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Israel's Dangerous Shadow War with Iran
- leptoniscool 4y agoIs there no de-escalation mechanism? Maybe through the UN?
- guykdm 4y ago[flagged]
- Gordonjcp 4y ago[flagged]
- jjcon 4y ago> There's only one of those two countries that's currently invading another country and conducting genocide. Kanye has entered the chat…
- jacooper 4y agoThis has nothing to do with kanye. Israel is an apartheid occupation conducting genocide, that's a report by Amnesty. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apart...
- jjcon 4y agoRacism is Kanye’s new brand… so yes very Kanye related
- nl 4y agoThe Amnesty report does not accuse Israel of genocide. That's a very specific accusation under international law. The Amnesty report makes a credible case that it is an apartheid system and illegal under international law but they clearly do not find evidence of genocide.
- Larrikin 4y agoIf you don't agree with everything Israel does it means you hate all Jews?
- uoaei 4y agoThey're referring to the Saudis attacking Yemen. At present, on the global stage, Israel/Palestine is not considered two states but rather a single apartheid state.
- digitaloracle86 4y agoIsn't Iran invaded Syria And fought Syrian rebel forces together with Russia to save Assad?
- jacooper 4y agoAt least it didn't say it was its own land, and that all Syrians should be killed
- apple10 4y ago[dead]
- potatototoo99 4y agoIt's that kind of psychotic response that ensures them they need to have nuclear weapons for dissuasion.
- guykdm 4y agoYou obviously don't know much about them, they would completely agree with the religious war against Israel being a core tenant. If WW2 teaches one thing, is that we shouldn't believe what is soothing, but what we see.
- RC_ITR 4y agoThe criticism was about the need for a military strike. When the narrative is that violence against you is a joke, it's easy to want to do anti-social/unambiguously bad things to protect yourself. [1] But anyway, you're not supposed to post things like (nationalistic calls to violence) that on HN - I'd probably delete it while you still have the chance. [1]https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9688222 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=968822...
- guykdm 4y agoI would post the same during the appeasement of Hitler, particularly following the anschluss, which obviously was a grave mistake. The "pragmatic" west has a habit of believing others are as peaceful as it is, later waking up to a horrible reality. Same thing will happen with Iran if we don't wake up now.
- RC_ITR 4y agoWow, what a quick jump to Hitler. I'm curious which military strike to since 1945 has, in your opinion, worked as planned.
- guykdm 4y ago1967 saved us big time. Also we preemptively destroyed Saddam's and Assad's nuclear weapon reactors, someone thinks that was a mistake? a nuclear sadam? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
- hax0ron3 4y agoAs far as I know, nothing about Iran's foreign policy decisions in the last 43 years shows that Iran's government makes foreign policy decisions in a less pragmatic way than the average country. If Iran got nukes, they would almost certainly just use them for deterrence purposes like all other countries have since 1945. Even if they didn't, though, I have no desire to definitely go kill Iranians now just to prevent some hypothetical future deaths of Israelis. If it was up to me I would cut off all US support of Israel tomorrow and let them figure out their own issues. If you personally want to go fight against Iran, there is nothing stopping you. I would rather not get dragged in to it, though, and I would not want my tax money as a US tax payer to go to murdering Iranians for the sake of soothing your bloodlust and/or your fears.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bradleyjg 4y agoThe security council is the only part of the UN with bite and it can only act when there’s such wide consensus that they aren’t necessary.
- 0xDEF 4y ago>Is there no de-escalation mechanism? No. Iran does not recognize Israel's right to exist, even if Israel goes back to pre-1967 borders.
- weatherlite 4y agoInterestingly neither do the radical parts of the Democratic party. Iran just walks the walk as well. It is interesting to me to see an ideological alliance between a radical Muslim movement and a radical left wing movement, I think Israel's "disappearance" is the only thing they agree on.
- wefarrell 4y agoDe-escalation requires willingness. It's convenient for both Israel and Iran to escalate considering they both have hardline governments and growing opposition.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> no de-escalation mechanism? Maybe through the UN? Possibly. Israel and Iran have friends in Moscow, so the usual Sinorussian veto party could be sidestepped. But this would require Russia extending its nuclear umbrella over Iran. That, in turn, gives Putin a say in Iran's extensive extra-territorial meddling. Tehran may figure they can get their own nukes out of Russia for a cheaper price. Tellingly, America has only extended strategic ambiguity to Israel, the same as we give Taiwan, not a red-lined nuclear umbrella like we do to NATO or Japan. This doesn't seem like a problem great powers care to resolve.
- nirav72 4y agoThe UN is just a forum and has very little ability to actually force a de-escalation.
- emptyfile 4y ago[dead]
- orange_joe 4y agoThis article is a joke, it claims that expansion of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is threatened by strikes against Iran by Israel. But the basis of the Israel-Saudi agreement is anti-Iranian. The Saudis would love Israel for attacking Iran more aggressively, effectively doing their dirty work.
- jaboutboul 4y agoThey both have a very strongly vested interest (as does the rest of the world) in not seeing a nuclear Iran. I remember seeing somewhere that Saudi Arabia has also started their own nuclear program, or at least is looking into it.
- andy_ppp 4y agoThey have basically said if Iran gets them they will get them too. This is the whole reason why you don’t want nuclear proliferation, it will be terrible if Iran gets them because so many other countries will also get them. The more countries that have them the more chance for both accidents and terrorism. It’s a small miracle one hasn’t gone off so far given some of the countries that have them!
- nirav72 4y agoMost likely the Saudis will just either outright buy nukes from Pakistan or purchase Pakistani expertise in building their own nuclear weapons program.
- nl 4y agoThis is true. It's widely believed there is an existing agreement that makes this possible. From 2013[1]: > Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery. > Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring." Saudi Arabia funded the Pakistan nuclear program back in the 1970s[2]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24823846 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24823846 [2] https://www.arabnews.com/node/2069831 https://www.arabnews.com/node/2069831 "This was the time when Saudi Arabia opened its doors to Pakistani workers and provided financial aid to the Bhutto regime in order to thwart India’s nuclear ambitions."
- 29athrowaway 4y ago"My imaginary friend is better than yours"
- coryrc 4y agoIt's even self-acknowledged to be the same imaginary friend!
- LegitShady 4y agothis is nonsense. Jews don't believe in the legitimacy of christianity's theft of their holy book or christian holy books, christians dont believe in the koran even if islam claims jesus as an islamic prophet, and islam doesn't believe in the revelations of the bahai even if the bahai claim it to be another revelation after islam. This "its all the same god" is feel good western stuff that has nothing to do with religious adherents of those religions. Nobody believes the next guy's book is legitimate, they just borrow the one before them to take the previous group's legitimacy. It's not the same god, its this massive game of gaslighting everyone is playing that the actual religious people do not play the same way.
- dragonwriter 4y agoCertainly, Jews, Christians and Muslims believe different things about God, that doesn’t mean that they don't see themselves as believers in the same God. > This "its all the same god" is feel good western stuff that has nothing to do with religious adherents of those religions. The joint declaration between the (Roman Catholic) Pope and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar would seem to disagree. [0] Similarly, the many joint declarations between the Vatican and Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which frequently invoke shared faith in the same God and shared Scripture. [1] [0] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-02/pope-francis-uae-declaration-with-al-azhar-grand-imam.html https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-02/pope-francis... [1] https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/documents-and-statements/interreligious/israeli-rabbinate-vatican-commission https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/documents-and-statements...
- 4y ago
- llimos 4y agoI mean, Iran's leadership have literally and publicly called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Several times. I don't think it's an overreaction to at least consider the possibility that they might mean what they say.
- RobotToaster 4y agoExcept that they never said that, because there's no such idiom in Persian.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bhouston 4y agoHere is what I found on this claim: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-ahmadinejad-really-say-israel-should-be-wiped-off-the-map/2011/10/04/gIQABJIKML_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/did-a...
- amanj41 4y agoI have no knowledge of the timeline here so don't know the facts but in any context this is a silly retort.
- uoaei 4y agoBut how else will we tally the points at the end of this debate session? /s
- kps 4y ago“Wiped off the map” was the English translation by the government-run IRIB of Ahmadinejad's famous speech. https://web.archive.org/web/20070708083524/http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=200247 https://web.archive.org/web/20070708083524/http://www.iribne...
- 0xDEF 4y agoThe Iranian government is very open about its goal to destroy Israel. However they also make sure to point out that "destroying Israel" does not mean "kill all Jews".
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- throwawaysleep 4y ago[flagged]
- bhouston 4y ago> Certain civilizations are really only able to comprehend a pile of corpses as a reason to stop doing something. How does one come to that conclusion? That is super extreme, dehumanizing and jingoistic. You are advocating mass death and saying that this civilization deserves it as they understand nothing else. I guess that is why you are doing with a throwaway.
- guykdm 4y agoIt's horrible, but also true. Germany had to be beaten to complete submission, fighting to the last inch until Berlin itself fell. Just recently, ISIS was huge, controlling vast oil reserves. The middle east is problematic to say the least and IRI fanaticism is in the hitler-isis category. The west has built a nice cocoon but this is the world in which we live.
- mrguyorama 4y agoIt's also important to note that even though the west basically caused all these issues in the middle east, that doesn't absolve the countries and people of things they have done of their own accord. I can understand some middle eastern countries saying Israel shouldn't be there, since it was placed their by western fiat basically, but that is not a justification for wanting to nuke them.
- bhouston 4y agoIran isn't about to nuke Israel, rather looking for a MAD outcome. Instead Israel prefers to have freedom of action and avoid a MAD like scenario. Of course it is best for Israel to not have a MAD like scenario so we can play up Iran's evilness for sure...
- 4y ago
- piokoch 4y agoEverything depends on the final result of the Russian invasion on Ukraine. If Russia will manage to enforce peace agreement, something like Minsk deals, that, effectively, would let them keep part of Ukraine and go away with sanctions then whole post 2WW collective security system will be smashed. Everybody will see that you can invade a weaker country, for whatever made up reason, and nothing happens. Everybody will try to posses nuclear weapon, as this is the only effective way of scaring potential enemies. A lot of local conflicts will start. Turkey against Greece. Azerbaijan against Armenia. Hungary might try to bring back their old territories, lost because of Treaty of Trianon (that's why I am so surprised Northern Hungary, sorry, I meant Slovakia, is not so eager to help Ukraine and a lot of people are pro-Russian). Belarus will become part of Russia soon, Kazakhstan will follow, hybrid war against Baltic States will began ("defending" Russian minority, etc.). If Russia will be forced to leave Ukraine and pay contribution we will be back in the World we peacefully lived since 1989, if not, well, interesting times ahead. USA understands this that's why it helps Ukraine, US domination, control over trade, dollar as an only mean to pay for oil, hence, reserve currency for all countries, will be questioned immediately. Asia is looking on Ukraine right now since maybe, maybe it will be time to change patron. Western Europe understands this too, but they dream about "multi-polar world" with Western Europe becoming one of the key players. The crux is you cannot be a key player if you have barely 800 tanks altogether, with an unknown number of those who are not even able to move out of garage (Spain). Multipolar world will not be a nice place to be, it will be a brutal place with competing forces among which Western Europe will need to fight for its position. And this will not be easy. Until new superpower will arise, if this will be China with its mixture of communism and technological control over societies then, we will really miss USA as a hegemony.
- consumer451 4y agoThis is the best interpretation of the geopolitical events which we are living through that I have read on this website. I am astounded that so many intelligent people in the USA and EU fail to grasp the stakes of what is happening in Ukraine.
- hax0ron3 4y ago>Everybody will see that you can invade a weaker country, for whatever made up reason, and nothing happens. I think that most people who make foreign policy decisions in countries around the world already knew that if you are strong enough, you can invade a weaker country, for whatever reason, and nothing happens. This is just plain common sense and has been discussed going back to Thucydides' Melian Dialogue or earlier. And if anyone somehow did not realize that the strong can get away with invading the weak, they should have realized it in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq.
- pseudo0 4y agoA bit surprising that they don't mention Israel's ongoing assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists, which is another component of this "shadow war". https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-fakhrizadeh-assassination-israel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-nuc...