Useful commentary from the ground from Dimitri Lascaris
Hat tip to RaskolnikovX on TLN
Israel would appear to be getting more than it bargained for. As Lascaris points out Iran is a less tangible target than Israel, whose assets and population centres are concentrated in a small area.
It’s hard to see Israel doing well out of this in the medium to long term.
However the calculation has to include the US involvement. Nobody believes claims the US is not involved already; armaments, refuelling, intelligence and reconnoissance at least. Lascaris reckons they may be contributing missiles from submarines. But this is of limited value and as the video shows Iran has fearome hypersonic missiles that can hardly be stopped.
So what is the US game plan? It doesn’t make sense to permit/encourage Israel to bring about a war in order for it to suffer catastrophic damage or even just get its face pasted in a short war.
The only plan that makes sense (if there are plans in the US, let alone sense) is for the US to be “brought in” publicly on some pretext that Israel is facing existential attack. This would allow it to inflict much more severe damage on Iran, which might feel it has no choice but to attack US bases and assets in the ME. After that everything is ablaze.
Something else Lascaris touched on is Israel’s nuclear option. Mad as this is it’s maybe not madder than the current Israeli regime, headed by Netanyahu, whose jail threat may have influenced the timing of its assault on Iran, and which will likely resume after the war stops, particularly if Israel is badly damaged - why should Israelis be grateful for this kind of ‘protection’?
It seems to me the worse it gets for Israel the shorter the fuse wire gets for Israel and the US, and thereby for the wider vicinity and maybe, given the importance of Iran to China and Russia (which Lascaris spelled out in the video), even the world.