I know that it’s been just a week since I said I would post less about politics and current events, but the events of the past week are so Earth-shattering that I really can’t hold back.
First, yesterday’s 200+ missile strike on Israel by Iran. For me, the scariest footage I’ve seen so far was this:
because it reminded me of this:
Obviously, Israel was not wiped off the map by Iran’s ballistic missile strike. In fact, from what I’ve heard most recently, the only casualties from that attack are one Palestinian in Judea/Samaria, and five Iranians when the missile they were prepping blew up on the launch pad. Wah wah sad trombone.
But it would be a very different story if any of those missiles had been tipped with a nuclear warhead.
So as we await Israel’s response to this unprecedented attack, I think it’s not to early to call the start of the Israel-Iran war. It’s been a long time coming, but I think it’s actually here, and I think it’s going to heat up a lot faster than most people think it will.
At this point, the two big questions on my mind are: 1) how many other countries are going to get dragged into this war, and 2) do the Iranian mullahs actually believe that they can win?
I’ll tackle the second question first. If the answer is “no,” then it means that the Iranians are being purely reactive, and this is Israel’s war to lose. And unlike the United States, which has a long track record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (especially under our current alleged president), the Israelis are clearly determined to win.
At the risk of waxing dangerously optimistic, I think there’s a very good chance that this is the case. The Hezbollah exploding pagers was an incredible operation that caught everyone by surprise, and the way the Israelis followed it up with the assassination of Hezbollah’s top dog Hassan Nasrallah was a massive blow that has the potential to completely reshape the Middle East. And now, with their assault on southern Lebanon, Israel has effectively eliminated Hezbollah as an existential threat to their nation, just as they have eliminated Hamas with the Gazan war.
Of course, given the nature of the escalation, the Iranians were forced to respond, and not just by shooting off a bunch of missiles into the desert for show, the way they did when Trump killed Qasam Soleimani. But such a response is guaranteed to escalate the conflict even further, to the point where Israel is now likely to take out Iran’s entire nuclear program, and possibly their oil wells too. They clearly have the capacity to do so.
Will the unpopular Islamist regime survive such a dramatic escalation? What if Mossad also assassinates a few of their mullahs, or the Ayatollah himself? Do the mullahs really think they can win?
What if they actually do?
What if they aren’t just purely reacting to events as they unfold, but are purposefully shaping events according to some script which we have yet to see? What if they want Israel to escalate, so as to drag other countries into the conflict?
I forget where I saw this statistic, but something like 70% of Iran’s oil production goes to China. If Iran’s energy sector is effectively taken offline by an Israeli strike, how will China respond? Does that make them more or less likely to launch an invasion of Taiwan, or to become more aggressive in the South China Sea?
Iran is also supplying Russia with most of their offensive drones, which the Russians have put to quite effective use in their war with Ukraine. If Israel takes out Iran’s drone production, or threatens to take it out, how will Putin respond? Will he come to Iran’s aid, the way he came to Bashir Al-Assad’s aid in the Syrian civil war? Will he expand the Russo-Ukraine war? Will he go nuclear?
If the Israel-Iran war is confined to a regional war, Israel will probably win and become a regional hegemon—and thanks to Biden’s and Obama’s catastrophic mishandling of foreign policy, the United States’ influence in the region has been and will continue to be seriously diminished. But with an Iranian defeat, the Abraham Accords are likely to become the framework for reshaping the entire region. The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be discarded, and most of the Palestinians will probably be relocated as Israel gradualy absorbs Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Some of them may become Israelis, but most will not.
Iran’s best chance to win this war is to draw in as many other countries as it can, especially Russia and China. Will they do so? Can they do so? Do they believe they can do so? I think this question is the key.
But here’s one question I do believe that I can answer: is this the beginning of the Battle of Armageddon—the prophesied end-times conflict that will precede the second coming of Christ? No, I don’t believe that it is, for the following reasons: 1) the Jews have not yet built the third temple, 2) the Latter-day Saints have not yet built the New Jerusalem in Missouri, and 3) the world is not yet united in war against Israel. This war may be the dress rehearsal for Armageddon, and depending on the outcome, we may only be a decade or two away from it, but I don’t think this is the big event.
Not yet, in any case. As we’ve seen over the last week, the situation can change very quickly.
