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Israel-Axis of Resistance Escalation and the Importance of the Minority Report

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In the same way that Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme realized that he had been speaking prose all his life, yours truly has realized that one of the reasons I had a good run as a consultant and now as a commentator is looking for minority reports. This is a useful posture to take in a polluted informational environment, such as we’ve had with the war in Ukraine and if anything are seeing even more so in the intensifying conflict in the Middle East. So indulge me for a bit.

For those who have not seen the Stephen Spielberg movie, which goes well beyond the Philip K. Dick short story. Tom Cruise is John Anderton, head of a Washington, D.C. prototype precrime unit, which arrests citizens treated as guilty of murder based on visions of three clairvoyant “precogs”. The program is about to be rolled out nationally when the Anderton himself is charged by the precogs as set to murder a man he has never heard of. The key part starts at 3:48, when Anderton, who is on the lam, visits Iris Hineman, a scientist who helped create precrime.

One thing I would observe regularly when reading volumes of literature searches and analyst reports early in studies is that, in a parallel to how the Big Lie works, certain facts or seemingly authoritative opinions would be picked up and repeated across an industry. The dint of repetition would lead even sophisticated insiders to treat that revealed wisdom as being more true that equally valid information that would suggest a somewhat or even very different trajectory.

There seems to be an immediate application to minority report thinking in Middle East coverage. Many prominent YouTube commentator have fallen in with the US/Israel party line that the recent missile strikes by Iran on Israel did little damage, and even were significantly intercepted. This includes analysts who came to understand that the previous, negotiated Iran attack on April was and often continues to be described inaccurately in the press. Iran first sent about 300 very slow moving drones that took about 6 hours to reach Israel. They were intended to draw fire and elicit information about how the Israel air defense system worked. They were not expected to get through; if they did, that would be gravy. Iran then sent in a small number of ballistic missiles, all or virtually all of which hit their targets precisely, which included extremely highly protected air bases.

In other words, the hammering by pols and pundits that the earlier Iran attack “failed” (when it was intended to be a show of capability as opposed to do harm) has turned that into a widely accepted fact, leading to continued, dangerous underestimation of Iran.

Similar successful messaging seems to be taking hold in the West with the latest Iran missile strikes. A surprising number of analysts, who did not fall in with the “Russia is running out of artillery” and other Ukraine-favoring spin are, too often, not exhibiting much skepticism regarding the new official story that the Iran attack did little damage and was therefore not effective. One of the claims connected to that is that many missiles were intercepted.

I hate to repeat a video run earlier on this site, but the one below, staring below, shows verified footage of missiles raining down on targets, the first the Navatim air base, the second, Tel Nof. You can see how almost none were intercepted:

Now it could be, as one reader suggested, that Iran chose this attack to be a second demonstration project, that it chose to strike low-priority areas in important targets. But regardless, these strikes demonstrated that Israel and the US did not meaningfully interfere with the Iran barrage.

And it’s not as if Israel has shown itself to be so effective as to deter the Saudis to continue to improve relations with Iran. To be blunt, you don’t invest in losers:

As to Iran’s controversial claim that it took out 20 of Israel’s 35 F-35s at Navatim, some have argued that Iran should show the goods. Ahem. Iran is supposed to give the West a clue as to what is surveillance capabilities to satisfy the peanut gallery? And in any event, as we know, images can be doctored. I have heard claims that there are not-great quality images of Navatim that show little damage. There are others that assert the reverse:

Mind you, I am not saying you should place much stock in this either. However, a new interview of Larry Johnson by Nima of Dialogue Works presentsother satellite images purport to show over 32 successful strikes at Navatim air base:

The coverage on the invasion of Lebanon is more even-handed, with many of the independent commentators describing how it is not going well, that Israel has already taken a lot of casualties when the fighting has barely begun. But this fits many of their priors: Israel has not won its past wars in Lebanon, Hezbollah is tougher than it was in 2006, the IDF lost to the much less experienced, equipped, and well bunkered Hamas. Some observers thought that the assassination of Hassam Nasrallah and most of the top leadership cadre would cripple Hezbollah. But other commentators have described how Hezbollah is operationally highly decentralized, with units of 250 to 500 each having their own leadership, their own territory and directives, and even their own supplies. There is admittedly some intermediate “management” but the top echelon has little to do with the fighting. Nevertheless, even with Hezbollah clearly continuing to perform effectively, some commentators seem almost puzzled in the wake of the much-ballyhooed decapitation attacks.

Another reason for more skepticism regarding the Lebanon invasion is the suspicion that Netanyahu went ahead now to undermine Biden and therefore Harris, so an overwhelmingly anti-Trump media is uncharacteristically willing to create some daylight between it and Israel. Per the Hill this evening, Democrats suspect Netanyahu of attempting to tilt Trump-Harris race. From the story:

Democrats increasingly suspect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics by ignoring President Biden’s calls to negotiate a peace deal in Gaza and by confronting Hezbollah and Iran weeks before the U.S. election.

The rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel, Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s ally, Iran, has undercut Biden’s efforts to achieve peace through diplomacy.

The growing threat of a broader conflict has opened the door for former President Trump to argue that the world is “spiraling out of control” on Biden’s watch.

We’ll put aside the fact that if Biden were actually interested in diplomacy, he would have fired Tony Blinken long ago.

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal today tries to depict the Biden Administration as victimized and unable to check Israel. Of course, it omits that Biden restricted his degrees of freedom by vowing unconditional support after October 7 and never once criticizing Israel.

It includes a tidbit new to me:

After the airstrike that killed Nasrallah on Friday in Beirut, U.S. officials said Israel had only informed them of the imminent attack when the planes were in the air.

This is taken to mean that the attack was a fait accompli, which is false.

It says the US did know of the Nasrallah kill mission in advance. If the bombs had not yet been dropped, the mission could have been aborted. But the Administration is too cowed to impose any punishment, and Israel knows that full well.

The Journal also tries to depict the US as wanting to curb Israel belligerence. Yet it states that it is actually not willing to appear to be hindering an Israel response to Iran in the runup to the election. And Biden’s poor impulse control makes him the escalation cheerleader in chief:

U.S. and Israeli officials have been discussing potential targets, including Iran’s oil facilities. President Biden said on Wednesday that he opposed any strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, but on Thursday left open the possibility that he would support an Israeli attack on the oil infrastructure, remarks that sent oil markets surging.” rel=”nofollow”>U.S. and Israeli officials have been discussing potential targets, including Iran’s oil facilities. President Biden said on Wednesday that he opposed any strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, but on Thursday left open the possibility that he would support an Israeli attack on the oil infrastructure, remarks that sent oil markets surging.

And one might have to take US claims that it is pushing Israel hard to refrain from using nukes with a fistful of salt:

On related fronts, Israel is also skirmishing with Russia. It hit a Russian ammo depot in Syria. And this was no small-scale attack. From The Cradle:

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported, “Unknown drones … carried out airstrikes targeting an ammunition warehouse near Jablah city in Latakia countryside, near the largest Russian air base in Syria, which led to the warehouse’s destruction and huge explosions heard from far away.”

SOHR said it was not clear whether the drones were launched from inside Syrian territory or from the sea. According to local reports, drones, warplanes, and warships conducted the violent attack.

Warships and warplanes were present in the sea and skies, “believed to be Israeli,” SOHR added. “The air defenses of the [Syrian] regime and Russian forces confronting the missiles for more than 40 minutes.”

From Aljazeera, Israel keeps pounding Beirut:

Israel launches the heaviest air strikes on Beirut so far with dozens reportedly killed across Lebanon over the past day.

Um, something like 300 civilians died in the 85 or 86 bunker-buster-bomb attack that killed Nasrallah.

The Financial Times gives the pretext for the attacks:

Israel’s military carried out one of its heaviest bombardments of Beirut overnight with multiple air strikes that aimed to kill surviving leaders of militant group Hizbollah.

Residents across the Lebanese capital heard several large blasts, and flames and large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the southern suburb of Dahiyeh in the early hours of Friday.

Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to Hizbollah’s assassinated former leader Hassan Nasrallah, was the target, a person familiar with the situation said on Friday.

Israeli military intelligence believed they had located Safieddine attempting to hold a meeting with a small number of other Hizbollah operatives, many of them relatively senior in the organisation, the person said.

Note that Hezbollah has at least one command center well away from Beirut which per Norman Finkelstein, is designed to withstand a nuclear bomb. Finkelstein argued that Nasrallah chose to use the Beirut center despite the risks (one YouTuber today described Beirut as a nest of spies) so as not to appear a coward. Becoming a martyr, if that’s what it came to. would be the better outcome.

But this video gives a sense of what is happening to Beirut, once the Paris of the Mediterranean:

Finally, Ayatollah Khamenei gave a very rare speech at prayers on Friday. Some feared he might issue a new fatwa allowing for the use of nuclear weapons (Shia doctrinally does not allow for the use of weapons of mass destruction but religious leaders have some latitude in interpretation). That did not happen. He issued a call for unity among all Muslims in opposing Israel and gave part of his speech in Arabic rather than Farsi to reach more listeners. He affirmed that Iran would strike Israel again if it attacked. He depicted the missile barrage as a minimum warranted response:

Back to the minority report theme. At least as of now, I see at least as big a gap between Muslim reporters and analysts and Western analysts, including some Israel critics as we have between Russian sources and Ukraine skeptics versus Collective West supporters. However, at this stage, there are also some Anglosphere Israel critics who seem not to be a skeptical as they might be of US/Israel claims about Iran. Perhaps that will change soon but it bears watching. That may result from anti-globalists having better access to Russia language sources/Russian speakers than they do Muslim and Axis of Resistance sources to better sanity check the official narrative. So I encourage readers to find this sort of minority report.

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17 comments

  2. Lefty Godot

    Any mainstream media news story containing the phrase “U.S. officials said” can be correctly interpreted as court stenographers repeating a lie.

    Reply ↓
    1. JonnyJames

      Yes, unnamed “officials” or the IDF press release is repeated verbatim. That passes for “journalism”. Ray McGovern called them “sycophant-stenographers”

      Reply ↓
  3. IEL

    I noted the contrast between the official line that most of Iran’s missiles were shot down, and the videos showing many that were not shot down. It is possible that some missiles were not shot down because they were off target and not worth wasting an expensive interceptor on, of course.

    I also found it odd that the missiles’ engines seemed to be continuing to burn during final descent – that is not typical for ballistic missiles, which true to their name let gravity take over mid flight. Do the still-lit engines indicate terminal-phase maneuvers?

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    1. Hickory

      I noticed that too. From what I’ve read, Hypersonics spend more time in-atmosphere than icbms (which are hypersonic but not maneuverable), and can maneuver more to change course or evade interceptors. I also read that they can burn on the descent so that they maintain a high speed even after all that atmospheric drag. I’m definitely no expert though.

      I want to give a big thanks to NC for the israel-palestine and israel-iran coverage. Super helpful.

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  4. Socal Rhino

    No unique sources but an observation: If Iran hit Israel with one or more hypersonic missiles, they displayed a capability that neither the US nor its “allies” possess. That, among other things, makes me think Iran has been showing restraint, not lack of capability, and I would take seriously their threat that an Israeli response will be met by a much more powerful attack. Iran I think is following Russia’s example in escalating slowly while working diplomacy to solidify its position with the non-western world.

    While we don’t know the extent, it is public info that Russia has supplied Iran with S-400 systems, presumably manned by Russian technicians for now. Additionally, there have been reports of Russian transfers of their 5th generation jets. Like the triumphalist talk of remaking Lebanon after the Beirut bombing, Israel and the US may be headed for a miscalculation. Or maybe the US will decide that F35 sales would not be helped by seeing how they perform in contested air space.

    We may know soon enough.

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  5. hk

    I suspect that one problem is that, during most of the Cold War, there was a healthy respect for Russia’s military capabilities that still has some residual effect (although it has largely been replaced by triumphalist disdain–I keep pointing to Andrew Bacevich’s account of how “disappointed” he was when he finally got the chance to see Red Army maneuvers after the fall of the Wall in which BMPs were breaking down in front of him.) I don’t think Iran was ever the subject of much respect in terms of its technological prowess (something that harkens back to the way Japanese were dangerously underrated in 1930s, in the leadup to World War 2–there’s a nifty military history master’s dissertation on this by a Canadian MA student (it’s not “deep” but interesting nevertheless) : https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjS8rvdl_WIAxUM6ckDHcljPeMQFnoECBgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fprism.ucalgary.ca%2Fitems%2F7795608f-dfae-4d2f-a9d5-6f6800d89c92&usg=AOvVaw19rap5LVjMKhHULqycgi5c&opi=89978449). Breaking this inertia, I expect, will take a bit bigger shock.

    PS. Oops. copied the wrong link–this by an Australian PhD student on the Japanese military intel…. The link should be correct now.

    PPS. Hopefully, I got rid of the duplicate post of the first one.

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  6. Bazarov

    The level of commentary regarding the conflict between Isreal and Hezbollah among the “geopolitical” pundits who usually focus on the Ukraine War has been very low. Despite knowing little about the region beyond the usual shallow Western caricatures and bromides, they nonetheless feel the need the opine at length, tarnishing themselves in the process and causing me to doubt their analysis about the regions they’re more familiar with.

    Mercouris, for example, embarrassed himself with long lectures in recent episodes about how weak Hezbollah was, how the loss of leadership risks resulting in its “disintegration” because the organization’s “just a militia” or whatever. It was painful to listen to for anyone with a passing grasp of Lebanon and Hezbollah’s history.

    Similarly, Gilbert Doctorow–now that he’s a bonafide geopolitical pundit—sees fit to opine about Isreal-American relations. Not that I find Doctorow particularly insightful even about Russia, his area of expertise (his analysis tends toward the shrill and hyperbolic), but he’s at least worthy of consideration and reading when sticking to Russian affairs.

    There’s a danger, once a pundit attracts an audience, of them taking up habits that make mainstream pundits so execrable: the obsession with topicality, the drive to comment when you have nothing much of value to say, being contrarian purely for more attention/views, etc.

    Reply ↓
    1. MaryLand

      I agree about Gilbert Doctorow. He is skilled at crafting topical headlines that border on clickbait. His analysis often seems weak.

      Reply ↓
  7. Louiedog14

    Honestly Yves, YOU are my Minority Report. It’s been rather amazing to me just how good your Russia/Ukraine analysis has turned out to be. My own take on that is that you are not swayed by what might be the ‘desirable’, or ‘right’ outcome, and are willing to look for and point out the difficulties of achieving such ends.

    Which of course, leads the commentariat to chime in as well. I am well aware of the difficulties Russia would face in trying to occupy Ukraine. But recently, (I think it was Plutonium Kun) pointed out the extent of the Dneiper watershed, and how keeping THAT safe from meddlesome Ukies only compounded the problem. Brilliant. Something I never would have thought of.

    Your methodology is especially useful to me when it comes to money, finance, global trade…I’m still a bit of a dope about all that, but it’s a useful habit on a range of issues, and even in life. A habit I’ve been working on cultivating.

    The current state of play in the ME is very foggy right now. Having crazy people instigating the action makes it more so. I very much appreciate your efforts to help us navigate through murky times, and knowing that you won’t go off half-cocked with some pet ‘Hot Take’.

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  8. Xquacy

    The picture appears to me as follows. On Oct. 7 2023, an opportunity presents itself before the Likud government in Israel for the establishment of Greater Israel. Netanyahu prompty declares a long war to finally rid Gaza of Palestinians, citing elimination of Khamas as excuse. As project genocide continues apace, most of the world population responds with disgust and dismay, while the United States sees and opportunity to completely capture Israeli foreign policy, by letting the vulnerable, now in trouble and home and abroad Netanyahu, accumulate more trouble. Netanyahu now depends entirely on the might of United States to protect himself from being tried, which gladly uses all its resources to muscle pesky international institutions crying ‘justice!’ into submission.

    With Israel completely in its reins, the necons can now execute their goals of picking off first, the circle of defence Iran created around Israel, and finally to have their long sought after war with Iran. Getting Israel to do its dirty work allows US plausible deniability, a trick that seems to have worked wonders, since even pro-resistence camp continues to buy the idea that Israel is the maniacal entity (which it is) and US is being ‘dragged’ by its out of control ambitions.

    This view departs from leading foreign policy ideas that put Israel lobby at the center of explaning the current crazies in the middle-east. But that view has always seemed implausible, for the reason that if US policy is purchasable on the market, why won’t the more resourceful Arab countries outbid the Israelis? Why can’t China buy American friendship? Another reason is simply that no special explanation is needed for US administrations wreckless disregard for human life and use of brute force, a consistent foreign policy posture right through the post-war period; see Vietnam, Iraq, Nicaragua, Chile etc.

    The advantages of the account is it perfectly explains US interests in Gaza genocide, which seems to have confused many, prompting them to resort to make-believes about US weakness. It also explains why Israel would rather implode than to act in its own interests.

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  9. Expat2uruguay

    There’s a don’t miss video in this article, has anybody watched this yet? Referenced in Yves reporting as:
    “But this video gives a sense of what is happening to Beirut, once the Paris of the Mediterranean:”
    https://x.com/TVFreePalestine/status/1841937491869499531

    There’s a lot of powerful reporting in there and you can’t miss the scene at 14:27

    I really hope someone else will comment on the quality of coverage in this video

    Reply ↓
    1. Expat2uruguay

      There is a demonstration of great humanity in the video going from 1800 to 1850

      Sorry to focus so much on this video not wishing to thread jack, because this is another excellent post from naked capitalism and it’s just what I’ve been looking for for the last few days. This site is worth every cent of donations it receives from us!!!

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  10. JonnyJames

    More great stuff here, thank you!

    “…Many prominent YouTube commentator have fallen in with the US/Israel party line that the recent missile strikes by Iran on Israel did little damage, and even were significantly intercepted…”

    Those commentators should know that Israel has targeted and murdered many dozens of journalists, imposed strict censorship and accurate information is very difficult to obtain. Anyone can simply read the Israeli press releases, we don’t need YT personalities to do that for us. The public should abandon any commentator who cannot use critical thinking skills, might as well watch Fox/CNN/Sky/ tee vee garbage.

    It would be nice if the commentators covered things like this:

    https://cpj.org/2024/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/23/israel-is-deliberately-targeting-journalists-in-gaza-experts

    Reply ↓

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