> The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement

The plan was fucked from conception. Not having a strategy for safeguarding the Strait made virtually any strategy that required persisting after decapitation half baked.

I don't see how that's a win for him since the outcome was a stronger Iran.

>Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of...

you mentioned what Netanyahu gained from this but what about trump?

> there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants

This vastly oversimplifies even that field.

MAGA has split hard. it's now MIGA vs AF. With MIGA being mostly boomer evangelicals and AF being younger, either outright fuentes antisemites or just anti Zionists that lean right. There is a huge astroturfing campaign to make it seem like MAGA is unanimously pro netanyahu, but it's simply fake.

> MBS and the Saudis also want this

While it is true that the Saudis are hostile to Iran and do want Iran's power to be curtailed, they were never in favour of the current war because they knew the plan was ill-thought and suicidal for it, as they knew how Iran would respond (and how ill-prepared they and the American military was to defend them). Iran's foreign policy with its Arab neighbours is based on the blunt but simple principle - "Peace for all. Prosperity for all." Implied in it is that if any of the Arab neighbours upset the public peace in Iran and / or attacked its economy, it would retaliate to ensure they too wouldn't have any peace or prosperity. And that's exactly how it played out ...

> 1500 years

I’m curious what the Lindy Effect would mean in this case

It's Israel's immediate history (as in the last year or so) that's made it an easier scapegoat.

That and the Saud's, despite an appalling human rights record, are politically difficult to blame for anything (including Bin Laden), because of their (brilliant) petro politics - playing the Eastern bloc off against the West incredibly well.

Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area. This is just dumb ideas piling up upon one another.

> Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it

More like his life. He will not survive the end of this war.

> How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.

You don’t need to influence a nation, you only need to get one guy on board.

When you have ready access to the ego-driven and cognitively limited man in charge, either directly or through his sycophants, and that man has enormous executive authority to do mostly whatever he wants, this becomes very straightforward.

Israel has been looking for a sucker in the White House for 40 years, and they finally found one.

Israel obviously influenced American politicians through many avenues, not the least of which is the Epstein blackmail ring.

It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible.

There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.

Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.)

The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.)

The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state.

This was always stupid.

I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k.

You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...

It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc.

Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.

So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.

> the popular uprisings

isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?

> They sure do

Do you have an example?

Kiriakou also stated several times that the Mossad was known to casually try to recruit CIA agents:

https://youtu.be/R7OWqAgGzwA?t=163

There's written legislation saying the CIA/NSA/etc. can't spy on Americans.

Guess what happens anyways?

He has CIA experience but his word shouldn't just be taken at face value. The man has unsettling views on buying pardons and excuses some other things away as well. Kiriakou shouldn't be trusted, IMO.

That said, he probably isn't wrong at all about this particular thing.

I think he said in that interview that the CIA does not spy on Israel. It does not apply the other way around. Based on policy decisions, this seems very believable to me.

> unwritten agreement

Support for Israel is present in the entire establishment, Democrat or Republican. Whenever Israel goes too far, a president suddenly leaks Netanyahu criticism like Biden on the hot mic where he said that he'd tell Netanyahu to have a "come to Jesus" moment or Trump leaking that he shouted at Netanyahu during a phone call.

This admin is special in that it blames proxies for wars that it started or provoked. Biden owned the Ukraine war, Trump blames the EU for wanting to continue the Ukraine war while Anduril and Eric Schmidt (https://www.techradar.com/pro/ex-google-ceo-is-key-to-ukrain...) are selling and testing their new drone tech.

In the case of Israel, you can say that there is direct influence from Kushner, Witkoff and Mark Levin. We'll see if Congress and Senate will get a 2/3rd majority to stop the war agaist a potential Trump veto. I don't think so. Until they do, I consider all resolutions with a simple majority to be theater for the midterm elections.

The reason for the support matters.

A lot of them think support for Israel leads to the apocalypse and Jesus’s return. It doesn’t end well for the Jews in that story.

Seems like he's the only one that doesn't feel any need to think about this question.

I don’t think it said anything about countries

Thinking that Israel potentially spies on the US government is not what anyone reasonable would call a conspiracy theory.

Do you blame them? If a global ring of elite pedophiles turned out to be true in spite of all the gaslighting and denial, then why couldn’t the moon landing also be a conspiracy?

Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)

Why must all conspiracy theories be bucketed together as if it's a single entity and culture. Conspiracies are real and as old as time, and treating any analysis or discussion about them as part of a greater crackpot culture just acts as cover for real ones. In fact there is evidence that the CIA is behind some of the crackpot theories to muddy the water.

I've heard very few if any "conspiracy theorists" talk about sexual blackmail because it's boring. The appeal of a conspiracy is that it grabs people's attention. And there are certain types of attention whores who will spout theories about flat earth, or fake moon landing, because it gets them instant attention and engagement. This is what I think the GP meant, that s/he hates that these people were "right" about politicians being compromised.

Based on what we _do_ know, I have serious doubts that this admin could keep a secret if they wanted to.

Yeah, I have to imagine Donald Trump has better intel and is making wise, measured, well-informed decisions beyond the abilities of your average HNer.

Do you’ve proof for that? On the other hand, AIPAC is out there for anyone to see

It's sustainable as long as it's neighbours keep being so corrupt and oppressive that their GDP (total, not just per capita) can't even keep up with a country 10x smaller than them. Israel literally has a larger GDP than Egypt and Iran combined, and not because Israel is doing anything special (GDP per capita there is less than e.g. Australia or the US), but because Egypt and Iran's military dictatorships are incredibly economically destructive.

Israel has a modern military and 200+ nuclear weapons that they would absolutely use in a last resort scenario (like all countries would). They are not going away anytime soon, nor are their days numbered.

Like geez, we can't even get rid of North Korea, how are people expecting to successfully destroy a nuclear armed power without getting everyone else in that area killed? Its delusional.