The neoconservatives who orchestrated the disastrous wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya — and who were never held accountable for the profligate waste of $8 trillion taxpayer dollars, as well as $69 billion squandered in Ukraine — look set to lure Americans into yet another military fiasco with Iran.
Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Afghanistan. Iran is not Lebanon. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Syria. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is the seventeenth largest country in the world, with a land mass equivalent to the size of Western Europe.
It has a population of almost 90 million — 10 times greater than Israel — and its military resources, as well as alliances with China and Russia, make it a formidable opponent.
Iran launched retaliatory attacks Saturday on Israel following waves of Israeli strikes that hit nuclear facilities and killed several top Iranian military commanders and six nuclear scientists. There have been dozens of explosions over the skyline in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
There is video footage of at least one large explosion on the ground in Tel Aviv from an apparent missile strike and reports of other explosions in some half dozen sites in and around Tel Aviv.
“Our revenge has just started, they will pay a high price for killing our commanders, scientists and people,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters. The official added that “nowhere in Israel will be safe” and that “our revenge will be painful.”
“They think it’ll be an easy war,” said Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and member of British intelligence (MI6) who spent decades in the Middle East. He told me of the neocons when I interviewed him.
“They want to reassert American power and leadership,” he said. “They feel that every so often throwing a small country against the wall and smashing it up is good for this.”
These neocons, bonded with the Israeli leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, he went on, “will not tolerate any rival power, any challenge to American leadership and American greatness.” They will create facts on the ground – a war between Israel and Iran – that will “pull Trump into a war with Iran.”
You can see my interview with Crooke here.
While Iran’s air force is weak, with many of its fighter planes decades old, it is well supplied with Russian air defense batteries and Chinese anti-ship missiles, as well as mines and coastal artillery.
It can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint that facilitates the passage of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply. This would double or triple the price of oil and devastate the global economy.
Iran has a large arsenal of ballistic missiles it can unleash on Israel, as well as on American military installations in the region. While initial waves can be intercepted, repeated attacks would swiftly deplete the Israeli and U.S. air defense stockpiles.
Israel is not equipped to endure a war of attrition, such as the eight year conflict between Iran and Iraq that ended — despite U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s regime — in a stalemate, or as in Israel’s 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon that eventually forced it to withdraw in May 2000, after repeated losses suffered from Hezbollah.
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