If the Iranian uprisings fail to overthrow the mullahcracy, Israel will act to behead that regime, and not worry for some time about the nuclear weapons program there. Right now Israel is waiting this out, to see if Hitler Jr (Ahmedeadman) is overthrown, or will manage to cling to power. My guess is, he will not be overthrown, and will come through the current crisis stronger than ever.
Also, I would guess that Israel will kill the sorry S.O.B. when he ventures out of Iran on some diplomatic trip. The plane carrying him will simply be shot right out of the sky and drop unremarked into the ocean. The entire Israeli attack squadron will return unscathed. If something goes wrong (if the enroute midair refueling fails for some reason, for example), the squadron will still successfully carry out their mission, and ditch in a prearranged location to be rescued by one or more Israeli subs.
The Saudis will supply some of the necessary intel to enable the Israelis to make the hit.
Removal of a hostile regime in Iran is a necessity to avoid a multifront war and internal uprising by Hamas, Fatah, Hizbollah, Syria, and what passes for the Lebanese army. I have confidence in the Israelis’ ability to defeat their foes, even if it proves terribly costly in lives and treasure.
The way the alliances have shaken out puts a neutral Jordan as a wedge along the eastern frontier of Israel; the Saudis are beset in the south and east by various Shiite groups funded by Iran, and Egypt has been sitting on a longterm buildup of other jihadist terror groups for decades (smart move, Sadat, letting your eventual killers out of prison to balance the hardcore Nasserites), so neither will fire a shot against or tolerate much nonsense along their common borders with Israel.
Turkey and Syria had been continually at each other’s throats (one pretext used by Syria was the Turkish dams on the Euphrates and its tributaries, which largely originate in Turkish territory) but have basically joined forces with Iran (and its proxies in Lebanon); Iraq is in a vise now, and will be in joint talks with those three as soon as US troops have completely left, if not before then.
The Russians are playing all sides, which is a nice safe way to come out on top no matter who wins.
The nest of vipers known as Saudi Arabia has helped spawn a worldwide jihadist movement without any official sponsorship but with the full knowledge of what Ariel Sharon once referred to as “those 3000 corrupt princes”. They’re in bed with the Russians regarding the jihadist groups operating in ever-greater numbers inside Russia’s perennial enemy China.
If the Taliban / al-Qaeda authority links up with Iran (geographically), it’ll be the beginning of the end of Saudi influence in Central Asia, and they know that too.
For that matter, if Iran’s influence becomes dominant among the various rag-tag tribes without flags in the ethnic Pollock painting that is Afghanistan, Pakistan, and various other ‘stans now in turmoil, I would look toward a major power shift when Ahmednutjob (if he’s NOT bumped off by Israel) engineers a major rapprochement with India. It would be a huge coup for India, since its archenemy China has made a lot of inroads over the past thirty or more years, helping the Pakis with their Bomb, building Iran’s communications infrastructure and working/training in its petroleum industry.
Russia would not care who runs the jihadist activity inside China, so out the Saudis would go.
India grows stronger as Pakistan disintegrates, and its only long-term worry is who controls the Paki atomic stockpile. India’s excellent diplomatic relations and military connections with Israel continue to grow. Naturally that could be threatened the instant Iran and India share a rice buffet and sign trade and military cooperation agreements. Among those agreements would be arrangements to secretly cooperate in the dismantling of Pakistan, and continued fragmentation of the rest of Central Asia.
Henry Kissinger and Anwar Sadat used the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” war to simultaneously end conventional warfare against Israel for the foreseeable, as well as to basically eject the Soviets from significant influence in the OPEC countries.
At that time, and starting with the OPEC embargo, Saudi Arabia began its political ascent as well as its serious campaign to spread Islamic rule throughout the Earth — but learned a little history lesson (and not very well did it learn) about how much unity there is in the Islamic world. This was most obvious when the Shah was overthrown in Iran, but Saddam’s stupid miscalculation (the eight year Iran-Iraq war, which cost 100s of 1000s of lives on both sides) and turncoat behavior (not one but two invasions of Kuwait, the latter one being far better known) after having been supported by the Saudis (who could not have been in favor of his precipitous action) and Kuwaitis during the Iran debacle.
It isn’t a coincidence that the Russians and Arabs dismembered the ever-unstable Afghanistan and fought over it for years until the Russians turned tail — and that the battle over it was tied to petroleum development in Central Asia, a restive Islamic population then under Soviet rule, and the overthrow of the Shah.
Even Obama knows that Afghanistan can’t be abandoned — not least because Obama serves the interests of his Saudi masters. And it’s not a coincidence that his choice of VP has spent a few decades wearing a dog collar and eating out of a bowl served up by the Iranian mullahcracy — Obama has pressed for direct negotiations without condition with the Iranian regime.
They weren’t fooled.
Neither are the Israelis.
The Turks have the second largest army in Europe (after Russia’s) and believe they can cope with Iran’s armed forces (and I believe they’re dead wrong; Iran’s army is IMHO the most underrated in the region at least), but seek cooperation for both idealogical reasons and common territorial ambitions (partition of Iraq, or at the least, cooperation in dealing with the Kurds).
The Turks also don’t have any interest in the disintegration of Syria, the prospects for which have been the driving force behind Syria’s lesser-of-two-equals relationship with Iran. Syria got kicked out of Lebanon due to Iranian proxy terrorist activity (Syrian nationals on vacation or on military leaves and whatnot were getting murdered) over a period of some years, and of course the abortive Lebanese independence movement. Syria’s last few assassinations of Lebanese politicians were massively stupid missteps, and led to the loss of an occupied neighboring country that had been a source of revenue.
Turkey and Iran will eventually come to blows, but it will be some years from now. Turkey doesn’t want Syria to become another fragmented failed state, and wants a buffer between itself and the mess that is Lebanon. The prospect of an independent Kurdistan — part of which would be carved out of Syria, Turkey, and Iran, all of which have at least some Kurdish enclaves contiguous with the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq — doesn’t thrill Istanbul.
All this will unfold over years, more than a decade probably.
A good time for Israel to rub out Ahmedinijad would be while he’s on the way to meet with the government of India. But there is no bad time to do it.
I think that’s the best analysis I’ve read anywhere.
I think you would do well to put it in it’s own thread.
Please do so and let me know.
I’ll ping my END TIMES list.
Great job.
Thanks. Very perceptive, imho.
Time will tell, for sure!
However,
I do suspect that things are going to be compressed into a much shorter time . . . and . . . sadly for millions . . . much more dramatic than your scenarios.
I hope I’m wrong and you are right.
Post 164, marker, thanks.
Syria's last few assassinations of Lebanese politicians were massively stupid missteps, and led to the loss of an occupied neighboring country that had been a source of revenue. Turkey and Iran will eventually come to blows, but it will be some years from now. Turkey doesn't want Syria to become another fragmented failed state, and wants a buffer between itself and the mess that is Lebanon.This becomes interesting due to this: Iran then would then have been doing something that resulted in the ejection of Syria from Lebanon, with the possible motive of forcing Syria into its own arms as it became a pariah state. Iran's proxies (including the "government" of Lebanon) have been defeating the Saudis' proxies in the ongoing civil war in Lebanon, and Syria has backed Tehran and the Hizzies to the hilt.
This sounds like a great story line and good news from a Ludlum book, (ghost written).
“I would guess that Israel will kill the sorry S.O.B. when he ventures out of Iran on some diplomatic trip. The plane carrying him will simply be shot right out of the sky and drop unremarked into the ocean. The entire Israeli attack squadron will return unscathed. If something goes wrong (if the enroute midair refueling fails for some reason, for example), the squadron will still successfully carry out their mission, and ditch in a prearranged location to be rescued by one or more Israeli subs.
The Saudis will supply some of the necessary intel to enable the Israelis to make the hit.”