Brace yourselves for war between Iran and Israel

 

The National Interest warns:  "Deal or No Deal, Iran-Israel War Is Coming to the Middle East".

The Israeli prime minister recently stated: “We no longer play with the tentacles, with Iran’s proxies: we’ve created a new equation by going for the head.” By letting Tehran know that it can and will be struck, Israel is changing the rules of the game. Jerusalem is no longer content to “mow the grass”—an expression for strategically limited strikes—but is upping the ante in response to what it sees as a growing threat.

Israel has also stepped up the scale and scope of its strikes in Syria, recently hitting the Damascus airport. The IDF recently held the largest military drill in decades, dubbed “Chariots of Fire.” In its own words, the exercises “aim to both increase the IDF’s defensive readiness and examine its preparedness for an intensive and prolonged campaign.”

In late May 2022, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) conducted drills which included “long-range flights, aerial refueling and striking distant targets.” It was, the Times of Israel noted, meant to simulate striking Iranian nuclear facilities. According to Israel’s Channel 13 news, the exercises spanned more than 10,000 kilometers and included more than 100 aircraft and navy submarines.

. . .

The IDF is, of course, an exceptionally well-trained military. It isn’t a stranger to major drills and exercises. But it seems clear that something is afoot and the parameters of the long-running conflict between Israel and Iran are changing. Coupled with Tehran’s imminent “nuclear break out,” such developments indicate that Jerusalem is doing more than mowing the grass—it might be preparing to get rid of the entire yard.

Should Israel strike Iran’s nuclear facilities it would likely bring about the worst war that the Middle East has seen in decades—if not longer. The conflict that would follow would look nothing like many of the recent wars between Israel and Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. For both Israel and the Islamic Republic, it would be an existential battle, with the fate of both the Jewish state and the regime in Tehran hinging on the war’s outcome. The losses and destruction would be devastating.

There's more at the link.

Inevitably, such a war would disrupt oil supplies through the Persian Gulf, not just from Iran but from other states in the region as well.  Iran's Revolutionary Guards will ensure that by blockading the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Gulf, as they've threatened to do often enough.  That, in turn, will draw in the US Navy and allied forces in an attempt to keep the Strait open - possibly also China, which gets well over half its oil from the Persian Gulf.

Meanwhile, of course, oil prices in the rest of the world would skyrocket.  We can expect to pay at least double what we are now for gasoline and diesel within a matter of days, and possibly much more than that.  What that would do to our economy as a whole, and to most of us in terms of our household budgets, I leave to your imagination.

Unfortunately, Iran is led by doddering religious zealots who actually believe that to spark a world war would accelerate the return of the "Twelfth Imam" and lead to a climactic war against evil (such evil, naturally, to include Israel and the USA).  They regard that as entirely desirable.  The rest of us . . . not so much.

Peter