Thursday, July 13, 2006
Next Moves
A second likely course is more aggressive management of Gaza. Given the circumstances, Israel may find itself given a freer hand to address Hamas terrorist leadership and infrastructure. I fully expect Israel to be much more aggressive with its use of air power over the Palestinian territories. The gloves are off.
The next critical decision juncture is how Israel decides to wage war with Hezbollah. Does it pound Lebanon as it did in 1982 (and until 2000) in order to assume an offensive posture against Hezbollah? Or does Israel leapfrog Lebanon and attack Syria, attempting to undermine the intermediate link in the Iran-Syria-Hez axis. This is a difficult question and will involve intense consultation with the US. Since Syria has a defense pact with Iran, widening the war to Syria increases the risk that Iran will enter the war, though it is unclear how Iran might choose to enter it. It could, for instance, choose to attack Iraq. That is the next vital juncture and may take days to sort out.
If Iran does enter the war, how it chooses to enter will be vital in determining the next step for us. Do we enter the war as Israel's ally? And does anybody join us?
This chess game has started, and where it leads is not in any one party's hands.
One observation: I think Iran is orchestrating this escalation, but it may not be their intention to fight any wars, merely to use others as cannon fodder for its objective. What is that objective? People always accuse the US of fighting wars for oil. Well, what if all Iran wants is sky high oil prices? How does it achieve them? Permanent regional instability. And if Hamas, and Hezbollah and Syria are all willing to act as proxies for Iran, what price does this carry for Iran? Not much, as long as they don't push one step to far. Speaking of next moves, oil prices next move is WAY up.
3 Comments:
By 
Fausta, at
Thu Jul 13, 06:12:00 PM:
Slightly off-topic:
As reported in al-Jazeera, Iran and Venezuela joined forces to undermine the US dollar.
Sky-high oil prices are the most obvious, but not only, tactic.
Related post here, with apologies for the shameless self-promotion.
By Final Historian, at
Thu Jul 13, 08:05:00 PM:
High Oil prices would certainly be to Iran's advantage... especially with regards to building up a war chest, "just in case."
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Jul 13, 09:47:00 PM:
I keep seeing posts about "Iran entering the war."
I don't mean to be rude, but have y'all looked at a map? Iran cannot move troops into the Levant without crossing either Turkey (hah!) or Iraq (double hah!) unless they sail all the way around the Arabian Penninsula into the Red Sea, where, if they make it, they will promptly be sunk by the Israeli air force. Not gonna happen.
2nd option, air power. Again, to reach the Levant they would have to cross the Iraq/Jordan/Turkey gauntlet, where, even if their aircraft had the range to make the round trip, the Israelis would shoot them to pieces due to 1) superior aircraft, 2) superior training and quality of pilots, and 3) spot on early warning intelligence, courtesy of the Turkish and US Air Forces.
They might try their luck at buzzing through northern Iraq en route to Syria and hoping that the US doesn't engage them on the way. Also unlikely.
3rd option, missiles, a la Saddam in 1991. This would be a diplomatic disaster on their part with questionable military potential; Israel has installed an anti-missile defense system (called Arrow I think?) and I think the Europeans and other sideliners would freak out. It would be an obvious act of war across 2 to 3 other nations, preventing a typical retaliatory strike as I described above in the 1st paragraph, and a horrific precedent to allow to be established on the international scene. This would all but guarantee those sanctions we keep hearing threatened.
One possibility is that Iran has or will negotiate a deal with the Iraqi government allowing Iranian troops to cross their territory (which means that there's nothing the US can do about it except count them and send pictures to Israel) with the statement, "we're gonna do it anyway so you can either agree or try to stop us." Given the current fragile state of Iraq, I think they just might give in. But this is just speculation. I don't really think that Iran would go so far as to commit troops in the first place; their situation at home is... not ideal.
