alt Hacker NewsI don't even really understand Israel's game plan here. Iran took a lot of damage but now they control the strait, they have a lot of leverage. Hard to know how it's going to shake out, but how is Israel better off now?
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They’ve massively expanded into Lebanon and Gaza, settlements are continuing to grow at an alarming pace, the Saudis have little choice but to get massively more involved in fighting Iran and their proxies, A less feckless US campaign could have eliminated or greatly weakened Iran’s nuclear program, Bibi’s mostly consolidated all power in Israel… it hasn’t worked out that poorly for Israel.
This was Israel’s last chance to strike on Iran using the US as the munition, because the next Congress and President wouldn’t and Netanyahu (76 years old as of this comment, close to end of male life expectancy) will only live or be in power for so long.
Very similar to Putin (73 years old, as of this comment) making his move against Ukraine when he did. Light cone of potential outcomes and path dependency.
“Old men pulling triggers out of ideology before they’re too weak to.” I argue that, in many ways, extended life expectancy has been a curse in this context. It has allowed unscrupulous people positions of power where great harm is incurred with limited repercussions (if any!), positions of power they would not be in if they had aged out sooner. You can only wait to vote them out, or wait for them to die if you cannot vote them out. Very unfortunate.
Israel didn't really change their position much. Iran was already funding all their enemies.
I suspect (know way to know) Isreal would have been better off attacking Iran alone - they could have sent a message "back off - we can do more harm to you than you can do to us", but sending that message is hard. They tried to send a clearer bigger message, but the problem is the message getting through ended up being "this is the worst that you will do to us and we can endure". The reality is Iran knows the US and Israel won't invade, and so long as that option is off the table Iran can do anything it wants knowing things won't get worse.
Compare to how Bush handled Iraq - months of convincing the world to help him invade (not always successfully, but enough that many people were sending troops). If conditions were sent such that troops really were on the table I would expect Iran to back down (I give it about 60% odds, which means 40% an invasion happens!). Israel would have won in that case, but it wasn't handled like that (there are reasonable odds that the US would refuse the propaganda to invade if that was tried though which means Israel would be back to the previous status quo...).
You probably have to read that last paragraph a dozen times to understand it. I'm not the best writer and it is a complex subject.