Friend of the Blog mike wanted a response to the latest U.S. "fucking around in the Middle East", so here goes:
1) Meh.
2) Well...meh IF this is all it is. Dropping ordnance from the low stratosphere is the ultimate in Rich Man's War. Provided your target lacks similar capabilities? You can pretty much stroll away whistling. I don't see this as much, if any, different than bombing Serbs or Libyans, and all the earlier examples of Aerial Gunboat Diplomacy didn't result in any real military escalation. That sucked for the dead and maimed people within the impact areas, but otherwise? Meh.
3) Now...in terms of "the law of war"? This is obviously criminal, the crime of "making aggressive war" for which we hanged the leaders of Germany and Japan. It's technically "unconstitutional" as well, a violation of Congress' explicit war-making power. Which, as we all know, is as dead as the dodo assuming that the GOP majorities could even be bothered to stop fucking with idiocies long enough to bother.
4) Okay. Now...if this ISN'T all it is - that is, if Tubby wasn't just showing his whole idiot ass when he burbeled about "Make Iran Great Again" - and there's a faction in the Fraudulency Aministration that genuinely wants to put GIs in Tehran? Ohfuckno. THAT's beyond insane. This country couldn't do "regime change" in Iraq, a much smaller and less fractious nation, and after fucking around we found out when the Islamic State emerged from the ruins.
5) My opinion on the whole "Israel is the most utterly worthless "U.S. ally" in history" hasn't changed, either, other than this reinforces the whole notion. That kind of pisses me off, since the original Tzahal of the Six Day War was one of my childhood heroes, and the descent of the tough sabras of 1967 into the thugs of the West Bank checkpoints makes me grieve for everyone involved.
6) Jeffrey Lewis has a nice thread on the technical issues with these strikes, as well: https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3lsageddlpk2l - well worth a look.
So, to sum up, these things are actually one of the less-harmful (to his own nation) examples of Trumpfuckery. Fairly pointless? Yep. Driven by "addled FOX News grampa" energy? Sure. Possibly relating to the limp-dick performance of his Big Beautiful Birthday Perade? Maybe.
The wild card now is "what happens next?"
If the mullah government falls...then what?
Who or what replaces it? I wouldn't bet that Freedom Will Reign; Iran hasn't had decent governance since the Fifties, if that.
And this whole nonsense frankly just hammers home the lessons of Libya and Ukraine versus North Korea and Israel; if you're a smaller nation and you don't want to kiss the ass of (or get pushed around by) a Great Power?
You NEED fucking nukes. Now. Yesterday.
So whoever replaces Khameni, unless they really, really want to kiss Trump and Netanyahu's asses, need to speed-run Khameni's nuke program, which is kind of "the opposite" of what this nonsense is supposed to be about.
But we're going to have to just wait and see "what's next"
Update 6/24: Apparently what's next is "Tubby declares "ceasefire!", and both Israel and Iran reply "WTF, dude?"
There's no upside for Netanyahu to stop belting the mullahs. The IAF has got to be struggling - my understanding is that, for one thing, their aerial tanker fleet is aging and small - but anything that keeps the Israeli public angry and scared keeps his ass out of court/jail.
Iran? I'd sure they'd love to nope out of this. They're getting mauled. But, as I noted above, if they want ANY hope of not becoming the pawn of every nuclear power with a grudge (or a grift) they still HAVE to keep the hope of nuclear retaliation alive.
My guess is that both Iran and Israel will reach a sort of "peace of exhaustion" and Fatso can claim credit for that. But it won't be "peace" in any sense of the term. And what comes after that? I have no idea.
