The hawkish Wall Street Journal has run an op-ed from the even more hawkish Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Prime Minister from 2020 to 2022. As usual, Bennett focused heavily on the need for military action against Iran, saying the US should be leading a global effort to impose regime change on them.
The argument for regime change is, of course, nothing new for Israeli hawks, while the case for the US taking charge is particularly self-serving as Israel is busy committing its military to an open-ended military campaign in the Gaza Strip. The US is backing Israel and arming them for the Gaza War, so to Bennett it makes sense to use America to pick the fight with Iran.
Interestingly, Bennett argued against Israel focusing on attacking Hamas and Hezbollah, calling Iran their “primary enemy”, and saying Irans must always be the focus (with the US expected, evidently, to do the focusing). Attacking Hamas, even with huge civilian casualties, is politically very popular within Israel, so the Gaza War is unlikely to be slowed down.
In the opinion piece, Bennett made another piece of international news, revealing that Israel was behind the February 2022 military attack on an Iranian drone base. Iran had accused Israel of this all along, but this is the first time a high-level Israeli official has admitted to it. Israel at the time focused on attacking Iran targets in Syria, and mostly did not directly attack inside Iran.
Whether the US was directly informed of the operation remains unclear, although Bennett made noteworthy comments in February 2022, saying President Joe Biden was absolutely supportive of Israel taking “freedom of action” militarily against Iran. This could imply Biden’s knowledge of or at least suggest he gave a de facto imprimatur for the strike.
The 2022 strike, on a base near Kermanshah, was said to destroy hundreds of Iranian drones according to the Israeli media. Bennett also claimed it killed an Iran Revolutionary Guard member.
The attack came apparently from Israeli drones out of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran blamed Israel from the start, and attacked a target in Irbil in response, saying it was an Israeli intelligence base. Unconfirmed media reports claimed that four Israeli officers were killed in the strike and seven more injured.
Since Israel is the evil empire dictating now, why aren’t they sending the US money? (I don’t mean to crooked politicians’ pockets through AIPAC).
Despite being run by religious fanatic crazies, Iran seems to be the most sane and moral country in the region by far.
They are religious but not crazy fanatics, they do have common sense and do act rational. That is more than we can say of our nutty leaders.
They honor their religious believes, we may not like it, but it is their religion, and they think about our religion and how bloody and brutal it is. Biden represents Christians, not so nice, and Netanyahu is Jewish, not so nice.
Religions are all BS. Any religion that forces or even coerces girls and women to have to wear that idiotic crap, and which otherwise oppresses and disempowers girls and women, is evil for that reason alone (there are many other reasons). Islam and Christianity are by far the two most evil religions, just look at the amount of the planet they’ve colonized and ruined.
To be clear, I strongly support people becoming more spiritual, but that has nothing to do with religion, despite the false conflation of those two things.
“The U.S. has around 1,000 military bases around the world; Russia has none, and China has, I believe one, and that one is near China.”
There are Russian military bases in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Abkhazia/South Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Syria, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. There are also Russian military bases under construction in the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Sudan.
Ukraine? Nope. I still have no reason to doubt the desire of ethnic Russians living in the four Oblasts and Crimea to be free of Kiev, regardless of how the western powers that be decide to call it. Twelve years living under Kiev’s yoke is enough aggravation to put up with.
International law? Whose? The Hegemon’s? I’ll take years of abuse as a reason not to want to be associated with the crooked cartel in Kiev until someone can convince me that Kiev would rule the east fairly.
I look at this issue the same way I look at battered wives. There comes a point when parting ways is a survival decision.
You seem to be responding to some other comment by someone else. At least that’s my best guess at why the content of your comment seems to have nothing in common with the content of mine.
Free speech at work…..
I don’t consider any part of Ukraine under Russian army control as a part of Ukraine. I accept the results of the vote to secede on the part of Ukrainians in the eastern Oblasts.
I don’t give a crap what the Americans or any of our allies think of those votes, as it’s pretty obvious that negotiations in 2022 would have left them in Ukraine were it not for Biden and company, who wanted someone else’s kids to fight and die for him.
Reality doesn’t care whether or not you “accept” it.
What reality are we talking about? Is it not a reality that Russia controls Crimea since 2014 and 4 other regions since 2022?
Ukrainine regimes since 2014 made it clear that they do not want Russian people in those regions — but wanted the land. Russia objected. If you do not like people, you Ukraine, do not get to keep the land. A just and sane outcome, wouldn’t you say?
US supporting Israel to take all the land it wants and get rid of occupied population is just the opposite. This logic seems to be just and sane to US governments.
Both very much REAL. Why does it not suprise me that US would support Zelennski in getting rid of Russian population? Everything that has been happening to Russian citizens of Ukraine for nearly a decade —our officialdom has observed in utter silence.
All the land grabbers, be that Zellenski or Netanyahu are continuously barking at us — demanding more money, more weapons. And we obediently oblige. Weird? Clearly not to everyone.
Wish you a happy and prosperous new year!
And a happy and prosperous new year to you as well!
The “reality” we’re talking about is that border changes are generally predicated on recognition by the world’s other regimes, and that precisely two regimes other than Russia (North Korea and Syria) recognize the Russian annexations of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia as valid.
The gangs that run the world have rules. I don’t like the gangs or their rules, but I acknowledge that they and their terms exist.
The moment you turn your back another idiot comes out of the wood work.
Push all you want… Not gonna happen…!
In 1953 there WAS regime change in Iran (during the Eisenhower administration). The result? Radicalization of the religion of Islam in Iran, which transferred to other countries in the ME. In 1963, WE had regime change. Yes, in the U.S. of A. We will not know what would have come out of another four years of the Kennedy administration, but we certainly know that the (undeclared) war in Vietnam, which spilled over into Laos and Cambodia, lasted another ten years, at the cost of 58,000 young American soldiers and a couple of million Vietnamese, a strengthening of the CIA, and, the strengthening of the power of the Military Industrial Complex. There were multiple actors involved in the assassination of Kennedy, but one country is never mentioned. Israel. Kennedy was adamant about Israel not developing nuclear weapons, even sending a harsh letter to Ben-Gurion. Kennedy felt that an Israel with the bomb would become more belligerent in the ME. He also wanted to put severe limits on nuclear proliferation. (by the way, Iran signed the NPT in 1968, ratified it in 1970).
The more recent research shows that Kennedy did a 360 in his positions on the Vietnam war, the military/industrial complex, and the CIA. If I remember correctly, he even threatened to abolish the CIA. That kind of stuff will get you killed if those powers and agencies think that you’re a threat to their money & power, which a president certainly is. Of course we can’t know for certain what another 5 years of Kennedy in the White House would have been, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that if he and Khrushchev had remained in power, this world would be a MUCH better place. But the a-holes in power in both countries couldn’t have decent people running them, so now we have this mess.
Former Israeli PM Pushes for US To Lead Israel Regime Change Effort