Yves here. Colonel Larry Wilkerson has predicted that Israel, and by that he means Zionist apartheid Israel, will cease to exist. If memory serves me correctly, he has even been so bold as to say within five years. He points to the overextension of its military (not just deaths but evidence of high numbers of severely wounded, and reservists refusing to show up for duty), damage to its economy, and the high odds that even more will leave once exits are opened up. A Twitter account also pointed out that South Africa initiated four wars late in its apartheid era, suggesting this is what these states do when nearing the end game.
We also see broader forms of BDS, such as port workers in Europe refusing to service ships bound for Israel, and in Greece, citizens barring the disembarkation of Israeli tourists. So Israel is increasingly subject to a death of a thousand cuts.
So even though this view is what one might deem to be leading edge conventional wisdom, it’s still good to get the word out.
By Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies in the Department of Peace Studies and International Relations at Bradford University, and an Honorary Fellow at the Joint Service Command and Staff College. He is openDemocracy’s international security correspondent. He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers. Originally published at openDemocracy
Amid the destruction of Gaza, the children starving to death, and the hundreds of people killed and wounded each week, Israel is at long last coming under pressure from some Western governments. Emmanuel Macron yesterday announced that France will recognise Palestine as a state later this year, becoming the first G7 country to do so.
Yet Western arms and equipment continue to flow to Tel Aviv, as does intelligence support. A false impression is given that this is Israel’s war, but in reality, it is a joint US-Israeli war supported by allies such as the UK, whose RAF Akroti military base in Cyprus is used for Israeli intelligence-gathering.
The US was at the heart of the recent attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, and even now, is maintaining forces in the region at considerable strength. This includes aboard its hugely powerful carrier strike groups (CSG), two of which are now back in the Middle East after one briefly left following the Iran operation, and even within Israel, where US personnel operate the key long-range X-band radar station on Mount Keren.
While he still has the backing of Donald Trump, Binyamin Netanyahu feels safe to do as he pleases. His ultimate aim is still to ethnically cleanse the whole of Gaza and turn it into a high-tech wonderland for Israelis. For now, he believes he can continue to ignore criticism from UN agencies, some Western governments and scores of non-government bodies and push ahead with his ‘security strategy’ of crowding Gaza’s Palestinians into a small slice of land in the south of the territory, with little in the way of food, water or medical supplies.
As to the conflict itself, Israel is falling back on its Dahiya Doctrine, which is straightforward enough if extreme. The doctrine follows that if an insurgency can’t be defeated by direct military means, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) will instead use disproportionate force against civilians to turn them against the insurgents. It is a standard IDF tactic that has been used in Lebanon and previous wars in Gaza, but the current operation goes way beyond that, amounting to the wholesale destruction of Palestinian society.
While all this is going on, in the occupied West Bank, many more Jewish settlements are being built with Palestinian villages erased in the process. There are now 800,000 Jewish settlers there, and that number will likely grow to a million within a year.
Even in Israel itself, many of the two million Palestinians with Israeli passports feel under heavy pressure. Indeed, one of the Palestinian members of the Knesset, Ofer Cassif, has been suspended for two months by the Knesset Ethics Committee after MPs “complained about his criticism of Israeli troops fighting against Hamas in Gaza”.
Beyond its immediate borders, Israel also feels safe to take whatever military action it thinks necessary to keep itself secure. IDF troops remain in several locations in southern Lebanon, have occupied the Israel/Syria buffer zone on the Golan Heights, established bases in Syria itself and frequently use airstrikes to suppress any paramilitary groups. They also attack Houthis in Yemen while engaging in patrols over Iran, and, if there is a further crisis with Iran, Netanyahu can be confident that the US will come to his aid.
In short, in Netanyahu’s view, it is all so certain: Israel is in full control, and little can change as the powerful messianic elements of its government will see to that. Gaza will be cleansed of Palestinians, and the millions of them in the occupied West Bank will be under constant pressure from aggressive and well-armed settlers. Ultimately, many will be forced to leave.
In the wider Middle East, the IDF will maintain security control through airpower. Israel, with the support of the US, will be the region’s superpower and will finally be truly secure, at a huge cost to the Palestinians and many others.
Yet it is all a chimaera.
The reality is that Israel is facing a very uncertain future and will most likely destroy its own security. My recent columns for openDemocracy have alluded to this, but more is being revealed by the week.
In Iran, Israel has failed in both its war aims of terminating the theocratic regime and destroying the uranium enrichment programme.
It is highly likely that large quantities of Iran’s 60% enriched Uranium have survived, which can be used for inefficient but still powerful nuclear explosions. And while Israeli and US missiles and bombs undoubtedly did much damage and killed over a thousand Iranians, the Iranian missile forces managed to repeatedly evade Israeli and US air defences, striking five well-protected IDF and intelligence bases. This was despite the US using as much as 15% of its entire inventory of THAAD missiles, stocks that are likely to take two years to replace.
All of this means that as far as Israel and the US are concerned, Iran’s military potential remains unfinished business, so expect further conflict.
Moreover, on the ground in Gaza, Israel has simply not succeeded in defeating Hamas – a fact that few in Israel will admit, though it is reportedly common knowledge in military circles. Major General Itzak Brik, a long-serving IDF infantry soldier who went on to lead the IDF military colleges, is a notable exception to the silence. In an op-ed published in Israeli newspaper Maariv last month, Brik said that Hamas has already replenished the huge numbers of paramilitaries it has lost in the war.
It is certainly the case that Hamas remains highly active and is regularly killing and wounding IDF soldiers, despite having only a limited supply of arms to Israel’s strike aircraft, helicopter gunships, armed drones, all manner of warships, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and the rest.
But the group does have a weapon of another form: the IDF as a recruiting sergeant to its cause.
Young Palestinians in their teens and early twenties have witnessed their friends and families killed and maimed in appalling numbers, and are now seeing young children being starved to death.
Close to 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza so far and tens of thousands more wounded. The suffering of those who have survived has often been made far worse by Israel’s destruction of hospitals and health centres, severe shortages of anaesthetics, drugs and even basic surgical dressings, as well as the killing of doctors and paramedics.
The impact of that far exceeds the Nakba of 1948 and will be an inspiration for resistance that will last and last. The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was a huge shock to Israelis, but the IDF’s far more violent actions since will ensure that Israel will never be secure until the underlying reasons for the conflict are addressed.
For now, Israel is becoming increasingly messianic and will work rigorously against such reconciliation, with any ceasefire short-lived. Whatever Israelis think they are getting through this conflict, it is certainly not security. Instead, it is the image of a skeletal child that will be remembered across the world for generations.
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After what has been happening all this time, I can never see Israelis in the same light ever again and will walk away from them if I come across any. Unfair? Yes, but **** fair. Want to know the worse thing about this genocide? In doing it, you may find that all Jewish people will be slapped with the same genocidal tar brush as the Zionists. Maybe that is why the haste in introducing super-duper antisemitism laws in western countries. They can see the backlash coming and want to get ahead of it. In Israel the idiots there would see this as a welcome development as they figure that a lot of Jews will flee the west to come to live in Israel. I do not think that so many Jews will move to Israel and people, especially those with families, want to go to a county with a future and where they will be safe. That is not Israel. That country is really stretched at the moment and like the Ukraine, the issue is manpower. And I just read today that the ultra-Orthodox have threatened to leave Israel if forced to serve in the IDF. But if they try to go round two with Iran, it may mean that things will crack in Israel. And how many people will be sad at the sight of this county imploding?
I was saying to a friend last night that we’ve had very dark chapters in human history but this surely ranks as the first to traumatize and retraumatize people people far from the conflict zone on such a scale. The “world’s first live streamed genocide”, as some have called it, distributes trauma (through horrific imagery) across the world at internet scale, all day, every day. It’s become an ambient, morbidly dark soundtrack to our lives and if one wears noise cancelling earphones to try and keep it out by pretending it’s all a bad nightmare, your soul gnaws at you to remind you that you are indeed living through this.
I wasn’t yet born in 1976 when gun toting apartheid police, their hearts filled with hatred, mowed down those students in Soweto for daring to protest and say “enough is enough”. The stench of unjust death continued to fill the South African air long after that fateful day and continues to do so in the present. What Israel is doing in Gaza will echo across the ages and will never be forgotten. It also seems increasingly clear that the Jewish state, its impunity underwritten by American backing, will not be talked off the ledge and seems determined to crank up the brutality, so perhaps, just perhaps, it will die like stars do in the universe, its savagery “shining brightest” before it collapses under its own weight.
Israel cannot survive this, even if it clears Gaza and wipes out the Palestinians, it will be a case of you lose when you win. It’s legitimacy as a state, along with the moral legitimacy of the west, are buried under the ruins of Gaza and can never be exhumed. Framing its brutality as a crusade to protect Jewish people will unfortunately wipe the memory of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews from the collective memory of much of humanity. The cognitive dissonance of having to reconcile the victimhood of Jews under Hitler with Jews committing an ongoing genocide will be too much for people to process. The default setting will be to associate it with Judaism and Jews at large. Sad, unfortunate, but seems like the most likely place for global sentiment to settle post-genocide given current trajectory.
Sadly (sorta), the new Super-Duper Anti-Semitism Laws will backfire, dangerously, inflaming feelings and opinions against Jews in those countries where such laws are enforced. Criminalizing protest against Israeli policies and actions as ‘anti-Semitic’ implies that ‘Israel’ is synonymous with ‘All Jews’, which implies that all Jews deserve to share the blame for Israel’s policies and actions.
Humans are ornery; legislating social opinions rarely works. (Religion is a much more effective tool than Government for installing ideas in people’s hearts and minds…). Laws intended to force people to think/feel any given way may be blandly accepted by those who already agree but they will be vociferously rejected by those who don’t.
Attempting to force citizens of Democracies to support Israel by criminalizing opposition as ‘anti-Semitic’ will ultimately inflame real anti-Semitism. This is likely to happen faster in countries where Jews are [accurately?] seen as wielding disproportionate political power (see: AIPAC).
The images of Iranian missiles slamming like Thor’s hammer on Israeli targets have forever annulled the image of a safe Israel.
Yes, and consider also the impact on education. Remember how we learned in school about the Holocaust, the six million dead, and the KZ camps, but we heard nothing about the Nakba?
That narrative is pretty much out the window now.
Students may still be shown images from Auschwitz, but they will also be shown images from Gaza, and they will draw the obvious conclusions about the Zionists.
I hope when this is finally over the movies in future will feature those in IDF uniforms as the “bad guys” just as Nazis have been the bad guys up until recently. I also hope there is a travelling (or even stationary) memorial exhibit just like the ones Israel is so good at dragging around the world or turning into sacred ground like the site of the music festival massacre and the ever expanding Holocaust museums around the world. I would suggest a line of squashed ambulances to line the entrance ways….and some kind of a memorial wall like the Vietnam memorial with all the names and ages of the victims.. I would definitely donate to such a cause. This horrific brutality must be remembered … past Nazi brutality obviously has not taught Israeli Jews anything about “never again”
A SF Bay Area newspaper from my parents’ attic, April-1945 reported people ripping the clothes off their bodies while crossing barbwire fences to escape from a Nazi forced labor camp in Poland as the Allied forces approached. And also reported, the German locals would deny this news, calling the story Western propaganda.
To paraphrase Elim Garak (Star Trek ref), the lesson that Israelis have absorbed seems to be that the problem with the Nazis was that they lost, not that they were evil and did horrible things.
Garak was one of the best-written and acted characters of all of Star Trek.
I watched “In the Pale Moonlight” on first run in the UK and didn’t see the twist coming. One of the top 5 ST episodes of all time IMHO. I think Sinn Fein bigwigs might be ST fans too…. Its fictional history put Irish unification at 2024 and now SF are popping up on MSM saying it’s finally time for *that* referendum.
I don’t believe north or south wants it…… Yet….. But the fact it’s been brought up and Irish relatives are now bringing it into polite conversation is interesting.
The other “Brexit,” that is exit from Britain post the original Brexit? People talked about Scotland, but I did wonder about Northern Ireland.
Wrt The Pale Moonlight, I thought it the best of Star Trek, but it was so different from the usual smarminess of the franchise in such “realistic” way that, as far as I know, it is also the most hated episode among some fandoms.
I suppose one reason that I appreciate this is that this is where the literal Space Jesus (in universe) accepts his humanity, that he can accept his own sinning if only by the thin excuse of “it’s not my own hands.” In a way, it fit neatly with my own worldview about all things…
Israel is a stain on the West’s “humanity” and “religions” that washing cannot remove, and its betrayal will stain Judaism for centuries. Who will mourn the disappearance of Israel? The words of Aaron Bushnell echo.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BJpWOikX9jU
I am so angry.
Its not Israel, its the west. Israel is simply our ferocious dog in the Middle east.
We destroyed any semblance of free market capitalism in 2008 and now we have forfeited any claims of high moral ground by allowing and supplying help and weapons to them to commit genocide and wipe of the map an entire people. its us who have fallen.
I agree, but I’m not sure what sort of “moral high ground” we can speak of: Since 1945, the US carpet-bombed Korea, carpet-bombed Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, supported terrorists, death squads, torture, dozens of violent “regime change” operations, And the US and vassals have protected Israel, funded Israel and enabled war crimes etc. for decades. For any honest observer, the US had no morality at all.
Besides, there is no such thing as morality in international politics: only power and interests.
History didn’t start in 2008 although our current history may have started in 1948 when, as JFK told Gore Vidal, wealthy Jewish supporters gave Truman a 2 million sack of campaign cash to ensure his support for the creation of Israel.
And our foreign policy has been skewed by the Israeli need for an aggressive American engagement in the world ever since. After all without a hegemon another Hitler may pop up any time. The pre WW2 pacifism has to be thoroughly discredited because Munich is always just aroung the corner. Since such thnking also serves the needs of the MIC then our elites didn’t need much persuading.
Now Trump is acting more like he’s the president of Israel rather than the USA. Those Epstein files must be really toxic.
Yes. We, the colonial west, are collectively guilty… israel couldn’t exist without the G7 and the arms/financial support they supply. The west’s unsinkable aircraft carrier group controlling Middle East oil supplies. But maybe that’s a mirage, as was Ukraine/‘russia just a gas station with nukes’. Hopefully the zionists will leave and plague the west.
If Israel is as important to long-term US/Western geopolitical plans as other articles on this site have posited, I very much doubt that it will be allowed to collapse or be totally defeated.
The US/Western geopolitical plans are closer to collapse than you imagine.
As Herbert Stein said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
True, but the US/UK and vassals will find it very difficult/impossible to supply Israel with enough missiles etc. when the hostilities with Iran continue. The situation in the so-called 12 day war made that clear. The UK has accepted US nuclear weapons “deployment” in the UK. This is a bit worrisome: if the west runs out of conventional weapons to defend Israel etc. the likelihood of resorting to nukes increases exponentially.
The likelihood of a nuclear war is very probably the highest it has ever been since the end of 1945.
Marc Suckerbird is reportedly building a huge bunker under his Hawaii compound. This seems to be a thing with the oligarch crowd.
Israel is an artificial outpost of the west, it will cease to exist one way or the other. Let’s just “hope” that it does not result in nuclear war.
And before the genocide is completed.
There must be a Palestinian state in West Asia to be the Conscience of the King, a reminder that the West’s words are empty echoes, built on the epitome of evil.
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition.
My take:
1) The prime “strategic” utility of Israel is that it is the country for the Jews. The vocal pro-Israel / pro-zionist elements in the West are either avowedly anti-semitic (such as those evangelicals who support Israel only because, according to their intepretation of the Bible, it will ultimately bring the demise of the Jews), or belong to political (right-wing) movements whose traditions and predecessors were staunchly anti-semitic (e.g. Macron and his praise for Pétain, Meloni starting her career in the neo-fascist MSI, von der Leyen and the cosy relations of her ascendants with the nazi regime, etc); not to mention those Ukrainian fascists and their banderist ideological roots. All of them would rather not see the Jews coming back, and that is why they “stand with Israel”. But the rest of the population — including many Jews in Europe — does not really follow them — as is becoming evident (protests, boycotts, student agitation).
2) At some point, because of ever tightening military limitations and increasing economic strain, the USA will have to start making hard choices. When it comes to the Near East, Turkey is a ally that has a real geo-strategic importance (between Europe, Caucasus, Near East; Bosphorus straights; pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq; 85M population), and no matter how difficult a “partner”, it must not be lost. Egypt has a real geostrategic importance (between Near East, North Africa, and a troubled Sudan; Suez canal; almost 110M people), and no matter its level of development, one definitely does not want it to become a new Libya or Sudan. When the issue of “giving up Egypt vs. Israel, or Turkey vs. Israel” will become a truly serious proposition, I suspect Israel, with no crucial geostrategic position, a small 10M population, and no particularly impressive economic assets, will be sacrificed in the blink of an eye.
In other words, I think that Israelis have an overinflated sense of their own importance and usefulness for the USA and its European sidekicks.
Larry Wilkerson has been saying this for a long time. He says that Israel is a US attack dog and that, push comes to shove, if it is in the US’ best interest, the US will, without a qualm, cut Israel loose. I imagine the Zionists in the US will have something to say about it, but if Zionism becomes synonymous with Nazism, they might stay quiet
In material terms, Israel is irrelevant, tiny colony occupying unimportant plot of land, that west needs Israel is just something elites tell themselves and to the proles. Which on one hand makes it hard to drop Israel, because said elites are so psychologically invested in it (and admittedly financially too), but once the switch happens, forgetting about Israel will be as easy as about Afghanistan.
My fear is that when final collapse is imminent, a vengeful Zionist fanatic will send a nuclear weapon towards the capital city of one of the countries they blame for the loss of apartheid Israel. Perhaps even more than one. If they can do what they’re doing now, they will cross that line with no remorse.
Yes. I am convinced that the first nuclear weapons we will see used in the current mess will come from Israel and will spawn many more returning missiles. The position if this regime is extreme enough to say they really will destroy the world rather than share it.
Creveld said (Idk how much he credibly knew) that Samson Plan involved Israel nuking Western Europe, Rome, specifically, IIRC. The man was a piece of work, and if what he said has a sliver of truth, so is the entire Israeli regime.
Western leaders discovering at 11:59:59 that the end is near and voicing opposition? That’s merely so they can later say they bravely opposed it, should the need arise.
….little realizing that they’ll be burnt to a crisp!
I don’t think framing the military actions outside its immediate borders as only defensive positions gets to the heart of the matter.
Israel’s Atrocities Have Destroyed Its Reputation and Its Security
Israel’s “reputation” destroyed? Please! What has been disabled for the time being is the ability of Israel’s propaganda production to obscure what it has been and is and what it has been and is doing to Palestinians–and Lebanon–for decades.
For those paying attention, Israel’s reputation has been that of a murderous colonial enterprise cloaking it’s duplicity with the patina of an ancient religion. It’s actual religion requires human sacrifice to survive.
Zionism is to Judaism as Jacob to Esau: serving up a mess of pottage in exchange for a birthright. At least Esau got some nourishment. The Israeli version of Judaism cannot stop vomiting and spreading the sickness.
From the article by Paul Rogers:
“Whatever Israelis think they are getting through this conflict, it is certainly not security. Instead, it is the image of a skeletal child that will be remembered across the world for generations.”
Contra his vision, let me recall the case of the Armenian genocide. While it battered the reputation of Turkey during the 1920s, by the 1930s, this was basically over and the country has been courted by European powers and the USA ever since. As Mr. Adolf H. stated in 1939, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
By the way: after slaughtering the Armenians, looting them, and destroying their villages, the Turks sent the survivors on a gruelling march to be “resettled”… in the Syrian desert. Which looks pretty similar to how Israel intends to proceed with the Palestinians.
The obligatory Geman citation:
“Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert, lebt es sich ganz ungeniert.”
Or “Once the reputation is ruined, it’s a happy-go-lucky life.”
Not many are talking about Armenians, but people didn’t forget about said Mr. Adolf. So it depends. I don’t think people will forget about Israel, if for nothing else then because Israel can not sustain itself and needs constantly remind someone to funnel it with arms and money.
There are still a lot of people who think Mr Adolph a hero for what he did, including many of West’s “heroes.”. Just sayin’.
The Nazi holocaust and the Armenian genocide were not live streamed to billions on the internet. This will never be forgotten, and hopefully never forgiven.
And many are aware of the Berlin Airlift (1948-1949) where the USA and UK airlifted food and fuel to the Soviet blockaded West Berlin.
In the Gaza case, food has been half heartedly (willfully?) distributed and the USA has supplied weapons and intelligence to the country running the blockade.
And Gazan medical care is decimated.
The Palestinians cannot even fish the Mediterranean because that is viewed as a security risk to Israel.
On the contrary, there’s a good chance it will be forgotten very quickly as soon as the next thing comes along on Tiktok. People are angry about this now, and then there will be something else to be angry about.
How many hours of video are available for the Armenian genocide?
How many Armenians are out there to carry the flame?
How many muslims are out there to carry the flame of Gazan children, shot, bombed, burned and starved to death?
I fail to understand how when the Gazians are gone how anyone would want to invest let alone visit a resort paradise that is under constant bombardment and sabotage.
Gaza will never be turned into a “resort paradise”. The devastation is so complete, the territory so saturated with unexploded ordnance, its natural resources destroyed and polluted to such an unbelievable extent, that restoring it will exceed the finances, available economic and technical resources, and perseverance of Israel, its Western patrons, and the Gulf sheikhs.
A terminal, harbour, and the infrastructure strictly necessary to exploit the offshore gas fields will be set up in the short term, and that will be it.
Areas of France unoccupied since WWI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge
Maybe ask Jerry Seinfeld and his wife. They had a very good vacation there, complete with rifle practice.
“They [Israeli soldiers] are very brave people… they are idealists… they want to serve their country and they want to prove themselves. The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose-lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel… if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape. Now the Israeli army has not by any means been the worst of the lot. It has not done what for instance the Americans did in Vietnam… it did not use napalm, it did not kill millions of people. So everything is relative, but by definition, to return to what I said earlier if you are strong and you are fighting the weak, then anything you do is criminal.[14]” Martin van Crevald, Israeli Military Historian (2002)
According to van Crevald (“Transformation of War”), when a stronger force fights a weaker force, the stronger force’s morale will be destroyed. Again, he cited the example of the US in Viet Nam.
In my opin ion, It wouldn’t surprise if Trump declares the IDF to be a humanitarian organization because it shoots women and children before they have die lingering death by starvation
In a way, the fanatical Nazis of the most dedicated SS units were also idealists. It takes a certain deranged faith in “superior morality” to do truly extreme evil. (Channeling Dostoevsky)
They may not have used napalm but they have used white phosphorus… just as bad
While “we” are worrying children, let’s make sure all Epstein’s child molesters go to jail.
In the end might help Gaza children
It’s unbelievable that it took the world over 70 years to recognize Israel’s evil nature.
But it didn’t, thankfully.
My Dad served in Palestine 1945-7.
He went to protect the Jewish refugees from a Palestinian backlash, but ended up defending Palestinian villagers from Irgun and the Stern Gang – who even murdered British troops to try to force the UK government to abandon the Jewish refugee quota.
He loved the Levant, but never forgave the Zionist terrorist leaders who then became Prime Ministers or Ministers of Defence, who he totally despised.
So the tired soldiers and airmen posted to Palestine after WW2, instead of being demobbed, all learned how Israeli terror was the midwife of the Israeli regime.
Any lingering sympathy Dad had, for Israel, though he always supported the idea of a Jewish homeland, was terminally damaged when the fascist Zionist killed the last great hope for peace in Yitzak Rabin in 1995.
Dad taught us the real Zionist terror background to the Israeli state, and I am sure so did thousands of Brit troops when they
finally got home.
They learned that terror from the Black and Tans of Ireland who trained the Jewish settlers after 1922 on how to terrorize the Palestinians.
The result of bombing Iran has been to create another nuclear armed state as Ted Postol says in this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcS3FQfjKI
Very good rundown on where Iran may be on the nuclear ladder and also for those interested in the enrichment process he goes through the steps. Making a nuclear weapon isn’t that difficult just acquiring the fissionable material is.
And Grossi of the IAEA now “insists” that inspectors return to Iran. The IAEA has openly shown itself to be in contravention of it’s own mandate, and an illegitimate espionage arm of the west. Iran will almost certainly tell the MI6 assets (aka the IAEA) to f-off.
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/07/01/spying-iran-mi6-infiltrated-iaea/
I wonder how much longer the US/UK and Israel will feel sufficiently resupplied to launch more attacks on Iran?
Our piecemaker’s favorite time periods are:
24 hours
Two weeks
Fifty days
I’ll pick 50 days to start the Iran round two.
I am still waiting for him to announce the ceasefire deal he brokered between Thailand and Cambodia. /s
Since you mention South Africa it’s worth pointing out that the apartheid regime didn’t really “invade” countries as such. It tried to dominate Angola and Namibia to prevent ANC guerrillas from infiltrating into the country from the training camps in Angola, and mounted frequent military operations against the Cubans who were supporting Angola’s Marxist government. It also had its own version of the Samson Option: nuclear weapons which it was ready to use against the feared Soviet/Cuban invasion of the country through Angola and Namibia.
This all fell apart for a couple of reasons. One was the strain on the economy and the population of constant mobilisation of a part-time force for operations in Angola (it reached three months per year at one point, and many of the conscripts were English-speakers, so not as committed to the idea of the Divinely Promised Land as the Boers were.) As one of the divisional commanders of the day whom I knew said to me, the Army had told the political leadership that the most it could do was buy time: there was no way of winning this war, while at the same time “the country was burning.”
But the really important factor was the end of the Cold War, which took the enemy away and knocked the props from under the regime. Until that point, isolation, unpopularity and sanctions had simply made the government and the population more radical, and less inclined to compromise. For the first time in the late 1980s, English-speakers started defecting to the Afrikaner Nationalist Party in large numbers. In the end, the fear which had driven apartheid policy went away in the matter of a couple of years. I can’t see the same thing happening in Israel.
You don’t give Cuba enough credit for ending apartheid in southern Africa. Cuba sent an army of mostly black soldiers to the region and trained thousands of local fighters. They won a major battle over the U.S.-supported South African army and that is what caused the apartheid regime to free Nelson Mandela and make peace. The two men most responsible for ending the apartheid regime are Mandela and Fidel Castro.
You’re thinking of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, I suspect, which was technically a draw, but which convinced the SA Army that it couldn’t continue to operate inside Angola as it had on and off since 1975. But it had little effect on the end of apartheid as such: indeed, the large Cuban presence in Angola actually fed the paranoia of the government and much of the white population, and radicalised them still further. The US, for all that its diplomacy was blundering and unhelpful, had no real role in all this. The main arms suppliers to SA were France and Israel, and it was Britain under Thatcher that obstructed efforts at sanctions and political pressure, though she was finally persuaded to relent near the end of her reign. De Klerk’s decision to release Mandela and unban the ANC began as a publicity stunt, in the hope that the ANC would accept a few token concessions in return. But the government lost control of events quite rapidly, and although the ANC made a lot of concessions, the regime made far more.
It is my understanding that the ANC guerrillas were not established in Angola, but rather in Mozambique (and perhaps Zimbabwe). In Angola, it was essentially the SWAPO that caused trouble for the South Africans.
While South Africa did not attempt to conquer Angola, it did stage an invasion in 1975 to prevent the MPLA from becoming the movement in control of the country at independence day. This was a two-pronged affair, with the SAA launching an offensive South, starting from Nambia, and North, after disembarking an expeditionary force that joined the FNLA coming from Zaire (and reinforced with Zairian troops). The goal was to conquer the capital Luanda and install a FNLA-led regime. The Cubans threw a spanner in the works by utterly defeating the Northern thrust and turning the Southern one into a hard slog.
When talking about the war between Cubans and South Africans, the 1985-1988 campaign is usually meant; but they had already fought against each other, and the Cubans had already successfully thwarted the plans of South Africans regarding Angola in 1975-1976.
Well, I knew a lot of people, some of whom were friends, who trained and served in Angola, and quite a lot has been written about the camps there. ANC military wing personnel (umKhonto weSizwe) fought in the trenches with the Cubans and the government forces. The ANC was never in Mozambique very much: too close to SA and too easy for the apartheid regime to attack. It was never in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe either, because he supported the Chinese-backed PAC. The political and administrative side of the ANC was in Lusaka, which was reasonably safe.
What you say about 1975 is true, although it’s really a separate issue from the ANC presence, which was only established later. The three-cornered civil war that followed the Portuguese withdrawal was partly regional/ethnic (the MPLA drew its core support from the educated coastal elite, often mestizo, the others from the interior.) But external forces backed each side and the West threw its lot in with the FNLA and to a degree with UNITA. The SA were at least encouraged to invade, in return for some kind of political benefits, but twenty years later people I spoke to were quite bitter with the West, which they thought had used and abandoned them.
Yes, the country was burning, and a couple of national states of emergency were declared in response to widespread civilian uprisings in the mid 80s which were brutally suppressed. (I remember going through riot drills at high school in Pretoria, and the teachers being armed.) This should not be forgotten and I would argue that the uprisings (and sanctions) played a significant role (along with the military losses in Angola) in getting a large number of white people to accept the inevitability of change by the late 80s. The ending of the Cold War was a welcome bonus when it came … the apartheid government was no longer able to use the spectre of communism to scare the white population into voting for it, and there was a feeling that the ANC was also weakened by it. A minority of hard core of fanatics remained. The final negotiations nearly got derailed by the assassination of the leader of the SA Communist Party by a Polish immigrant one Easter weekend around 1990.
Israel’s neighbors, Turkiye, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, will invest in the same kinds of missiles that Iran used to pummel Israel. Sooner or later, Israel will face a devastating assault that even the United States can’t prevent. The destruction of Gaza is an unrecoverable error, equivalent in stupidity to the U.S. “war on terror.” This is how arrogant nations lose their dominance: thrashing in futile efforts to assert their will; squandering their resources; and destroying their reputations.
Watching the Israeli behaviour over the decades one can only assess that the Israelis, not just their government, only care about the ‘facts on the ground’ as they say after their actions. They do not care about what anyone thinks and they’re quite ready to tell you so. They have impunity and they are using it.
I write from Greece with both anger and sadness. The vast majority here are opposed to growing ties with Israel, driven by a comprador & parasitic elite of oligarchs, their political prostitutes and their media whores. You can feel it on the massive change of tone in coverage, in targeted social media ads, etc. Mass behavioural modification onto a country that’s been traditionally pro Palestinian, a process with tailwinds because of the anger illegal migration.
The bloody British were demonically evil in the way they weaponised Jewish desperation. Besides Israel they considered Uganda, Madagascar and Cyprus- all with the same plan: insert a desperate, alien population that is 110% dependant on external support to do the dirty work and disrupt local development for predatory, imperial exploitation and control. Israel disrupts Arab unity & controls the Suez canal (whose closure after 67 enhanced South Africa’s value to the west to control the Cape route). Cyprus is the unstoppable aircraft carrier that had to be torn apart like Ireland to secure bases.
It seems to me Isrealis are suffering a mass psychosis, where they’ve internalised the lesson that “the world is against us, whatever we do, no-one understands us” and reaction to horrid events reinforces this. I’m not trying to defend their behaviour, just contextualise it: let’s not forget that many Palestinians are just as cynical as the worst of Isrealis: talking about peace but wanting to use the process to “outlast” the other side. Bad behaviour, ill will on both sides has made this into a Kobayashi Mauru. Sadly, tragically – the only resolutions I see is that either the Palestinians are driven out (and Isrealis become less useful as a pawn) or some type of Balfour Boatlift gets organised after a nuclear disarmament.
If and when Israel fails as a state, where will the Zionists go? Surely they are survivors. When the writing on the wall is clear and Israel’s collapse as a state is imminent, I suspect that the core Zionists will make plans for another host; the US, the countries of Europe and other members of the collective West, perhaps some or all. I wonder how the local populations will react regardless of their compromised political elite. It could well be the case that the insanity and destruction of Gaza will come home to the countries that helped enable it. The collective West is certainly complicit in Israel’s genocide though it will no doubt try unsuccessfully to bury that. I suspect that Zionists, like neocons, have no reverse gear and their project will continue in some new form much like a cancer metastasizing and spreading. The ongoing internal social conflict and turmoil in these “hosts” will no doubt distort and undermine the collective West even further even as they are reeling from their loss in Ukraine. I doubt that the “democracy” of the collective West will survive.
The Zionists will find shelter with the Latter Day Saints in the American West. After all, they are both remnants of the Tribes of Israel. The Great Salt Lake is too much like the Dead Sea for this to be coincidence. It is preordained by G–!
Then sit back and watch the destabilization campaign against Idaho begin.
What democracy? Imo…
Corps write the laws.
We don’t choose the candidates, so it doesn’t matter which one we vote for. Kamala vs Donald? Joe vs Donald? Hillary vs Donald? I could go on. For decades.
Congress and pres are bought.
Media is concentrated and anyway a slave to advertisers, explaining why most circulation is falling.
Supremes were selected by and for elites, not you or me.
If we had a democracy they wouldn’t be jailing genocide protestors, kicking them out of schools, and/or deporting them.
You’re so right. You forgot the judges and the so called judicial system where money talks. Local govts. are also the same as the the feds. Very few exceptions.
They will flee, like old Nazis, and pollute other countries with their toxic world views and their racism.
I am currently a week into a six+ week junket of the east Med for work and have spent the last week at meetings in Greece with thirty or so Israeli colleagues. Some disorganized thoughts/comments on the above based on questions I put directly to them between business:
– In response to the question “Will Netanyahu go to jail?” the consensus was “No, but he should”. He has successfully removed any potential successors and this limits the ability of the opposition, such as it is, to bring an end to the genocide and move onto another trajectory. All agreed, with various degrees of disgust/admiration, that Netanyahu is the ‘best’ politician in the history of the world where ‘best’ is defined as ‘successful at avoiding entrapment by rivals’.
– All the Israeli colleagues are sabra and thus ex-IDF. At least one did multiple tours in Gaza (and has the PTSD to prove it). Most were officers and a not insignificant amount were intelligence. Several are on active reserve currently. They have all been indoctrinated from birth to view ‘the arabs’ and especially the Gazans post-10/7 as the enemy. This is neither an affect nor something they have been told to believe, they all believe this, they must believe this in order to continue fighting – the current situation is existential for them. It reminds me very much of post 9/11 in the United States, the absolute crazed bloodlust that can be invoked at a moment’s notice by remembering the television deaths and transplanting them on personal contacts. “Everyone in Israel has a personal connection to 10/7!” one told me. I did not bother trying to dispute that, pretty sure I heard the same thing in the US c. 2002 as we were preparing to go into Iraq.
– Most of the people I work with are still more or less the secular type but a non-insignificant percentage have gone hard into the orthodoxy as a response to the crisis in Israel. They can keep the paranoia in check when talking to outsiders like me but I was able to coax it out from time to time in discussion. They’re falling back into national mythos, that the Holocaust/shoah was just one step on the road to where they are now, and they have to fight to keep what they have lest they be killed where they stand. And every single event since 10/7 appears to reinforce this belief to them.
– A handful are both sabra and truly non-religious and these are the closest to ‘sane’ but even those hold views that can be best described as ‘kill them all, God will know his own’. They know their media is censoring most of the worst of what is happening in Gaza and outsiders see more than they do. They don’t care. Only those living within the situation can possibly understand, regardless of what is being seen. Again, very similar to the US after 9/11.
– I am known as being pro-Russian and very up to date on the Ukraine-Russian war to them and have probed them a bit around what they think is likely to happen if the Iran situation resumes from a sort of mutual war observer perspective (this is one of the few entry points I’ve found into their wars that don’t trigger their immediate us vs you response). Firstly they all have wildly overinflated confidence in the US’ capabilities to protect them and seem shocked that I do not share that confidence. Secondly, those who have not yet fallen into messianic religion to soothe the anxiety have a more rational view of what happened with Ukraine (they at least didn’t try to dispute me when I stated that Ukraine was incentivized to destroy themselves) but when it comes to their own country they believe they have no choice but to do as the US directs them, they are (to paraphrase a commenter above) the unchained attack dog and this is necessary to secure their safety in the region. And this has been the case for generations now, it’s not something they can just stop doing.
– They seemed really surprised that the Epstein thing still has legs in the US. As one said, “He died like six years ago, what is the big deal?” and this triggered huge clearly unexpected howls from the US attendees who began ranting on many different tangents before the liberal application of beer was able to calm things down again. Later I had to explain that there is a belief that this issue can potentially bring down the government where other issues have failed and they seemed kind of surprised. “No way in hell!” but I was surprised that this was a surprise to them.
– I’m going to be in Turkiye later in the trip so I will probably have some commentary from colleagues there too. My personal belief is that the US will ultimately abandon Israel in some form but only after at least another round of hostilities with Iran early next year and the fall of Trump and Netanyahu. Turkiye and Egypt both have much larger armies but Israel’s surveillance tech is too valuable to the West to fully cut them loose (not to mention how embedded into the US political power structure the Israelis have made themselves) – it won’t be a quick or sudden cutting off but a slow process enabling the valuable assets/people/companies to get to the US while the rump state that remains is taken fully over by the messianic religious factions. I also think Russia will be the ultimate guaranteeor of Israel’s physical security assuming there is something left following the final round with Iran. I told a handful of colleagues to keep an eye on Russia’s comments to the Russian-Israeli diaspora and if they were told to evacuate to follow their lead. None of them were aware of the Zhirinovski comments about Iran vs Israel and the relationship to US-Russia-Ukraine.
Very interesting. Keep us updated.
I’m not familiar with the Zhirinovski comments…
The silence from Saudi Arabia and Jodran and Qatar is worse. To see their fellow Arabs slaughtered by a foreign power(s) and to do nothing while tiny Yemen does it’s part is utterly shameful.