How Close Is Israel to Maximum Escalation?

"The situation in Israel is dire," say many observers.

Though the video above (a must-watch in full) makes many excellent points, I’m posting it to point out these two.

But before I begin, note that the Brandon Weichert, the interviewee, is a right-wing writer. He’s not one of the usual left-wing suspects (see the video at 8:25 for more).

The Unacknowledged Beating

First, the conversation supports the idea that Israel has been taking a ton of unacknowledged damage (see “War on Iran: The Information Gap”), directly related to the depletion of U.S. missiles, not just in the Gulf, but worldwide. As U.S. air defense missiles become scarce and targeting radar is destroyed, more and more Iranian missiles evade interception.

This is probably the reason Iranian missile salvos are now smaller — more missiles are finding their targets, which requires fewer launches.

Image from the video (9:09)

The discussion of the damage to Israel and U.S. Gulf bases starts at 3:40. From the transcript (lightly edited):

Question: Brandon, can you describe for the audience the level of intelligence and targeting that it takes to actually be able to hit and to cripple some of these things? And then also talk about the asymmetry in terms of the drone and/or missile cost as opposed to the actual cost of some of these batteries?

Weichert: Well, let’s start with that last part first because that’s the easiest thing to explain.

You’re basically trying to hit a $100,000 — at best — drone with a missile that’s a couple million dollars, and as I noted we don’t have a lot of those anyway.

So what the Iranians have done very deftly, and this is part of their strategy, has been to get us to expend critical munitions against these cheaper drones, so that when it’s time for the Iranians to go HAM with their much more advanced missiles — which they haven’t even really started popping off yet — but when it’s time for that to occur, there will be less of a chance that we can shoot them down.

You’ve also noticed the Iranians attacking high-end radar systems throughout the region. This is to create a channel with which they can send these higher-end missiles through when the time is right.

The level of intelligence involved is significant because they have to have people on the ground at all times basically keeping an eye out on what the Americans are up to. Also, don’t discount the presence of Russian and Chinese assistance in the form of intelligence assistance. We know the Chinese are helping the Iranians range targets with their higher-end satellite constellations in orbit.

So the fact of the matter is that we are basically laying supine in the region while the Iranians pick at us like the Lilliputians did to Gulliver.

The Samson Option

Second, consider: Everything we’ve seen about Israel’s national behavior says they will stop at nothing to dominate their region.

I mean that literally. They will stop at Nothing. That includes nuclear war. As Weichert says about that, “The situation in Israel is dire” (16:13). He’s not alone in that thought.

My sense is that Israel is near where it was at the end of the Twelve-Day War — battered and hungry for peace, desperate to stop the pounding, needing a break. They got a pause last time, and they used it to reload. The Iranians have learned from that. I’d be shocked if Iranians agree to another cease fire until the threat of renewed attack is fully eliminated. Fully eliminated.

Think about what that means. A fully eliminated threat could mean the elimination of the Zionist state, either by collapse (there are several ways this could occur; emigration is one), by weakness, or conversion to a secular entity, which no Zionist will allow.

Which brings us to Israel’s acknowledged Samson Option:

The Samson Option (Hebrew: ברירת שמשון, romanized: b’rerat shimshon) is a deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” against any country whose military has invaded and/or destroyed much of Israel.

From the video above (15:10):

Weichert: And if I can just add here … if you look at the damage in Israel, I believe the Israelis are getting ready to pop off a nuke. I really do. And I think this is a very dire moment in the history of our country because we are highly tethered to this insane policy. It’s not our own policy. We’re not writing it. This is the Israelis writing it.

Is there anyone paying attention who thinks that Israel would not do that, would not “pop off a nuke” if collapse were close? Weichert’s not alone with this worry.

Long or Short War?

Iranians appear to be leaking that they’ll fight through the U.S. midterm elections. Based on the Twelve-Day War, Israel may not last a tenth of that time. As always, we’ll see. But that’s how things look today.