Link/Source: World Threats
Posted by Richard Radcliffe on September 5th, 2010
First, God bless you Ryan for figuring out the mess that is the Middle East. God bless you for starting this blog and allowing me to occasionally stick a few comments up here. In this instance, you totally underestimate the Hell that will rain down on Israel not only from Hezbollah but from Syria and Iran.
That is what ambassador Oren said. What he did not mention, that we have, are the preparations for war that Syria, Hezbollah and Iran are taking at this very moment. You do not go to all the expense of setting up joint and combined commands unless you are preparing to use them in the short term. In the recent past, Syria and Hezbollah have set up joint commands. That means a lot of fiber optic line has been laid, a lot of copper wire has been laid, a lot of concrete has been poured over a lot of steel and a lot of munitions have been built and moved into ready positions. We should all take note of the explosion earlier today of the Hezbollah weapon’s storage area under a three story building in Lebanon south of the Litani River. This is in direct contravention to Security Council Resolution 1701. Why should we care if the UN doesn’t!
The simple fact is that the controlling forces in Iran want a war. They believe it is their manifest destiny to rule the World. They believe that the return of the Hidden Imam from the Occultation requires major chaos. What better major chaos than a Middle East wide war? Why has not the Hidden Imam chosen to reappear before? Because none of the previous major wars involved the particular portions of the Middle East that this one will. Rommel only got as far east as El Alamein. All of the other Middle East conflicts have gone against the muslims. None of them had the possibility to be fought in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and involve the shiite holy sites at Karbala and an-Najaf. This bloodletting will be as much or more a sunni-shiite conflict as a war to destroy Israel.This will be a war on at least two fronts. The Western Front will comprise the area directly contiguous to Israel. The Eastern Front will be the Persian Gulf and the Shatt al-Arab. Whether or not this will spill over into Afghanistan is total conjecture. But the prizes for the shiites are an-Najaf and the Imam Ali mosque, Karbala and the Imam Hussein mosque, Medina and Mecca. You only haver to read “Shorty’s” diatribes at the UN to understand that these are shiite sermons containing an invitation to islam. Having extended the invitation to islam, the Iranians are now religiously free to initiate jihad against all of those who have rejected the call.
How soon? That is the big question. as I said in an earlier post, Ramadan ends on the tenth of September. The Israel-Palestine peace talks resume on the 14th. While this may lead to sporadic terrorist attacks, I do not believe that it will lead to full scale war. I don’t believe Iran is ready yet. Right now I believe that Iran is focused on making a mess of the Iraqi attempts to form a government that they don’t like. The Iranians are deathly afraid of a sunni running Iraq. They will do their best to keep Allawi from becoming Prime Minister. If they cannot forestall Allawi becoming Prime Minister, they may go.
A lot also depends on the internal situation in Iran. We document here on a regular basis the facts of the Iranian economy. Life is not good in Iran right now. There is a whole lot of hate and discontent directed at the absolute mess that “Shorty” has made of the economy. The sanctions are not making life any easier. The mullahocracy is ruling in a lot of cases by execution. So far, the revolutionaries have been unable to get significant support from groups that would allow them to take on the Bassiji and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. As much as we support them here, they cannot be depended upon to take the regime down. There simply are not enough monafeghin and they don’t have enough firepower. Until the regular Iranian military decides to get involved on the side of throwing the mullahs out, there is no real revolution in Iran.
What would a defining event be? Some kind of a peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel? Probably. The effects of the sanctions becoming unbearable? Maybe. A fight between the Yazdi faction and the Rafsanjani faction for control of the Council of Experts? Possibly. Stopping an Iranian ship attempting to break the Gaza blockade? Probably. Pick yours. And that is the problem. We here in the West have a very weak idea of what constitutes the decision making process in Tehran. We also have a very weak idea of who their allies might be and what they might do. What exactly might the PRC do if it thought that its major oil supplier might be destroyed? How much of the oil pipelines to bypass the Straits of Hormuz are complete and what is their capacity? Could the tankers get insurancefor such a trip? Can the US Navy keep the Straits open or will they be overwhelmed by the Rigid Raiders and the new speedboats? How much of the oil infrastructure will remain after the combat is over? How soon can it be brought back to full production? The answers to many of these questions are simply unknowable.
What is knowable is this. Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will take a beating. Will their combined forces be able to forestall a shiite takeover of the holy sites? Probably. Will King Abdullah II of Jordan behead Bashar Assad? Hopefully if Bashar doesn’t flee to Great Britain. Will there be a State of Israel in existence after this bloodletting? That is unknowable. The array of conventional firepower deployed against Israel right now is daunting. It may well require the use of nuclear weapons on Lebanon to insure the survival of Israel. The last time that we did this, we missed World War Three by not a lot. I was on alert as a B-52 navigator then. I don’t want to be that close again.
Related posts: