Gilbert Doctorow: U.S. Bombing of Iran as Political Theatre?
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow takes a critical view of the US intentions behind the bombing of Iran. Did this represent the start of a large war, or did the successful strike that "completely obliterated" Iran's nuclear program end Israel's reason for continuing the war?
Gilbert Doctorow's new book "War Diaries. Volume 1: The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/War-Diaries-Russia-Ukraine-2022-2023/dp/B0F9VK1WM2
One thing you get from Gilbert Doctorow is a willingness to digest the groupthink and then play devil's advocate, flip a scenario and say "Well, what if the opposite is true?"
That makes any discussion worth listening to even if you don't necessarily agree with his thesis.
So here, in the first half hour, he goes against the grain (being that Israel controls the USA) and suggests that the USA is just using Israel as the USA's fall guy, the same way it is using Ukraine.
I'm not sure they are competing theories are they? These are two allies, so are these not two complimentary theories? Both countries at times exploit each other for their own purposes?
The problem with proposing that the USA actually exploited Israel by manipulating them into attacking Iran, and then using the subsequent severity of the damage to Israel as evidence for that thesis, is that it assumes rationality of deed. I'm sure Gilbert Doctorow is all too aware of the religious zealotry that drives Israeli politics, and I am 100% confident that that alone explains Israel's attack on Iran, albeit I would be confident that the USA is not totally without culpability.
I think the most interesting proposal of Doctorow was that Trump has effectively snookered Israel by shutting down their justifications for any further attacks beyond the (supposed!) bunker-busting attack on Fordow. He has removed the imperative, or so he claims, though there appears to be pushback in the media in the West about this. Doctorow rightly highlights that the Israelis cannot now go after the nuclear sites without embarrassing Trump, as they would openly be signalling that Trump's claims to have neutralised the sites are a load of flannel.
You could actually take this proposal and run it on a bit, play the devil's advocate that Doctorow himself likes to play. The only people who actually know whether they used bunker-busting bombs or not are the Americans. Maybe they didn't? Maybe Donald Trump didn't fancy being charged with war crimes for a bombing raid that caused a radioactive leak on Iranian territory?
The satellite photos I've seen, admittedly small and grainy, didn't seem to show particularly spectacular bomb damage. Hardly bunker-busting. A crater at Natanz was described as being 5.5 metres in diameter. Any Irishman worthy of the name could take his shovel and dig out a crater that size by lunchtime and have the rest of the day off. A morning's labourer's wages. Certainly cheaper than the tens of billions of dollars spent on Operation Midnight Hammer.
So yes it is possible that the Americans have completely outplayed the Israelis, shut down their little war, but then the question is why? Because they wanted to shut down the possibility that Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz and oil prices go mental? To show Israel who's boss? Because Trump didn't want to get involved in a protracted conflict in Iran, with its political/financial costs?
And has Israel been outplayed, or has it been rescued from the religious lunatics that run Israel?