the USA, Israel, and national interest

I think they would continue to deny that they possess nuclear weapons. xp

Mordy's advocating airstrikes, apparently. Dropping bombs on Iran. Very large bombs, but only conventional high explosive ones, presumably. Then, afterwards... ? Everything goes back to normal, right?

What's your opinion of such denials, Mord? (I sympathise with you being the only one in your corner, don't wish to appear that I'm piling on or anything)

Like do I think those denials are... what? Ethically correct? Politically expedient? Regionally important?

Aimless, please show me something I wrote that indicates that I'm advocating dropping large bombs on Iran?

All three really - if you were in charge of Israel's policies would you deny having nuclear weapons? If so, why?

I'm not saying that Israel should perform airstrikes to keep their status as the only nuke possessing nation but to mediate the possible ramifications of a particular administration in a particular country developing nukes.

To clarify the syntax:

Israel should not perform airstrikes to do X, but {Israel should perform them} to do Y. You may not have meant it that way. I don't know. But this is what you wrote.

Mordy, wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

To be fair, dude, I've been pushing this entire thread that I don't think Israel should rule that option out, but that I couldn't say whether it is ultimately the best or right option. I pointed out in the very beginning that the wager is between something probable and safe (that even w/ nukes Iran wouldn't be a threat) and the unlikely, but possible, and catastrophic (that Iran would use nuclear weapons on Israel). You then compared the scenario that I was discussing to a general who wanted to nuke the USSR to maintain a US nuclear hegemony. I pointed out the major differences between what I was saying, and that particular general. My pointing that out wasn't intended to suddenly embrace the position of bombing as advocacy, but to defend the point I was trying to make the entire time.

Now, it could be that you want to make leaving a particular option on the table synonymous with advocating for that option. I don't think those two things are synonymous. For one, I don't know the particular intelligence that the Israeli government is looking at when making this decision. I do know what the IAEA says, but I'm not sitting down at the desk with all the intelligence. If I felt from gathered intelligence that a) the Iranian government was close to developing a working nuclear weapon, that b) other methods of interrupting the process were insufficient, and c) that there was reasonable evidence that the Iranian government would use those nuclear weapons, then in that theoretical situation I would advocate for using targeted airstrikes, such as were used in Syria, to set back the nuclear program.

I don't think that means that I'm advocating bombing Iran, that I feel that Israel should nuke Iran, or whatever other strawman argument you want to affix to me.

xp

But you did say it would have been "the right move, imo" to engage in pre-emptive attack on the USSR, under certain circumstances, and then you listed the circumstances:

If we had been adjacent to the USSR, subject to 'eliminationist' rhetoric from them, and had intelligence that suggested they were trying to develop nuclear weapons, I imagine an airstrike would have been on the table then too, and without the benefit of hindsight (that thank god a nuclear exchange never happened) it would have been the right move imo.

...which circumstances are strangely identical to known circumstances for Israel in regard to Iran. Forgive me if I jumped to the conclusion that you thought that a pre-emptive airstrike would also be the right move for Israel to make.

I freely grant that you weren't really contemplating "nuking the shit out of" Iran, but then again, Israel has nukes and if this led to a war with Iran and Israel thought it ran the risk of annihilation due to its starting a war with Iran... someone would start contemplating it pretty seriously don't you think?

I'll let you think that over. I have to go to dinner with my wife (our 27th anniversary today). Don't change that dial!

Happy anniversary and all, but tbh, I don't really get what your challenge or question or whatever is here so I'm just going to let things be. I guess you're trying to make some kind of slippery slope argument but I don't think you're really addressing anything that I've said...

Like, you're saying that bc I advocate using an airstrike in a very particular situation, and bc using an airstrike might lead to open war between Iran and Israel, and bc in the course of said war Israel might feel existentially at risk, and bc if they feel existentially at risk they might decide using a nuclear weapon, that means that I should never advocate an airstrike in any situation?

Iran has a lot to lose by really pushing the nuclear issue: a European oil embargo, sanctions on their central bank, and even (if the situation with Syria is an indicator) some potential action by the Arab League?

http://s1184.photobucket.com/albums/z328/userwvf/

http://i1184.photobucket.com/albums/z328/userwvf/rockflagneagle.png

^^fb profile pic for someone from my high school

have you ever seen those "Don't worry America, Israel is right behind you" t-shirts?

some potential action by the Arab League?

What do they care? They're not Arabs. OPEC is unlikely to do anything. The UN won't manage to do much because of Russia. The Sunni members of the Arab league and Iran aren't exactly friends anyway. For all we know, Saudi might secretly welcome an Israeli airstrike.

I'll tell you one country that will likely go apeshit if it happened, tho. Pakistan.

http://ottomansandzionists.com/2013/03/29/george-washington-and-passionate-attachmen

Throwing up the Mordy signal on this one, but anyone else can answer:

How can Trump be "good for Israel" in a realpolitik way while also realigning with Russia? Russia is aligned with supposed enemies of Israel -- Iran and Syria. Is this insignificant?

I don't think Putin sees it as a contradiction to be a patron to Syria/Iran and also on strong terms with Israel. Remember during the Cold War the US fostered alliances/client relationships with Israel in addition to other countries that were antagonistic to Israel - like Egypt before 1978, the gulf states like Saudi Arabia until today, etc. I think Israel prefers having the Syria war continue so that Iran and Hezbollah continue to bleed (and it has already basically ceded any Syrian claims to the Golan practically), so in that sense Putin's interests - ending the war and returning sovereignty to Assad - is not perfectly aligned with Israel. But otoh Putin has given Israel the go-ahead to bomb shipments to Hezbollah passing through Syria and so I don't know that Putin actually cares about Iran's proxy war against Israel and would probably prefer all the countries get along.

Trump is "good" for Israel in a very limited sense - he'll presumably have no interest in pushing a 2SS, or going along with UN resolutions. He already gave the go-ahead for Israeli to annex the settlements if they want, and even if he wasn't gung ho about the settlements it's hard to imagine him taking any active interest in the whole thing. So if you're pro annexing the WB, I guess you would see Trump as good for Israel. Presumably it'll lower some of the BDS heat especially in the US, but also likely it'll take the attention off Israel since POTUS Trump is such a more troubling figure. If you think annexation is a bad idea (maybe because of demographic concerns, or whatever reason you might think the 2SS is still the best solution), Trump will not be great for Israel.

Essentially you've got to think that neither Putin nor Trump really gaf about the Palestinian issue. How you feel about it yourself probably determines how good or bad you think that is for Israel.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Steve Bannon wants to long-term reduce the influence of the Israel lobby in the US.

Does that make sense? Like the bottom line is that even if Putin is snuggling up to Iran, and the US is now going to have a more favorable relationship with Russia, that doesn't mean that either Russia or the US suddenly care about the same things that Iran cares about. From a realpolitik perspective Israel doesn't want the war in Syria to end since that'll give Iran and Hezbollah enough breathing room to start fucking w/ Israel again, but even there they might stand to gain more from having tighter connection to Russia (and therefore some potential leverage on Iran/etc). Even before Trump's election Bibi has been sidling up to Putin - so you could reframe the question as "How can Israel gain from a closer relationship to Russia despite Russia's ties to Iran/Syria" but that question kinda answers itself I think?

I don't get the impression that the Israel lobby is on the Trump administration's radar at all. Isn't Bannon buddies w/ like Horowitz and Geller and Caroline Glick, etc? He seems like the kind of white supremacist that is pro-Israel (maybe bc he sees it as a model of an ethnosupremecist State he'd like to establish in the US). Here's a comment I wrote on fb this week explaining this particular peculiar phenomenon to a friend:

Maybe. There's a strain of white supremacism that chides liberal Western Judaism (generally metonymically represented by the Frankfurt School) for trying to dominate gentiles by diluting the white gene pool through massive migration. This strain 'calls out' Zionism as hypocrisy because Jews support an ethnosupremecist State when it is Jewish but not when it is white. It is not entirely incompatible for them to say (and this is a rarer ideology but one I have definitely seen expressed) that Jews should live in Israel and whites should live in the US and that's the best for each. (iirc this was not an entirely unknown ideological current in pre-Final Solution Nazism.) In that case they might even respect Bibi for so strongly supporting the needs of his ethnic community while disdaining American Jews for undermining their own.

Yes, that does make sense. xp