Israel has gone all in on its bet that its patron, the US, would be always and ever loyal to its interests. That in finance is called an undiversified bet and is considered to be particularly hazardous. Israel has further engaged in the finance equivalent of leveraging that wager by piling on: engaging in in-your-face genocide in Gaza, intensified ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, attacking civilians relentlessly in Lebanon (notably but far from exclusively Beirut), and overextending itself in Syria. Most YouTube geopolitical regulars depict US Middle East policy as totally captured by Israel; Larry Wilkerson has been a lone opponent, contending that the Israel’s conduct, no matter how appalling, serves and is driven by US interests.
If this new story in the Times of Israel is any guide, Israel assumptions that the Zionist state and US interests are joined at the hip just took a big hit, in the form of Trump negotiating with and concluding a deal with Ansar Allah of Yemen, aka the Houthis.
Not only was Israel not a party to the talks, but the (only vaguely described) pact covers only the US and Yemen. Yemen is to stop attacking US ships and the US will stop shelling Yemen. So Yemen is free to and no doubt will continue to attack any Israel-bound vessels. There remains the interesting question of whether the US will try to provoke Yemen by getting a US carrier to go to Israel.
But even more distressing to Israelis is that this pact was agreed after the successful Houthi attack on Ben Gurion Airport. This is a serious psychological as well as practical blow. Apparently, a single missile got though Israel’s much-touted air defenses, including recently-supplied THAAD systems.1 So unlike the staged Iran retaliation in April, where Iran got through not just Israel and US but also supplementary French and UK air defenses via among other things a drone swarm which overwhelmed the air defenses, this attack demonstrated conclusively how vulnerable Israel proper is to the stereotyped sandal-wearing Houthis. Even if the damage can be repaired quickly, the airport was out of service and foreign carrier cancelled flights. It’s not clear how quickly they can be persuaded to restore full schedules.
Despite the spectacle of Gaza violence and now starvation having the effect of making distress in Israel look like whinging by pampered sadists, there is more and more evidence that the country is coming apart. Alastair Crooke pointed out right after October 7 that it did profound damage to core premise of the state of Israel, that it was a safe haven for Jews. The justification for the savage and disproportionate violence against Palestinians over decades was to maintain that status. The brutal lashing out after October 7 looks like a further manifestation of displacement activity, even before getting to the fact that eschatological crazies now dominate the government.
Despite Netanyahu’s deeply offensive braying, Israel has not fared well since October 7. Hamas has not been defeated and the hostages have not been returned. Israel has launched yet another reservist-call up, when no-show levels have already been high. Larry Wilkerson claims that the losses to the IDF are much larger than reported. Not only is the death count high, but the level of severely (including permanently) injured is unsustainable for a small country. Wilkerson points out that the number of wounded is the key figure to watch, since in theaters like Lebanon and Gaza, the injured can be transported quickly to first-class hospitals, improving survival rates.
And in addition to the practically and psychologically destabilizing failure to subdue Gaza quickly, Israel’s other warmaking has produced other Pyrrhic victories. Israel barely was able to enter Lebanon and suffered horrific losses, hence it resorting to pummeling Beirut to bring Hezbollah to heel.3 And that mission still failed. The objective was to enable the Israel settlers in the North to return to their homes. Many have still not done so, believing the border area to be unsafe.
The spectacular pushing-over of an unexpectedly weak Assad regime has made Israel the dog that caught the car. It’s overextended and the much much better armed and resourced Turkiye is starting to take action against Israel adventurism. And the Houthis didn’t just keep shelling but also seemed to be getting better over time.
Many of its best and brightest have left, some contend as many as a million. Even if the number it much smaller, Israel depends on a small number of highly educated and/or trained professionals. A serious hollowing out of that cadre leads to administrative malfunction and seize-ups. Tourism has collapsed. Israel society is more and more divided, to the degree that the mainstream press is reporting more and more signs of an impending civil was (see here and here as examples). So the last thing that Israel can absorb well now is further destabilization via a US reduction in support.
Now, in Trumpland, it is never clear how long any arrangement will hold. Trump may have decided to cut his losses after his much ballyhooed bombing campaign in Yemen did not cow them, and even worse, the US suffered the embarrassments and costs of losing not just so-called Reaper drones but then two fighter jets.2 But if the US thought that the Yemenis leaving US ships alone would restore normalcy in the Red Sea, they are set to learn otherwise soon. It seems highly unlikely that insurers will resume giving coverage while Yemen still has open season on Israel-bound or connected ships. So even if the Houthis hew to the deal’s terms, will the Don declare them in breach because US commercial carriers are still not traversing the Red Sea?4
One other point regarding the Times of Israel story, to which we turn now. It claims that the Houthis agree to the Trump demand to end attacks on US ships as a result of Iran pressure. We have said that Trump’s real desire out of the Iran talks was not just to score some sort of colorable win on the nuclear enrichment front, but more important, to deliver a victory of some sort with respect to Yemen.
Note also, contrary to my assumptions about the timeline, that Israel made its devastating attack on Yemen’s Saana airport before Trump made his surprise announcement. Clearly that attack had US intelligence support even though we apparently did not provide new/additional materiel. I had mistakenly assumed this was an Israel show of force, not just retaliation for the Ben Gurion attack, but also to demonstrate that Israel could pound Yemen all on its own, thank you very much.
From the Times of Israel in Trump ditched Israel with surprise Houthi truce. That doesn’t bode well on Iran:
The Israeli Air Force…flattened the airport in Sanaa, a day after Israeli jets pounded the port city of Hodeida.
Then, US President Donald Trump dropped his own bombshell.
Without coordinating with Israel or other allies, he announced during a White House meeting that the Houthis had agreed to stop attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, and said that the US would halt its attacks on the Iran-backed group.
The Houthis, meanwhile, declared they would keep hitting Israel. As if to emphasize the point, a drone believed to have been launched from Yemen flew toward Israel early Wednesday before being intercepted by the IAF.
If the agreement holds — and that is an extremely uncertain proposition — Israel, it seems, is on its own in the fight against the Houthis….
Worryingly, Trump didn’t even mention the Houthis’ attacks on Israel…
It is unclear what exactly was achieved by Trump’s two-month bombing campaign, which cost over $1 billion….
If the Houthis do continue firing at Israeli-linked civilian ships and at the country itself, Israel is unlikely to be capable of forcing them to stop through airstrikes.
It’s not even clear that hundreds of US strikes are what caused the Houthis to agree to a ceasefire with Washington.
Two Iranian officials told The New York Times that it was Iran that persuaded the Houthis to stop their attacks on US assets, as Tehran engages in nuclear talks with the US.
And the punch line:
It appears Israel may run out of meaningful targets before the Houthis run out of missiles…
Still, the most important element in the conflict with the Houthis is the implications for Israel’s confrontation with Iran….
With Israel on the sidelines, the president could suddenly announce a deal with Iran that leaves its nuclear program intact. Israel would find itself isolated, and unlike in the Houthi case, it would be inconceivable that it would attack Iran after an agreement with Trump.
My guess is this surprise development is a very rare case of Trump’s personal pathology having an upside. Trump cannot stand to be dominated. Yet that has not been Netanyahu’s posture versus the US but openly that of many Israeli officials. Larry Wilkerson and others have reported their shock and anger at how Israel intelligence officials and IDF members waltz into high-level meeting, not even having been made to go through normal security checks, much the less get clearances. Trump would find the persistent muscling and presumption to be intolerable and would feel compelled to restore the US status as firmly in charge of matters Israel.
Now having said all of that, notice this key sentence in the Times of Israel account: “…it would be inconceivable that it would attack Iran after an agreement with Trump.”
If Netanyahu and his clique believe that an attack on Iran would force America to saddle up, that means Israel would need to do so before Iran negotiations are completed, since the risk to Israel of an agreement are real.
And a strike does not need to be successful to have the desired effect. The loss of Israel aircraft would do, particularly if then followed by a false flag attack within Israel. Mind you, that would not be credible to anyone with an operating brain cell who has observed Iran’s considerable restraint in the fact of Israel’s provocations, but that isn’t the target audience for this sort of stunt.
So while the Trump action looks like a remarkably positive development, it’s still way too early to declare a win for peace. Israel hardliners and Netanyahu must be besides themselves, and Israel has already amply demonstrated its capacity to operate well outside any notion of norms and decency.
____
1 Larry Wilkerson said that what made the THAAD impressive was not its missiles but its super duper radar.
2 Only one is arguably directly due to Houthi shelling targeting aircraft carriers, as in a fast evasive action dumping a plane in the drink. The second, an attachment failure (landing jet presumably not grabbing those rubber bandy thingies that bring it to a fast stop) has not, as far as I can tell, been further explained. A maintenance lapse? Stressed staff screwup? Or one of our new pet issues, a (Covid cognitive impact induced) checklist failure?
3 I am in no position to adjudicate the debate over whether the Israel decapitation efforts were successful. My impression is there is a strong case that Hezbollah remained very well armed and had enough organizational depth in the form of a younger generation of seasoned figures, to carry on. But as part of the government of Lebanon, the societal costs of the continued bombing of Beirut, particularly given the already-desperate conditions in the country in the wake of the massive fertilizer cargo explosion, were too high to justify.
4 There is reason to think that Trump won’t go there unless he needs cover for yielding to Israel Lobby pressure. Most experts depict the cost of the longer transit around the Cape of Good Hope as manageable.
The view of “The Deal” from the other side
Seems more like unilateral withdrawal which was presented by our illustrious leader as a deal.
Unilateral withdrawal … sounds like “surrender” or more charitably, “retreat.”
Houthi keep on Houthi’ing.
USS Truman needs to come into port for a lengthy refit! It has been “deployed” longed than the systems are designed to be used. The other carrier in the Arabian Sea is just in from cruising around the west Pac, it does not have that much time on station left in its design and magazine. The missile defense destroyers are low magazine need rearming and home port refit.
Short the US Navy is over extended while not deployed to defend Taipei.
Carriers do not generate that many sorties, a lot of bombing is flown out of Djibouti where US Navy runs a forward operating base from the airport runway. There is likely a refueling and air cargo force there as well. Keeping US Mil Spec fuel and bombs/guidance kits in the region is a big logistics tail!
While the “buck for the bang” on Yemen is tiny! Thumping rubble is not winning.
Distances are much longer over Iran, the “good stuff” is buried deeper and well masked. There exist air and missile defenses. Thumping rubble while exposing your attack assets to hazards is not profitable.
Israel might get Iran to use some of its offensive capacity.
A comment on US Army’s THAAD (been around a while, not that many produced, but continually upgraded), it is a longer range radar set. The recent additional “system” came from Korea (if I recall) likely was face down the Red Sea. Not reassuring! Israel is more important than US Forces Korea.
And I think that right there is why Trump called it quits and I have been waiting for it. That naval force was being pushed to the edge and was running out of missiles and needed heavy-duty maintenance so the whole thing was a gamble on Trump’s part that Yemen would break and ask for peace – only they didn’t. They haven’t for the past decade or more so why would they now? Probably find that it was the admirals that demanded that that force be pulled out before there was a hit on one of their ships and told Trump that it would make him look bad on Fox News if that happened.
These ships being pulled out, getting Re supplied, good thing we’re not in an all out war.
Of course those ships would be auditioning for starring roles as coral reefs by now if we were in one.
So what’s the plan when taking on China?
Sarc.
The only scenario that I would call karma is zionists dying of thirst, famine and disease in the streets of Israel.
They have told us who they are.
And Caitlin Johnstone makes the case of who the Israelis have become by their own deeds-
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/israel-really-is-as-evil-as-it-looks-1e5a4a343fd5
Hope they will apply this on each other when the civil war starts.
Otherwise maybe we can collect shekels and air-drop them and watch the hilarity ensue*.
*An old jewish joke: How do you kill two jews? Drop a shekel between them and watch them fight ’til death.
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/1024500
Optimistic take: Looking like even pro-Zion Trump can only tolerate so much genocide-ing…
Pessimistic take: this is the flip side of the “pivot to Asia”…. China hawks are telling Trump that Israel and the Sandbox are distracting the US from its Thucydides-momen (trap) with China
both could be right
Trump, the capricious, egoistic, backstabbing agent of chaos is IMO the only person in Washington capable of cutting Zionists down to size. Fingers crossed that Bibi triggers him.
William Schryver (@imetatronink) on the latest carrier fighter loss:
https://nitter.poast.org/imetatronink/status/1919930543124201856#m
He finds the mooted failure of the arrestors unlikely (apparently quadruple redundancy) and the failure of the pilot in that event to use unarrested roll speed and extreme TOGA power to take off again inexplicable.
Human error and/or the consequences of evasive manoeuvres would explain it though.
for being such an erudite, Mr Schry has a tendancy of skewing to the more convoluted chain of events when the evidence is in the gray zone.
YMMV. i still enjoy reading his thoughts, and agree with him mkre often than ntot
Carrier pilots are well aware that during each shipboard landing the plane’s tail hook could miss all of the arresting cables and need to fly around for another pass. It isn’t a rare event by any means.
They are supposed to be ready to go full throttle once the pilot realizes the miss.
Gaza is Israel’s Vietnam. It will never recover its reputation after what it has done to Gaza. The reason the zealots are pressing on with the genocide is that they know there is no way back to respectability, so they are gambling on a successful ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They are willing for Israel to become a pariah state as long as it is tribally pure. This will not end well.
So God, in this case, the Donald, has left them in the lurch again. History tends to repeat itself, when we don’t learn the lessons the first time around.
The problem with monotheism is that ideals are not absolutes. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The core codes, creeds, heroes, narratives at the center of every society are ideals.
The universal, on the other hand, is the elemental. So a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.
The light shining through the film, than the stories playing out on it.
I would also like to point out that I’ve been blocked from further posting or commenting on Substack, since making that argument.
Google Substack, God’s Problems, by John Merryman and there is no further posting by me from two days after.
When I took it up with the help desk, they ran me through the usuals, cleaning cache, etc, but when I sent them a screenshot, with the address down in the corner as, run script void 0, with the curser on the share button and no reply button under the comment box, all communication ceased.
Thank you, Yves.
My only surprise is that it has come so quickly.
I have long wondered who Israel would seek for protection once it became clear that the US was in relative decline and a multipolar world emerged.
Some years ago, Israel put out feelers towards China, using technology as something in common. I thought and still do think that Russia would be the more likely patron and perhaps the EU.
The chuckleheads of Brussels are most likely partners to share in Israel’s collapse. The genocide fits into the longstanding tradition established by Simon de Montfort against the Cathhars and maintained by Eurpean colonists until the present day.
I suspect that Putin no longer sees the Israelis as Jews, and whatever feeling he has for Russian Jews no longer extends to the Zionists. And Xi knows a losing cause when he sees it and both China and Russia have a respect for international law which is unfamiliar to the Collective West, and they will probably take the lead in re-building a Palestine for Palestinians while the Zionists are waiting to face war crimes tribunals – god knows they have left enough evidence of their crimes, individually and colectively, all over the internet.
My guess is that an efficient tribunal could get through a couple of hundred death sentences per day, and a body of twenty tribunals could sort out the Zionists in 12 months or so.
What will Mrs Adelson be saying to Trump now? Will there be threats to call in any debts owed by Trump (if any)?
And if she and her colleagues aren’t saying it to Trump directly, will they be saying it to the ring of neocons who surround him, so that they exercise ‘suasion’ over him?
The Gaza situation has reached such heights of pure and unalloyed evil that the whole West deserves to go down over it. In the UK silence remains supreme, although the recent cautious volte-face of the FT and a few MPs (some of them even Tories) suggests the possibility of the worm turning. However, in terms of silences I have much the greatest contempt for the so-called centre and centre-left media, politicians and, above all, the churches who have been like blind and deaf mutes over the last 19 months. For the most part, the clergy of the Church of England have been especially cretinous (even by their dismal standards) and as prone to hasbara as anyone.
I think that’s where the billion dollars spent bombing Yemen fits. I figure that Trump has repaid what he thinks he owed, but not one cent more.
“how Israel intelligence officials and IDF members waltz into high-level meeting”
Well, at least they ain’t Waltzing no more, at least for now. ;)