• Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    That’s certainly Israel’s goal.

    That said, Trump and Vance have now both progressed to openly threatening Israel in public, which suggests that either Israel haven’t fully played their hand yet, aren’t holding as much as we think, or have too much to lose from any blackmail material getting out in the open. Keep in mind that Epstein being an Israeli political operative cuts both ways; I’m sure there’s a lot in those files that could seriously damage Israel if it got out. If it were publicly known that they were, say, trafficking children for political favour with US politicians, that’s the sort of thing that could be really bad for them. Not saying that happened, but we’ve not got much reason to believe it didn’t at this point.

    If Israel had enough usable blackmail on Trump and his crew to get their way here, I think we’d already be two months into an invasion, not discussing US surrender. Why wait this long to use it if you have it?

    • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      Nah, Israel has the usuable blackmail, not just epstein stuff either to be sure. Invading Iran was never feasible, it would seriously take a million troops even for a half assed iraq style invasion, and Iran has mountains, and is 5x the size.

      Israel doesn’t actually care about Iran, they are a foil for their politicians. They know they’ve been lying about them for decades, and while they do want to hurt them, that is not their reason, forever war for domestic political purposes is.

      This will not end, even when it seems like it ended, it will keep on, this is forever war, and Israel is going to turn lenanon into a series of ghettos.

      • mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        Israel do care about Iran. It want is fully destroyed. It thought arming some protesters and factions like the kurd would have created an civil war

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        Invading Iran was never feasible, it would seriously take a million troops even for a half assed iraq style invasion, and Iran has mountains, and is 5x the size.

        You’re correct, but I think what you’re missing is that this has nothing to do with the political calculus currently taking place in the White House. If they were capable of realistically assessing military threats they wouldn’t have been blindsided by Iran’s ability to strike at their military bases or by the closure of the strait. Trump truly believes that the power of the US military is infinite. What’s holding him back from an invasion isn’t a fear of losing, it’s a fear of the political cost of being seen to sign up the US to another decades long occupation.

        Israel cares very much about Iran, because Iran is still a serious threat to them. They can have their forever war without Iran in the picture, they’ve got an almost unlimited supply of local adversaries to pick fights with. But Iran is currently by far the most dangerous of those allies to Israel, at least in Israel’s estimation.

        • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          I was going to take issue with the calculus term you used, but as I believe calculus is measuring the area of probability curves, it might fit. The probability curve of fucking children on tape being released.

          That said, Iran is not a real threat to Israel and we all know it. Iran can’t do shit to Israel, that has overwhelming advantage. Any suggestion to the contrary is Israel playing their sheep.

          To get back to the calculus, it has nothing to do with winning or stopping Iran from whatever. Why anyone would take them at their word at this point is beyond me, not the least on this issue.