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A major war between Israel and Iran is soon likely to erupt – so says Israel’s Defence Minister Gallant. It will be initiated when Israel launches its long mooted strike on Iran. Gallant has promised that Israel’s strike on Iran will be “lethal, precise and especially surprising”, adding that Iran “won’t understand what happened to it, or how”.

‘How’ so – an interesting choice of words.

As of this morning, there is no sign of the lethal response promised by Gallant. It would appear that Israel which initially attached importance to responding swiftly and directly, is awaiting the THAAD anti-ballistic missile batteries to be set up – and for the U.S. troops that will operate them to arrive in Israel.

THAAD likely is no ‘game-changer’. Iran proved on 1 October its ability to saturate and overwhelm Israeli Air Defence capabilities through two successive volleys of incoming ballistic missiles. The point here about the THAAD arrival is that, on the one hand, Israel is running short of intercept missiles, and secondly, that drawing the U.S. into a war between the U.S. and Iran – is hugely more important for Netanyahu than keeping to timetable.

The THAAD batteries paradoxically might do just that (draw the U.S. into the war). With U.S. forces now deployed on the ground in support of Israel’s military kinetic action against Iran, Israel effectively inserts an American ‘tripwire’ into the war drama: Should American soldiers be killed, then the U.S. is at war with Iran; It would feel bound to react forcefully to the deaths of American soldiers.

Netanyahu has been wanting this war for 25 years. He can now see it taking solid shape – directly in front of his eyes. It comes too, from his perspective, at an benign juncture – just before the U.S. elections in which almost every candidate vies to pronounce his or her fealty to Israel.

To be clear, this is no ‘small beer’. It may evolve into a major conflict with Russia, should Tehran be threatened. Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its inhuman – beyond all Rules of War – bombing of civilians in Lebanon to force a terrorised submission, has turned Russia into a full partner with Iran. Russia therefore, has worked hard to supplement Iranian defences with their own top-of-the-line defence systems.

Russia’s role however likely will be confined to providing Iran with this defence assistance: Russian ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance); its latest electronic warfare system; certain missiles; and possibly S-400 Air Defence missiles (though their arrival in Iran has not been confirmed).

Russia will have a prime interest in observing how these weapons perform against an Israeli strike.

Should they function well, it will provide a major boost to Russian general deterrence.

And here lies the key point: For Israeli Zionists and American neocons, the path to a de-fanged Moscow is viewed as passing through a de-capitated and defeated Tehran. Iran winning – the Resistance winning therefore – is very much a Russian interest.

Excited by Israel’s de-capitation of much of the Hizbullah senior leadership, and heartened perhaps by unauthorised (and wrong) signalling from Iran that it might respond perfunctorily to an Israeli strike, Team Biden might well perceive a new Zionist-led Middle East about to be born.

Will the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon intervene to stop the march to conflict – as they did over Blinken’s escalation plans in Ukraine? It seems unlikely. They have unreservedly supported Israel up to now. And they have agreed to send the THAAD batteries.

The Joint Chiefs certainly will have experienced the strong pro-Israeli sentiment in Congress, in marked contrast to the growing disenchantment with Ukraine.

Yet, taking on Iran – supported by Russia and China – is no small thing: Is it truly ‘winnable’? What if it isn’t? What if Israel loses – and therefore America loses? It would be an earthquake; a humiliation that would shake the western world.

One commentator, James Kroeger, intriguingly predicts that “Israel’s attack, if it comes, will be yet another decapitation strike: This time executed in even more stunning fashion than the one they pulled off vs Nasrallah”.

“You see, the Pentagon won’t sign on to IDF’s plans to attack Iran’s oil fields or even Iran’s buried nuclear industry; but they have a history of supporting Israel when it targets the Resistance leaders who oppose Israel. Didn’t the IDF just use 82 – 2,000lb U.S. bombs in Beirut to kill Nasrallah? With full U.S. complicity?

“As a basic concept, the U.S. is likely to approve and possibly even enable a ‘decapitation’ strike on Iran’s key leaders in Tehran in the belief that Iran would be too stunned to respond with a ‘total war’ attack on Israel. After all, what did Iran do after Nasrallah was killed? Attack some IDF Air Bases in a way that killed no Israelis? Did it deter Israel from daring to attack Iran once again?”

“What the Pentagon would not be likely to approve is the use of nukes to decapitate Iran’s government – because it just might be enough to trigger the all-out war that the Pentagon so fears: But what if cunning Israel, after accepting America’s assistance in an operation to deliver a conventional ‘bunker buster’ bomb attack on the Supreme Leader, decides on its own, to also deliver a tactical or strategic nuke on Tehran that completely devastates Iran’s chain of command?”

“Understand, Israel’s intent is not to avoid an all-out war with Iran, but to ignite one & using a nuke on Tehran would do just that. 100% guaranteed. Bibi understands that after such an attack, if Iran responds by attacking Israel with everything it’s got, he’ll be able to get Congress to pass a Declaration of War vs Iran”.

“MSM and the State Dept [together with Congress] would be marshalled first, to deny that nukes were used, and then to make emotional excuses for why Israel needed to use its nukes “to defend itself”. The theme they’ll endlessly repeat: Poor Israel, threatened with annihilation by terrorists, resorted to the only weapons it had left to defeat the evil it was facing …”.

“Madness? Yeah. Netanyahu ‘madness’” … Yet, Gallant’s enigmatic “lethal, precise and especially surprising: Iran won’t understand what happened to it, or how” – odd wording fits neatly with this Kroeger thesis.

Big unknown: Will the Pentagon be able to take a stand and refuse to comply? Indeed the Pentagon consistently has opposed all-out war between the U.S. and Iran.

Why? All the war ‘games’ played over successive years have resulted in America losing.