TheImmortal.....let me ask you man-to-man here.
You think this is gonna go down, like for real?
What does your gut feeling tell you?
If you asked me before Solemani I would say no. Iran’s philosophy has always been to avoid direct engagement (even with Israel). This might be interpreted as weakness by the uninformed, but I assure you world powers don’t view it that way.
Iran expands via the virus approach. Invading silently host cells and working together to expand. It is not in Iran’s interest to alert the major body to what it is doing. If it loses a few cells to counter attacks so be it.
Thus I never believed Iran would engage US militarily in any serious manner.
After Solemani, my viewpoint rose to 20% probability that their would be war. Again Iran’s goal is expansion without commotion. So unless absolutely necessary war would be avoided at all costs.
However, in the last few hours the chance of war has unfortunately risen to over 50% and is probably somewhere around 60% pending future news may go higher.
What the US was attempting to do was establish a red line that said Embassy attacks are off limits. Unfortunately they selected the wrong method of deterrence.
Killing Solemani would have made sense if during the embassy attack an Ambassador or high ranking diplomat was killed. But for a few broken windows and graffiti, the deterrence level should have at most been more air strikes against Iran backed milita or arresting low level Quds force operatives.
This is the fault of the national security team that put Solemani on the slide of options and allowed a Man-child the ability to select it who has clearly demonstrated he has no idea of strategy. Some may say this was a deep state tactic to trick trump others may say it’s just Neo-Hawks, I don’t care the reason.
Nonetheless, Trump a few hours ago set an infamous redline that may go down in history as the red line of war. He basically said ANY attack by Iran is paramount to war. So that increased the chance substantially. Because last time trump gave a explicit warning Solemani was killed within 48 hours. So I don’t think he will back down from this.
Now Iran has its back against the wall and if it doesn’t respond it has completely lost face in the world and if it does respond then it’s war.
Current probabilities for war:
60% Iran responds with an attack and Trump orders attacks on Iranian soil (war break out)
20% Iran backs down and figures the risk to the republic is too great
10% last minute diplomatic breakthrough
10% Iran attacks US interests and US does nothing notable.
