I agree with
@Hiryu2.0 .
Imo it's not about any damage (or lack thereof), that may well have not been the Iranian primary objective given the amount of ordnance fired vs the known strength of the Israeli air defenses, it's about the deterrence being broken down further. Iran has proven that you can attack US military targets (in Iraq, Syria and at sea among others) multiple times without being punished for it in any meaningful way. If the reports about Biden not supporting Israel in any punitive strike they've even been handed the supreme win of the US now even actively degrading the deterrence of their own allies and their ability to react to both Iranian terrorist operations in/by proxies and direct aggression.
It's not
how they faired it's
that they attacked a close ally of the US to begin with and will get away with it that's the key takeaway here for all strategic opponents.
And I don't want to make this about Biden specifically, many administrations have made large geopolitical mistakes in the region since the end of the Cold War, but Obama and Biden by far reign supreme in this regard imo. During the Obama administration Iran went from laughing stock with their ancient unservicable pre-revolution air force to one of the world's largest producers of all sorts of long range guided missiles, ammunition and UAVs. Look at many of the Iranian missile systems, when they were produced in unseen before mass production: The second Obama term after he had lifted sanctions and returned billions of seized assets to the regime. That was after Obama had been re-newing sanctions against them, adding additional ones, and had been confronted by violent repression of not just the Iranian people for 6 years in office, but the support given to the Syrian regime to butcher their people too. Yet he gave them everything they wanted for nothing in return, changing his opinion seemingly overnight.
Diplomacy does not recognize compassion, kindness and charity, especially not in the Middle East and Asia. Weakness is not a strength, weakness is weakness.
And don't get me started on the retarded Reset button with russia. I bet Vlad & Sergey are still ROFL whenever it's brought up.
Loads more provocations during the Trump administration and what does Biden do? He reverses the Trump administration's actions against Iran, overtly signaling that the US is prepared to do anything to avoid having to confront Iran in any way, economic, diplomatic or military. Whenever Russia, China, Iran or North Korea go for a bout of sabre rattling the US response is to at best put on a token show of force coordinated so as not to cause any actual damage or far more often to move out of the way. Runing out of Afghanistan with his tail between his legs showed pure cowardice. A staged withdrawal from a long time warzone is not a disaster, pulling out with near zero preparation and absolutely zero plan for how things will go afterwards but pure hope is.
Hope is not a plan.
This isn't avoiding conflict, it's boosting confidence and abilities among the aggressors for the next time they choose to engage, to the point where the US either has no more choice on whether or not to ignore it because it directly affects the US (/mainland), or is no longer in the position to counter it in the first place. When the confrontation does come it will be far more costly than it could have been a decade ago or more at that point.
There is at least a certain amount of coordination going on. The spider in the web is clearly China.
As someone here said, can't remember if it was this thread or the Russia/Ukraine one: The west has politicians, but there isn't a single leader among them. And that is imo by design. We don't want strong leaders, they frighten us.
Problems is, they frighten our elected officials too. On the playground the dominant kid is the bully, not the nice guy.
www.jpost.com
