Most people are not realizing that just as the Israeli's currently see the destruction of HAMAS as necessary for their continued survival, in a similar manner Iran sees it's continual survival requiring maintaining an Islamic Israel divide throughout the middle east, and ensuring the continued survival of terrorist organizations that attack Israel.
It is as important for Iran to ensure that Gaza continues to exist outside Israeli control, as it is for Israel to ensure that HAMAS ceases to exist.
A war with HAMAS and occupation of Gaza will see Iran actively participating in the conflict. Whether it be through its proxies fully activating and attacking Israel, or with Iran itself attacking Israeli airspace, or whatever else it can do with its current capabilities.
The US in its current state is not well positioned to attack a nation of 80+ million people. Any invasion of Iran by the US will quickly and over time convince the world of US imperialism conspiracies and lead to loss of US influence and prestige in terms of global matters. The Iraq invasion and withdrawal from Afghanistan already came at a cost. With the Iraq invasion likely having a strong impact on the weakening of Republican support and anti-boots on the ground mindset propagation across the US, and the Afghanistan war withdrawal resulting in the galvanization of Russia and China into believing in a weakening US.
An Iran invasion by the US would likely have similar outcomes.
Add to this the fact that Saudi Arabia by itself invading Iran would result in a severe middle eastern conflict which will be too costly to Saudi Arabia, and that Iran working more heavily to help the Muslims in Gaza than the Saudi Arabians will also shift public opinion towards Iran in the middle east, it is likely that the best case scenario for Saudi Arabia is to not participate in the ongoing conflict at all even if it escalates into a direct war between Israel and Iran.
The other scenario would be for Saudi Arabia to invade Iran with US backing and future guarantees. The only problems regarding this being that the US guarantees are already on the global stage currently seen as having limited worth outside of guarantees and promises made to other western nations and East Asian allies.
Saudi Arabia, even if it were to agree to such an invasion of Iran with US backing, would still suffer from having untrained troops with limited fighting ability.
From a EU perspective, they might as well treat an invasion of Iran by the US as an attack on the EU, taking into account how many refugees would be at the EU borders if such an escalated war were to occur.
Which limits the US to two functions in the middle east if an Iran Israel conflict were to escalate.
1. To provide Israel with intel regarding Iranian movements, to provide weapons to Israel, and to assist Israel in air bombing locations of Iranian proxies outside of Iran
2. To provide medical services to individuals within Israel, or funding to Israel, or to assist in moving foreign and US residents out of Israel.
The only reason the US would have to invade Iran in the coming days would be to guarantee expansion of US dominance across the middle east, which taking into account previous experiences with fighting smaller powers such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, will likely not be the case.
The US till date has at best been able to hold down territory in the middle east for limited amounts of time, but never able to normalize relations with the region.
The only time the US has come close to such a goal is in the relations it maintains with Saudi Arabia, where the US is still forced to give concessions to Saudi Arabian geopolitical goals in the middle east, in exchange for Saudi Arabia working to support US goals on the global stage.
If Israel were to be fully cornered, it is very likely that the Israeli state will lash out with limited concern as to what or who it hits during the process. It is very likely that the brutality that we would see from the Israeli state in terms of total deaths and civilian casualties caused in the name of killing Terrorists and enemies of Israel would make the Western world turn against Israel in terms of public opinion, and even possibly political support.
There is no doubt as to the Israelis being supplied by the US in their war ahead. However, the fact remains that there is no guarantee that Israel will win the conflict even with US arms, and even winning the conflict will result in complete loss of support on the global stage, taking into account the amount of casualties a complete victory today would incur on the middle east.
It is a very real possibility that a war between Israel and Iran would destabilize the entire middle east against Israel, causing the continual and future collapse of the Israeli state.
In a worst case scenario, Israel if it does indeed possess nuclear arms, may launch the same against enemies in the middle east, which would guarantee the Israeli state being turned into an international pariah and its future disintegration via whatever methods necessary by the international community.
In conclusion, there are no good forward paths for Israel, and no matter what path it walks, it will come out weaker and worse off in international relations. The relations between Israel and other middle eastern states have not normalized long enough for the middle east to not turn against Israel if it kills enough Muslims in the middle east. There is a real possibility of this war escalating beyond only the participation of terrorist organizations, in which case Israel would suffer.
Israeli lives matter. ( Required message by the chud award )
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Iran at least has a standing military to target right? Could the US not strike quickly to crush Iranian forces à la the Golf War instead of getting bogged down in years of gorilla warfare? Maybe I'm underestimating Irans military power, whatever happens I agree another prolonged invasion and occupation would be a disaster.
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Destroying Iranian military would result in successfully radicalizing 80+ million people against the US, and these aren't just dumb goat herders this time. Think smart enough too build an IED that actually works right smart.
Also destroying Iran would pretty much destabilize the entirely of Eastern Middle east, so you then got a mass unstable dead zone of Afghanistan + Iran of a 100 million plus all thanks too the US.
The optics would be bad is putting it mildly.
Once you get too fighting countries at that size, you are no longer fighting too destroy the military or occupy the territory. At that point you are fighting too weaken the state piece by piece until it breaks apart internally into more manageable chunks, or until its weak enough too be easily influenced and controlled by external parties.
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It's a huge country with 80 million people, and they're much better educated and skilled than any enemy we've had before. We sent 200,000 men into Iraq and it was nowhere near enough to effectively control the country. We sent 500,000 to South Vietnam where most of the population was on our side.
Occupying Iran could easily take 2 million troops, which means returning to the draft. Which if you know any actual boomers who lived through it, that's not possible now.
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