Alternatively, their "options" were never all that impressive.
The common assessment is that Iran pushed Hamas to launch its October 7th attack in order to derail Saudi Arabia signing on to the Abraham Accords. However, in the aftermath of the October 7th attack Israeli trucking companies finished organizing an overland shipping route from the UAE and Saudi Arabia into Israel, with the last leg of the route running through Jordan.
That suggests that the broader sentiment in the Arab world is that it is better to do business with Israel.
This is significant because the Abraham Accords say NOTHING about the Palestinian Arabs. The Arab world, as it gravitates to the Abraham Accords, is moving past making the Palestinian Arabs a central issue in their diplomatic and economic relations with Israel. If that trend continues, Iran's terror proxies are significantly and permanently diminished. If Saudi Arabia signs the Abraham Accords, the Palestinian Arabs will be effectively cut loose by the Arab world, and left to work out whatever peace they can with Israel entirely on their own.
Iran may simply have misread the situation in the Middle East, and are paying for that mistake.
You have given us many logical and wise insights reassuring us that the Hamas-Israel conflict should not explode into a larger war. You’re right, it’s not in the best interests of hardly anyone. Still, I keep expecting some rogue player to exploit this opportunity - to seize power, demolish ancient enemies, or safeguard assets. Is there some billionaire in Dubai plotting something? In the vast herd of Saudi princes, is there one who will take some bold actions to catapult himself to being the next King? Who knows? All I know is that, historically, the Hamas-Israel war presents an ‘opportunity’ for the kind of political scheming that is hard to predict but makes sense in hindsight.
One aspect that I don’t know -and this is maybe true for most of us in the West - is to what extent are the ancient hatreds, prejudices, and suspicions between the Mideast players still valid. The Arabs and Persians have detested each other for centuries, but their countries are thoroughly modern now, so can they be completely civil in their interactions now? And I remember the savagery of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - how the Iranians strapped explosives to eight-year-old boys and sent them to the front - but Iran has modernized extensively since then. Have they stopped believing that it is their religious duty to kill Sunnis? These kinds of deep religious and cultural hatreds -or lack there of-can make all the difference in the expansion to a larger war. I don’t think we in the West are getting the modern cultural insights from the media to understand all the aspects. If you find any good cultural explanations from some expert who is presently living in the Mideast, please clue us in. Thanks!
There are unquestionably forces that want to see the Israeli Hamas War expand. So far, they are not succeeding except in the most incremental of ways.
That doesn't mean those forces won't eventually get the wider war they want, just that they're not getting it yet and they're not getting it in the way they most probably anticipated. Right now the impacts of the war's expansion have not been what I would have expected back in October.
If the war does escalate in a sudden and dramatic fashion, it will be from a catalyst which no one so far has considered.
Which is the great danger here. No one in 1914 expected WW1 to start the way that it did. No one expected the stalemate to emerge on the Western Front.
Which tells us that an "explosion" of war in the Middle East will have consequences that will reverberate far beyond the Middle East and last long after the fighting ends.
You know, if I were head of Israel, or advising the fake pres. Biden, here's what I would do, and it would solve a lot. Not that anyone would listen, but here goes:
a.) As head of Israel, or Blinken, whatever, I would go back to the Oslo Accords. Are they ideal? No. But let me know how the other plans are working out. But sides want to drive the other "into the sea." Good luck with that. Fact is, the Palestinians, which are a cover for a disparate group of peoples, include Christians as well.
b.) I would affirm that Jews ARE indeed God's chosen people, but they were meant to usher in the Messiah. I was just reading in Exodus the other day that God did indeed grant the greater area to the Jews, but on the condition of their obedience to Him. Right now, Israel isn't that much different from, say, corrupt California. God's promise is only for a nation that follows Him. Israel by and large is a secular, liberal state that mostly wants nothing to do with God, including abortion, homosexuality, etc. God's promise is thus null and void. Moreover, if God has granted the greater area to the Jews, He, not the military, will provide this. And it will NOT include the massacre of innocent women and children. As a matter of fact, if the Jews would show some intellectual honesty, along with the Muslims, they would consider the claims of Christ. Already small communities are doing that, and there is rapproachment between Messianic (Christian) Jews and MBB (Muslim background believers in Christ). The son of a Hamas leader is now a Christian and a great advocate for reconciliation. In fact, the whole New Testament has much on Jewish and Gentile rapproachment. "Tearing down the wall" between the two was how St. Paul put it.
c.) I would, as a Blinken, Netanyahu, etc. make one simple statement: Dear Palestinians: I want you rich. I want you to be the next Qutar or UAE with the gas fields off your coast, and turning it into what Lebanon used to be - a vacation paradise. The tradoff is that you need to accept permanent peace keepers with very strict and draconian rules to keep the peace. The UN is a bunch of Marxist idiots, so maybe get a couple countries, like Russian, Norway, Canada and maybe even China to do the policing that MUST be strict. I'll tell you what. If I were a Palestinian, and I had the choice between being rich and at peace, or what's going on now, I know what I would choose. Allow Gazans to have the gas fields off the coast, an bring in tourist escaping winter. When people are rich, they are a lot less interested in war, for the most part.
d.) The supposed Ben Gurion canal, to take the load off of the Suez. If it goes thru part of Gaza, fine. Let them make some money off it. Again, the msg to the Palestinians is that you can be rich and at peace, or broke with half the population displaced or killed. Dunno about you, but despite no PhD in math, even I can do that kind of calculation. Yes, this is contingent upon hammering out a police force in Gaza that has teeth, and brooks no Muslim radicalism. But, as we see with Dubai, UAE, Qutar, etc., their radicalism (and make no mistake. The Qu'ran, which I own and have read twice, is FULL of violence. We can't go in assuming there will not be a subset of Muslim radicals, who must be rooted out as the stick, and wealth for all Gazans as the carrot. Israel should make hard plans to quickly ramp up a Ben Gurion canal that would bypass Gaza should they not play pool
e.) I am aware that the Jewish state has usurped some Palestinian land; this must stop. Similarly, we need policing in Gaza with teeth from an international force. Those pushing violence on Jews should be dealt with harshly. I am also aware that this Palestininian attack came with the foreknowledge of the Israeli upper command... all probably done - like the Israeli bombing of the USS Liberty in I think it was 1967, to try to get the US to join the war. Something similar is being done now. But again, I would appeal to the Iranian population directy, with the same bargain: We, Israel, want you rich and at peace, but those imams that want war? Well, you again can have wealth and peace, or some nukes. We, Israel, not only do not WANT your land, we couldn't occupy it anyway. Heck, we, Israel, got our butts handed to us by Hezbollah a few years back anyway. My broadcast to the Iranians would be that not only do we NOT have designs on your land, but even if we did, there's no way we could even think of occupying it anyway. This is not dissimilar to Russia not wanting western Ukraine, as there is no way to occupy and police it. Beside, the underground Christian church is growing by leaps and bounds in Iran. Christians there just want peace as well .
To be sure, there's a lot of loose ends in the proposals above, but the main tenet - we want you Palestianians rich and peaceful, with the "peace" part backed up with a strong military (think the Green Line in Cyprus) so that never again would it even be possible to launch an attack. And the Israeli Deep State should be investigated for them allowing the October attacks, which they clearly knew about, but allowed to help draw in the US to try to invoke a greater war, ultimately with Iran, or at least its proxies.
Could this broad framework actually work? It's better than what is being done now.
Maybe the Iranians have very wisely thought about these factors, and scaled back their once somewhat impressive 'options.'
Alternatively, their "options" were never all that impressive.
The common assessment is that Iran pushed Hamas to launch its October 7th attack in order to derail Saudi Arabia signing on to the Abraham Accords. However, in the aftermath of the October 7th attack Israeli trucking companies finished organizing an overland shipping route from the UAE and Saudi Arabia into Israel, with the last leg of the route running through Jordan.
That suggests that the broader sentiment in the Arab world is that it is better to do business with Israel.
This is significant because the Abraham Accords say NOTHING about the Palestinian Arabs. The Arab world, as it gravitates to the Abraham Accords, is moving past making the Palestinian Arabs a central issue in their diplomatic and economic relations with Israel. If that trend continues, Iran's terror proxies are significantly and permanently diminished. If Saudi Arabia signs the Abraham Accords, the Palestinian Arabs will be effectively cut loose by the Arab world, and left to work out whatever peace they can with Israel entirely on their own.
Iran may simply have misread the situation in the Middle East, and are paying for that mistake.
You have given us many logical and wise insights reassuring us that the Hamas-Israel conflict should not explode into a larger war. You’re right, it’s not in the best interests of hardly anyone. Still, I keep expecting some rogue player to exploit this opportunity - to seize power, demolish ancient enemies, or safeguard assets. Is there some billionaire in Dubai plotting something? In the vast herd of Saudi princes, is there one who will take some bold actions to catapult himself to being the next King? Who knows? All I know is that, historically, the Hamas-Israel war presents an ‘opportunity’ for the kind of political scheming that is hard to predict but makes sense in hindsight.
One aspect that I don’t know -and this is maybe true for most of us in the West - is to what extent are the ancient hatreds, prejudices, and suspicions between the Mideast players still valid. The Arabs and Persians have detested each other for centuries, but their countries are thoroughly modern now, so can they be completely civil in their interactions now? And I remember the savagery of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - how the Iranians strapped explosives to eight-year-old boys and sent them to the front - but Iran has modernized extensively since then. Have they stopped believing that it is their religious duty to kill Sunnis? These kinds of deep religious and cultural hatreds -or lack there of-can make all the difference in the expansion to a larger war. I don’t think we in the West are getting the modern cultural insights from the media to understand all the aspects. If you find any good cultural explanations from some expert who is presently living in the Mideast, please clue us in. Thanks!
There are unquestionably forces that want to see the Israeli Hamas War expand. So far, they are not succeeding except in the most incremental of ways.
That doesn't mean those forces won't eventually get the wider war they want, just that they're not getting it yet and they're not getting it in the way they most probably anticipated. Right now the impacts of the war's expansion have not been what I would have expected back in October.
If the war does escalate in a sudden and dramatic fashion, it will be from a catalyst which no one so far has considered.
Which is the great danger here. No one in 1914 expected WW1 to start the way that it did. No one expected the stalemate to emerge on the Western Front.
Which tells us that an "explosion" of war in the Middle East will have consequences that will reverberate far beyond the Middle East and last long after the fighting ends.
You know, if I were head of Israel, or advising the fake pres. Biden, here's what I would do, and it would solve a lot. Not that anyone would listen, but here goes:
a.) As head of Israel, or Blinken, whatever, I would go back to the Oslo Accords. Are they ideal? No. But let me know how the other plans are working out. But sides want to drive the other "into the sea." Good luck with that. Fact is, the Palestinians, which are a cover for a disparate group of peoples, include Christians as well.
b.) I would affirm that Jews ARE indeed God's chosen people, but they were meant to usher in the Messiah. I was just reading in Exodus the other day that God did indeed grant the greater area to the Jews, but on the condition of their obedience to Him. Right now, Israel isn't that much different from, say, corrupt California. God's promise is only for a nation that follows Him. Israel by and large is a secular, liberal state that mostly wants nothing to do with God, including abortion, homosexuality, etc. God's promise is thus null and void. Moreover, if God has granted the greater area to the Jews, He, not the military, will provide this. And it will NOT include the massacre of innocent women and children. As a matter of fact, if the Jews would show some intellectual honesty, along with the Muslims, they would consider the claims of Christ. Already small communities are doing that, and there is rapproachment between Messianic (Christian) Jews and MBB (Muslim background believers in Christ). The son of a Hamas leader is now a Christian and a great advocate for reconciliation. In fact, the whole New Testament has much on Jewish and Gentile rapproachment. "Tearing down the wall" between the two was how St. Paul put it.
c.) I would, as a Blinken, Netanyahu, etc. make one simple statement: Dear Palestinians: I want you rich. I want you to be the next Qutar or UAE with the gas fields off your coast, and turning it into what Lebanon used to be - a vacation paradise. The tradoff is that you need to accept permanent peace keepers with very strict and draconian rules to keep the peace. The UN is a bunch of Marxist idiots, so maybe get a couple countries, like Russian, Norway, Canada and maybe even China to do the policing that MUST be strict. I'll tell you what. If I were a Palestinian, and I had the choice between being rich and at peace, or what's going on now, I know what I would choose. Allow Gazans to have the gas fields off the coast, an bring in tourist escaping winter. When people are rich, they are a lot less interested in war, for the most part.
d.) The supposed Ben Gurion canal, to take the load off of the Suez. If it goes thru part of Gaza, fine. Let them make some money off it. Again, the msg to the Palestinians is that you can be rich and at peace, or broke with half the population displaced or killed. Dunno about you, but despite no PhD in math, even I can do that kind of calculation. Yes, this is contingent upon hammering out a police force in Gaza that has teeth, and brooks no Muslim radicalism. But, as we see with Dubai, UAE, Qutar, etc., their radicalism (and make no mistake. The Qu'ran, which I own and have read twice, is FULL of violence. We can't go in assuming there will not be a subset of Muslim radicals, who must be rooted out as the stick, and wealth for all Gazans as the carrot. Israel should make hard plans to quickly ramp up a Ben Gurion canal that would bypass Gaza should they not play pool
e.) I am aware that the Jewish state has usurped some Palestinian land; this must stop. Similarly, we need policing in Gaza with teeth from an international force. Those pushing violence on Jews should be dealt with harshly. I am also aware that this Palestininian attack came with the foreknowledge of the Israeli upper command... all probably done - like the Israeli bombing of the USS Liberty in I think it was 1967, to try to get the US to join the war. Something similar is being done now. But again, I would appeal to the Iranian population directy, with the same bargain: We, Israel, want you rich and at peace, but those imams that want war? Well, you again can have wealth and peace, or some nukes. We, Israel, not only do not WANT your land, we couldn't occupy it anyway. Heck, we, Israel, got our butts handed to us by Hezbollah a few years back anyway. My broadcast to the Iranians would be that not only do we NOT have designs on your land, but even if we did, there's no way we could even think of occupying it anyway. This is not dissimilar to Russia not wanting western Ukraine, as there is no way to occupy and police it. Beside, the underground Christian church is growing by leaps and bounds in Iran. Christians there just want peace as well .
To be sure, there's a lot of loose ends in the proposals above, but the main tenet - we want you Palestianians rich and peaceful, with the "peace" part backed up with a strong military (think the Green Line in Cyprus) so that never again would it even be possible to launch an attack. And the Israeli Deep State should be investigated for them allowing the October attacks, which they clearly knew about, but allowed to help draw in the US to try to invoke a greater war, ultimately with Iran, or at least its proxies.
Could this broad framework actually work? It's better than what is being done now.