The difference is that the former does not threaten the security of the great powers, whereas the latter undermines it in the most dangerous way possible. — Tzeentch

I wouldn't necessarily agree, as Israel officially adopting mass terrorism is going to motivate similar attacks on both Israel and the US as well as normalize the practice generally speaking which effects also everyone, and likewise eroding the US credibility and diplomatic position is a threat to US interests and thus security while also threatening to drag the US into a disfavour able war, but even assuming what you say is true and the former are of no concern to the US or the other great powers, can the great powers do anything about it?

Simply being a great power doesn't magically make your will happen, in this case even with respect to your own colony that you've setup, funded, nurtured and shielded. We are in an unusual situation where a colony has effectively taken control of the foreign policy of the empire from which it comes.

If not completely, clearly enough to carry out a genocide in broad daylight and boast about the fact, likewise praise rapists and blowup embassies and assassinate high officials left and right. None of this benefits US security since all of these norms are bedrock parts of the "rules based order" US officials keep going on about and some of the rules (like not being explicitly genocidal, explicitly pro raping prisoners, and not blowing up embassies) the US even follows itself (assassination being the one policy US also carries out with the expectation no one does it to them, but even there the US is clearly far more restrained than Israel)!!

Israel is simply not effectively constrained by the great powers at the moment so what the great powers want is not a determining factor in this situation.

On top of all of that, it's also debatable the extent to which US elites are actually against Israel nuking Iran. There's clearly a strong faction of US elites that wants war with Iran while, as @ssu notes, never elaborating how exactly a war with Iran would unfold; perhaps their idea is that Israel will nuke Iran all while being protected by the US from retaliation. They clearly don't have in mind a full-scale invasion, occupation and building up a liberal democracy over several decades only to be defeated by the Taliban again, yet they talk about war with Iran a lot so they must have some sort of idea of how that would actually go. If it is as obvious that Iran cannot be invaded conventionally as everyone familiar with the matter seems to believe, it would seem equally obvious that nuclear weapons is the only recourse that changes that equation.

Nuclear proliferation is one of the only topics the great powers have generally been in agreement over. They realise the consequences to global security, including their own, if the nuclear genie is let out of the bottle. — Tzeentch

Agreed, but Israel already has nuclear weapons and the great powers were unable to prevent that nor would they be able to prevent Israel using those nuclear weapons.

What would ensue after an unprovoked nuclear attack is a mad scramble where virtually every nation on the planet will be trying to get their hands on nuclear deterrents and anti-ballistic missile defenses of their own. — Tzeentch

Agreed. Again, doesn't stop Israel from using nuclear weapons. One may assume that proliferation would lead to Israel eventually being nuked, but they may (whether they are delusional or not about it) believe that preemptively nuking Iran enough will deter that from happening. The US nuked Japan and has yet to be nuked in return; that maybe their model.

At that point, the great powers would likely do everything in their power to crack down on the culprit in an attempt to cool global fear. — Tzeentch

Again, how? And also maybe Israel elites believe, rightly or wrongly, that the US simply won't do any such thing.

For, Israel is a tiny country and so it simply doesn't require that much inputs to keep afloat.

If all the "hippy liberals" and "startup bros" have mostly already left Israel, perhaps those that remain in Israel have little problem with the idea of becoming an insular rogue state exactly as you describe, confident that the US will continue to supply them with whatever they actually need. After the nuking, they'll be able to simply occupy the land they want, kill or displace whoever they want, and after that (at least believe now) they'll be left alone.

Now, the analysis I provide is not meant as a prediction, that this is the most likely outcome. My point is that this is where the trend is going and we'd need a solid theory based on prior knowledge, i.e. evidence, to predict the trend will change before nuclear weapons use.

It could very well be Israel is "escalating to deescalate" and is repeating their former pattern of disproportionate retaliation just with a bit extra "oomph" this time. That their enemies will have "learned a lesson" and will think twice about messing with them again.

It's also possible that the plan is to provoke a conventional war between Iran and the US and that they have some plan how that will go, or anyways think it's a good idea even without an actual plan.

It's likewise possible Israel is simply conquering more territory and once they have it they feel they can defend it at a sustainable cost.

Another possibility is recent events are driven mostly by Israeli internal politics to solidify Netanyahu's hold on power, trying to push the limit to distract from Israeli internal problems while satisfying the population with perceived victory, without intending to go more extreme than the current policies, and the long term security implications are not really a factor (of making more enemies, of losing enormous international sympathy, of not being unable to hold territory in Lebanon assuming that's the case, of angering the entire Muslim world for generations and so on).

So, there are many possibilities, none of which we have much data to exclude nor support above the others, but my basic point is that nuking Iran is one such possibility and directly in line with the current trajectory of going rogue on everything else and detonating taboo after taboo in an accelerating fashion.

In terms of reasoning structure, we need actual evidence (prior knowledge) upon which to base predicting a trajectory in the data will suddenly change.

I gave the analogy of the water. Another analogy would be simply throwing a ball. We know how to predict the trajectory of projectiles and in order to predict a sudden change in the data we'd need actual knowledge of something that's going to affect the balls path. Obviously if we can literally see a building in front of the ball, or we know the ball was thrown at ground level and there's no giant cliffs around, or we know someone is aiming to shoot the ball with a high precision anti-ball system, or someone there to catch the ball, etc. then that's excellent knowledge in which to predict the ball will not simply continue on an expected high-school physics trajectory (speed, gravity, air resistance etc.; which, even that presumes knowledge of the ball being thrown somewhere close to the surface of the earth and not on the moon or elsewhere in space; even the simple prediction "the ball will be stoped by something at some point" requires prior knowledge about the situation).

Now, before Israel blew past all these taboos we did have the prior knowledge that Israel did place limits to its violent actions, so if we were having this conversation a year ago, or perhaps even a few months ago or even literally weeks ago, the "restraint theory" (either self-restraint or then the great powers as you propose above) would have had significant weight. I definitely didn't predict where we are now a year ago; my expectation being things would be bloody but ultimately return to the status quo (as that is what has always happened before).

And certainly the theory that despite appearance we are not actually outside the previous pattern of violence and Israeli war planners fully expect everything to "go back to normal" can be argued. It certainly feels like "things are different this time" but perhaps that is only a feeling and in another year tourists will be back on the beaches, tech bros raving in their techno parties in Tel Aviv, Palestinians still in concentration camps with little international concern for their well being dealing with the raping and murdering as best they can, tensions with Iran exactly as the same as they usually are and the spice continuing to flow from the Middle-East as it usually does. That is possible.

However, when Netanyahu says Iran will be free sooner than expected he may not be referring to the freedom that the US generously brings to a country after a large scale invasion and decades of occupation and tutelage, and he may not just be talking bluster because that's what leaders in wars do, but rather he maybe referring to freeing Iranian spirits from their bodies in by cleansing light of the nuclear flame.

Nuking Iranian leadership and population centres is the only practical interpretation of Netanyahu's words, that is unless I'm missing some other way of exporting freedom to Iran.

Also, notice that in the time we are discussing this a new data point is created by Israel which tracks the nuke Iran trajectory: "warning" the Iranian people themselves so they can say "we warned them and they didn't listen" after everything is made "different" than it was before.

I already watched this video (I think you posted it already). I find Gideon’s argument, from premises to conclusions, enough plausible in light of available evidences and universal humanitarian concerns. However, I don’t find it particularly enlightening from a geopolitical and historical perspective (I elaborated on this in several previous posts, not sure if you read them).
So what I would really like to understand is: is it geopolitical and historical reasoning that is blind to universal humanitarian concerns or is it universal humanitarian concerns that are blind to geopolitical and historical reasoning? I think the second is way more likely, hence the spectacular and endless frustration of the universal human rights activists.

First time I've seen the video so I couldn't have posted it before.

is it geopolitical and historical reasoning that is blind to universal humanitarian concerns or is it universal humanitarian concerns that are blind to geopolitical and historical reasoning?

Yes and no. The latter opposes – struggles against – the inhumane and counter-productive (i.e. destabilizing) excesses – strategic blindness – of the former.

So what I would really like to understand is: is it geopolitical and historical reasoning that is blind to universal humanitarian concerns or is it universal humanitarian concerns that are blind to geopolitical and historical reasoning? I think the second is way more likely, hence the spectacular and endless frustration of the universal human rights activists. — neomac

I'm not sure what you mean by "historical reasoning", but both geopolitical analysis and humanitarian concerns can be as informed or then blind to the other.

There are plenty of geopolitical analysts and actors that wish to minimize human suffering, and there are plenty of humanitarian actors that are aware of the geopolitical realities. You can also find the opposite cases, of geopolitical analysts and/or actors that have zero concern for human rights (there are plenty of brutal dictatorships that understand the geopolitics of their situation but are unconcerned with human rights).

In terms of "historical force", most conflicts are framed and limited by humanitarian concerns. The rules of war and international law and WMD treaties and other self-imposed constraints on state actors are the result of a humanitarian tradition to minimize the harms of war and strive to maximize a liveable peace after war, all while recognizing that wars do happen. If there was no humanitarian concern every state would stockpile chemical weapons and strive to attain nuclear weapons and not hesitate to use such weapons, as well as any other weapon on hand, on civilian populations. And not just weapons of mass destruction, there is a long list of weapons that states agree not to use (sound weapons, pain inducing weapons, various forms of terrorism, laser and other blinding weapons and radiation weapons of various kinds) all while competing with each other using as much force as they can muster within this broader humanitarian framework.

There's all sorts of things states could do but choose not to, and the argument that they don't do it because they would look bad simply circles back to the fact they look bad because enough people genuinely believe in the humanitarian principles (such as striving to minimize rather than maximize harm, avoid intentionally harming civilians and so on) that therefore those actions look bad.

The only reason we are discussing Israels breaching of various taboos is because a global human rights movement established those constraints on state actions to begin with. Everything Israel is doing, from intentionally starving a civilian population to compromising supply chains with explosives, could be completely normal acts of war that no one is the least surprised by, as normal as shooting with riffles.

Which is one area where I diverge from Mearsheimer in that states in the current system strive to maximize power but within a collaborative framework of self-imposed constraint due to the genuine belief in principles opposed to power-maximization. Even Israel could have easily carried out the final solution to the Palestinian problem if not for attempting to at be able to keep pretending it conforms to these universal human rights values. Even Israeli propaganda would have difficulty pretending to be a good faith actor if there was not one Palestinian left in Gaza.

And, as mentioned above, these constraints are due to the values and not some second order practical consideration, for we can easily find periods in history where there were no such values and we never find such constraints simply arising anyway due to practical lessons. When it was completely compatible with people's values to be torturing, crucifying (including a tenth of your own men on occasion), poising enemy water supplies, general raping and pillaging and eradication or enslaving conquered people's etc. we never find in history groups of people who have these values (i.e. see no problem with any of these things) but stop doing them because of practical considerations (like "torture doesn't work" for example).

Iran is firing misses at Tel Aviv

It appears to be far bigger than the previous attack in April. It is crazy how the chaos is raging over there (Middle-East). I can't see a calm and peaceful mood in the long term... This will take years, more than expected, maybe.

As I forecasted two days ago, Israel started the land invasion of Lebanon. It was totally clear from Netanyahu's speech at the UN. Bibi is confident that he can solve his problems by escalating the war.

And Iran finally responded in trying to assist it's ally Hezbollah. But with the killing of the Hezbollah leaders and with the great success of attacking Hezbollah unconventionally, it's obvious that Israel sees that it will be triumphant in this war (or military operation). And that's problem, as if successful military operations will solve the basic underlying problems.

This will take years, more than expected, maybe. — javi2541997

Ask yourself how many years Israel occupied Lebanon until it withdrew ...and with it's actions made the Lebanese shiias form Hezbollah in the first place.

It appears to be far bigger than the previous attack in April. It is crazy how the chaos is raging over there (Middle-East). I can't see a calm and peaceful mood in the long term... This will take years, more than expected, maybe. — javi2541997

It's now likely that Israel will strike Iran now. Last time the two warring parties refrained their military actions, but likely this time it will be far more. This will likely escalate.

I think the US is now on the verge to being dragged out to another large Middle Eastern war. You'll just notice that you are in another quagmire...

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden has directed the U.S. military to aid Israel’s defense against Iranian attacks and shoot down missiles targeting Israel, the White House National Security Council said on Tuesday.

This is the way the US is drawn to the another war in the Middle East.

Why no?

Because Israel's intent is to destroy Hezbollah and it will likely attack Iran, hence the fighting is quite likely to continue.

It's now likely that Israel will strike Iran now. Last time the two warring parties refrained their military actions, but likely this time it will be far more. This will likely escalate. — ssu

I thought the same when I read the post of Manuel in the first place. Everything is escalating very quickly, in my opinion. A few days ago the murder of Nasrallah, now Iran is bombing Israel. Netanyahu said that Israel can get to wherever they want in the Middle East after the missile attack. He is a bellicose man; his adrenaline pops up with this tension, and when everything is crossing the limits.

It's now likely that Israel will strike Iran now. — ssu

Yeah, Israel vows revenge, and they are looking forward to having a face-to-face confrontation with Iran. This is going to get worse. I hope nuclear weapons are not used. By now, only the USA is openly helping Israel, but if this gets serious, we (NATO) must take part in the conflict actively, right?

Well, I am off to bed. I hope Israel has not captured Teheran when I wake up.

Israel can get to wherever they want in the Middle East after the missile attack. He is a bellicose man; his adrenaline pops up with this tension, and when everything is crossing the limits. — javi2541997

This is a wartime politician on a roll. Fighting Hamas is now a mopping operation and the spectacular pager and the killing of the Hezbollah made likely Bibi and his leadership overenthusiastic and extremely self confident. As I've said, the 2006 operation into Lebanon didn't go well. Hence IDF is eager to have a brilliant victory such the Six Day War is very much in the past. They've been thinking how to fight Hezbollah for 18 years, so it's time now to put those ideas into action.

Last time the two warring parties refrained their military actions, but likely this time it will be far more. — ssu

Iran still refrained this time around. The problem has always been Israel and their desire to drag everyone into a war. It doesn't matter how much the other sides want peace if one party believes a war is in their best interest. That's how WWII started.

Iran still refrained this time around. — Mr Bee

As Israel and Iran are distant from each other, there is a geographic reason that limits warfighting capabilities. Hence both sides will talk about limited actions: they simply cannot fight the war in any other way. However now it's the second time in a short time that Iran has attacked Israel. Hence it is unlikely that Israel will refrain from a retaliatory strike.

JERUSALEM, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran's missile attack on Israel failed and vowed retaliation.

"Iran made a big mistake tonight - and it will pay for it," he said at the outset of a political-security meeting. "The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies."

Now tell me how Netanyahu won't strike back when he has said the above? When you say Iran will pay and that Israel will retaliate against it's enemies, it would be quite difficult then to follow by not doing anything.

This is the reason why I'm worried about the situation. There's no reason why Netanyahu wouldn't attempt to destroy Hezbollah as it has done with the current military organization of Hamas.

As Israel and Iran are distant from each other, there is a geographic reason that limits warfighting capabilities. Hence both sides will talk about limited actions: they simply cannot fight the war in any other way. — ssu

Of course both sides can only fight using air strikes but if Iran wanted to cause more damage they probably would've done so. Same with Hezbollah. Apparently alot of their strike here was intercepted like last time, and likely it was by design. They are clearly telling Israel right now that they are done and if Israel is done then things will cool down.

Now tell me how Netanyahu won't strike back when he has said the above? When you say Iran will pay and that Israel will retaliate against it's enemies, it would be quite difficult then to follow by not doing anything. — ssu

Of course I'm not suggesting that I expect Netanyahu will hold back. It was honestly surprising that he even held back in April. Like I said, Israel, helmed by Netanyahu, wants to escalate as far as possible. They really want to strike their nuclear facilities, which they can't really do by themselves, but again that's where the US comes in.

War is the main interest of the current Israeli government to cover the corruption and power abuse of Netanyahu. He was lucky with the attack on October 7th. He would be locked up in prison otherwise.

There's no reason why Netanyahu wouldn't attempt to destroy Hezbollah as it has done with the current military organization of Hamas. — ssu

He will attempt to destroy all those groups altogether and reach Beirut or even Teheran. He feels unstoppable due to the unconditional support of a large number of Western countries. Israel always dreamed about a conquest and an expansion. They have now the best opportunity in decades to accomplish their mission.

War is the main interest of the current Israeli government to cover the corruption and power abuse of Netanyahu. He was lucky with the attack on October 7th. He would be locked up in prison otherwise. — javi2541997

Netanyahu is interested in more war to stay out of jail. The rest of his coalition are just in it for the body count.

Of course I'm not suggesting that I expect Netanyahu will hold back. It was honestly surprising that he even held back in April. Like I said, Israel, helmed by Netanyahu, wants to escalate as far as possible. They really want to strike their nuclear facilities, which they can't really do by themselves, but again that's where the US comes in. — Mr Bee

They can come close ...assuming they get the needed airspace to launch an attack. I assume that Israel has it's Jericho missiles for nuclear deterrence, but for example the LORA medium range artillery missile (400km) can come in handy with it's air launched variant (AIR LORA) would be the optimal system. This has the possibility of launching the missiles from possibly Iraqi air space and thus minimizing the threat Iranian air defense systems pose. And then of course there's the option of also using drones, which Israeli has already used against Iran.

Israeli F-16 with conformal fuel pallets and AIR LORA missiles


And then of course Israel has a myriad of long range cruise missiles in it's arsenal, which can be launched from the F-15I, F-16I and F-35I combat aircraft. First wave would be to attack Iranian ground based air defence systems (GBAD) and it's command centers and likely the nuclear facilities. Yet a large scale attack would mean that the US would give a green light, which isn't actually so difficult as already the US has committed to the defense from incoming Iranian missiles. If Joe Biden (and Kamala) are started to be called chickens or whimps, that might easily get the US to side with it's ally even during an election.

The fact is that even if Iranian military targets are first attacked, then the lure of simply going against it's oil infrastructure looms also, even if this would be controversial and extremely unpopular (because of high oil prices). You can easily get into a situation just like with the War of Attrition 1967-1970 between Egypt and Israel, just now with the artillery strikes being replaced with missile strikes. The problem is that basically there's no reason why Israel wouldn't commit to this. It already is in an open military conflict with Iran. Bibi has already the hammer in his hand and Iran looks like one big nail.

It's simply about power. If you're powerful enough, humanitarian considerations don't matter because it's not beneficial to restrain yourself. Exercising power at its maximum yields the greatest rewards. But this is short-term thinking, assuming you'll be powerful forever or cynical if you realise you won't be but do it any way and let later generations deal with the fall out.