Is Something About To Give In The Middle East?

It’s becoming clear that the Zhou administration is increasingly desperate to find some way out of its self made crisis in the Middle East, which has taken on global dimensions. The Neocons always prefer playing checkers, but now find themselves in a game of chess with grandmasters, and their king is being inexorably hunted down. Russia is remaining steadfast in the face of repeated and ever more serious provocations—that’s the front of this global war that has to be of primary concern for the the Neocons. But the Middle East front has quickly evolved into a black hole for US military resources, as well as a whack a mole contest, demanding ever shifting commitments of carrier battle groups that don’t seem to lead to any clear strategy for victory. Every move seems to lead to either a check or some other impasse. Worse still, the US finds itself complicit in genocide with an international pariah: Israel. Our hapless “diplomats” are forced to repeatedly veto calls for an end to violence, virtually alone against the world. Not a good position.

Jeffrey Sachs summed it up well the other day (the full discussion with Judge Napolitano is excellent). Sachs explains the effects on our political and economic position in the world, but he also enunciates what Israel’s war is really about:

Victor vicktop55 @vicktop55

American economist Jeffrey Sachs:

The United States is completely isolated throughout the world due to its support for Israel. And the consequences of this are felt all over the world. In changing alliances, in economic models, in changing geopolitical structures, even in the use of the dollar as a currency and much more. The US is left alone with Israel. The world is stunned by what Israel is doing because we have never had live video feeds of massacres before. It has a purpose that also needs to be understood. Israel is not fighting Hamas. Israel is fighting for a greater Israel, which is a kind of messianic biblical idea that is now in political dominance in Israel. This is 21st century stuff, and it's destructive. I don't think the Americans understand the risk of a very significant, very dangerous and rapid expansion of this war. This is what we are faced with. This is the worst foreign policy imaginable.

https://t.me/vicktop55/19713

11:13 AM · Dec 29, 2023

The initial Neocon decision was to rush major naval assets to the region as a blocking force against Iran and Hezbollah, while enabling Israel to get on with its genocide campaign by supplying vast amounts of munitions that had only that purpose. That reaction involved two basic miscalculations. The first was that Iran and/or Hezbollah would rush to join the war. They forgot that Iranians are past masters at chess, and that mindset translates into their geopolitical strategy. The US tried playing with what they thought were two queens—carrier battle groups. But instead of providing flexible and powerful freedom of movement, those two pieces are tied down with no ability to act in a meaningful way. And that at the hands of the Houthis. The second miscalculation was believing that the Israeli Occupation Force would prove competent in combat against well dug in asymmetric forces, despite signal lack of success in past efforts. The war in Gaza is going badly for Israel. Casualties are heavy, progress has been at a standstill, and the government is dissolving into bickering factions—most pointing the finger of blame at the psychopathic Netanyahu. I’ve taken these short takes from @Megatron_ron’s feed:

Israeli Channel 13 :

"The intensity of the fire in the north (border with Lebanon), between Hezbollah and the IDF has reached such a level that in some towns, due to the security threat, it is not even possible to estimate the amount of damages.”

Israeli TV channel 14:

"The situation in the north of Israel (on the border with Lebanon) is worse than announced in the media.

Some positions are the target of dangerous attacks that are prohibited from being reported."

Kan TV [Hebrew] analysts:

"If #Hamas does not fall in #Gaza, we must prepare for a new and major attack on the periphery by them, even if their numbers are large and may reach the outskirts of Tel Aviv, and this is not unlikely at all."

They also said:

"The army added 30,000 soldiers on the Khan Yunis front, but the battle of Khan Yunis will be very complicated.

If the army fails in the Khan Yunis operation, as happened in Shuja'iya and the north, #Hamas will be declared victorious in the battle."

Israel's political top in crisis and a major dispute.

The war is not going in the desired direction.

Gantz and Gallant criticized Netanyahu and refused to hold a joint press conference with him.

Netanyahu will hold a press conference alone tonight.

Basically, what Netanyahu ended up saying was that nothing will change, everything is going well but it’s “complex”, thanked Zhou for more weapons, and threatened the usual suspects—Hezbollah and Iran—with massive retaliation. Israeli military analyst, Amos Harel, had a starkly different assessment, which one assumes is shared by the feuding government members—otherwise they wouldn’t be feuding:

"The truth must be told. #Israel entered a difficult strategic trap after the October 7 attack.

It is still unclear how to get out of the trap, and this attrition could turn into a permanent situation, and the possibility of the Lebanese front reaching a state of war is still high."

If they enter into an all-out war with Hezbollah, they will lose in Gaza and vice versa.

…, a ceasefire now would mean an even bigger war in a short time.

While the massacre of children was the stupidest decision they could make, which would cost them the country.

If Israel fails to completely defeat Hamas in the next 2 months, it's over.

The problem for Zhou, of course—beyond the complications for the Russia war—is that his polling numbers continue to plummet, not only including but especially among the Dem base voters. Supporting the Israeli genocide campaign is bad enough, but supporting the Israeli economy is becoming progressively more burdensome, as major European and global shippers appear to be cutting deals with the Houthis that include secret agreements regarding shipments to Israel. US shippers and Israel are the big losers, while the US has made the strategic calculation that … it can’t actually do anything about this. Thus, this report is hardly surprising:

Iran Observer @IranObserver0

BREAKING

The US has sent secret messages to Iran and Saudi Arabia about the future of Palestine

Saudi security officials are now in Tehran for talks.

US Secretary of State Blinken will visit Israel and several other Arab countries this week

12:21 PM · Dec 30, 2023

Have you ever tried to talk your way out of a check? It doesn’t work—you need a safe position to move to. The US is in a tough position, without a lot of leverage. Concessions—serious concessions—look like the order of the day. But, as Amos Harel and other analysts realize, that would mean a defeat on a massive scale for Israel, possibly on an existential scale. Nor is it clear that Israel has any credible concessions to offer, even under US pressure. Past intransigence has its costs.

This development probably also explains the huge atrocity porn propaganda campaign, full of lurid sexual fantasies (I won’t describe them) from the usual suspects. It looks very much like a desperate effort to raise an hysterical reaction in the US to stampede the US into war with Iran. Again, the usual suspects appear to be coordinating with the propaganda effort: Lindsey! and Bolton and their ilk, both American and Israeli. First, Max Blumenthal does a good shop deconstructing the propaganda campaign:

Max Blumenthal: (TheGrayZone) - What the IDF Did on Christmas

~15:50 - ~18:00

AN: The New York Times has published a piece claiming that on October 7th there's evidence of rape and beheading. You have debunked that. You have just obliterated that. Why would the Times do it and what was the Times so-called information even based on.

MB: Well this is a high level Israeli psychological operation and a propaganda hoax that only became coherent about two months after October 7th, when Israel decided that international support for its genocidal rampage in Gaza was faltering, and that they were particularly losing support among Joe Biden's base, which includes many feminists, Progressive minded people. And so they began to accuse Hamas of mass rape without any forensic evidence. And that's the first thing the New York Times piece by Jeffrey Gettelman--who is guilty of the worst journalistic malpractice, as we just outlined at our live stream at The Grayzone. And I did so on Twitter and we'll continue to do so.

They blame the lack of forensic evidence, the total lack of forensic evidence proving these allegations, on Jewish burial ritual. So, basically, if you challenge any of this or ask for evidence, you're anti-semitic. Then they proceed to interview all these "witnesses"--one guy, Roz Cohen, who's a former Special Forces soldier who was at the Nova Electronic Music Festival, who claims to have seen Hamas militants get out of a white van and gang rape a woman in the middle of their lightning surprise attack on Israel. And this is a guy who has changed his story, as I've documented, no less than eight times. When he was interviewed on October 9th, first interviewed, he made no statements about having witnessed any rape. Then you have this anonymous paramedic that is, that the New York Times interviews, who has previously gone on an Indian news channel and lied about finding a dead Israeli baby thrown in a trash can by Hamas militants and stabbed multiple times. There's no record of that. He's just a fraud.

I can go on and on but, from top to bottom, this story is an elaborate fraud based on the perception that anyone involved with Hamas is capable of sexual savagery as soon as they come upon a Jewish Israeli woman. Which is interesting, because if you listen to the testimonies of the young women who have come out of the Gaza Strip where they were held in captivity, none of them describe any sexual abuse. In fact, one said that she was shocked at how careful her captors were to not make her feel uncomfortable in any way, or violated in any way. That's not to say that everything Hamas did, that they didn't kill people, [that] they didn't kill civilians, but what Israel has to do, Israel has to go big with its propaganda to justify its big genocide.

As MB tweeted: “It takes a disturbed mind to concoct a farce this lurid, and an extremely enfeebled one to believe it.”

Next, Danny Davis, for his part, in less than three minutes, does an excellent critique of the only “strategy” the Neocons know: Hit ‘em hard and if that doesn’t work hit ‘em harder. It’s the only play in the Neocon playbook, and it never works:

As stated above, my suspicion is that this—the atrocity porn as well as the renewed Neocon drumbeat for war with Iran—is prompted by the peace feelers the Zhou administration is putting out to squirm out a geopolitical check. To echo MB, Israel has to go big in its propaganda and with its political proxies because they need the biggest prize of all: a US war on Iran. My guess is that, if the US military has realized that confronting the Houthis is a risk too far, then attacking Iran would certainly be, also. The wild card in all this is Russia. Doug Macgregor has repeatedly warned that anyone who thinks Russia would stand by idly while Iran was attacked is simply delusional.

Things are definitely heating up. 2024 could be …