That is true when viewed from one angle. But when viewed from another you are asking Israel/Bibi to leave a massively direct attack on the Israeli homeland without a response. This "well Iran has gotten their little pushback out of their system so just let it be" mindset has its limits. Irans pushback was a major attack on Israel. And then there is the argument that they are already up to their arses in dealing with the results of a major attack from Hamas- as a result of their failure to take more aggressive action against them earlier on. None of this would be happening, nor in Ukraine, nor in Taiwan to come without Biden pre-broadcasting that "a little incursion" might be okay. You are lapping up the idea that a little incursion by Hamas or Iran might be okay and has been okay. Not working out so well. Possibly they need to be squared away more firmly. It's Bibi's and Joe's war- not mine.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Iran just made a big mistake. Israel shouldn't follow https://www.wral.com/story/thomas-f...big-mistake-israel-shouldn-t-follow/21380315/ The sound within Iran and the Resistance Network on Sunday morning is that sound you hear from your car's GPS after a wrong turn: "Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating." It would be easy to be dazzled by the way Israeli, American and other allied militaries shot down virtually every Iranian drone, cruise missile and ballistic missile launched at Israel on Saturday and conclude that Iran had made its point — retaliating for Israel allegedly killing a top Iranian commander operating against Israel from Syria — and now we can call it a day. That would be a dangerous misreading of what just happened and a huge geopolitical mistake by the West and the world at large. There now needs to be a massive, sustained, global initiative to isolate Iran — not only to deter it from trying such an adventure again but also to give reason to Israel not to automatically retaliate militarily. That would be a grievous error, too. Iran has a regional network, and Israel needs a regional alliance, along with the U.S., to deter it over the long run. So there must be a major diplomatic and economic consequences for Iran, with countries like China finally stepping up: When Tehran fired all those drones and missiles, it could not know that virtually all of them would be intercepted. Some were shot down over Jerusalem. A missile could have hit Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest shrines. (You can see pictures online of Iranian rockets being intercepted in the skies right over the mosque.) Another could have hit the Israeli parliament or a high-rise apartment house, causing massive casualties. In other words, we are talking about an escalation without precedent in the long-running, tightly contained, shadow war between Iran and Israel that had almost exclusively been limited to targeted Israeli strikes against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard units in Lebanon and Syria — where they have no business being in the first place — and Iran retaliating by having its Lebanese proxy militia, Hezbollah, fire rockets at Israel. We’ve also seen Iran smuggling arms and explosives from Syria into Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to be used to kill Israelis and destabilize Jordan — and the Mossad assassinating a nuclear scientist inside Iran. Israel has never launched such a massive missile strike directly at Iran, and Iran had never done so to Israel, either, before this. Indeed, no country had attacked Israel directly since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did with Scud missiles 33 years ago. Without a U.S.-led global initiative to impose sanctions on Iran and further isolate it on the world stage, Iran’s behavior would be tacitly normalized, in which case Israel will most likely retaliate in kind, and we’re on our way to a major Middle East war and $250-a-barrel oil. “The alternative to a wider full-scale regional war, which we don’t want and Israel doesn’t want, cannot be a return to the status quo ante,” said Nader Mousavizadeh, founder and CEO of geopolitical consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners and a senior adviser to Kofi Annan when he was the U.N. secretary-general. A global effort to isolate Iran, Mousavizadeh added, “is the best way to separate the regime from its people, reassure Israel and Israelis of their security and remove the need for further regional military escalation, which would be a gift to Iran and its proxies." It is also the best way to ensure that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel does not drag the United States into a regional war to shore up his own crumbling political base. It is impossible to exaggerate the political-military implications of what just happened. Shortly after the missile strike, President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran issued a statement declaring that the Revolutionary Guard had “taught a lesson to the Zionist enemy.” It sure did, but it may not be the one Raisi thinks. Iran just unwittingly revealed to the whole world that Iran’s government is so penetrated by Western espionage agencies (because so many Iranians hate their own government) that President Joe Biden was able to predict almost the exact hour of attack over a day in advance, and it showed the whole world that Israel and its Western allies have far superior antimissile capabilities than Iran has missile capabilities. As Haaretz veteran military correspondent Amos Harel wrote Sunday: We are talking about “an unprecedented achievement in the history of Israel’s wars — albeit with some help from friends — that largely takes away the main card held by Iran and the axis: drones and missiles. The impressive Arrow system interceptions have garnered most of the attention, but Israeli and American pilots downed hundreds of cruise missiles and drones.” One has to assume that Iran and its proxies have to be both disappointed and unnerved by this turn of events. As Harel added: “The Iranian intention, as evaluated ahead of the attack, was to put on a display of its capabilities with an attack on military targets. An analysis of the areas in which warnings were sounded suggests the target could have been the Nevatim air base in southern Israel. It appears that the Iranians planned to destroy the base and the advanced F-35 fighter jets stationed there, which are the crown jewel of American aid to Israel. Iran failed completely.” Instead, the Iranian attack may have been limited to badly wounding a 7-year-old Israeli Muslim Bedouin girl hit by falling shrapnel. And if that’s how effective Iran’s offense was, its leaders have to now be wondering how good its defenses are — if Israel now chooses to retaliate. Hezbollah has to be asking the same. That may explain why Raisi, after his boast about teaching Israel a lesson, asked (pleaded?) that the U.S. and all other “supporters of the occupying regime … appreciate this responsible and proportionate action by the Islamic Republic of Iran” and not go on the offensive against Iran. Message to the world from Tehran: We were just sending a little warning shot; nothing to worry about here; let’s move on. That is not only because Raisi is worried about his external front. Early this month, Haaretz reported that “Iranian soccer fans in Tehran’s Aryamehr Stadium were asked to observe a minute of silence in honor of the seven members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, including top general Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who were killed in (the Israeli) airstrike on its consulate in Damascus. Instead, spectators began booing and blowing air horns in an apparent act of protest. In a video circulating on social media, fans can be seen loudly interrupting the moment of silence. … In one video that made the rounds on X, fans can be seen shouting, ‘Take that Palestinian flag and shove it up your ass!’” And this is not the first time it’s happened at football matches. Many Iranians understand that the regime’s obsession with destroying the Jewish state is nothing but a costly way to divert the Iranian public’s attention from its murderous crackdown at home against its own people. As this soccer match story indicates, people are growing less afraid to say so in public — especially after the regime has killed an estimated 750 women, girls and men since a nationwide protest uprising started Sept. 16, 2022, after the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Iran’s morality police. Thousands more have been arrested. One reason Iran supports the Hamas war and prefers that Israel remain stuck in Gaza and occupying the West Bank is that it keeps the world and many Americans focused on Israeli actions — rather than on the brutal crackdown against democracy protesters in Iran and on Iran’s imperialist influence in the region, where it uses proxies to control the politics of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen and uses those countries as military bases to attack Israel. No one should think Iran is just a paper tiger. Tehran can still unleash thousands of shorter-range rockets against Israel through Hezbollah — and because some of these rockets have precision guidance, they could do significant damage to Israel’s infrastructure. Iran has bigger missiles in its arsenal, as well. Still, what happened Saturday is ultimately a significant boost for what I call the Inclusion Network in the Middle East (more open, connected countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel and the NATO allies) and a real setback for the Resistance Network (the closed and autocratic systems represented by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq) and Russia. The sound within Iran and the Resistance Network on Sunday morning is that sound you hear from your car’s GPS after a wrong turn: “Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
It is really painful and nauseating to see John Kirby, an Admiral or former one, with full military awareness, spinning absolute bullshit and propaganda in his current role as spinmeister for Biden. He is babbling on about how Iran's attack had little or no impact and this sends a message to Iran that anything they try will not be successful so we should leave it where it is. Just complete and total bullshit. Total. First of all, Iran notified Turkey and Iraq of their planned attack in advance. Knowing full well that the U.S. and Israel would position themselves favorably and be able to fend off the kind of damage that would require a full retaliation- or that was the plan anyway. Kirby knows full frigging way that if Iran wanted to attack or does attack again with the intent of doing major damage, that there will be no notification to anyone in advance. Second. Everyone- even lay people- know how successful drone and missile attacks work. We see it everyday in Ukraine. And the Russians- and anyone watching- knows that the most damage is done when the drones/missiles flood the zone and overwhelm defenses. That is just Drone Attack 101 for crisesake. Iran, however, sent their missiles/drones in sequential firings allowing the Israelis and their allies to pick them off. No one in their right frigging mind thinks Iran will fire in that manner if and when their intent is to truly damage Israel. Fuckhead Kirby knows this 100% and he is lying piece of shit when he launches into the bit about the attack being success for Israel and everyone should feel smugly satisfied that Israel has proven that it can handle whatever Iran wants to . Not surprisingly, Kirby and Austin and Biden are the same pieces of lying shit that repeatedly said that the withdrawal from AFG was an "outstanding success" even though that is total, total lunacy.
Yeah the entire way Iran did this from start to finish... it makes no sense at all. Are their people that isolated from the real world, like folks in NK, that the State media can tell them they made this incredible retaliatory strike in an effort to save face? They may have lots of Western censors in place, but it's certainly not a NK type existence for the masses. It makes no sense. They were pitching underhand softballs in game 7 of the World Series. I'd like to be a fly on the wall at whatever meeting our Joint Chiefs are having about this. It just doesn't add up. Unless, like I posted last week, it was all about gathering ELINT.
I heard there were more like 600 objects launched only for a little under 50% to not even reach a point where they needed to be shot down. The weak Iranian response could be due to their Islamic Republic engineers have to pray five times a day. Israeli engineers have more freedom to be productive.
In the past couple days it appears Iran has admitted that one of their seven that perished near their embassy in Syria had played a significant role in the planning for October 7th. Apparently this is the first admission they were involved. Why would they admit this? Apparently the Islamic regime has to appease about 8% of Iranians who are super hard core Islamo-fascists. This group thought the regimes response was weak. So to appear stronger, the regime made this admission. So now the 60-70% of Iranians who want Israel to destroy the regime's leadership and military installations may get their wish. Apparently only 30% of Iranians are Muslim anymore. As such, in real politik, they are an "occupied" nation by a terrorist organization that just renewed its commitment to crack down on mandatory hijab for women, again, to appease the 8% hardcore suppressionists.
Some thought Israel would not strike Iran directly as the urging of allies. However the he retaliation has apparently started. This might be a strike aimed at Iran's nuclear capability. Israeli missile hits Iran, U.S. officials confirm https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-iran-missile-strikes/ Two U.S. officials confirm to CBS News that an Israeli missile has hit Iran. The strike follows last weekend's retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to respond to. Officials were tightlipped about the location or extent of the Israeli strike. When reached by CBS News, the Israeli Defense Forces had no comment on the attack. The Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said air defenses fired at a major airbase in Isfahan, which long has been home to Iran's fleet of American-made F-14 Tomcats — purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies also reported the sound of blasts, without giving a cause. State television acknowledged a "loud noise" in the area. Isfahan also is home to sites associated with Iran's nuclear program, including its underground Natanz enrichment site, which has been repeatedly targeted by suspected Israeli attacks. However, state television described all sites in the area as "fully safe." Dubai-based carriers Emirates and FlyDubai began diverting around western Iran about 4:30 a.m. local time. They offered no explanation, though local warnings to aviators suggested the airspace may have been closed. Iran later announced it grounded commercial flights in Tehran and across areas of its western and central regions. Loudspeakers informed customers of the incident at Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, online videos purported to show. Iran last weekend launched an unprecedented retaliatory strike against Israel in response to a deadly attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria, which killed seven officers, including two generals, from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran's attack on Israel included 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles, according to the IDF and U.S. officials. None of the drones crossed into Israeli territory before they were shot down by Israel and its allies, including the U.S., the IDF said. Five of the ballistic missiles struck Israel, with four of them hitting Israel's Nevatim Air Base, where Israeli F-35s are based, U.S. officials told CBS News. The officials believe the base was likely Iran's primary target, as the strike against the consulate in Syria is believed to have been carried out by an F-35. The U.S. and other allies of Israel have urged Netanyahu to exercise restraint in any possible response to Iran. U.S. officials have said the country would not participate in any Israeli retaliatory strike. In the aftermath of Iran's attack, which the IDF said caused "very little damage," President Biden pressed the Israeli prime minister, "to think about what that success says all by itself to the rest of the region," according to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
Iran retaliates against itself. Dumbasses! Ship attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels was full of grain bound for Iran, the group’s main benefactor https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthi-rebels-red-sea-attacks-iran-503de70230fba0cd7c992558e2d1b83a