Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oooof new superseding indictment of Bob Menendez adds a Foreign Agent charge.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Wait...does he know Robert Byrd too? Oh no...that was The Chairman...

[THE_WIZARD_]

Blinken in Tel Aviv today..."We are here for you!"

Wait...didn't you just fund the country funding Hamas?

Hey thanks America!

[crashcourse]

well having the SOS on stage with Bebe continues with the right message

Have to admit biden so far has played this one correctly

now if hezbollah gets more involved might be time for some strikes from some of those carriers

bottom line though is iran wouldnt be so rich if biden wouldn't have shut off the worlds gas supply from the US

and trump needs to listen to wiz and STFU

[THE_WIZARD_]

We just paid a bully to beat the shit out of them...but we are now there for you. okeeeeee

[Mike]

Well, great! Now the world is clearly coming to end because Crash just made 5 salient points in 1 post.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I think Talent has hijacked crash's account...

[Dr. Strangelove]

The $6 Billion was frozen again

U.S. and Qatar agree to not release Iran’s $6 billion for U.S. prisoner swap (nbcnews.com)

[THE_WIZARD_]

Good. Right thing to do.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Hamas leadership beginning to panic?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Aaaaand the House Republicans are still a total shitshow.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Did someone say shitshow?fetterman and biden.jpg

[crashcourse]

Other thing I agree with is all these CEOs wanting the names of these participants in these protest groups

first amendment give you every right in the world to protest all you want

Capitalism gives me every right in the world to tell you I'm not hiring you because of your dumbass actions

nice to see government and business not cowering away

[Jeff Buchanan]

The link below is to ISW's carefully constructed Update on Iran dated yesterday. It's very thorough and lacks any kind of bias that I'm seeing in other sources. What I wanted to point out is this grouping of Jihadist organizations connected to Hamas called the "Axis of Resistance." It is operational movements of these groups that ISW is monitoring as a key to a widening conflict in the ME. In todays news, what I mostly see (probably biased) is that Hamas has not been able to gain the support (beyond words) of the groups in the table below.

Axis of Resistance.jpg
There are two possible central strategic outcomes (among many other tactical ones): (1) The conflict widens precipitating political chaos and the outbreak of wide spread force on force combat. (2) Out of the current circumstance, the Abraham Accords survive and provide a ME wide platform for turning down the heat. In fact, it is believed that one of Hamas' main strategic objectives in their incursion into Israel was to scuttle these accords that were becoming central to ME peace and stability. Several articles I've read point out that a key features missing from these accords is the the Palestinian elephant in the room. It is possible that one of the pathways to stability emerging out of the present circumstances is that the point has been made by Hamas. Arabs have to deal with the Palestinian issue.

My take is that ultimately, and after the Israelis have a chance to consider their options going forward, they will conclude that occupying Gaza, eliminating Hamas and sustaining that occupation is impossible out of the gate, unsustainable long term and fails to recognize Hamas and it's causes are not going to just go away or even be substantively weakened. Israel's next step is to figure out how to resolve their pre-war political chaos. If that happens, Israel will be in much better position to be centrally involved in ME stability.

Right now things are very murky in terms of predicting outcomes. This could go either way. Which way it goes will be, in large part, determined by what Israel does or attempts to do in Gaza.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-11-2023