Will Iran strike back?

Israel and Iran are still fighting a shadow war, delivering punishment from the skies but playing it all down. It's a bizzare and potentially dangerous game. Both Israel and Iran have warned of battles to the end but clearly don't mean it which is fortunate. Nevertheless the you-hit-me and I'll-hit-you confrontation going on is escalating bit by bit, until one day, the restraints will be off and one side or the other, probably Israel, will launch an attack that will do really serious damage, like blow up an oil installation, causing conflagration, or target the Supreme Leader in his weekend residence. On October 1`, Iran carried out a much bigger attack on Israel than it did in April which was the first time Tehran had directly hit Israel. Israel's response was limited and now in retaliation for October 1, its air force bombers have increased their payload and targets, delivering a less limited but still restrained attack. And so it goes on. Unless it doesn't. Tehran is playing down the latest Israeli attack and wise people are saying this probably means they are going to call a halt to the tit-for-tats for now and not respond this time. But many, more extreme voices in Tehran will be saying it's vital to respond to show that Iran will not be cowed by Israeli attacks. Saving face is always a crucial ingredient in this tit-for-tat game. But the ayatollahs in Tehran know that if they approve a bigger hit on Israel, as promised a few days ago, Israel will come back with something bigger, too. Then what? Then it could be a real war. It's all psychology, but highly dangerous psychology. Wrong judgments can so easily be made. In the end I suspect Iran will follow a wait-and-see policy because the regime knows there is one man they can rely on to urge restraint on the Israelis, and that's the man who will remain as president of the United States until Januarty 19, 2025, Joe Biden.

Is Benjamin Netanyahu waiting for the US election to be over before striking Iran?

Benjamin Netanyahu is still waiting to give the go ahead for Israel's retaliatory strike on Iran. There have been stories about Iran "bracing" for the expected attack for weeks. That's a lot of bracing. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Netanyahu has held back from attacking Irainian targets, hoping that Iran will be caught napping. But I suspect the main reason why we have this delay is that Netanyahu has decided to wait until the election is over in the US on November 5. He probably wants Donald Trump to win because Trump has said Israel should be allowed to get on with the job of destroying Hamas etc and, as president, he would help him do it. And Netanyahu would prefer to have Trump as the elected president waiting to take over on January 20 next year than the vice president to Joe Biden who has caused him such grief over the last few months. That doesn't mean the strike against Iran will be delayed until November 6, although it's not out of the question. But Netanyahu nill be studying the polls to see whether there is going to be any firmer insight into who is going to win. Right now it's so close, no one can tell. But in the last two weeks, a lot of undecided people are going to make up their minds and that could change things a lot. My guess is that Netanyahu, canny politician that he is, will order a mighty bombing of Iran on November 4, the day before the US election, hoping the undecided will vote for Trump to stop the Third World War from breaking out. Kamala Harris might not know what the hell to do, and Joe Biden, in the final throes of his presidency, won't be able to do anything. Thus Trump wins and Netanyahu gets what he wants.

Is it Biden's fault that the world is now in such a dangerous state?

Some of Donald Trump's former officials, such as General John Kelly, his former chief of staff, are saying the ex-president is a Fascist and a danger man who never listens. But others, such as Robert O'Brien, his former national security adviser, are saying that under Trump the world was a safer place. No wars. No invasion of Ukraine. No Middle East war. And that under Biden, his cautious, weak approach had been exploited to the full by, first the Taleban, then Putin and Xi Zinping, and Iran and, basically anyone with a grudge against the US. This is too simplistic. Even though the president of the United States has always been and is today a key figure in the way the world works it's far less so now and increasingly less so because of new alliances being formed against American domination, notably the one forged by Putin with China, India, Brazil and South Africa and others. But O'Brien is sure that if Trump had been in the White House in the last four years, Putin would not have been tempted to invade Ukraine. He says, in a piece in The New York Times, that Putin went for Ukraine because he took comfort from the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan under Biden's watch and thought he could get away with invading his neighbour without risking having a war with the US as a consequence. He was right. Biden sent billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine but made it clear from the start that he would never put American troops into Ukraine to fight Russian troops. Under the O'Brien thinking, Trump would have left that option in the air and it might have deterred Putin from invading at all. Who knows?

How dangerous is North Korea's dispatch of troops for the war in Ukraine?

On the face of it, it is extraordinarily dangerous and bizarre that Vladimir Putin has come to the point in his war in Ukraine that he needs to turn to North Korea for help. Thousands of North Korean combat troops have headed to Russia, according to Lloyd Austin, the US Defence Secretary. It is assumed by American intelligence officials that they will soon be in Ukraine joining Putin's invasion army in the east or perhaps initially helping Russia to drive Ukranian occupying troops out of the western regioon of Kursk in Russia where Kyiv's forces have been spreading their wings since August. No figures have been given of the number of North Korean troops but speculation is it could be as many as 11,000. These are combat troops but without combat experience, so the chances are they will just be more Putin cannon fodder, like the murderers and rapists released from Russian prisons to fight for him in Ukraine. Having no experience or specific training for this sort of attritional warfare, Kim Jong un's gesture to Putin could mean a lot of body bags returning to Pyongyang. Nevertheless, it's a significant moment and Kyiv will need all the help it can get from US intelligence assets to pinpoint the arrival of these North Koreans and target them as swiftly as possible. However well or badly they perform in Kursk and Ukraine, the North Korean leader is clearly hoping for some quid pro quo for sacrificing thousands of his soldiers. And this is where the real danger comes. Putin, to show his gratitude, might agree to help his buddy in Pyongyang to improve the range and accuracy of his intercontinental ballistic missiles to threaten the United States. That might suit Putin. He'd be happy for the US to be threatened by North Korea. It makes it even more important that if and when the North Korean troops arrive in Ukraine, they receive a very hostile welcome from the western-backed Ukrainian military. If Kim's soldiers fail to make a difference, Putin might be less eager to assist Kim's ICBM programme.

Will Netanyahu's strike on Iran be proportionate or punitive?

On 20 June 2019, President Donald Trump rescinded an order he had given for a military attack on Iran in retaliation for the shooting down of a long-range Global Hawk surveillance drone. He decided that a missile strike on Iranian military bases which might cause casualties would have been disproportionate. Global Hawk was unmanned. No American had died. The bombers, already en route, were summoned back to base. No one could suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu is facing the same decision. The circumstances are entirely different. There is no moral equivalence. On 1 October Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles on Israel, and Netanyahu has vowed to respond with a significant retaliatory strike. However, there is one issue which does mirror the decision-making that went on in Trump’s mind late on Thursday June 20 five years ago: should a retaliatory tit-for-tat strike be proportionate or punitive? President Joe Biden, ever cautious and worried about the potential for a real war between Israel and Iran, has emphasised the need for proportion. The 180 ballistic missiles launched against Israel were mostly shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system and by US-led coalition warships in the region. Those that got through damaged the Nevatim airbase in the Negev desert in southern Israel but without destroying any of the F-35 fighter jets parked there, caused minor damage at other bases and fell relatively harmlessly near Mossad’s headquarters north of Tel Aviv. A Palestinian man was killed when he was hit by missile fragments in the West Bank city of Jericho, and there were minor injuries from falling debris elsewhere. The battle damage assessment, as the military like to call it, concluded that the Iranian attack had largely failed.: 180 ballistic missiles, one fatality. However, judging by the Israeli preparations for a retaliatory strike, leaked from a classified report produced by the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, have decided that a punitive, not a proportionate response, is required. The leaked documents, based on US satellite images of Israeli forces rehearsing an attack, indicated the thrust of the proposed retaliatory strike will involve air-launched long-range ballistic missiles identified as Rocks ALBMs and “Golden Horizon” weapons, believed to be from Israel’s Sparrow series of missiles with a range of 1,240 miles. When asked by reporters whether he knew what Israel planned to attack and when, Biden replied “yes and yes”. But he wisely divulged nothing further, other than to underline his hope that a ceasefire in Lebanon and possibly in Gaza might be on the cards following the killing by Israeli troops of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on 16 October. Biden dispatched Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, to Israel and the Middle East region to devote yet more time and energy on trying to broker a ceasefire in what has become a spiralling conflict. Will Blinken, who arrived in Israel today (Tues), also try to persuade Netanyahu to limit what is viewed even in Washington as Tel Aviv’s necessary and justified determination to respond to Iran’s ballistic-missile strike of 1 October? It’s probably too late to beg Netanyahu to go easy. He has made it clear that this time round – in contrast to the last retaliation for an Iranian missile attack in April - Israel has to be more heavy-handed. Even though the 1 October missile launch killed only one individual, the clear aim of the Tehran regime was to cause serious damage. A proportionate response would look like failure in Netanyahu’s mind. The unknown question is how Iran will respond if Israeli Air Force bombers succeed in destroying or severely damaging key military sites . In other words, achieving far more destruction than Iran managed with its 180 ballistic missiles. The Israel Defence Forces claimed the missiles caused minor damage to maintenance and administration buildings at several airbases and did not harm critical infrastructure. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned that any attack by Israel, particularly if it targeted the country’s nuclear facilities, would be met with like-for-like strikes. He said in an interview with Turkey’s NTV network last Friday that specific military targets in Israel had been pinpointed. Israel has so far waited three weeks without retaliating. In the meantime, Yahya Sinwar has been killed, raising tentative hopes of a slowing-down of the war in Gaza, Hezbollah has launched drones against Netanyahu’s holiday residence in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea in northern Israel and the US presidential election is just two weeks away. The political and strategic landscape has thus changed. But will it make any difference to whether Netanyahu and his cabinet go for a full-scale punitive strike on Iran or a more limited but precise attack which would highlight the country’s vulnerability and maybe force Tehran to think twice about another tit-for-tat bombing? In his current mood, Netanyahu seems intent on striking a mighty blow on Iran. The consequences could scupper ceasefire hopes and have an impact on the way Americans vote on November 5.

Trump is easing towards beating Kamala Harris

The polls are now so tight it's impossible to make a safe prediction about who is going to win on November 5. However, there are signs, just little ones, that Donald Trump is beginning to ease his way past the vice president and into a winning position. It's not copper-bottomed, but there's definitely a sign of Trump moving forward. There are only two weeks left and if that slightest of movements ahead for Trump continue, then he will get the White House back. This should energise the Kamala camp to start warning the whole country about what a second Trump administration could mean. But I reckon it's now almost too late. I suspect most American voters have taken everything into account, including Trump's odd ramblings, his felony charges awaiting trial, his past disgraceful remarks about women, his threats to put away his political opponents and his false claims, and yet still many of them will vote for Trump. I suspect three of the reasons are that Kamala is a woman, she is only 5ft 4ins tall and she seems to be a very nice person. Maybe American voters don't want a very nice person to be president standing up against very un-nice people like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong un and the Tehran lot. They would prefer to have a tall, overweight, bully of a man who, despite his eccentricities and outrageous tendencies will enjoy facing up to the world's dictators and try and see them off. So, is Kamala too nice to be president? This, I think, is the fundamental question which could be why Americans on November 5 will go for Trump.

Israel should avoid killing Iranians in its retaliatory strike

Why Israel has delayed so long before striking back at Iran for its October 1 launch of 200 ballistic missiles, we don't know, but it may be something to do with Benjamin Netanyahu's indecision over how devastating a response to make. He has said it will be significant, unlike the last time Israel hit back at Iran when airstrikes just destroyed an air-defence system at a military base. This time it will be much more. But Netanyahu would be wise to insist that the target should be structure, not people. Iran's attack on Israel was pretty comprehensive and large-scale but the missiles targeted an Israeli airbase, home for F-35 fighter jets. They didn't go for cities and civilians. That would have been dangerousaly escalatary and would have led to an instant attack by Israel, probably against Iranian cities, too. Iran is not stupid. It cannot afford an all-out war with Israel, so the message from the ayatollahs was this: We will hit you but we don't intend to kill Israeli civilians. Netanyahu should follow suit. Go for Iranian military sites and hit them hard, but avoid casualties where possible and definitely leave the Iranian people alone. A slaughter of civilians on the scale of the killing of Palestinian people in Gaza and Lebanese civilians in Beirut would lead to a war with potentially catastrophic consequences.