Yeah, that's a good question. Time will tell.
Looks like the Israelis are delivering more presents.
Originally Posted by CBS News
Tel Aviv — Israel said it carried out more strikes on
Iran on Monday, targeting missile, satellite and radar sites two days after the President Trump ordered American warplanes to join Israel in attacking the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities, fueling concern around the world of an escalating conflict in the heart of the Middle East with the potential to draw in major world powers.
Those concerns may continue to mount, as both Mr. Trump and Israeli officials hint at hopes that the military operations could result in the fall of Iran's theocratic rulers, and as Iran's top diplomat visits Russia looking for support from a key ally. Israel is also expanding its list of targets in Iran to hit sites linked directly to the ruling theocracy's grip on power domestically.
The office of Israel's defense minister said Monday that the military was "attacking with unprecedented force regime targets and government repression entities in the heart of Iran." It was the first time Israel has acknowledged striking targets linked to the Iranian regime's domestic authority, rather than its military or nuclear assets.
The defense minister's office said the new targets included the
notorious Evin Prison, where political prisoners are held,
a clock in Tehran's Palestine Square that symbolically displays a countdown to the destruction of the state of Israel, and the headquarters of Iran's
Basij paramilitary forces, which among other things acts as a morality police force for the Islamic rulers.
As I have mentioned before, a number of Muslim nations have been in a state of war with Israel since its founding (to include Syria, though that may change soon).
It is arguable that a state of co belligerency has been on going between Iran and Israel since at least the formation of Hezbollah in the early 1980's.
Iran's very public support for the Axis of Resistance fits into Fifth Generation Warfare (see William Lind) and since the Korean War, hardly anyone declares war anymore. (Credit to Iran and Iraq for having done that in their war in the 1980's). What Israel is doing at the moment is engaging in Asymmetric Warfare with Iran - from the other direction.
For once in my life I agree with Steve Bannon (whom I generally hold in very low esteem): there was no need for the Americans to strike Iran. The following comes from the magazine Rolling Stone...their biases are well known.
After President Donald Trump's
decision to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, administration officials are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented - and potentially calamitous - attacks were motivated by new intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons. Just months ago, Trump's Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress, in her opening
statement, that the U.S. intel community "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon" and had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program. While Trump
recently publicly disputed Gabbard's testimony, according to two administration officials with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks,
the president's decision to strike was not driven by any new U.S. intelligence on Iran."There is no intel," says one of the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. "Nothing new, that I'm aware of… The president is protecting the United States and our interests, [but] the intelligence assessments have not really changed from what they were before."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee,
confirmed Saturday night that American intelligence assessments on Iran have not changed. "I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States," he wrote on social media. "Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon."
I guess that since he had made that Threat the president felt he had to follow through on it. Or maybe he just woke up in a bad mood. Hard to say.
