Israel Bombs Tehran

Post Reply New Topic

Y-Yes?

technically the Arabs should also give back the entire north Africa back to the Maghrib, Berber and Nubian peoples.

President Donald Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes on several nuclear facilities in Iran has divided Americans and exposed fault lines within the coalitions of both parties, according to an NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey.

Among U.S. adults, 45% oppose the airstrikes, versus 38% who support them. An additional 18% of Americans said they neither support nor oppose the strikes, illustrating how fluid the situation is.

While this survey was in the field from Monday through Wednesday, Iran launched a retaliatory missile barrage at a U.S. military site in Qatar. Trump then announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, chastised both countries for appearing to break the terms and then congratulated them for stopping attacks. Meanwhile, questions remain about the ultimate consequences of the U.S. strikes, including exactly what damage they did to Iran’s nuclear program.

Support for the airstrikes divided predictably along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 77% oppose the airstrikes, with 61% strongly opposed. In a near-mirror image, 78% of Republicans support the airstrikes, with 60% strongly supporting them.

Independents are much more divided, with 45% opposing the airstrikes, 21% supporting and 34% who neither support nor oppose the move — almost twice the share of the overall population who took the neutral position.

The lead-up to the strikes on Saturday exposed a split in the Republican Party between those with isolationist tendencies in the MAGA wing of the GOP and those with more hawkish, traditionalist Republican Party foreign policy positions. A testy exchange between right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, illustrated the divide, with Carlson forcefully arguing that attacking Iran would betray the president’s “America First” promises.

But while there is a split among Republicans in the poll, it is an exact inversion of the public debate between prominent pro-Trump figures.

While all Republican factions support the airstrikes, respondents who identify with the MAGA movement are significantly more supportive of them than those who identify as traditional Republicans. Though there are some high-profile dissenters on Iran within the MAGA movement, the movement's rank and file is firmly in favor of the strikes.

Fully 84% of Republicans who identify with the MAGA movement support the strikes, including 70% who strongly support them. In contrast, 72% of Republicans who identify themselves more as supporters of the party support the strikes, with 49% strongly supporting them.

What happens next
While more Americans oppose the airstrikes than support them, a majority (60%) also support a continuation in military action if Iran’s nuclear program remains intact. Initial intelligence assessments indicate that the strikes only set Iran’s nuclear program back three to six months, though it will take more time to make a final assessment. Trump and his administration have pushed back against those conclusions.

Overall, 26% of Americans say that the U.S. should consider all options for future military action, including the use of ground troops. A slightly higher 34% say they support continued military operations, but only through airstrikes. The remainder of Americans (41%) believe the U.S. should not take further military action in Iran.

The question of how to proceed with military action in Iran also splits the Democratic coalition, with a large divide between those who identify themselves more as supporters of the party versus those who identify themselves more as supporters of the progressive movement.

Among progressives, 75% say the U.S. should not take any further military action in Iran. Meanwhile, supporters of the traditional wing of the Democratic Party are nearly evenly split, with 54% saying that no further action should be taken, and 45% supporting some degree of further action if Iran maintains its nuclear program. Nearly one-fifth — 19% — of traditional Democrats believe that the U.S. should consider all options, including the use of ground forces.

Tempering this support for continued military action in Iran is a deep concern about the conflict escalating into a broader regional conflict in the Middle East. A full 78% of Americans are very or somewhat concerned about the conflict escalating. This includes 55% of Republicans, 83% of independents and 95% of Democrats.

The role of Congress
Members of Congress from both parties have questioned the legality of Trump’s decision to launch the military strikes on Iran. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., called the strikes unconstitutional, and he had joined with Democrats to introduce a bipartisan resolution before the attacks to block such action without congressional authorization. (He later said that the cessation of hostilities after the strikes would remove the need for a vote on the resolution.)

A majority (60%) of Americans say that Trump should have received congressional authorization before launching the strikes.

While responses to this question were deeply divided along partisan lines, 19% of Republicans agreed that Trump should have received congressional approval first. And 92% of Democrats agreed with the need for authorization, as did 71% of independents.

The Arab conquest was more like an "imperial cultural dominance+assimilation" rather than "demography replacement". The proof? The DNAs.

From the perspective of the top ranks of the Israel Defense Forces, this time there is no doubt: Israel concluded the round of war against Iran with a clear victory. Severe damage was inflicted on the Iranian nuclear project and the country's missile systems, and the leadership in Tehran, which lost many of its senior figures, also lost the relative sense of confidence with which it acted in the region.

The IDF and the Mossad achieved the goals that were set for them at the start of the campaign: creating conditions to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state and improving Israel's strategic situation. The achievements were attained faster than originally estimated, and with far fewer losses than the early scenarios predicted.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir isn't comparing the present era to the time of the War of Independence and isn't expecting any victory parades. But he does know that in the past two weeks the army, under his command, carried out the most remote and complex operation in Israel's history while thwarting a potential existential threat.

The security cabinet approved the operation for the military with the knowledge that this time, the Israeli public wouldn't be able to absorb another failure. Since the cease-fire took hold, the General Staff sees the campaign as the start of an opportunity to achieve a larger and more ambitious goal. The window has been opened for the possibility to also end the regional war in the arena in which it started – the Gaza Strip – with the prospect of resolving the saga of the hostages.

As a dispute builds over the scale of Israel's and the United States' achievements, we are again entering the familiar, and dangerous, Bermuda Triangle that intertwines politics, intelligence and media. It was important for U.S. President Donald Trump to frame the one-time attack on the Fordow nuclear facility as an unprecedented success.

When the American media quickly relied on a preliminary interim intelligence report and downplayed the scale of the damage, Trump recruited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was the origin of the extraordinarily unusual announcement by the Atomic Energy Commission in Israel (which was actually issued by the White House) and afterward, Zamir's statement about the severe damage to the nuclear facilities.

In practice, Israel's confidence about the results concerns some of the sites that were bombed, but not all of them. The optimism stems from the estimated cumulative damage, which isn't limited to sites and centrifuges but also includes the assassinations of the most senior scientists who were working on the nuclear project. As for the American bombing of Fordow, there isn't enough information yet.

There is no doubt that the physical damage to all the sites is severe, but it's also clear that the project wasn't totally obliterated. First, more information is needed to perform a confident analysis; and second, there are "softer" issues here relating to the mood around Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Israel and the United States don't conclusively know what happened to the 408 kilograms (900 pounds) of 60 percent enriched uranium. It's also difficult for them to assess whether the failure in the war will push Khamenei to order the remaining scientists and generals to cross the last red line and conduct a test at a primitive nuclear facility to declare: This is where we are.

Other problematic scenarios remain. Iran could return to the negotiating table but persist with a stubborn policy of foot-dragging and lies. And Trump is liable to lose interest in the nuclear episode, declare victory and move on. The man is built for sprints, not a marathon, precisely when many experts are saying that it is of the utmost importance to reach an agreement that will lock the Iranians into commitments under supervision, for years ahead.

Part of Israel's achievement lies in its success in assaulting the regime's flagship initiatives, on which hundreds of billions of dollars were spent in the past few decades: the nuclear project, missiles and regional influence. It will be difficult to maintain air control over Iran during a cease-fire, but 12 days of attacks proved that the air route to Iran is open and that currently, the regime has no ability to defend itself.

Of all the astonishing events of recent weeks, it's worth recalling again what happened this past Tuesday. Trump happily declared a cease-fire, only to awaken before dawn and discover that Iran had stubbornly gone ahead and launched two more missiles and dozens of drones at Israel, and that the latter was deploying for a fierce response.

Twenty bomb-laden planes were already on their way to Iran. But then the president intervened. He called Netanyahu and ordered him to stop the planes. The aircraft simply did a U-turn and dropped part of the payload on radar in northern Iran. With Israel calling itself a regional power this week, it's also worth remembering this element of the balance of forces.

On Thursday the army held a briefing for journalists on the campaign against Iran. The officers were very cautious not to be caught out again as arrogant, and not to clash with the political decision-makers (Netanyahu wasn't even mentioned). Some of those who took part in the briefing were also at the helm on October 7, 2023. For the first time, after no few meetings with them since the massacre, it was possible here and there to detect the flicker of a smile.

Sinwar's failure
The Iranian failure against Israel and the United States, whose scale is still being assessed, sends us back to the act that started the present war: Hamas' decision to launch a terror attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7.

At the beginning of this week, journalist Ben Caspit published in the newspaper Ma'ariv the full text of the message that the Hamas' leaders in the Strip – Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa – sent to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah a few hours before the start of the massacre. (None of the four is still alive; all were assassinated by Israel during the war.)

n the message, the three Palestinians urge the Lebanese cleric to join the campaign, apologize for not having shared the planned date with him (Hamas rightly feared a leak within Hezbollah) and explain their considerations.

Interestingly, in contrast to what has been reported since then, the reasons terror organizations' leaders give for their decision to attack focus on religious provocations by the extreme-right parties in Netanyahu's coalition, particularly on the Temple Mount. There is no mention of the rift in Israeli society over the regime coup, the protest movement against the coup and the tempest that was brewing in the IDF.

This week Shas leader Arye Dery described the October 7 massacre and the developments of the war in its wake in religious terms, from the perspective of God's relationship with the Jewish people. Like other leading figures in the coalition, he also displayed appalling insensitivity when he talked about the "miracles" that had occurred.

But to a certain degree, and despite the horrific toll of the massacre, things could indeed have been even worse. Sinwar and his associates embarked on their path without full coordination with Iran and Hezbollah, who knew only the general pans for an attack, and when the offensive capabilities of the region's radical axis weren't fully developed. If they had waited two more years, the scale of the damage in the multi-arena war could have been incalculably greater.

This is where Nasrallah's hesitation also enters the picture. On the day after the massacre, he allowed his men to fire only antitank missiles and short-range rockets at army bases and civilian communities along the border. Nasrallah's decision not to join the fighting in full force during the first hours enabled the General Staff and Northern Command to organize effectively on the Lebanese front, deploy three divisions there and deflect the danger of parts of the Galilee being captured.

We know what followed. The fighting in the north escalated gradually until the Israeli decision to mount an offensive, in response to the killing of 12 children by a Hezbollah rocket in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights last July.

Even then, many in Israel were fearful of an all-out war with Hezbollah and hoped that the American mediator, Amos Hochstein, would succeed in cobbling together a deal to prevent that eventuality. However, the mediation efforts failed, and in September Israel launched the "beeper attacks" and then assassinated Nasrallah and most of his organization's top personnel.

In October, the IDF conquered south Lebanon, encountering negligible resistance, and decimated Hezbollah's bunkers. In November the Shi'ite terror organization was compelled to accept an agreement that was effectively a surrender.

But as Dery enthuses over miracles and Netanyahu takes pride in his far-seeing wisdom, both ignore the critical significance of Nasrallah's decision. It's best not to lie to ourselves: The IDF's deployment in the north was also inadequate against Hezbollah, a stronger foe than Hamas.

And in Lebanon too, the army prepared for limited scenarios that would have been no match for Hezbollah's plans and true capabilities, had they been implemented. Even the containment policy, which ignored a trend of creeping escalation by the enemy on the border, was similar in both arenas. It turns out that on the eve of October 7, preparedness in the north was no better than in the south.

Israel's blindness in the face of the two massive terrorist armies that sprang up along its borders in Lebanon and in Gaza was collective, encompassing the entire political spectrum. It stemmed in part from a fear of getting swept into a war with Iran and the radical axis. In the end, Israel dealt with it when it was left with no other choice – and then it turned out that the lengthy, elaborate preparations it had made produced results.

The initiative was another critical element. Hamas found an unprepared IDF. Meanwhile, Israel chose when to surprise Hezbollah and Iran after it, even though in all three cases, there was enough intelligence that should have warned the side taken by surprise about what lay in store for it. This isn't a question of a deficient assessment about one foe (Hamas) and an excessive assessment about other foes (Hezbollah and Iran). It's a matter of planning, initiative and choosing the time.

Khamenei also made critical mistakes. Like Nasrallah, he preferred to observe Hamas from the side and not commit to active involvement in the war when Israel was in an inferior position. Then, last April, following the assassination of an Iranian general in Damascus, he decided to respond with a heavy barrage of missiles and drones against Israel from Iran itself. The rationale was that the assassination had occurred in a consular facility. That offensive was largely thwarted, but the exchange of blows resumed last October.

The Iranians didn't attribute sufficient importance to the fact that Israel's counterattacks destroyed a considerable portion of their air defense system. On the contrary, they accelerated their nuclear project. When Trump decided to return to negotiations on a new nuclear agreement, Iran jerked him around him with excuses and time-wasting tactics, ignoring the 60-day deadline he had set. The result was the Israeli offensive, followed by the American attack.

For his part, Netanyahu is now trying to retroactively write a new narrative that will place him in a flattering light. October 7 is presented as a small glitch in history, which in any case was the responsibility of generals and intelligence personnel who have been replaced (if only he'd been woken up in time!). According to the updated account, which Netanyahu made a point of disseminating last week in an "interview" with the Bibi-ist Channel 14, already on the second day of the war, he promised "to change the Middle East," and now he has fulfilled his promise.

Writing in the Seventh Eye, an "independent and investigative magazine," according to its website, Shabi Gatenio noted that Netanyahu is drawing on a happenstance remark he made in a conference call on the third day of the war with heads of local authorities in the south.

In reality, as former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and others have attested, and as is evident from the few videos the Prime Minister's Office issued in the first days of the war, Netanyahu looks stunned and frightened, and was far from formulating a comprehensive plan for victory.

Channel 12 News' Amit Segal told The New Yorker this week that October 7 was "Israel's Pearl Harbor" and that Netanyahu recovered from it to achieve a historic victory over Iran and its proxies, as the United States did at the end of World War II. To me, it looks as if the development was less planned and calculated than what's being presented by the prime minister (with the exception of his long occupation with the Iranian threat) and that, in any case, despite the cease-fire, the campaign is far from over