TL;DR: the theocratic government of Iran has cracked down on ‘liberal’ media substantially, but there is a lot of factionalization and variable control over media, and even conservative outlets are sometimes highly critical of the current government. There is also a strong social media presence in Iran (especially among younger people across the political spectrum) and trying to pass off this attack as a success for Iran is going to quickly be seen as a sham.
Stranger
I was trying to avoid the US politics aspect, but yes, it was done by Trump (describing the framework as “…defective at its core”) and applied “the highest level of economic sanctions” despite the clear evidence that sanctions are ineffective at controlling nuclear proliferation. This was widely regarded as a massive blow to the “non-proliferation regime” and there is basically no way to unmake that particular omelet now.
Stranger
I will proceed to quote Bob Dylan:
“If God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war.”
There appears to unfortunately be no evidence, despite lots of claims, that there’s any god on anybody’s side on this mess. Though Eris might be on everybody’s.
No, they didn’t. Iran attacked Israel first. They just did so from within other countries.
We’re not doing that. People (other than apparently you) aren’t isolating that one action; we’re looking at a pattern.
It’s always in retrospect, when someone fails, that people say that they had to have known it wouldn’t work. Personally, I’m not sure they did know. Israel’s anti-ballistic missile systems had never been tested in battle before, not least against such a large number of targets, and fighter jets have never taken on swarms of drones and cruise missiles. I think nobody on either side could have known what would happen. I think the Iranians genuinely thought they would do some damage.
I think you and I look at Iran in fundamentally different ways. To an American, Iran is just another third-world country; to Israel, Iran is a near-peer. It’s our Russia.
I agree – if Iran had wanted to “fail” (i.e. they wanted to send a militarily insignificant message), they wouldn’t have wasted literally hundreds of expensive weapons. It would have been much, much smaller. They just wasted tens of millions of dollars in military equipment. Maybe more.
I’m less sure. The move Iran wanted ideally is something that looks big and tough to the various players but isn’t in reality big enough to provoke an escalation response. They want Israel to have space to respond smaller than bigger because it in fact was more a bluster than a real hit.
I’m not sure if this has been discussed yet, but IMO a huge ramification of this attack is MASSIVELY strengthening Biden’s bargaining power with the Israeli government – the US and allies just (likely) saved hundreds or thousands of Israeli lives. If the Israeli government won’t bend more to how the US wants them to handle things going forward, Biden could threaten to withdraw that protection – he could even hint at it publicly. What if Iran knew that next time, the US wouldn’t get involved?
To be fair, Iran has long backed and propped up the Syrian Arab Republic in the civil war happening there and have provided weapons and troop training to them (mainly via Hezbollah I think).
They wanted to send a significant message. Message sent. They have lots of bombs, especially lots of bombs placed in Lebanon, and you won’t stop them all every time.
Even the idiot Bibi knows to play the response with great consideration. Same thought process: something that looks strong but is actually a step away from escalation.
Miscalculation and spiraling into major damage on both sides is all too easy to happen.
Iran has been supplying Russia with missiles. Russia has oil and nukes. What does Russia have that Iran wants? Iran doesn’t need Russia’s oil.
Correction, it as a “consulate annex” (whatever that is). Had they hit the embassy, the ambassador and his family would’ve been dead, but they were completely unharmed. Moreover, given that nobody disputes high-ranking Iranian military officers were present, said to be meeting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, this “consulate annex” lost any privileged noncombatant claims.
We have to be clear Iran was retaliating against Israel’s strike here. It didn’t come out of the blue. But if the facts I described above are accurate, then the target was military in nature, and Israel was within rights to strike it. (I say this as someone who leans skeptical toward most everything Israel says, but Iran doesn’t exactly inspire credibility either).
Opposing the US. Enemy of my enemy thing.
Also, maybe fighter jets? (guessing)
It’s true that Iran wants nukes, has been trying to get them, and Russia could be a big help to them. But Iran hasn’t declared itself a nuclear power, hasn’t implied it’s a nuclear power, and isn’t known to have conducted any nuclear tests.
From sources I’ve read, Iran has been within a year of the “nuclear breakout” phase for the past 4 years. So God only knows what sort of surprise they’re actually sitting on.
If ones goes in for speculation, one hypothetical could be that Iran has a device ready to test, but are waiting for suitable political cover to do it. Such as, Israel conducts a significant strike directly on Iran. Then Iran conducts their nuclear test as a warning.
Maybe the Stuxnet virus set back the Iranian nuclear program more than we thought.
I’ve been down on the economist in recent months, but this was a good analysis. Basically, a big miscalculation from Iran.
It wasnt an embassy. Probably a consulate. Or perhaps a building next to a consulate.
Nuke tech, money. Gold.
Right. Anyone who wants to understand the motivation of the strike in Syria should read up on Iran’s Qud Force.
Putin’s crazy, but he’s not that crazy. Or at least, he’s not that kind of crazy. There’s no way that he’d share the ultimate power weapon with anyone, because he wants all the power for himself. And he has two other things that Iran wants.
First, he’s been selling oil to China and India, both of whom are mostly not supplying him with weapons directly. What is he getting from them? Money. Which everyone, Iran included, likes. Second, even if Russia’s own conventional arsenal is severely depleted, they still have the expertise that produced that arsenal in the first place, and that’s worth a lot, too.
I think it’s more like, they aren’t prepared for the consequences of becoming a rogue nuclear state quite yet, so they’re toeing the edge without crossing over the finish line.
The problem was not that a general was killed. The problem is that an embassy was bombed, which is an act of war and has been considered such for centuries pretty much everywhere.
We know Israel and Iran are enemies, that’s not news.
No, actually, Iran does not have nukes.
They do have a nuclear program but they do not (to the extent any civilian can know) have bombs
One enternal obstacle to depriving Iran of a nuclear industry is that they have significant natural reserves of uranium on their territory. It makes it difficult to prevent them from getting their hands on it.
Yeah, you really have to wonder about whackos who look forward to a war that will kill billions…
Iran has publicly stated obliteration of Israel as a goal… but more of long-term one. That doesn’t mean they want to get into a shooting war with Israel right now.
They weren’t. But I doubt those generals were someone locked up in the basement of the embassy the whole time. Embassies are generally considered off limits for target assassinations.
Then again, we’ve seen considerable evidence these past couple months that Israel doesn’t play by the rules and ignores international conventions about what is and isn’t an allowable target, so I suppose it’s consistent…
That is an extremely good question. I, too, would like to know the answer.