You have literally worked yourself up into hysteria if you think Israel is in any position to invade Iran, even with US support.

▲

mjburgess 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What do you mean by "in a position"? Do i think it would be successful? of course not, that's mad.

Do I think israel is inclined to try, or otherwise, risk failure on the back of US blood and treasure? More or less, yes -- i think that's quite likely.

The US invasion and occupation of vietnam, afganistan, iraq, etc. were all mad. The US foreign policy elite are not very competent because america doesnt receive any real blowback from its failures -- so there's no conditioning mechanism to force it into instutitonal competence.

Do I think such an elite would do one more stupid thing? yes, its actually far more improbable that they'd learn caution

They've bankrupted america, caused half the world to turn against them -- all the while presiding over the rise and enrichment of a peer competitor (china). You could not describe a more incompent, warmongering, self-destructive set of foreign policy institutions.

It's what happens when you are isolated on your own continent and rarely have to pay for your decisions.

▲

bigyabai 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Operations are defined by goals. If you want to invade or launch a special forces op into your enemy territory, you need a small and attainable goal. Not "eliminate all nuclear threats" but more like "clear this area of nuclear materiel" in any areas you consider suspect. Otherwise you end up deploying troops that never come home.

Israel's state government is absolutely filled to the brim with war hawks - but they're not stupid. The situation they want to contain is too large to fix with IDF ground forces, they necessarily have to involve US force structures to seriously challenge Iran. And even then, it feels likely that we'd be looking at an Afghan War situation where guerrilla combat absolutely shreds the modern forces the further they push in.

	▲	mjburgess 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"they're not that stupid" has not been a good predictive theory of western foreign policy since the victorian era