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Once it became clear that the #UnitedStates would be #Israel’s partner in an attack on #Iran & it began to amass forces in the region, 2 defense officials said, Israeli generals changed their tune. They grasped a historic opportunity to batter Iran, destroy its missile arsenal, further damage its nuclear program, & even try to push the Iranian government to the breaking point.
#ForeverWars #war #Trump #Netanyahu #warmonger #WarCrimes #RegimeChange #RulesOfWar #law #geopolitics #MiddleEast
For years, as it railed against Iran’s nuclear program, #Israel seemed held in check from confronting #Iran militarily. It feared that #Hezbollah, Tehran’s political ally & proxy army in #Lebanon, would respond on Iran’s behalf, unleashing its arsenal of thousands of missiles & rockets & raining hellfire down on Haifa & Tel Aviv.
Now, Israel & the #UnitedStates own the skies over Iran & are steadily blowing up its ballistic missile infrastructure & arsenal.
And when #Hezbollah joined the fight, however symbolically—with a single, relatively feeble volley of rockets & drones launched into northern #Israel at about 1AM Monday—Israel had the pretext it needed. It announced a much more significant & long-in-the-making counteroffensive, striking Hezbollah leaders in #Beirut & throughout the country [ #Lebanon].
#ForeverWars #US #Iran #war #Trump #Netanyahu #warmonger #WarCrimes #RegimeChange #RulesOfWar #law #Congress #WarPowers #geopolitics #MiddleEast
Emboldened by its partnership with the #US, feeling its own #military strength, & sensing the weaknesses of its 2 fiercest adversaries, #Israel is seizing the new #war as an opportunity to pursue its own geopolitical agenda.
“We will end this campaign with not just #Iran being struck, but with #Hezbollah suffering a devastating blow,” the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, told division commanders on Israel’s northern border on Monday.
Zamir hinted at a long fight with #Hezbollah, saying it would not end “before the threat from #Lebanon is eliminated.”
This is also a #war that #Israel started opportunistically. And that fact reflects an important shift in the country’s strategic thinking since the #Hamas led attack on Oct 7, 2023, and & catastrophic intelligence failures that made it possible.
#ForeverWars #US #Iran #war #Trump #Netanyahu #warmonger #WarCrimes #RegimeChange #RulesOfWar #law #geopolitics #MiddleEast
No longer does #Israel trust its intelligence establishment’s ability to read its adversaries’ intentions accurately. So when enemies bent on Israel’s destruction begin amassing the means to achieve it, Israel now sees an imperative to destroy those capabilities….
“That’s why the conversation about whether #Iran was really on the verge of developing #nuclear weapons doesn’t even really matter at this point,” said Shira Efron, an Israel analyst at RAND….
Acc/to 3 Israeli #defense ofcls, #Netanyahu ordered #military leaders at the end of last year to begin planning for a solo strike against #Iran to be carried out sometime between April & June.
Military commanders were unenthusiastic,…because they did not believe that #Israel, acting alone, could achieve much more than it had in the June 2025 12-day war. They were also concerned about their ability to defend against…an Iranian response targeting Israeli population centers with ballistic missiles…
