Jettisoning a Maniac

to resist an obvious calamity

Published: 2024-08-05

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Political Assassination

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, a political organisation elected by Palestinians to govern Gaza, which also has a defense force which is supported by other political organisations. Ismael Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated with his bodyguard by an explosion just after the inauguration of Iranian President Pezeshkian, in Tehran.

The assassination is so dangerous to the military and political stability of southwest Asia, that only a group which is happy to take the risk of setting off a conflict across the region would execute the murder. This leaves the list of suspect organizations rather short. There are only four organisations which, in the last 6 months, have performed actions which have been escalating tensions in the region. Two, Yemen's Ansar Allah and Lebanon's Hizbollah have no motive. Indeed, these two organisations are aligned with Hamas and have been risking the lives of their military personnel in support of Hamas. The other two organisations are the USA and Israel. The USA has been arming Israel to continue its genocide against the Palestinian people in Palestine and summarily murdering members of Iraq's security forces. It is also illegally occupying Syria, against the will of the government.

During the last few weeks, Israel has committed internationally illegal military attacks in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

In response to the assassination of Haniyeh, US Secretary of State Lloyd Austin has stressed that the US is doing all it can, politically, to avoid the outbreak of a regional war. While these actions may be happening behind the scenes, the USA has moved more military assets into the region, including an aircraft carrier strike group.

Warnings of the risk in the current situation have obviously been flowing through the military intelligence networks of NATO and the English language 5EYES network because Australia, Canada and France have all issued travel alerts recommending that citizens leave Lebanon. The danger is well known: international flights to and from Israel were severely reduced following the assassination.

While Israel has yet to admit that it was behind the political assassination, its guilt is evident to all careful observers. The component of its state apparatus most likely to carry that guilt is its military intelligence.

The Man in Focus

Israel's current political leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, following a 58 long sequence of standing ovations while addressing the USA Congress, has been emboldened. Israel's parliament issued him with authority to attack Lebanon at his own discretion, irrespective of international response to the obviously illegal escalation of the existing war between Israel and Hizbollah.

Netanyahu is motivated to take this action from two origins. Hizbollah's punishment of Israel in accordance with the Genocide Convention has driven many illegal Zionist settlers out of the territory of Syria annexed by Israel after the 1967 war. This migration is placing financial and social stress on areas of Israel to which the illegal settlers have relocated. Secondly, when the genocide on and war against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank ends, Netanyahu is likely to stand trial in Israeli courts for existing charges of corruption. The continuation of Israeli launched conflicts, including the genocide, is in his personal interest, as is escalating the war against Hizbollah in Lebanon.

Because Israel cannot possibly win a war against Hizbollah, and even less so against Hizbollah, Ansar Allah, Hamas' al Qassem Brigades, Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units and Iran, Israel needs an ally to support it in escalating its conflicts. Israel has only one ally, the USA. Israel's actions must therefore be seen with the motivations of its political leader Netanyahu, and within the constraints of its one-ally military reality. Netanyahu is trying to engineer the USA into being trapped to join Israel in a war against its neighbours for Netanyahu's political survival.

Before moving to why this is proving so difficult for Netanyahu, despite the tsunami of support he received from the USA Congress, the curious case of how Haniyeh was assassinated may provide some light entertainment.

Deflecting Embarrassment

As of writing two versions of the mechanism of the assassination exist. One is provided by Iran in which the explosive which killed the political leader moved before it detonated. It flew. The other proposal is by anonymous officials from the West who spoke with a state aligned newspaper, the New York Times. In this report the explosive was already there; it was "pre-planted". Haniyeh was staying on a military premises controlled by the Iranian Republican Guards Corp, an elite state military organisation. Their guest was being hosted in the same place, again, mentioned Mark Sleboda in discussion on Dialogue Works with Nima Alkhorshid. This repetition of where Haniyeh was being hosted lends itself to the possibility of a pre-planted explosive.

That the IRGC failed to protect their guest severely damages its reputation. Were the attack based on a missile or drone, their failure is in aerial defense. Were the attack based on a pre-planted explosive, the embarrassment is far deeper: they had not even swept the area to clear it of danger. Were it that the explosive was pre-planted, this would explain the continued denial of it by Iranian media, to limit the reputational damage to the IRGC.

Note 2024-08-06: Alastair Crooke reports that a person known to him who was at the site of the attack on the IRGC grounds is certain that the attack was airborne. See sources.

While discussion of the mechanics of the assassination may provide some insight into media and the motives for issuing different claims, it does not change the serious nature of the risk of a wider war in the region. There is, however, a limiting factor on that, which was again emphasized to by Sleboda. To understand it, we need to turn our attention to information learned during the catastrophic, for Ukraine, proxy war which NATO, led by the US, has been waging against Russia.

Despite all of the claims that Russia was running out of any number of changing munitions, or equally spurious claims that Russia was suffering casualties far in excess of those being suffered by Ukraine, the contrary has been proven to be true on both fronts. Not only is Ukraine unable to field sufficient trained units to inflict any significant defeat on the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AFRF), but the waves of "improved" military systems which NATO member states have been providing Ukraine lie destroyed on the fields of an ever shrinking nation.

In April of 2023 the leak of an authentic assessment by the USA's military intelligence informed the world that the biggest problem which Ukraine faced was its lack of air defenses. Ukraine had been armed for air defense with USA Patriot missile batteries, augmented by their radars and USA's satellite and flown intelligence platforms. Additional NATO nation air defense systems were also provided, like Germany's Iris-T. Since that assessment Ukraine launched a major counter offensive against the Surovikin line, a triple deep defensive works constructed by the AFRF. The offensive achieved nothing more that killing hundreds of thousands of AFU soldiers and having the newly delivered "advanced" weapons systems destroyed. Ukraine demonstrated the futility of attacking Russia's prepared defenses.

Following that Ukrainian disaster, Russia has continued to successfully target and neutralize any air defense systems in Ukraine which it can identify. They have been and remain “priority targets”. Russia’s success is evident by the introduction of their "glide bombs", the FAB series from FAB-250 to FAB-3000, where the number indicates the size in Kg of TNT equivalent which the bomb carries. The AFRF have successfully used these across the more than 1000 Km long lines of contact to destroy defensive works, ammunition depots, headquarters, and many other fixed position Ukrainian military assets. The AFRF have also been using cruise and hypersonic missiles to destroy other key assets, often air defense systems, anywhere they wish in Ukraine.

Ukraine has no effective air defense. It is hampered by both lack of launch systems and the missiles they are meant to fire.

Withheld by Production; thanks Russia

The USA has revealed that its entire production of Patriot missiles, after upgrading their production, is between 550 and 650 missiles per year. Russia has been launching approximately 4000 missiles at Ukrainian military targets per year for 2.5 years. The USA has called on allied nations to donate missiles to Ukraine. This indicates just how low USA stocks of these air defense missiles are. The USA has diverted all of its small production to Ukraine, except for one client.

In response to Israel's military attack on Iran's diplomatic mission in Syria, Iran responded with an attack on military targets in Israel. The exclusively military targets of the attack were agreed between Iran and the USA days ahead of launch. This provided the US and some of its NATO allies, notably the French and British, and other regional allies, notably Jordan, the ability to assist in Israel's defense against the pre-agreed, pre-planned, known attacks.

Iran managed to penetrate the most heavily defended airspace in the history of warfare, proving forever that "missile defense" is an oxymoron. The cost to Israel and its partners in defense is estimated to be between $3 and $6 billion USD for one attack by Iran, in which Iran used only a fraction of its capacity and did not use its most advanced missile systems.

These two data, Iran's successful attack and the pathetic volume of USA's missile production, are the reasons that the USA's political elite, despite a seemingly overwhelming desire to assist the genocidal Zionists in starting a regional war, cannot.

Hubris is not a currency

Israel's much vaunted military has been shown to be a paper tiger, first by Hamas' al Qassem brigades' audacious attack on 2024-10-07, and then by failing to defend itself against an attack by Iran in response to its outrageous violation of the Geneva conventions by attacking a diplomatic mission.

Should the USA be dragged kicking and screaming into a regional conflagration in southwest Asia, it too will have its military prowess exposed as overconfident and overextended. The destruction which would rain down on US military assets in the region would banish it from the area for generations.

The USA's military leadership know this.

To understand the changing geostrategic situation in southwest Asia please take time to read carefully M.K.B's most recent article. Russia's venerated Foreign Minister Lavrov has called on all parties, without exception, to work to stabilize the situation. Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman called new Iranian President Pezeshkian to congratulate him and express his wishes to further their recently unfrozen dialogue after assistance from China. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi has asked Pezeshkian for an urgent meeting. Pezeshkian has appointed experienced Iranian diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif to head his presidential research agency the Center for Strategic Studies. The recent de-listing of Hizbollah as an unfriendly organisation by the Arab League signals a regional desire to hear Iran's voice. Regional and international organisations are far less inclined to countenance Zionist hyperbole or US propaganda demonizing Iran.

The USA's involvement in a regional conflict in southwest Asia would be geostrategic suicide and very likely lead to a military defeat so large that it would force the nation to turn inward. The claim of suicide is realistic because the economic sanctions which the US and EU tried to use to defeat Russia in the Ukraine proxy war failed. Iran is well capable of withstanding similar efforts with small assistance from its allies. The US has insufficient military production for the nightmarishly long logistics chain to support a war on the other side of the world in southwest Asia. Iran is right there and is already armed with sufficiently dangerous weaponry to cause extensive damage to US military assets and destroy Israel.

The world would not be well served by such a dramatic and sudden shift in geoeconomic and geopolitical power. China and Russia, along with their key partners in BRICS+ and the SCO, know this.

Will the US allow the political career of one genocidal Zionist to implode its projected power? Everybody, except that megalomaniac, hopes not.

Update

Israel, under Netanyahu’s leadership, has just shifted from being a liability to the US to being a direct threat.

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Sources

Iran Says Haniyeh Was Killed by a 'Short-Range Projectile,' Not Planted Bomb, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-08-04

Israel Considering 'Preemptive Strike' Against Iran, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-08-05

US Sending Aircraft Carrier, Fighter Jet Squadron To 'Defend Israel', Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-08-04

Iran to hit Israel hard with smart power, M. K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 2024-08-03

Checkmate, Scott Ritter, Scott Ritter Extra, 2024-04-16

US Intelligence Leaks, YesXorNo, 2023-04-11

The FAB and the Donbas, YesXorNo, 2024-03-13

Mark Sleboda： NATO's Downfall & Putin's Next Move - Can Israel's Army Survive War w⧸ Hezbollah⧸Iran, Sleboda with Alkorshid, Dialogue Works, 2024-08-03

Youtube id: Qr8Oszmoxk4

Larry C. Johnson： Israel'\''s Imminent Destruction in All-Out War with Hezbollah and Iran!, Alkhorshid interviews L. Johnson, Dialogue Works, 2024-08-04

Youtube id: hyMxEWu7hac

Alastair Crooke: Willful Western Blindness Over Israel, Crooke with Napolitano, Judging Freedom, 2024-08-05

Ukraine - a tragedy of conflicting narratives | #1632 with Nicolai Petro, Adrian Verbrugge in conversation with Prof. Nicolai Petro on the war in Ukraine, De Nieuwe Wereld TV, 2024-07-04

Youtube id: 2KIVk4WJgR4

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