoric”. Beautiful.
It's mostly about X conspiracy theory turned out to be true, so the Y conspiracy must be true! The fact that it even has to be a conspiracy theory that later gets validated is what annoys me, asking questions is okay, claiming conspiracy as fact is not.
Thinking that Israel potentially spies on the US government is not what anyone reasonable would call a conspiracy theory.
ask AI with internet access disabled aka: the aggregate of the entire internet. every single ai, chinese included will call it antisemitism.
People were smeared regularly for suggesting this less than a decade ago. You are being tripped up by recency bias since mainstream media started reporting on it.
What is and isn't considered a conspiracy theory changes very rapidly. There are a lot of things that today are considered common sense that 10 years ago would be considered a fringe conspiracy theory.
I hate that people will take “political blackmail is real” and jump to “the moon landing wasn’t real”
Do you blame them? If a global ring of elite pedophiles turned out to be true in spite of all the gaslighting and denial, then why couldn’t the moon landing also be a conspiracy?
Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)
Why must all conspiracy theories be bucketed together as if it's a single entity and culture. Conspiracies are real and as old as time, and treating any analysis or discussion about them as part of a greater crackpot culture just acts as cover for real ones. In fact there is evidence that the CIA is behind some of the crackpot theories to muddy the water.
I've heard very few if any "conspiracy theorists" talk about sexual blackmail because it's boring. The appeal of a conspiracy is that it grabs people's attention. And there are certain types of attention whores who will spout theories about flat earth, or fake moon landing, because it gets them instant attention and engagement. This is what I think the GP meant, that s/he hates that these people were "right" about politicians being compromised.
We are all fooling ourselves if we don't consider that Israel is interfering in our elections too.
AIPAC publicly brags about this.
https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/aipac-says-it-was-pro...
https://www.reddit.com/r/illinois/comments/1ry8tha/aipac_ope...
The Thomas Massie situation is extremely suspicious.
Every Big Tech company employs hundreds of "former" Israeli spies - Google just brought on another 900 via their acquisition of Wiz (to add to their existing 6000).
Well, I for one can’t imagine someone more qualified to work in content moderation at Meta than someone who spent his or her formative years murdering unarmed children in the Gaza Strip. These companies need morally grounded, paragons of decency to set the example for us all.
These threads are always fun.
The mental gymnastics of the Israeli "splainers" will never fail to amaze me. Israelsplainers perhaps.
I want to say that it's just Netanyahu who needs to go away but it's actually much, much more than just him. The tide is shifting methinks and rightly so (and finally).
President Trump has written a strongly worded check to Netanyahu in response (according to The Onion)
It's the most reliable source of news these days.
Seems legit.
Is even dumber than that.
Funds for Israel flow. Trump was yelling expletives down the phone at Netanyahu this week. Trump has been leading an Israeli war.
It’s dizzying, and it’s almost as though there is a lack of sound minds involved.
Has the US ever been easier to manipulate or spy on?
or more likely, like we the public do not have the full context of whats going on behind the scenes.
Based on what we _do_ know, I have serious doubts that this admin could keep a secret if they wanted to.
Yeah, I have to imagine Donald Trump has better intel and is making wise, measured, well-informed decisions beyond the abilities of your average HNer.
If we assume everything you say here is true, why is the US in such a bind with reopening the straits? The risk of Iran behaving exactly like this has been understood for decades. The attack was not a a wise, measured move.
This was (I thought) very obvious sarcasm, the man is an easily manipulated buffoon.
I did initially, then decided it wasn't.
I'll go recalibrate my detector!
Where is the proof that Iran was going to attack the US? I mean real proof and not just saber rattling.
The Snowden disclosures revealed that the US was regularly spying on Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, the EU, and the UN. Also of course the CIA was spying on Congress.
One can only imagine that many of these countries were also spying on us in various capacities, albeit with fewer resources. Israel is a bigger concern because they're extremely good at it, but I'm sure it's nothing new.
From the article:
>While it is commonplace for allies and adversaries across the globe to spy on each other, the current and former U.S. officials said Israel’s recent efforts have gone well beyond what is typical and expected espionage.
How many of those countries openly lobby politicians in USA though?
Every single one.
Do you’ve proof for that? On the other hand, AIPAC is out there for anyone to see
Ah, the whole, "Everyone does it, why are you picking only us?"
They used to for their warcrimes, genocide, apartheid, and literally every other thing they are guilty of.
They literally merging US military with Israel lol
I remember when orange people would flag your comments whenever you mentioned Mossad spying on people
Mazel Tov!
Didn't Trump recently ban Sean Strickland for critisizing Israel?
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/sean-strickland-says-hes-b...
Trump is like the ultimate tool of corruption - whether it is Russia or Israel or whoever, you name it. Dude flops to the highest bidder. No wonder US oligarchs are currently controlling the USA.
This is pathetic. Raising this? This is the level of "intelligence" you get when you pretend to remove all DEI/wokeness and just leave the ones that cater to you. Pathetic.
Israel doesn't really need to spy on the US. They can just ask Kushner.
Israel would be deeply impacted by the results of the negotiations, so is this surprising or unexpected? Any nation including the US would most likely do the same in a similar scenario over what is considered to be almost existential negotiations.
It would be a massive scandal if any of our other allies were conducting this level of spying on our country's senior leadership, for the sole purpose of manipulating their decision processes to the foreign ally's benefit. Israel needs to learn to play by the rules.
From its start Israel's existence has been about not playing by the rules. The days are numbered for Israel because it's not and never has been a sustainable enterprise and its exploitation of the American people and US taxpayer money is catching-up to it faster than it can damage control it away or come-up with more and more creative ways to pay people to call label criticism of Israel a hate crime.
It's sustainable as long as it's neighbours keep being so corrupt and oppressive that their GDP (total, not just per capita) can't even keep up with a country 10x smaller than them. Israel literally has a larger GDP than Egypt and Iran combined, and not because Israel is doing anything special (GDP per capita there is less than e.g. Australia or the US), but because Egypt and Iran's military dictatorships are incredibly economically destructive.
Israel has a modern military and 200+ nuclear weapons that they would absolutely use in a last resort scenario (like all countries would). They are not going away anytime soon, nor are their days numbered.
Like geez, we can't even get rid of North Korea, how are people expecting to successfully destroy a nuclear armed power without getting everyone else in that area killed? Its delusional.
Unlike North Korea, Israel is highly globally economically integrated. I’ve only ever seen anti-Zionists propose defeating the state the same way the last apartheid state (and Israel’s nuclear weapon development partner) was: a mix of extreme economic and diplomatic pressure.
Oh, does it apply when the US spies on Europe too? Or only when it's against the US?
Dude, the Epstein scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. It goes way deeper than that
I don't think we can assume that easily that it's perfectly normal to spy on allies, especially when one ally is the biggest military power in history, & their direct sole protector
The US has consistently spied on allies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_espionage_in_Aus...