Iranian Chill Thread

[HGV]

Do you have the one where they shoot themselves?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1711110386684948868

 

[shadihassan28]

Do you have the one where they shoot themselves?


This is only the beginning of the exposure of their army propaganda they have done and people trusted for decades.

I don’t know I think fake news I was trying to find something and we are watching Al Jazeera at my parents nothing

 

[HGV]

WSJ: Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks​

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut​

DUBAI—Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.

The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides—Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official.

At least 700 Israelis are confirmed dead, and Saturday’s assault has punctured the country’s aura of invincibility and left Israelis questioning how their vaunted security forces could let this happen.

Israel has blamed Iran, saying it is behind the attacks, if indirectly. “We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Sunday.

Hamas has publicly acknowledged receiving support from Iran. And on Sunday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi talked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.

Iran has been setting aside other regional conflicts, such as its open feud with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, to devote the IRGC’s foreign resources toward coordinating, financing and arming militias antagonistic to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.
The U.S. and Israel have designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

“We are now free to focus on the Zionist entity,” the Iranian official said. “They are now very isolated.”

The strike was intended to hit Israel while it appeared distracted by internal political divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It was also aimed at disrupting accelerating U.S.-brokered talks to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that Iran saw as threatening, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.

Building on peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, expanding Israeli ties with Persian Gulf Arab states could create a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Persian Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Leading the effort to wrangle Iran’s foreign proxies under a unified command has been Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, the Quds Force.

Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal has reported, where Hamas began working more closely with other groups such as Hezbollah for the first time.

Around that time, Palestinian groups staged a rare set of limited strikes on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza, under the direction of Iran, said the Iranian official. “It was a roaring success,” the official said.

Iran has long backed Hamas but, as a Sunni Muslim group, it had been an outsider among Tehran’s Shia proxies until recent months, when cooperation among the groups accelerated.

Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.

“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London. “Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”

The Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ ability to coordinate with Iran will be tested in the coming days as Israel’s response comes into focus.
Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.

Hamas has called on Palestinians in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel to take up arms and join the fight. There have been limited clashes in the West Bank, but no reports of clashes between Arabs and Jews inside Israel, as happened in May 2021 when Israel and Gaza last engaged in extended combat.

The Iranian official said that if Iran were attacked, it would respond with missile strikes on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, and send Iranian fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in the north and east of Israel.

Iran’s backing of a coordinated group of Arab militias is ominous for Israel. In previous conflicts, the Soviet Union was the ultimate patron of Israel’s Arab enemies and was always able to pressure them to reach some type of accommodation or recognize a red line, said Bernard Hudson, a former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“The Soviets never considered Israel a permanent foe,” he said. “Iran’s leadership clearly does.”

WSJ News Exclusive | Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut.

www.wsj.com

US earlier said it had no evidence of an Iranian role, but now WSJ is claiming otherwise, with a lot of detail.

Most interesting are themes around Iran's desire to set aside other regional rivalries to focus on countering Israel, spearheaded by Qaani who brought Hezbollah and Hamas together on a regular basis.

Iran should focus on arming Houthis with 1800-2000km range weapons and pivot from seeing the Houthis as an anti-Saudi force into an anti-Israel force. Iran is clearly adept at smuggling large, advanced missiles into Yemen and Israel has no good retaliation options against Yemen.

Credit to Gen. Qaani for his effective work in uniting the resistance forces and extracting huge sums from Israel. The Quds Force has proven to be extremely resilient after the US assassination of our hero shahid Soleimani (and Abu Mohandes etc).

 

[tsunset]

WSJ: Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks​

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut​

DUBAI—Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.

The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides—Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official.

At least 700 Israelis are confirmed dead, and Saturday’s assault has punctured the country’s aura of invincibility and left Israelis questioning how their vaunted security forces could let this happen.

Israel has blamed Iran, saying it is behind the attacks, if indirectly. “We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Sunday.

Hamas has publicly acknowledged receiving support from Iran. And on Sunday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi talked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.

Iran has been setting aside other regional conflicts, such as its open feud with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, to devote the IRGC’s foreign resources toward coordinating, financing and arming militias antagonistic to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.
The U.S. and Israel have designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

“We are now free to focus on the Zionist entity,” the Iranian official said. “They are now very isolated.”

The strike was intended to hit Israel while it appeared distracted by internal political divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It was also aimed at disrupting accelerating U.S.-brokered talks to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that Iran saw as threatening, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.

Building on peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, expanding Israeli ties with Persian Gulf Arab states could create a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Persian Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Leading the effort to wrangle Iran’s foreign proxies under a unified command has been Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, the Quds Force.

Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal has reported, where Hamas began working more closely with other groups such as Hezbollah for the first time.

Around that time, Palestinian groups staged a rare set of limited strikes on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza, under the direction of Iran, said the Iranian official. “It was a roaring success,” the official said.

Iran has long backed Hamas but, as a Sunni Muslim group, it had been an outsider among Tehran’s Shia proxies until recent months, when cooperation among the groups accelerated.

Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.

“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London. “Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”

The Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ ability to coordinate with Iran will be tested in the coming days as Israel’s response comes into focus.
Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.

Hamas has called on Palestinians in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel to take up arms and join the fight. There have been limited clashes in the West Bank, but no reports of clashes between Arabs and Jews inside Israel, as happened in May 2021 when Israel and Gaza last engaged in extended combat.

The Iranian official said that if Iran were attacked, it would respond with missile strikes on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, and send Iranian fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in the north and east of Israel.

Iran’s backing of a coordinated group of Arab militias is ominous for Israel. In previous conflicts, the Soviet Union was the ultimate patron of Israel’s Arab enemies and was always able to pressure them to reach some type of accommodation or recognize a red line, said Bernard Hudson, a former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“The Soviets never considered Israel a permanent foe,” he said. “Iran’s leadership clearly does.”

WSJ News Exclusive | Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut.

www.wsj.com

US earlier said it had no evidence of an Iranian role, but now WSJ is claiming otherwise, with a lot of detail.

Most interesting are themes around Iran's desire to set aside other regional rivalries to focus on countering Israel, spearheaded by Qaani who brought Hezbollah and Hamas together on a regular basis.

Iran should focus on arming Houthis with 1800-2000km range weapons and pivot from seeing the Houthis as an anti-Saudi force into an anti-Israel force. Iran is clearly adept at smuggling large, advanced missiles into Yemen and Israel has no good retaliation options against Yemen.

Credit to Gen. Qaani for his effective work in uniting the resistance forces and extracting huge sums from Israel. The Quds Force has proven to be extremely resilient after the US assassination of our hero shahid Soleimani (and Abu Mohandes etc).

Are they citing Iranian officials or anonymous sources?
Edit: Yes they are, their sources are based on their own speculations shown as anonymous sources

WSJ is a Jewish Ashkenazi/White evangelical zionist owned newspaper, they seem very panicked themselves, i remember when they were mocking Iran achievements and army, this is a very awkward situation they are facing

And if you don't watch Manoto or Iran International/Western medias, they are all currently blaming everything on Iran, even as far as to imply Hamas has been created by Iran.

I don't really know what they search, maybe an excuse for EU to put IRGC into terrorist list or whatever or to forment protests by showing gore videos on air pretending this is Iran, or just trying to trigger a full scale war.

Iran is always the very useful scapegoat in any bad situation for Israel, a tribal state that is always the victim of everyone on earth.

 

[HGV]

Are they citing Iranian officials or anonymous sources?
Edit: Yes they are, their sources are based on their own speculations shown as anonymous sources

WSJ is a Jewish Ashkenazi/White evangelical zionist owned newspaper, they seem very panicked themselves, i remember when they were mocking Iran achievements and army, this is a very awkward situation they are facing

And if you don't watch Manoto or Iran International/Western medias, they are all currently blaming everything on Iran, even as far as to imply Hamas has been created by Iran.

I don't really know what they search, maybe an excuse for EU to put IRGC into terrorist list or whatever or to forment protests by showing gore videos on air pretending this is Iran, or just trying to trigger a full scale war.

Iran is always the very useful scapegoat in any bad situation for Israel, a tribal state that is always the victim of everyone on earth.

WSJ is indeed the most hawkish and anti-Iran of the major US papers. But their claims are usually pretty reliable (they match the bragging from others in this very thread about Iran's obvious involvement in this war).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1711127303843893263

Interestingly, our friend Patarames thinks that Israel will not launch a ground invasion of Gaza. I think he is dead wrong here - Israel has no choice. He overestimates Israel's aversion to casualties post-2006.

 

[WudangMaster]

WSJ is indeed the most hawkish and anti-Iran of the major US papers. But their claims are usually pretty reliable (they match the bragging from others in this very thread about Iran's obvious involvement in this war).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1711127303843893263

Interestingly, our friend Patarames thinks that Israel will not launch a ground invasion of Gaza. I think he is dead wrong here - Israel has no choice. He overestimates Israel's aversion to casualties post-2006.

They have to do something on the ground or at least look like they did something major; I was thinking earlier how that entire society at large is going to experience PTSD for at least a generation and what long term consequences could there be. Will there be a migration trend out of israel in the next few years? Will netanyahu declare marshal law and get all of his wishes and stay in power for life?

 

[HGV]

They have to do something on the ground or at least look like they did something major; I was thinking earlier how that entire society at large is going to experience PTSD for at least a generation and what long term consequences could there be. Will there be a migration trend out of israel in the next few years? Will netanyahu declare marshal law and get all of his wishes and stay in power for life?

Bibi has to fulfil his promise to destroy Hamas while also rescuing >130 Israeli prisoners. The more resources he pours into Gaza, the more vulnerable Israel will be in the West Bank, the northern front with Lebanon and on the border with Syria. Israel has no good options. Now is a pretty good time for Iran to deliver significant weapons across the resistance axis.

The families of the prisoners are already growing impatient and angry. From Israeli news:

“And no one is talking to us, no one can tell us anything.”

The call echoed the pleas from the families of those missing, many of whom say they have been abandoned by the authorities.

Desperate mother Alin Atias was looking for her daughter Amit Buskila.

“Nobody is helping us,” she said. “Where is the government?”

“I beg the whole country. Help me find my daughter,” she cried. “Benjamin Netanyahu, I am begging you, send helicopters. Find her, I beg you, please.”

The young woman told Channel 12 news that she has not heard any updates from any government or IDF officials.

“We just keep watching the news all day hoping for news,” she said. “It’s horrible, it’s a horrible thought, that we are only finding out information from the news.”

 

[tsunset]

Bibi has to fulfil his promise to destroy Hamas while also rescuing >130 Israeli prisoners. The more resources he pours into Gaza, the more vulnerable Israel will be in the West Bank, the northern front with Lebanon and on the border with Syria. Israel has no good options. Now is a pretty good time for Iran to deliver significant weapons across the resistance axis.

The families of the prisoners are already growing impatient and angry. From Israeli news:

“And no one is talking to us, no one can tell us anything.”

The call echoed the pleas from the families of those missing, many of whom say they have been abandoned by the authorities.

Desperate mother Alin Atias was looking for her daughter Amit Buskila.

“Nobody is helping us,” she said. “Where is the government?”

“I beg the whole country. Help me find my daughter,” she cried. “Benjamin Netanyahu, I am begging you, send helicopters. Find her, I beg you, please.”

The young woman told Channel 12 news that she has not heard any updates from any government or IDF officials.

“We just keep watching the news all day hoping for news,” she said. “It’s horrible, it’s a horrible thought, that we are only finding out information from the news.”

Feeling what their government did to Palestinian for 70 years, reminds me of US feeling ballistic missiles impacts for the first time in their existence, indeed this is horrible

No doubt that plane tickets Israel>Poland, Israel>Hamburg are completely full

 

[HGV]

On the other hand, we should not underestimate Israel's competence, strength and historical lust for punitive vengeance. No doubt they will be looking to extract a heavy price from Iran down the line, and Iran should prepare for all possibilities.

 

[Stryker1982]

I think now is the time to take the risk. Gloves come off and resistance declares war on Israel. 50 year anniversary of Yom Kippur. It is fitting. Another surprise war.

Force the Arab countries and Turkey to take sides: support fellow Muslims in the liberation of Al-Quds or sit at the feet of the Zionists and God-less Anglo-Saxons.

Iran has waited 43 years for this moment. If Khomeini or Solemani was alive we would be at war. This current breed who survived the Imposed war just want to milk the country of assets and ride off into the sunset (retirement/peaceful death). Like the rockers and metal bands that survived the AIDS/Heroin/Drug epidemic of the 80’s and 90’s. The ones left are lame and shells of their former self.

If Russia vs Ukraine taught us anything you strike when you should have (2014) and not wait for the enemy to bring the war to your doorstep (2022).

If Iran is luckily the King of Jordan will collapse during the war and Islamists will take over and IRGC will have another friendly axis of resistance.

The Zio-Saudi normaization accord would pose a serious risk to Iran, not just the Islamic Republic. The fact this has moved forward and if this war is not impactful, it will move forward again eventually with time. Their is really no other solution than initiation of a war to end the greater war.

I think the folks in the IRGC understand that, everyone else part of the axis understand that, and they could have done what they usually were capable of doing which is to do small attacks, maybe kidnap a solder. But instead they decided to go for the highest risk, and highest reward plan which is a literal invasion and hold settler cities. No one in their dream would've though this could happen, but they went that rough which really tells me that they needed to inflict maximum possible damage for the end goal of a Axis-Israel war.

Honestly I'm at a loss, does Iran throw itself headlong into this war and hope for the best or does it just sit and watch from the sidelines, preserving its own integrity...

Because of we get in involved we will pull the USA into it, and we can shift the balance of power in their favor. What is required is for the entire axis to slowly get themselves involved in this war, to become a Axis-Israel war. Iran supports from the rear with logistics and ISR. Iran is a last resort involved in the escalation ladder.

Iran doesn't need to announce it, the world would know. It's difficult to hide these things from intelligence agencies (as Iran knows very well). There is no evidence of such warheads existing, but we do know that Khomeini expressly forbade these weapons. So unless you have evidence of a pivot away from this policy, I don't see any evidence to suggest Iran has chemical warhead BMs deployed.

We also said we won't build nukes but we have all the resources, the schematics and the infrastructure setup for precisely that. The world changes and you can't stick to decrees forever when reality is different.

 

[Stryker1982]

I haven’t been reading all the comments to be honest so I don’t know if anyone brought this up but remember years ago when it was brought up by iIDF that in a future war hezbollah would attempt to take control of Israel territory by sending several hundred troops into northern Israel even if it was only for a day or week it would come off as a psychological victory, personally I think hezbollah has advisors inside Gaza territory I think all this planning went old school no communication devices whatsoever, it really is amazing.

They'd never think it'd come from the south. Remarkably so, they are holding territory still, which is remarkable.

More deaths announced

https://twitter.com/x/status/1710964044809502942

At least 100 IDF were killed yesterday. Any number less than that is military censorship.

A Lt. Col at 33? A Major at 27 years old? What kind of Sesame Street military is this.

Death toll of civilian and military can easily surpass 1000. We area already at 700

 

[Stryker1982]

WSJ: Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks​

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut​

DUBAI—Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.

The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides—Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official.

At least 700 Israelis are confirmed dead, and Saturday’s assault has punctured the country’s aura of invincibility and left Israelis questioning how their vaunted security forces could let this happen.

Israel has blamed Iran, saying it is behind the attacks, if indirectly. “We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Sunday.

Hamas has publicly acknowledged receiving support from Iran. And on Sunday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi talked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.

Iran has been setting aside other regional conflicts, such as its open feud with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, to devote the IRGC’s foreign resources toward coordinating, financing and arming militias antagonistic to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.
The U.S. and Israel have designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.

“We are now free to focus on the Zionist entity,” the Iranian official said. “They are now very isolated.”

The strike was intended to hit Israel while it appeared distracted by internal political divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It was also aimed at disrupting accelerating U.S.-brokered talks to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that Iran saw as threatening, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.

Building on peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, expanding Israeli ties with Persian Gulf Arab states could create a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Persian Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Leading the effort to wrangle Iran’s foreign proxies under a unified command has been Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, the Quds Force.

Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal has reported, where Hamas began working more closely with other groups such as Hezbollah for the first time.

Around that time, Palestinian groups staged a rare set of limited strikes on Israel from Lebanon and Gaza, under the direction of Iran, said the Iranian official. “It was a roaring success,” the official said.

Iran has long backed Hamas but, as a Sunni Muslim group, it had been an outsider among Tehran’s Shia proxies until recent months, when cooperation among the groups accelerated.

Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.

“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London. “Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”

The Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ ability to coordinate with Iran will be tested in the coming days as Israel’s response comes into focus.
Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.

Hamas has called on Palestinians in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel to take up arms and join the fight. There have been limited clashes in the West Bank, but no reports of clashes between Arabs and Jews inside Israel, as happened in May 2021 when Israel and Gaza last engaged in extended combat.

The Iranian official said that if Iran were attacked, it would respond with missile strikes on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, and send Iranian fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in the north and east of Israel.

Iran’s backing of a coordinated group of Arab militias is ominous for Israel. In previous conflicts, the Soviet Union was the ultimate patron of Israel’s Arab enemies and was always able to pressure them to reach some type of accommodation or recognize a red line, said Bernard Hudson, a former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“The Soviets never considered Israel a permanent foe,” he said. “Iran’s leadership clearly does.”

WSJ News Exclusive | Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut.

www.wsj.com

US earlier said it had no evidence of an Iranian role, but now WSJ is claiming otherwise, with a lot of detail.

Most interesting are themes around Iran's desire to set aside other regional rivalries to focus on countering Israel, spearheaded by Qaani who brought Hezbollah and Hamas together on a regular basis.

Iran should focus on arming Houthis with 1800-2000km range weapons and pivot from seeing the Houthis as an anti-Saudi force into an anti-Israel force. Iran is clearly adept at smuggling large, advanced missiles into Yemen and Israel has no good retaliation options against Yemen.

Credit to Gen. Qaani for his effective work in uniting the resistance forces and extracting huge sums from Israel. The Quds Force has proven to be extremely resilient after the US assassination of our hero shahid Soleimani (and Abu Mohandes etc).

Sources are dubious. but Qaani does appear to be a very proficient and resourceful commander, it seems like the coordination effort between Hamas and the Axis was led by him, he might be even stronger than Soleimani in other areas like administration.

 

[tsunset]

WSJ is indeed the most hawkish and anti-Iran of the major US papers. But their claims are usually pretty reliable (they match the bragging from others in this very thread about Iran's obvious involvement in this war).

I red the article quickly, they basically distorted some events that happened in 2006 when IRGC says it was a great success, when you click on the their links put on words, it redirects to their own articles speculating, can't find any Iran official claiming to fund Hamas or being part of the operation or whatever, piece of toilet paper with "iRaN iRaN bOmB iRaN tHrEaT"

The question is, Israel said to have declared war and being in a war state, but against who?

 

[Ich]

*sing* sink sink sink, sink sink the Ford

 

[SalarHaqq]

U.S. is sending a carrier strike group closer to Israel and will begin supplying munitions starting Sunday​

Oct. 8, 2023, 7:02 PM CEST

The U.S. is also looking at options for a possible evacuation of Americans from Israel. Nothing has been decided, but one option involves putting some Americans on Navy ships.

U.S. is sending a carrier strike group closer to Israel and will begin supplying munitions starting Sunday

The U.S. is also looking at options for a possible evacuation of Americans from Israel. Nothing has been decided, but one option involves putting some Americans on Navy ships.

www.nbcnews.com