16 Comments
User's avatar
Pumpkin Princess's avatar

Defeat is an orphan. There is so much spin that even with the excellent reporting I am pretty sure we are only getting a small understanding of the true situation

Barry Grau's avatar

Regine change can't fail. It can only not have been tried.

I remember a similar argument about communism and the Soviet Union.

victor yodaiken's avatar

Has the Israeli government gone mad?

SM's avatar

Apparently. And what's most disturbing is that it's the normally sober intelligence agencies.

Light's avatar

Decouple from Israel. they have no clue what they are doing. Also Israel needs a rationalist foreign policy. They are a tiny country of 8 million expats living in a Middle East surrounded on all sides by hostile countries who practice different faiths, they need to make allies not be in perpetual war.

Attila Debrodi's avatar

Nadav has just given a thorough description and in certain aspect even evidence why any widescale and lasting peace structure in that region has a common BASIC PRECONDITION: REGIME CHANGE IN ISRAEL.

The more its executed by MOSSAD & AMAN (and not by any external actors…) the less harmful it will be on the State of Israel.

Dan Elbert's avatar

Is the generals' job to provide the military options, the government's job to restrain them and provide the political and big picture dimensions - which not sure this Israeli government, which portraits every agreement or accomodation as weakness, knows how to do.

DWAnderson's avatar

The capability of the West to predict regime change in an adversary or what will cause it absent invasion) is just really bad. I'm pretty sure that this is because this is really difficult. But that also means best you can do is take a shot at it, not do something that assures it happens.

Light's avatar

So let’s get this right;

A) We have no idea how to predict regime change

B) we have limited efficacy is making regime change happen (only 20%) of the time we have been successful with historical examples

C) often we regime change ( see shah vs mosaddegh) leads down the road to worse outcomes (IRGC). Or Soviet Union’s fall lead to Putin

But despite that we should regime change anyway???

DWAnderson's avatar

Sometimes. I don't think your example of "worse outcomes" are as strong as you think they are because you don't know what would have happened in the absence of regime change, but that's a much longer discussion.

Light's avatar

Sometimes doesn’t seem a good enough answer to justify killing thousands of American men (Iraq and Afghanistan) and hundreds of thousands of the native population.

DWAnderson's avatar

I generally agree, but there are costs to inaction too.

Sara Springer's avatar

I think it was a superb plan. Anything Turkey wants- do the opposite.

Light's avatar

I’m sorry why do we hate Turkey now? What’s next- blow up all the power plants in Ankara? Genuinely asking, I’m hoping Netanyahu doesn’t show up in 2035 to claim “weapons of mass destruction” in Ankara or something.

Michael Remler's avatar

Can one say that the military war is over, with Israeli American victory, having destroyed essentially all of Iran's ability to make war and project power. Now we agree, the political war, increase the pressure inside the Iranian power structure, such that it cracks open and collapses. The blockade, and by that means straggling the economy, is the strategic plan of the political phase.

Light's avatar

You can say that. Sadly none of that is true at all.