The Problems of Restraint

A very short post for now. My main thoughts on yesterday’s events (October 1st) were captured in my post of yesterday afternoon which may not have been broadly circulated (scroll down below this message to see).

My suspicion is that Iran, possibly counseled by Russia, is playing a game of careful calibration with an enemy that knows no restraint. Something a good deal more subtle may be going on but I suspect not. Iran has had a wonderful opportunity, even without adopting Israeli tactics of the mass murder of civilians, to take out many more military and airfield targets than it did yesterday, while Israeli and US air defense systems were barely operational.

Israel’s response, probably in the form of an attack on Iran’s nuclear energy systems (western media deliberately obfuscate the distinction between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons), its oil refinery capabilities, and Iranian ports. If the latter, Iran may be prompted to shut down the straits of Hormuz, since an attack on its ports may wipe out the advantage to Iran of not doing so, striking a blow against one third of global oil traffic, pushing oil prices through the roof and making Russia even more powerful (bringing a faster resolution to NATO’s war in Ukraine).

But for the immediate future Israeli retaliation may well cripple the speed of an adequate Iranian response to the multilateral threat Israel poses for the region. But this in turn may yet force Turkey’s Erdogan to actually do something useful other than support Jihadis in Syria and murder Kurds. It may force Jordan’s 11million Palestinians to boot the Hashemite plague out of the vicinity once and for all and may even excite a military coup against Sisi in Egypt.