Michel de Bruin

Before launching the war, Trump told the Iranian people: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” That sentence—breezy, belligerent, untethered from reality—is the best summary of how this conflict began. 5 things he didn’t think through: 🧵

Israel now has the death penalty but only for Palestinians. Also the Palestinians in question - a stateless indigenous people occupied by Israel in the WB/Gaza for 59 years - will be tried under martial law with no due process. "Apartheid" is not adequate to describe this.

Israel Under Fire from Three Fronts Iran has been launching 10 to 20 missiles against Israel every day for nearly a month, causing significant material damage, the hospitalization of approximately 6,000 people, and several deaths. While a large part of the destruction and casualties come from Iranian attacks, Israel has recently opened two additional fronts: one from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north and another from the Houthis in the south. Israel is now facing three simultaneous fronts, with all its adversaries possessing ballistic missiles, a situation Israel has rarely, if ever, experienced in recent history. Iran has executed a meticulous strategic plan, systematically destroying key radars along the route and opening a missile corridor directly toward Israel. With high precision, Iranian forces have taken out at least 10 critical American radars essential for monitoring and intercepting Iranian missiles. On the Lebanese front, Hezbollah, which appeared weakened, has resurfaced with what seems to be improved training in saturation tactics. The group now launches waves of 10 to 20 drones from one direction while simultaneously firing salvos of 30 to 50 rockets from another, combined with Fateh-110 ballistic missiles (range of 300–350 km). These missiles are the crown jewel of Hezbollah’s arsenal, capable of striking almost any target in Israel with high precision. The Lebanese militia’s arsenal also includes the crude but powerful Burkan rocket, used for massive destruction at short ranges (around 10 km) with warheads of up to 500 kg. For medium and long-range targets, they employ the Zelzal-2 (210 km) and Fadi missiles (up to 225 km). Even after Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon, Hezbollah continues to launch potent missiles against Israel. Yesterday - 30th- alone, 10 evacuation helicopters were seen removing wounded soldiers from the front, highlighting the intensity of the fighting. Hezbollah also possesses Iranian cruise missiles such as the Quds and Paveh, as well as anti-ship missiles like the C-802. There are also suspicions that they are operating Russian P-800 Oniks missiles diverted from Syria. To the south, the situation is somewhat calmer, but it may be only the calm before the storm, as the Houthis appear to be warming up. On October 27 and 28, the Houthis launched at least two ballistic missiles along with waves of drones and cruise missiles toward Israeli territory. Unlike Hezbollah, the Houthis maintain underground missile assembly lines, where guidance systems and engines continue to be imported while fuselage and solid fuel are produced locally under the supervision of Iranian technicians. Join my Substack to read the full article: open.substack.com/pub/global21/p…

The nuclear deal with Iran, put together by the Obama administration, was less about actual nuclear weapons and more about creating a non-kinetic containment framework. Obama’s analysis was that in light of the decline of American power 1/

The US military has not fought a real enemy in decades. Now that it has been faced with one, it is doing badly. That is no coincidence. The military was built to make money for arms companies, not to win wars. Read my latest for free.

The IDF has confirmed that it is going to make the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon permanent. This is the IDF plan according to media sources and people I have talked to: 1) The villages in the front line across from Israel, and probably the line behind that too will be completely destroyed, as in Rafah. Not a single building will be left standing. Villages like Kfar Kila and Yaroun have already seen extensive demolition, with some reports indicating up to 90% of structures in specific border towns have been destroyed 2) IDF bases will be built there instead. 3) Israel will occupy all territory up to the Litani and control all crossings over the Litani. All bridges there have been destroyed and some may be rebuilt to serve Israeli purposes. 4) The IDF has already ordered residents to evacuate areas as far as the Zahrani River, which is roughly 10 miles (16 km) north of the Litani. The IDF security zone will go beyond the Litani but there has not yet been a decision on how far. 5) The entire area will be ethnically cleansed. Israeli officials have explicitly stated that displaced Lebanese residents, over 1.3 million, will not be allowed to return to any areas south of the Litani until Israel's security is "guaranteed." 6) The IDF is deploying an array of advanced sensors, surveillance equipment, and automated systems across the seized territory. This infrastructure is designed to maintain an open-ended security zone even if ground troop levels fluctuate. This is already bigger than the Nakba in terms of raw numbers. The plan is for a permanent occupation. A crime of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and permanent denial of return.

The US is on the verge of stopping the war with Iran without any achievements. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump is willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. This is because the political bleeding and the price of oil are too much for Trump to continue to withstand. What this means: 1) Trump and his aides concluded that forcing the strait open would take longer than his 4–6 week timeline, so the plan is to wind down hostilities after degrading Iran's navy and missile capabilities. 2) The plan is then to push diplomatically for free passage and if that fails, lean on European and Gulf allies to lead the reopening effort. 3) Iran would then likely demand that Israel stop bombing before they agree to open. That shouldn't be a massive problem, since Israel is running out of targets there anyway. 4) Iran received a lot of money from oil and a lot of new weapons and technology. They will use that to rebuild their regional power. 5) It appears very likely that Iran is going to pursue a nuclear weapons seriously for the first time, instead of pursuing the goal of being a threshold state. 6) The United States will lose a lot of its influence in the Gulf and the Middle East due to this disaster. That will pave the path to Chinese domination in the region. The US appears ready to conceded a historic defeat in the Gulf. American power will never be the same.

Kennett Love was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times who spent much of his journalistic career in the Middle East. Love was in Tehran during the 1953 coup in that country that restored the Pahlavi monarchy to power. Decades later, he was accused of playing a role in these events on behalf of the CIA. Love responded that his actions, which included distributing copies of a decree by the ousted Shah and encouraging tank commanders to attack units stationed near Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's residence, represented “misguided patriotism”, and that he “never wittingly” assisted the CIA. Nevertheless, several lawsuits launched by Love in US courts to clear his name failed. Several years later Love covered the 1956 Suez Crisis and Israel’s invasion of Egypt that year. He would later publish Suez: The Twice-Fought War (1969), at more than 700 pages one of the most detailed and comprehensive examinations of these events. It leaves absolutely no doubt about what transpired that year. Israel was not responding to any Egyptian provocations, of which there were none, but rather engaging in a series of violent provocations against Cairo in search of a war. After Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, Israel joined forces with Britain and France to launch an illegitimate and unprovoked war of aggression, the purpose of which was to overthrow the Egyptian leader. It was that simple, and suggestions that Israel was in any way defending itself against Egyptian attack or anything else is pure hasbara. Love devotes much less attention to the 1967 June War, but gets the history right. Once again, the idea that Israel was in any way responding to an Egyptian or other attack, or defending itself against anything, is pure fiction. Indeed, the fact that Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban on 6 June 1967 provided the United Nations Security Council with a detailed but entirely invented list of attacks against Israel by the Egyptian military and air force, and claimed that these initiated armed hostilities, give Israel’s game away. It was a carbon copy of the Gleiwitz Incident, the false flag Polish attack on Germany, carried out by the SS, that the Nazis used as a pretext to invade Poland in 1939. Love provides a useful timeline to understand the 1967 June War, reproduced verbatim: 14 May 1967: As Israeli leaders threaten Syria, Nasser reinforces Sinai 16 May 1967: Nasser requests UNEF [the United Nations Emergency Force stationed in Sinai and the Gaza Strip] to withdraw; it complies 22 May 1967: Nasser reimposes Aqaba blockade 26 May 1967: Nasser promises Egypt will not attack Israel but will fight to destroy Israel if Israel attacks 29 May 1967: Nasser says he won’t ask Russian intervention even if US helps Israel 30 May 1967: Jordan joins Egypt-Syria defense pact 3 June 1967: Nasser accepts Johnson invitation to send [Egyptian Vice President Zakariya] Mohyeddeen to US 5 June 1967: Israeli air strikes wipe out Arab air forces; Israel invades Egypt and Jordan Timelines can of course tell us only so much. The paragraphs below are excerpted from pp. 678-698 of Love’s chapter on the 1967 War: [Begin Quote] Just as the Suez War of 1956 had its origins in the Gaza Raid of 1955 [Israel’s Operation Black Arrow, in which it killed 38 Egyptian soldiers], so the Suez War of 1967 resulted from a chain of reactions and counterreactions that began with an Israeli raid on 13 November 1966, which demolished the Jordanian [West Bank] village of al-Samu. Eighteen Jordanians died at al Samu and 134 were wounded. Like the Gaza Raid, al-Samu had no convincing justification… The Security Council censured Israel on 25 November [1966] in the strongest language it had used in ten years, saying such reprisals "cannot be tolerated" and warning of "further and more effective steps." It had no more effect on events than the series of similar Security Council censures [of Israel] in 1955 and 1956… Ambassador Charles W. Yost of the American UN delegation raised the suggestion in the January 1968 issue of Foreign Affairs that Israel had artfully contrived the crisis that gave grounds for her [1967] attack on Egypt. "It is difficult to see," he wrote, "how any Israeli leader could have failed to foresee that such repeated massive reprisals must eventually place the leader of the Arab coalition in a position where he would have to respond." There is circumstantial evidence that Israel did seek, in 1967 as she had done in 1956, to create a situation favorable for war, particularly in the chronology of Israeli actions which provoked foreseeable Arab reactions. Certainly her territorial objectives, as part and parcel of her war plans, were adopted long before the crisis… James Reston reported from Cairo to The New York Times on the eve of Israel's attack: "Cairo does not want war and it is certainly not ready for war." Nasser had been led willy-nilly into his predicament by a concatenation of political imperatives that could not have been set in train by anything other than Israel's extraordinary public threats against Syria… On 26 May Nasser disclosed his promise to Egyptians in a speech. Egypt would not start a war, he said, but if Israel began hostilities, "the battle against Israel will be a general one and our aim will be the destruction of the State of Israel." Western and Israeli newspapers bannered Nasser's statement about the elimination of the State of Israel but they scanted the essential fact that Nasser's deterrent warning was predicated on Israel starting the war, not Egypt… The sensational half of Nasser's statement became a permanent part of the standard propaganda against him. Even in its full context it was by far the strongest statement Nasser had ever made against Israel… Nasser told Egyptians the month after the war that Egypt had never considered attacking Israel because of fears of American intervention. He said Washington knew in advance of Israel's plans and had deceived Egypt until the war began into believing a non-military solution was in prospect. On 3 June, at Johnson's invitation, Nasser agreed to send one of his vice presidents to Washington to discuss the crisis. Nasser named Zakaria Mohyeddeen, known for his moderation and Western affinities. Mohyeddeen was scheduled to reach Washington on 7 June. He never made the trip because Israel attacked on the 5th… On the first day of the war Eshkol and Dayan forswore territorial conquest. Two days later, after the fall of Jerusalem, Dayan went to the Wailing Wall and proclaimed: ''We have returned to this most sacred of our shrines never to part from it again." Israel marched swiftly to the Jordan River, completing her conquest of Palestine. By sundown on 10 June Israel had stormed the bunkered Syrian highlands containing the eastern part of the watershed sources of the Jordan, an area that Weizmann had urged Curzon to incorporate into Palestine for the Jewish national home. The third round of the Palestine War was over. And there would be no disgorging. On the morrow of the war the Israeli leaders, replete with territorial conquests, declared one after another that there would be no return to the old frontiers. Eshkol denounced all the Israeli-Arab Armistice Agreements and vowed to his exultant nation that "the position that existed until now shall never again return."… Israel's western border is now far beyond Wadi Arish, the Brook of Egypt promised in the Covenant, although her northeastern border is far short of the promised River Euphrates. The most likely area for further expansion is the Litani River basin just beyond the border in Lebanon. This was the river which [World Zionist Organization leader Chaim] Weizmann, foreseeing that the Promised Land would thirst for more water than it possessed, so earnestly begged of Lord Curzon, to no avail… As a result of the 1967 war there are now 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, two-thirds of the entire nation, and, in addition, 100,000 Syrian and 39,000 Egyptian refugees. It is with this [Palestinian] nation in exile that Israel must make peace, more than with any other, if she is ever to live in tranquillity. Yet it is with the claim of this people to the national home in Palestine from which it was driven, just twenty-one years ago, after immemorial ages of residence, that the fundamental tenets of Zionism are most irreconcilable… Israel's Zionist mission to be both a haven and a defender for Jews everywhere required that, whatever Israel's size may be, it must have an unassailable Jewish majority. This undeniably racist requirement that Israel must be, in Weizmann's words, as Jewish as England is English, is proudly asserted by Eban: "Israel will continue to be conspicuously non-Arab in its speech, thought, and shape of mind. Its Jewish connections will be stronger than its links with the Arab environment… The question is not whether Israel will change its special nature, but whether the Arabs will come to terms with Israel as it is." When Eban says: "Immigration was the purpose of Israel's existence; sovereignty was the means which served the end," he is speaking of Jewish immigration and only Jewish immigration. It is this mission which has made Israel expansionist and which makes it impossible for her to achieve a reconciliation with the Arabs, whether of Palestine or any other country… Israel and her friends in the West have been too ready to forget that when political Zionism was born at the turn of the century, the Ottoman province of Palestine was, to paraphrase Weizmann, ethnically as Arab as England was English. The Jewish minority there was smaller proportionately than that in some of the European provinces from which the Zionists emigrated… Meanwhile, Israel has become a modern Sparta, pugnacious, beset on all sides, and increasingly violent and short-tempered. [End Quote] The resonances with 2026 are overwhelming. More than half a century after its publication, Love’s book remains well worth reading, and does much to help us understand the world we live in.

Israel's conviction rate of Palestinians (in military courts) is 99.74% Israel's conviction rate of reported settler attacks on Palestinians is 1.8% Israel's death sentence will only apply against Palestinians not Israeli Jews It's not complicated. It's Apartheid!

Why Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain Cannot Do Anything Against Iran Right Now Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain are completely paralyzed in the face of Iran. Days ago, Israeli media reported an agreement between Qatar and Iran, and the facts confirm it: attacks launched from Qatari territory have ceased, and strikes against Qatar have also stopped. The situation with the other four countries is the opposite. Iran has been attacking these countries on a daily basis for more than 30 days. While Iran claims that cooperation with the United States is the reason for the attacks, that cooperation has not stopped. In Saudi Arabia, collaboration with the US and Israel runs even deeper, including the provision of infrastructure, aerial refueling tankers, bases, and logistics. Every week, these countries issue bombastic threats to enter the war against Iran. In practice, it is pure bluff. Beyond the obvious fear of destruction to their oil and port infrastructure, they lack the real capacity to sustain a prolonged conflict. Join my Substack to read the full article: open.substack.com/pub/global21/p…

The IDF is so low on personnel in fighting its forever wars, that it is sending combat soldiers with PTSD back to the front against their will and against the advice of their own health professionals: 1) There are 37,500 soldiers with mental health injuries. 15,000 of them have not yet gone through a medical committee (a process that can take years). The IDFs new policy does not exempt those still in process from combat. 2) Commanders explicitly threatened soldiers with being declared AWOL if they didn't report, which carries serious legal consequences. Some were threatened with military police showing up at their homes to arrest them. 3) The IDF has been dismissing evidence of serious mental trauma. Commanders ignored psychiatric documents presented by soldiers, including letters stating a soldier was "dangerous to himself and those around him." One commander's response to a soldier in day hospitalization was essentially "figure it out." Mental health struggles were framed as normal: "Everyone is like that, everyone has their problems" 4) Soldiers respond due to a deep sense of duty. Commanders invoked the weight of the war — "the most important war in the history of the Jewish people" to override personal health concerns Soldiers feelt intense loyalty to their fellow fighters One soldier internalized the pressure himself: "I told myself my brain is already scratched up, so what's a few more scratches." 5) One soldier said, "I sent my commander a document from a psychiatrist explaining I'm dangerous to myself and those around me, and he still told me I had to report. I begged, I cried to him on the phone, but he said 'I'm sorry, but whoever doesn't show up is considered AWOL, with all the consequences.'" 6) All this is happening despite a wave of suicides in the IDF and the warnings of IDF psychologists who say this will make it worse. Prof. Eyal Fruchter, former head of the IDF's mental health division says: "It's a particularly bad idea to take people who are already high-risk and send them back to the battlefield — the consequences could be severe." There have been 279 suicide attempts documented since 2024, over 60 of which were successful. The fact that 15,000 soldiers are stuck in a years-long medical committee process suggests the bureaucracy is being used as a retention tool. This is the sign of a desperate army without personnel to support expansionist ambitions in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank and Iran. So the common IDF soldier is being run to the ground to allow this insane militaristic agenda.

The IDF has begun to run out of primary targets, such as regime HQs, nuclear facilities, known missile sites, etc. They announced that will be done in a week or so. Now they will be moving to secondary targets such as police HQs, industrial infrastructure and dual use facilities. There is no limit to the targets AI and human intelligence can generate. But they will be less important. What this means: 1) The Iranian regime, its missile program and its nuclear program have not been seriously degraded by the bombing. They survived the use of the bank of targets that Israel and the US created over the years, shaken but strong. 2) There is a difference between physical damage and functional suppression. You can blow up a building, but if the scientists, engineers, and blueprints survive in clean rooms or deep underground bunkers, the program is merely paused, not erased. If the regime can still command a single drone unit or launch a "lucky" missile at a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, they maintain deterrence-by-denial, proving they haven't been degraded in a way that changes their behavior. 3) There is a lot of destruction but no strategic gain. Military and industrial capabilities can be rebuilt. Paradoxically the regime seems stronger than before the war due to the rally around the flag effect. 4) There will be diminishing returns on bombings. As each target becomes less important, the bombings get less bang for their buck and the damage from rising oil prices to the economy increases. 5) What is happening now Targeting Inflation. When the high-value targets (HVTs) are gone, military bureaucracies often lower the threshold for what constitutes a military objective to justify continued operations. Grinding bombing on Iran does have an effect on the economy and social cohesion, but it is accruing slowly. Meanwhile, the damage done to the West economically is accruing quickly. The switch to secondary targets will decrease the military effect. It is an admission of defeat.

Israel is being sucked into a quagmire in Lebanon, and it is losing soldiers accordingly. A paratrooper in Battalion 890, Moshe Yitzchak HaCohen Katz was killed by Hezbollah rocket fire. He is the fifth IDF soldier killed in this campaign so far. What this means: 1) In the 24 hours surrounding the incident, the IDF reported approximately 250 rockets launched from Lebanon toward Israeli positions. 2) The nature of the operation is exposing soldiers to intense fire. The IDF is currently focused on expanding a security zone in southern Lebanon. Ground operations, which began on March 16, 2026, are intended to push Hezbollah's capabilities away from northern Israel and prevent their return to the area south of the Litani River. 3) The trouble is that Hezbollah can easily fire from north of the Litani, leaving the soldiers in a vulnerable position as they advance. It will be even worse when they stop. A security zone pushes anti-tank missiles further from the border, it doesn't solve the high-trajectory threat. That will creates a sitting duck scenario for the soldiers stationed within that zone. 4) Once the IDF stops advancing and begins fortifying positions, they transition from a mobile force to a static target. Hezbollah excels at attrition warfare, using IEDs and coordinated strikes on fixed outposts, which could turn this security zone into a drain on manpower and morale. 5) The increased distance between Israel and where rockets are fired when the security zone is in place will increase warning time for residents of the north. But it will not prevent fire at them which can proceed from a distance. 6) In previous Israeli occupations of Lebanon, Hezbollah relied on mortars and Sagger missiles. Today, their use of one-way attack drones means that even if a security zone pushes back physical launchers, the sitting ducks in fixed outposts can be targeted with high precision from far beyond the Litani more easily than ever. The IDF will likely have many more casualties, as it occupies Lebanon indefinitely. A return to the quagmire of 1984-2000 is all but certain. Meanwhile, the firing of rockets will continue. But this time with drones. Another ill conceived war.

The US has lost a good deal of equipment in the war with Iran so far. The damage inflicted by Iran significantly exceeded U.S. expectations: * 3 F-15E Strike Eagles — shot down by friendly fire * 1 F-35A Lightning II — emergency landing after possible Iranian attack * 1 KC-135 Stratotanker, lost after mid-air collision over Iraq on March 12; all 6 crew killed. The second KC-135 involved managed to land safely despite damage * 5 KC-135 Stratotankers — damaged in Iranian missile strike on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia; being repaired * 12+ MQ-9 Reaper drones — 8 shot down by Iranian missiles, 3 destroyed on the ground, 1 downed by friendly fire; additional Reapers damaged (~$16M each) * Additional MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones — also reported lost or damaged (~$30M each) * USS Gerald R. Ford — fire broke out March 12 in the main laundry space supposedly in non-combat circumstances. Undergoing repairs at Souda Bay, * AN/TPY-2 radar (Thaad battery, Jordan) — struck by Iran; costs at least $300M * AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar (Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar) damaged by Iranian attack; costs ~$1B * AN/TPS-59, AN/FPS-117, AN/MPQ-64 radars — additional damage reported across the region * MIM-104 Patriot AN/MPQ-65 radar — reported damaged * Additional radar, communications, and air-defense systems across Qatar, UAE (including sites at Al Sader and Al Ruwais), Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia * At least 17 U.S. sites across the Middle East have sustained damage. 13 are considered "unlivable." Total estimated cost: ~$4 billion and climbing This reflects the best available public reporting. Classified damage assessments, unreported infrastructure losses, and small-unit equipment destroyed at smaller outposts mean the true cost is likely considerably higher.

The war keeps getting worse. The Houthis have now joined, creating a new logjam in the Red Sea as the US Navy and Israeli Air Force are distracted. 1) The Houthis have threatened to target the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a vital shipping route connecting the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. This follows Iran's previous closure of the Strait of Hormuz, putting global trade under severe pressure. 2) Renewed Houthi attacks on shipping are expected to skyrocket oil and fuel prices and force global shipping to reroute around Africa once again. 3) Beyond just fuel costs, the war risk premiums for maritime insurance will likely triple or quadruple, making even non-oil cargo, like grain and consumer goods, prohibitively expensive for global markets. 4) The U.S. Navy may be forced to redeploy carrier strike groups or destroyers from the Mediterranean or Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, thinning out the military presence in other high-tension zones. 5) It will add stress to the ailing interception systems, which are already overloaded as the Houthis shoot from the south. All this entry does is compound the major economic and military problems already facing Israel and the United States.

An Iranian missile and drone attack struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia wounding 10 U.S. personnel, two seriously, and damaging several refueling aircraft. The accuracy of Iranian missiles and their continued ability to launch have taken a massive toll on US forces in the Gulf.

The basic premise of this [Zionist] ideology was that the Jews constitute a nation, and not a religion—a redefinition of Jewishness that resulted from a broader ideological innovation in Jewish history: the creation of modern Jewish nationalism ... [T]he word “nation,” which previously had a very loose meaning that could apply to essentially any group of people united by some common bond (one spoke, for example, of the “nation of students”), now acquired a highly specific and exclusive meaning: every person’s primary identification was as a member of his or her nation, rather than other forms of self-definition or loyalty—religious, regional, local, even familial. This superseding national identity required, among other things, a continuous common history (invented by nationalist historians), led by national heroes reaching back to antiquity, and a “national language” which had to replace previous modes of communication, now derogated as dialects which had to be eliminated. In due course, crucial to the new nationalisms was the insistence that each nation required political sovereignty—preferably, complete independence—in clearly demarcated territories that belonged in a biological manner to that nation and that nation alone, but had in whole or in part been taken away from it by foreign occupiers, from which it had to be liberated. ... While for the most part Zionism followed this common pattern of modern nationalisms, it also diverged from it in crucial ways. First, since antiquity the Jews had described themselves, and had been defined by others, as a “people” or a “nation,” even though the latter term was understood in a different way from its later nationalist usage. Thus, the Hebrew Bible uses three words to convey the concepts of Jewish peoplehood or nationality: am, goy, and leom. It is not at all clear what the difference was, if any, between these terms for the Biblical authors, but over the course of time the most common appellation for the Jews as a group became am yisrael, the people of Israel. With the invention of modern Jewish nationalism in the middle and late nineteenth century, however, the third and least common Biblical term—leom—came to be used as the basis for the Hebrew versions of the new European conceptions of “nation,” “nationhood,” and “nationalism,” so as not to confuse them with the more typical pre-nineteenth-century terms. Michael Stanislawski, Zionism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 18-19

This explains a LOT. China has been providing Iran with a stream of high quality chips, missiles, explosives and other materials: 1) China provided Iran with dual-use components, including inertial sensors and satellite navigation modules, often acquired through Chinese intermediaries to bypass sanctions. These chips are essential for any electronics, but particularly for the guidance systems of drones, like the Shahed series, and missiles. 2) In early 2026, China granted Iran access to its BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System, significantly improving the accuracy of Iranian drone and missile strikes. Combined with Iran’s recent transition from U.S. GPS to China’s BeiDou-3 Navigation System, these chips allow for high-precision, jam-resistant strikes that are much harder for Western forces to intercept. 3) Beyond chips, China has supplied over 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a precursor for solid rocket fuel, enough to power hundreds of ballistic missiles. This allows Iran to rapidly replenish its arsenal even after heavy battlefield losses. 4) Potentially, the most significant recent development is the reported acquisition of the CM-302 supersonic "carrier-killer". This was designed to his US Navy carriers. This all explains why Iran has been so effective and why they may be able to further escalate and hit targets like desalination plants and even carriers. It also shows that China is going all in, in order to frustrate the US and to test its weapons systems.

As I've previously stated, Israel's aspiration to become a regional hegemon is pure delusional hubris. Israel is too small and vulnerable, lacks the required demographic and resource base, and is fully dependent on external support. Already in Iran we are learning that Israel has bitten off more than the US can chew on its behalf. A state that can't decisively defeat a second-order militia like Hamas, or administer a fatal blow to Hizballah, and needs the full might of the US to wage war against Iran - a state under comprehensive sanctions since the 1970s - is now threatening to take on NATO member Turkey? Pure delusional hubris. And after hubris comes nemesis.

Israel has sent five divisions into Lebanon in the most massive invasion of the country since 1982. But the IDF has run into serious trouble. Today one soldier was killed and 15 soldiers evacuated due to hypothermia. These are the main problems the IDF has run into: 1) Just in the last 24 hours a soldier was seriously wounded by mortar fire, another soldier was seriously wounded by rocket fire from Hezbollah and one soldier was killed in a direct face-to-face firefight. 2) Hezbollah claimed a record 95 operations in a single day, including strikes against IDF forces and rocket launches into Israeli territory. Even during the long months of fighting before the ceasefire, that number was never reached. 3) That is a result of the effective way Hezbollah has split itself into local units which fight independently, making it difficult for Israel to cut communications as they usually do. 4) Friendly fire is turning into a massive problem. Israel is using so much firepower in such a small space. When forces are searching buildings room by room, units can lose track of each other's exact positions. In darkness (as was the case here, with the 2:10 AM engagement), visual identification of friend vs. foe becomes extremely difficult. Hezbollah fighters often wear civilian clothing, adding to the confusion. 5) Hezbollah has had decades to pre-register firing coordinates across southern Lebanon. They know the terrain intimately and have pre-calculated firing solutions for key roads, buildings, and likely Israeli patrol routes. This means they can drop mortars with high accuracy onto Israeli positions very quickly, without much adjustment fire that would give warning. 6) Israel is essentially entering terrain that Hezbollah has spent years preparing. Tunnel networks, pre-positioned weapons caches, and booby-trapped buildings all favor the defender. The IDF has significant technological superiority in the air, but at ground level that advantage narrows considerably. There is no doubt the IDF will reach the Litani River. But they will do so at a high cost and will continue to take casualties as they occupy the territory. In addition, Hezbollah will be able to continue to fire on Lebanon from afar. This operation will not succeed.