Neocons Talking Middle East Escalation

So far it remains mostly talk—unless you happen to be a Palestinian at the receiving end of unguided US 2,000 lb. bombs. The US continues to supply the munitions without which the Israeli genocide could not continue. On the other hand, despite plenty of saber rattling and despite Houthi attacks on US naval ships, the US has so far failed to take military action to break the Houthi blockade of the Suez Canal or to retaliate. There has been talk of military action, there has been plenty of chatter about building coalitions to somehow safeguard passage through the Red Sea, but not much has been done from a military standpoint. Here’s how Zerohedge frames that:

So far there's been a lot of empty threats and posturing from Western defense leaders, but after at least 25 significant missile and drone attack incidents against commercial vessels and shipping lanes in the Red Sea, there's yet to be one instance of US or UK or other coalition warships hitting back directly against Houthi launch positions.

Today we’ve been told, via the British and US Deep State media outlets, that this will change in the near future. I’m reporting what I read, but I’ll admit that I’m not sure this is actually for real. What seems for sure is that the (dubiously serious) “peace plan” Blinken has been flogging on his latest Middle East tour is DOA—Megatron_ron observes:

Megatron @Megatron_ron

BREAKING:

The situation between the Houthis and the US is about to escalate

The Wall Street Journal reports that Houthi forces in Yemen are moving weapons in anticipation of a strike by the U.S. and its allies.

US military also announced that the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen into international shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden.

The [London] Times also wrote that U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is currently in a full cabinet meeting, and that ministers said that US-UK strikes against the Houthis in Yemen may be imminent .

The whole situation gives the impression that Blinken's attempt at a 'ceasefire' and the establishment of a Palestinian state under the administration of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, to isolate Israel from Iran, has failed.

Hezbollah has already rejected such a thing. My opinion is that most likely within a week the US will launch a massive missile attack on Yemen and Lebanon and the second phase of the war I wrote about will officially begin.

http://t.me/megatron_ron

1:58 PM · Jan 11, 2024

What do I know? I remain cautiously optimistic that the US will walk back from escalation. Unfortunately, that leaves two things in play: 1) the Israeli/US genocide will continue, and 2) the Houthi blockade will continue. The two are linked. Yemen is acting to stop the genocide through economic sanctions. If the US doesn’t stop the genocide, the Houthis will continue the sanctions—the blockade. As for Hezbollah, nothing short of nukes will make a difference in Lebanon (that would also be the case with Yemen). Israel might be up for that, but I’m doubtful that the US is. And I don’t believe the US is up for a ground invasion in either country. I’ve seen no sign that there are any such preparations under way.

In a longer post, mostly devoted to the South African lawsuit in the ICJ against the continuing Israeli genocide in plain sight, Yves Smith offers some sensible observations on the current situation in the Middle East in a general way, mostly echoing the preceding paragraph:

Israel does not have any good cards to play, not just with respect to the South Africa genocide case but in its campaign against Palestinians. It seems to be relying on the fact that no one has been able to stop the slow-motion extermination of Palestinians, and that all it needs to do is stay its vicious course of action. But that sort of win is not going to make Israel safer.

Israel is running into the considerable limits on its and US power, and the resulting costs. Israel looks unable to achieve its stated aim of destroying Hamas. Israel has pulled ground forces out of Gaza, in effect confirming that clearing Gaza of Hamas fighters is not its aim. As we have regularly pointed out, the lack of food shipments, limited water supplies. destruction of hospitals, and the flattening of shelter means everyone in Gaza will die in not that long a time in the absence of an intervention. But the Houthi blockade of shipping to and from Israel is damaging not just the Israeli economy (see reports of imminent food shortages) but global shipping, witness the hissy fit by the US and 11 other countries trying to intimidate the Houthis into backing down. But the Western threats are pure noise-making. It’s not realistic for a Western coalition of the willing to subdue Yemen, particularly with its stockpile of weapons to deploy against any landing parties. And if they could subdue the Houthis otherwise, they would already have done so.

Israel similarly has only lose-lose choices as far as Hezbollah in concerned. [Hezbollah’s] pattern of tit for tat attacks picked up in severity and a bit in range, leading to evacuation of border towns. Israel has committed to getting Hezbollah to pull back from the border…with no agreement from Hezbollah to do so and doubtful means to make that happen by force. Most experts believe that the Israeli army is so poorly prepared that were it to push into Lebanon, Hezbollah could and likely would occupy northern Israel, potentially as far as Galilee. Perhaps Israel hopes to pull the US in more deeply, but it’s not as if it would do any better with US help (Scott Ritter has stressed that war game have consistently shown the reverse).

Israel media and statements by official show the country is still operating on blood lust and not realism. …

The complicating factor is that the people making the policy decisions in the US are crazy. Would SecDef Austin push back hard against crazy proposals? Oh, wait …

Daniel Larison takes aim () at some of the hard-to-accept assertions in the London Times article that touts an imminent attack by the US/UK on the Houthis:

U.S. attacks on Yemen will be dangerous not only for American interests, but they will also backfire on other U.S. clients in the region, especially if they are seen as supporting the attacks.

The Times article includes this bit of absurd spin:

Any action against the rebels in Yemen would coincide with attempts by the United States to prevent the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas spreading to the rest of the region.

If the U.S. takes military action against the Houthis in response to their attacks on commercial vessels, it will be among those spreading the war to the rest of the region. Military action against Yemen won’t “coincide” with attempts to prevent the war from spreading. It will cancel out those attempts and render them irrelevant. Attacking the Houthis would be a dramatic escalation in response to what should be a manageable problem. It will not solve the problem, it will further destabilize the region, and it could very well spark a larger conflict that extends beyond Yemen and its immediate vicinity.

As an example of the reality that Iran, for example, is not backing down, consider this:

Iran Takes Back Oil Stolen by US. Neocon Heads Explode.

January 11, 2024

On today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Iran has seized the exact cargo ship seized by the United States last year, raising the stakes in the Middle Eastern tinderbox. The US seized the ship and confiscated the million barrels of Iranian oil as a punishment for violation of US sanctions. Now the Iranians are likely to “get their oil back” from the exact same (renamed) ship, this time carrying Iraqi oil. Also today: US moves closer to seizing Russian assets and Speaker Johnson pledges the US to defend Taiwan.

The Russian assets in question here are the $300 billion of Russian reserves that the US illegally seized, i.e., stole. This is a nutso move, and will only hasten the demise of the USD’s global reserve currency status—already occurring due to our out of control debt. As for Johnson, I’m with MJT, who today indicated she thinks it’s time for him to go, too.

Now, turning directly to Israel an genocide, two items. First we have articles appearing in the Israeli media, reporting that the Israeli military explicitly invoked their Hannibal Directive, ordering their forces to kill Israelis. This, again, raises the question of how many Israelis were actually killed by the IOF. In fact, the Israeli forces reportedly shot at anything moving in the area. Many of the vehicles may not have been Gaza bound but were instead occupied by Israelis attempting to flee:

Asa Winstanley @AsaWinstanley

Yediot Ahronot investigation tomorrow:

Israel ordered all combat units on 7 October to stop Palestinian fighters from returning to Gaza with captives "at all costs".

Ynet: This was an order "to use the 'Hannibal Procedure,' although without clearly mentioning this explicit name".

"About 70 vehicles" were shot "by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed."

"It is not clear at this time how many of the abductees were killed due to the activation of this command"

11:48 AM · Jan 11, 2024

Lastly, for those who are interested in the ICJ case against Israeli genocide, I can’t recommend highly enough this discussion between Judge Napolitano and John Mearsheimer—which I’m listening to as I write. As Mearsheimer states, nobody can listen to the case as presented, can listen to the sick statements that Israeli officials continue to make, can watch the ghoulish singing of dancing of Israeli military in the streets of Gaza, celebrating “wiping away the seed of Amalek,” without coming to the conclusion that “there’s something fundamentally wrong in Israel.”

I was just kidding—I have one more item, a real head scratcher, and it goes to the whole question of military preparedness:

US Army Struggling To Recruit White Soldiers And The Reason Is Obvious

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

People reacted to the news that the U.S. Army is struggling to recruit white soldiers by asking why they would want to serve a regime that hates them.