Candlelight Vigil for the Middle East

Iran has just launched ballistic missiles at Israel.

Hopefully this teaches Israel a valuable lesson and they promptly move to elect a new government that doesn't bomb embassies for funsies. Maybe the new government will even appoint some generals that are more focused in retrieving hostages than posing with Palestinian women's undergarments.

Major explosions reported in Jerusalem.

That looks bad, or maybe it is exactly what bibi wants? Wasn't he looking for war so he could dodge accountability for other troubles?

It's bad for everyone except Netanyahu and Hamas, for whom it's potentially career-saving. At least for a little while.

It's definitely what the military industrial complex wants.

I still think the best idea is to sort of wall off the middle east, evacuate all the innoicents, and to make the entire area one big real world game of warcraft or civ. Chose a faction, set up your bases, and fight to keep your resources to keep your war machine moving. Occasionally if one faction starts to develop a threatening WMD the game masters will come in and bomb that development tree into the rubble.

Jews, muslims, christians, atheists, witches, and whatever else can just go there and fight if you feel the need. We also have a place to dump our violent criminals.

Just keep their manufacturing and flight capabilities low grade, and we make their research video game levels. This way when they develop the great sky cannon, it is just us that hits a place for them.

https://bsky.app/profile/jysexton.bsky.social/post/3kq2lwnel3j2r

memeber when that young black guy had made a historical peace agreement with Iran.

Problem corrected by old white dudes.

Thanks Biden, Trump, and Bidebibi. This is much better.

So just got done calming my partner (parents and sister still in Tehran) down about this.

From what I can see this is just The Dance.

Israel killed seven Sepah officers including one general. Iran has to do SOMETHING. Their something just happened to be the most interceptable option (didn’t use closer in proxies like Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia militias) and the end result is that one 10 year old Bedouin girl got hit with some shrapnel but will be okay.

200 missiles and drones and the only fucking casualty is a fucking Arab Israeli child.

Ain’t that ironic. God damn century in a sentence.


Anyway, no damage no war. Israel will probably hit some IRGC training camp in the desert and call it a day.

That’s the dance.

In my partners defense The Dance can actually be deadly. In the back and forth over the Soleimani killing Sepah/IRGC shot down their own airplane in paranoia (thought it was a US missile) killing my partner’s favorite uncle (first person they came out to) and his entire family when they were flying back to Toronto after winter break.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-iran-flight-icj-1.6897348

Scoop: Biden told Bibi U.S. won't support an Israeli counterattack on Iran

I will take it. I will admit this is a stabilization action that I did not think Biden would do and he actually pushed back before Bibi makes his decision.

Maybe if he would put some good regulations in on transportation I would consider voting for him.

I am a bit bothered about a lot of things, but not unilatterally supporting Isreal in a revenge attack is a huge plus in my book. Maybe he could get that black guy in there to do some peace work again. What was his name again? Oh yeah, Obama.

Maybe some of these fuckers have gotten the point that overwhelming support for a colonizing zionist state is not a good idea for peace. As for the people of Isreal I want the defense systems to work well for the backlash from their governments violence, and maybe they can calm things down on both sides and start realizing this terrorism from Hamas\IS and the IDF and Netanyahu is just going to keep fucking things up.

Hopefully it doesn't escalate further, but Israel can't continue attacking everyone around it with impunity and then playing the victim whenever anyone shoots back.

At one level, I'm disappointed that the IDF didn't get more of what they badly deserve.

That isn't how stopping the fight ever works because neither of the sides will ever agree on what is deserved.

The real problem will be stopping whatever retaliation both sides will try to get through. The reality is that people on both sides of this fight are going to try to keep on fighting, and expecting all attacks to stop is unrealistic. The leaders of both sides of the conflict need to become entrenched in peace and find those who are working towards war to be the criminals.

Like Anc says, Iran had basically no choice but to respond to the embassy attack, they'd appear extremely weak domestically if they didn't.

The best case scenario right now is that they expected/hoped that most of the drones would be intercepted because they really don't want it to escalate further.

Israel are talking about significant retaliation. That 'best case scenario ' may not stack up. Netanyahu wants this to blow up, remember.

Iranian Foreign Minister say "We notified our neighbors about our attacks against Israel 72 hours before they took place" - this was never an escalation or meant to do anything meaningful.
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https://bsky.app/profile/caponatacommie.bsky.social/post/3kq3nmjeeop2p

Iran notified TURKEY 72 hours in advance. That is basically notifying Israel 71 hours and 59 minutes in advance.

He doesn't want to go toe-to-toe with Iran, end of the day he has a bit of saviour complex hitched to a love of power and not wanting to go to court. All out war with Iran directly won't serve that, all out war with their proxies, on the other hand, would.

He's a very transactional politician - he moaned about "abandoning" Hebron when it suited him, yet signed the Hebron agreement when it suited him. He'll slap you on the back one day, stab you in it the next, just so long as both actions benefit him.

The extreme right, religious nutters and ultra-nationalists, now they want all out war with Iran, and they're what are keeping Netanyahu in power, so we'll have to see if he can navigate that.

The Israeli public are angry, and a majority seem to want retaliation, but they'll cool down over the next few days hopefully.

The Iranians both overplayed their hand and got even less of a result than they expected, so Israel should just consider the matter settled. Iran got punched in the nose, flailed out in response, achieving little beyond saving face. So, time to head back to bar, honour satisfied, and either buy each other a drink, or glower at each other from opposites sides of the pub, not time to get the pool cues to hit other with.

Hopefully Netanyahu can sell that to the more frothy mouthed of his government.

The narrative we seem to be going with is that the Iranian attacks had little or no effect, and that's fine if it helps prevent a full scale war. Not sure it's the full story though.

First, the legal justification for the attacks. These have been justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which allows states to take measures in self-defence against armed attack. This is the same rationale used by the Israelis for their assaults on Gaza and used by just about everyone when they feel like blowing something up. It is, of course, ridiculous. Self-defence against an attack is not the same thing as retaliation, whatever logical contortions lawyers might engage in.
It is unfortunate that this has become the accepted norm - to the point where states invoke Article 51 to justify any manner of response, up to and including genocide in the case of Israel.

Second, while the drones and cruise missiles were intercepted, Iran's hypersonic missiles were not. These all hit their targets, the Nevatim Base and an intelligence HQ in the Golan Heights - which had been used on the attack on the consulate. There are conflicting reports about the level of damage sustained. (It obviously suits the Israelis to say it was light.) But what is now clear is that Iran can saturate the Israeli air defences with junk and hit whatever they like with those missiles. We call this "deterrence".

Third, the response by Israel, the US, UK and Jordan to shoot the stuff down cost well over $1 billion, many multiples of what it cost Iran to launch the attack. This is clearly not sustainable for an Israeli government was a $4 billion budget deficit already. Not to mention that the public in Jordan were already enraged by its governments position and this will further inflame that situation.

Fourth, Iran will have seen exactly how all of these air defence systems work. The very use of them disadvantages Israel in any future strike.

54% of Israelis in a poll yesterday state that they believe that Israel should declare war on Iran. Another 40% support some level of attack. Only 6% said that both countries should move on. We'll see if that drops in time, but that was a massive missile barrage by Iran.

Israel maintains that the IRGC commander that was killed in the attack help plan the Oct 7th attacks with Hamas.

F-35s have been seen landing at Nevatim Air Force Base. It clearly was not significantly damaged in the attack.

So far the only casualty that's been confirmed is a 10 year old Bedouin girl who was hit by fragments.

There is a report of a failed missile destroying a house in Iran.

And Iran's attack violated Jordanian air space.

We also have the first occasion where multiple Arab Muslim nations protected Israel from aggression by another Muslim nation.

And the Saudi Arabian envoy has been going on talk shows saying how this entire affair starting with the Hamas attack in Gaza has been about Iran trying to stop normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, and how that it's merely delayed it.

Hot take: violence is bad and people should stop attacking other people.

Several rumbles out of Tel Aviv that they aren't going to let this pass. They've stated that they will inform Washington of any strike package they make, but clearly that doesn't mean they will listen to Washington who is telling them to cool down. One official suggested that they will show Iran that they have the ability to penetrate their airspace at will and strike deep within the country.

I think the issue is both sides have something to gain from widening this conflict.

Netanyahu wants to have a broad war to be able to continue to ignore the nearly daily calls for his resignation, and have a chance at a victory that will not only help his legacy but help keep him out of prison.

And Khamanei has a similar issue at home, and while his personal situation is better his party's rulership is having great difficulties. Inflation has exploded beyond measure, the Rial is trading at 42,075 to the US Dollar. Huge gas lines were seen in Tehran with people worried about a broader war, evoking memories of gas riots five years ago that led to 300 deaths and thousands of arrests. The culture police have vowed to clamp down on women showing their hair, which last time they did cause unrest. And the normal 'rally around us so we can kill Westerners and/or Jews' is showing considerable fatigue, with Iranian crowds booing these types of speeches repeatedly at football matches.

So an actual strike on Iran would help the ruling Clerics grasp on power as well, unless it was totally overwhelming.

If I was a betting man I'd say we probably haven't seen the end of this quite yet.

The US is likle a shitty bartender at a dive bar with two people about to fight and ordering more drinks. It is great you are going to get another bud light sale, but the destruction that is coming from these two asshole is going to have some real damages, and you are still serving them.

Maybe cotton eye sleepy joe should toss them out like cornpop.

It is great you are doing something joe, but tug that leash a little harder.

https://x.com/lhfang/status/1779642902291116274?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

And right on queue:

https://apnews.com/article/mideast-...drone-attack-aec3627b0b19b42dcafc89a7408dc296

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military chief said Monday that his country will respond to Iran’s weekend attack, but he did not elaborate on when and how as world leaders urged against retaliation, trying to avoid a spiral of violence in the Middle East.

The cycle of tit for tat does not work well in the long run unless your goal is war.

That's such a hot take I was able to make tea with it.

um he does know that Magog's in Quebec right?