Category: Ukraine

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Will Israel nuke Iran? Some background.

Regular reader Barbara Matthews asked me in a comment on a previous post about Israeli nukes. I replied on the comment thread on that post but have decided to flesh out the answer and post it here by way of a primer on Israel’s nuclear weapons since many people do not know much about it. Here goes:

Israel is estimated to have around 100-400 nuclear warheads (more likely closer to the lower figure). The throw weights (explosive power) of these warheads is classified but estimated to be variable but relatively low yield (20-300 kiloton (kt), with 1 kiloton=1000 tons of high explosives), along the lines of US and Russian Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) throw weights but far smaller than the megaton (one million tons of high explosive) + throw weights of US and Russian “heavy” strategic warheads. It is believed that most Israeli nukes are of the “tactical” IRBM type rather than strategic in nature.

Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is believed to have some of its nuclear weapons technology passed on to it by an Israeli spy in the US government (later imprisoned and deported to Israel) who was part of the Lakam nuclear spy ring that operated from the 1950s that helped apartheid South Africa develop a bomb and test it in 1979 over the South Indian Ocean and which supplied nuclear technology to the Argentine military dictatorship in the 1970s, plus a lot of other covert shenanigans. After years of silence and ambiguity and nebulous statements by previous government officials, Netanyahu has implied in public comments that Israel will use nukes on Iran in specific circumstances because it sees Iran as an existential threat. If so it would be the first “first strike” since Hiroshima and Nagasaki and violate the second strike retaliatory premise of modern nuclear deterrence theory.

Israel has a standard delivery system triad of air, sea and land-launched nuclear weapons. The land leg has the “heaviest” warheads that are mounted on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) known as Jericho-1 and Jericho-2s that potentially can reach distant adversaries such as North Korea. I do not know but assume that Israel has MIRV (Multiple Re-Entry Vehicle) technologies in its nuclear fleet, presumably for the heavier warhead-bearing platforms like the Jerichos.

Its main nuclear research and development facilities are at Dimona in the Negev desert, which also serves as a civilian power generating facility that, besides the power generation aspect, produces around 20 kg of Plutonium each year as waste that is directed to the weapons program. 5-6kg of Plutonium is needed for a 20 kiloton warhead, so there are constraints in the Israeli weapons production process, especially for larger-yield warheads. By wy of comparison, the Hiroshima bomb had 15 kilotons of throw weight while the Nagasaki bomb had 20-22 kt of explosive power.

The use of Plutonium is interesting for several reasons. First, its is by-product of nuclear energy production so is not enriched uranium such as those used in both civilian energy (<20–usually 3-5 precent– enriched) production and most advanced nuclear weapons programs (90 percent enriched U235). It is also very unstable and dirty when compared to enriched uranium, which means that besides the risk of accidental chain reactions, the radioactive cloud and plume from a detonation will be far more lethal than those produced by more refined nuclear weapon detonations. That means that detonations in the air at any altitude and on the surface will generate plumes that will then drift hundreds of miles traveling on the prevailing winds, contaminating everything. along the way.

In the case of Iran, Israel would presumably use “bunker-busting” deep penetration missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear stockpiles and delivery platforms widen deep underground. That might minimise or partially contain the fallout contamination that follows such strikes. But Israel has shown little regard for civilian casualties when levelling Gaza, Lebanese neighbourhoods and parts of the West Bank as well as Iran itself, so we cannot discount the possibility that it might use air- or surface-burst weapons, including against civilian targets (these are known as counter-value strikes) as well as “hardened” military targets (known as counter-force strikes).

In my opinion, there is at least a 50-50 chance that Israel will use nukes against Iran if this conflict does not go the way that Netanyahu’s regime wants it to go, especially of the US–yet again– loses interest and withdraws from the conflict as midterm elections approach and GOP political fortunes turn South as commodity prices continue to rise, etc.

If I were to be charitable I would say that unlike the US, which sees Iran as hostile but containable, sort of like North Korea, Israel views Iran as a threat to its very existence. Why? Not because of nukes but because hardliners in Iran have repeatedly uttered serious anti-semitic as well as anti-Zionist rhetoric towards the Jewish state. The former include grotesque stereotypes and caricatures, betraying a profound and twisted hatred of Jews as a people rather than Israel as a nation-State. In light of that Israel wants to eliminate Iran as a functioning State and partition it into various ethnic nationalities in which Persians are just one of many, albeit a dominant group in whatever demographic mosaic is constructed out of the ashes of the Revolutionary Republic. That removes Iran as a threat to Jewish, not just Israel’s existence.

If I were to not be charitable I would say that Bibi and co. just want to degrade but not destroy Iran so as to keep it as a convenient scapegoat and enduring threat that helps them justify their rogue actions and avoid having to account for their own crimes and atrocities. In that perspective, it is the tail that wags the imbecile dog that is the MAGA administration, but that dog is about to turn tail for domestic political reasons in the US and at that point the spectre of Israeli nukes against Iran becomes real.

One other factor must be considered in Israel’s strategic equation to launch such strikes: who will retaliate against Israel in the event that it does engage in the first use of nuclear weapons against Iran, much less retaliate in kind with a nuclear counter-strike? Quite frankly, I do not see anyone being capable or willing to do so.

The “Doomsday Clock” run by the Association of Atomic Scientists already sits at 85 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been to nuclear armageddon day, and that was set before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran.

The moment of deadly truth may be fast approaching.

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An analogy and an axiom.

Some words to the wise.

Analogy: Trump’s war against Iran might be the geopolitical equivalent of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn. Built on arrogance born of easy bullying in lesser conflicts, he has overestimated his capabilities and grossly underestimated his opponent. Iran may be Trump’s Sitting Bull, but the analogy holds only if Custer had a malevolent manipulator like Netanyahu leading him to his ignominious comeuppance.

Axiom: History shows that the side that prevails in war is not always the one that can deliver greater punishment to the adversary but the one that can absorb the most punishment and keep on fighting. Superior weapons do not always overcome determination and will.

Remember that “asymmetrical warfare” does not only refer to differences in weapons capabilities, kinetic mass and quality of forces brought into battle. It also refers to the motives and commitment that adversaries bring to the fight.

The US is an instant gratification, short attention span culture with a low social pain threshold and technology fetish, especially when it comes to gadgets, weapons and war-fighting (which feeds into the other cultural traits). Iran is the birthplace and seat of a 6000 year old Persian culture that invented chess and carpet weaving. Both of these endeavors require consummate patience, perseverance, imagination, complex multidimensional thought and extended foresight that sees the “play” several moves ahead of the current moment. At the behest of an international pariah client-state partner unable to “go it alone,” the US has launched an opportunistic expeditionary war of aggression against Iran during a midterm election year. Iran is fighting an existential defensive war of attrition in and from its ancestral homeland against the US and its regional (including Arab) allies, including the pariah state.

Given these differences, the axiom could well explain the analogy.

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Podcast Update: Latest “A View from Afar” is now available..

Selwyn Manning and I will be discuss the how’s and whys of the illegal Israeli/US war of aggression against Iran but with a different angle than most because we eventually focus on potential upsides to the conflict. Yes, you read that right. Rather than dwell on war porn and weapons fetishism, we outline some positive systemic repercussions and consequences looking forward.

That is our bias for hope.

You can find the show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtJOeVMshc8

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US and Israel gone rogue.

First the US kidnaps the president of a sovereign state after killing more than a score of civilians on the open seas without warrant or evidence of wrongdoing. Now it kills the head of state and supreme religious leader of another sovereign country, teaming up with a regime credibly accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank in order to do so. Whatever one may think of the individuals and regimes targeted (I happen to not be a fan of either) or the narrative spin given by Western governments and media, the selective unilateral application of force without international approval in the absence of imminent threat from either country demonstrates two things: 1) the US and Israel have gone rogue; and 2) in doing so they have set a dangerous precedent for others to follow suit (think China with regard to Taiwan).  That this act of belligerence is taken in part as a “wag the dog” diversion from Trump’s Epstein and domestic policy problems as well as Netanyahu’s legal troubles only makes the matter worse.

It also reinforces a core notion of nuclear deterrence theory: having nuclear weapons deters attacks. North Korea, China and Russia are all despotic but nuclear armed. They are not attacked by other nuclear states (and for those who might raise the issue, Ukrainian strikes on Russia are retaliatory and limited). Pakistan and India are nuclear armed but limit their military encounters vis a vis each other to conventional weapons. Same with Pakistan and Afghanistan–their conflict is limited to guerilla and conventional exchanges. Israel has nukes so is not subject to full scale attacks, again, just limited and often unconventional sporadic strikes by missiles and guerrillas/terrorists. 

But Venezuela and Iran are not nuclear armed (even if the latter is trying to develop that capability for the reasons described here), so they are attacked with impunity. This confirms the deterrent value of even a small number of deliverable nuclear weapons, including so-called “dirty” bombs. Even just having one any day will keep full scale aggressors away.

Whatever the outcome of the US/Israeli attacks on Iran both short- and long-term, and in spite of the Western media fascination with war and weapons porn, things seem poised to get worse as a result. Iran has limited experience with democracy (and the CIA helped orchestrate a coup against its last democratically-elected president in the early 1950s), so even if Mossad and the CIA are organizing post-conflict political forces to replace the theocratic regime, there is no guarantee that what follows will be democratic (and if people think that the Shah Reza Pahlavi’s son living in LA is the answer, they are sorely mistaken). Plus, Iran’s scattershot military response against Gulf States is designed to inflame the Sunni/Shiite divisions within them as well as anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment. That could spell trouble for the  Western-backed sultanistic dictatorships that control them (none of the Arab Gulf States are democratic, which makes the hypocrisy of US rhetoric justifying its aggression against Iran and Venezuela more obvious. Especially when Trump honors and does business with Saudi prince Mohammed bin-Salman, who ordered the murder of US citizen and Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi in 2018 ). Moreover, Iran and its proxies have cells in many foreign countries, including the US, which will now be likely activated because of the egregious nature of the preventative and/or regime change-focused war of opportunity (as opposed to a war of necessity) unleashed upon it.

As for the response inside Iran, it is difficult to ascertain. Even with Mossad/CIA agitators in place, Persian nationalism and anti-interventionist sentiment against “the Great Satan” and “Zionist Entity” may prove a significant obstacle to installing a pro-Western regime. The Revolutionary Guards can clearly see that they have nothing left to lose by doubling down on their hardline response to the US and Israeli calls for an uprising and coup, and relying on airpower alone will not allow the US and Israel to impose their political will on Iranian society (which besides the usual rural-urban divides also includes religious hardline and moderate divisions, modern secular elements versus cultural traditionalists, educated versus uneducated sectors, gender divisions, etc.). In other words, while prudent from a US/Israeli perspective, the “no boots on the ground” approach may be insufficient to enforce regime change on Iranian society even if the new regime is autocratic as well. That leaves the field for other actors to get involved, even if in surreptitious ways.

In the previous KP post, I spoke of the death knell of liberal internationalism exemplified by the Epstein client list. Now, with the US and Israel having gone rogue, we witness the demise of Westphalian principles like respect for sovereignty amongst nation-states, to say nothing of concepts like jus ad bellum (reasons for war). On top of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s scorched earth approach to its fight against Palestinians and unlawful aggression at home and abroad by a number of other regimes around the world, the package of precedents being opened up is ominous for world peace and international order.

Time to button up and batten down.

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Addressing some mistruths.

The Bondi Beach mass murder attack is yet another inevitable sequel to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The precise nature of the sequels are seldom known, much less prevented in advance of their occurrence, but the fact that they will occur should. be obvious to anyone who has studied or experienced the dialectic of sectarian violence whatever its specific origins. In this case we saw a small-cell (not lone wolf) attack where operational secrecy in preparing, planning and execution was apparently well maintained.

While digesting the stock pap that passes for NZ local “expert” commentary on the Hanukkah attacks I found myself thinking about the broader tone of Western media coverage and the implicit biases reflected in it. Let me start with a few small points of order and then speak to what is left largely unsaid in mass media coverage.

The father and son attacks on the celebrating Jewish crowd at Bondi may or may not be a terrorist attack or simply a hate crime. I have written about this many times before, here and professionally, but the core of the definition is worth repeating. Terrorism is a violent tactic that has been used by States (during and outside of war), non-state ideological actors, criminal organisations and psychopathic individuals. It has a subject (audiences), object (to influence the will or psychological health of subjects by installing fear and dread among them) and target (victims). Seemingly random and unwarranted violence is the instrument and being terrorised is the effect. For unconventional warfare analysts and practitioners, the motivation of the terrorists is less important than the epistemological sequencing or chain of causality involved. Terrorism must have all three components in order to be correctly labeled as such.

Terrorism can be (and often is) a product of hatred but is not synonymous with hate crimes. Hate crimes lack the subject-object-target sequencing that distinguishes terrorism from other forms of unconventional violence. Hate crimes are often born of passion and fury. They may be done for revenge, retribution or sadistic pleasure. In some cases these pathologies enter into the terrorist’s equation. But what distinguishes hate crimes from terrorism is in the latter’s choice of subjects and objects, which gives an element of cold dispassioned rationality to the calculation. The subjects are more than the victims and their immediate circles. They include governments, communities, specific entities or organisations,, supporters, opponents and peer competitors. The object is to do more than inflict pain, suffering and punishment on victims and subjects. It is to bend the will of subjects in a specific direction pursuant to the perpetrator’s interests.

More simply, terrorism is a reflective exercise of violence. Hate crimes are a visceral violent response.

It remains to be seen whether the Bondi attacks were reflective or visceral in nature. Reporting has suggested a variety of motives but nothing concrete has been produced other than reports that one of the gunmen traveled to the Philippines in recent months, which may or may not be linked to the presence of ISIS cells in that country. What is clear is that the Australian government and global media have jumped to describe the event as an antisemitic terrorist attack. The antisemitic part of that label is undoubtably true (more on this below) but the terrorism label appears to be more one of unreflective convenience, political opportunism and/or agenda-serving rather than serious analysis (as is the case with what passes for local “expertise” in NZ).

Mind you, not all instances of hidden agenda grammatical opportunism and mistruth are necessarily bad. Authorities may misuse terms like terrorism to shake society out of complacency and/or expand their legitimate deterrent or preventive reach via expanded powers of surveillance and arrest with cause. The emotive weight of terms like terrorism may allow legislative and institutional reforms that provide legal and operational latitude that previously did not exist but which are needed inn the face of fluid and evolving threat scenarios. On the other hand, the risks of official misuse of terms like terrorism are obvious, to which can be added media misuse for reasons other than objective reporting of the facts and political and interest group misuse of terms in pursuit of partisan and sectorial advantage.

War criminal and corrupt fraudster Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to blame the attacks on Australia’s recognition of the right to Palestinian Statehood is the most patently crude of recent attempts to take advantage of the situation for self-serving purposes. He is far from alone, as pro- and anti-gun lobbies have jumped into action over the issue and then, of course, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine lobbies blanket the media with their respective takes on who/what/when/why/how. The objective truth does not matter here. What matters is the public weight of the sectorial spin.

We can assume that counter-terrorism authorities in Australia (now under the microscope because one of the gunmen was monitored for some time as a possible ISIS sympathiser and was known to. hold a legal firearms license and six hunting weapons), are acutely aware of what the attack really was but prefer in any event to fall into line when it comes to brandishing the terrorism accusation. As for other Western governments and media, the uncritical use of that label suits their specific interests quite well.

By way of another aside, please note that “ISIS influenced” is not equivalent to “ISIS” or “ISIS directed.” The killers showed little fire control in using their weapons (such as one providing covering fire for the other) and demonstrated little tactical acumen like effectively using cover and efficient angles of fire to their front and rear, instead scurrying around while firing indiscriminately into the crowd and at arriving police. Theirs was not the work of proficient and disciplined assassins trained by and serving in a militia, but instead appears be that of weekend warriors with limited time at the shooting range. They were still deadly, but they may not be actual members of ISIS. In fact, no claims of intellectual or material authorship of the attack have been made ISIS or any affiliate group.

Another unacknowledged mistruth is the constant reference to the “Israel-Hamas” conflict and the events of October 7, 2023. No serious person disputes that Hamas committed unspeakable atrocities on that day, including crimes against humanity. They deserved what came to them. However, had Israel limited itself to pursuing, locating and killing every single person involved in the attacks with some “collateral” damage thrown in because of the “fog of war,” relatively few people other than rabid Islamicists would have objected. October 7 was too barbaric for the global community to tolerate and for a very brief moment, much like the US after 9/11, the world majority stood in sympathy for and solidarity with the Israeli people (as distinct from the Israeli government)..

Like the US after 9/11, Israel squandered that goodwill. We will not dwell on the backdrop to October 7 here (the intelligence failures, the clandestine Israeli support for Hamas prior to the attacks, the unspoken agenda of conquest shared by radical Jewish ethno-nationalist elements in the Knesset and wider Israeli community, including by foreign-born illegal settlers on Palestinian land in the West Bank). What we will address is a simple fact that is crucial to understanding the inevitability of sequels such as that at Bondi Beach.

That fact is that the conflict in Gaza is not between Hamas and Israel. It may have started that way, but Israel’s response, an act of collective punishment of an entire population that quickly became a prolonged process of ethnic cleansing that has now become a UN-recognized genocide, and which has moved into the West Bank, makes the conflict an Israel-Palestinian war. It has also spilled into Lebanon, home to many Palestinians, under the pretext of eliminating Hezbollah (and by connection, Iranian interference in the Levant). The war is grossly one-sided and is being waged against an entire people, not just armed insurgents and their immediate political leaders and supporters. Truth be really told, it is civilizational in nature and seen by the (willing and unwilling) participants exactly as that.

It is this war–an Israeli war of annihilation designed to pave the way for permanent occupation and annexation of Palestinian lands–that has ripped off the scab of global antisemitism. Primordial antisemitic prejudices now combine with modern grievances and anti-Jewish tropes in the face of global indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people. Western liberal democracies do nothing or side with Israel. Authoritarians of the Left and Right steer clear of the fight or cut secret deals with Israel in order to keep commercial, diplomatic and security ties flowing. Regardless of thousands of protests and millions of marchers, the situation has not appreciably changed and instead we hear open commentary about US-backed development of Gaza as a tourist destination. Needless to say, anger, frustration, hopelessness and feelings of powerlessness begin to mount. In that mix, hatred rises and eventually–inevitably given human nature–violence happens.

That is why semantic precision is necessary. The conflict in Gaza is not between Hamas and Israel but waged by Israel against the Palestinian people, That started the sequel-chain involving antisemitism (which gathered “old school” hatred of Jews such as that of neo-Nazis and Groypers with modern anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist hatred), and pushed its eventual descent into, at a minimum, hate crimes (such as the Australian arson and graffiti attacks on Jewish centres leading up to the Bondi attacks), and now perhaps a mass murder event that may be an act of (even if unlikely if we are honest in our use of the term) terrorism.

The sad and often unspoken fact is that signal events like the Gaza conflict bring out suppressed hatred and prejudices as well as opportunistic corporate, social, political and ideological agendas that seek to frame the narrative about the event and its sequels in specific self-serving fashion. Unfortunately, the media and political commentariat in NZ is not immune from that syndrome.

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Some comments on NZ politics.

I had some time on my hands the past few days so spent more attention than usual consuming news about NZ domestic politics. My interests tend to lie further afield, but recent government assaults on Maori rights, women’s pay equity, constitutional neutrality, environmental, health and safety regulations, equitable taxation policy, state sector employment, Labour’s pandemic response and assorted other lesser insults have drawn me, perhaps like a moth to flame, to seek some illumination on the local political scene. These are a few tidbits that I took away this week., translated into social media posts.

  1. Chloe Swarbrick’s remarks about the government’s cowardice on the issue of Palestinian statehood in the wake of Israeli actions in Gaza.:

First all, Swarbrick is correct. If only six coalition MPs had some moral-ethical courage, then NZ could join the majority of the international community, including three of the 5 Eyes partners, in condemning Israel’s collective punishment of all Palestinians for the sins of Hamas on October 7, 2023, including the IDF’s use of ethnic cleansing and mass starvation as a means to that end. For that she was told to apologise by the Speaker (and National MP) for using the phrase “if six…members had a spine” and when she did not, ordered to leave the debating chamber. and later “named.” This is my comment on social media: “Peters, Jones and Seymour voice ugly boorish insults against their opponents (including racist taunts) and are allowed to remain in the House. Swarbrick correctly points out the spineless behaviour of government MPs regarding Gaza and gets thrown out. So much for Speaker impartiality” (referencing routine remarks made by the NZ First and Act leaders).

Also, as an aside to the particulars of this case, I should note that in light of prior history by Brownlee and other conservative MPs when it comes to progressive female members, there is a whiff of misogyny in the ruling. As a relative said to me (paraphrased here), male MPs can be loud, rude, condescending and bombastic when speaking to the House, but women cannot get angry or raise their voices even in defense of universal values. Now, I realise that Brownlee fashions himself as “old school” when it comes to parliamentary ethics and protocols, but if these boy’s club unwritten rules are part of the “old school” way of doing parliamentary politics, I say that he and others of his ilk need to be woken from their Rip Van Winkle stupor and shown the door.

By way of a broader backdrop, we should be clear that for all of its talk about foreign policy independence and having stood up to the US and its Anglophone allies with the 1985 non-nuclear declaration, NZ is a diplomatic follower, not a leader. It waits until other States make a move or show initiative on sticky international issues or events, then coattails on whatever seems most beneficial over the short-term. It pays lip service to international rules and norms but sniffs the wind when foreign policy smoke is in the air.

This syndrome has been accentuated in recent decades, particularly by National-led governments, and is now at rock bottom when it comes to NZ supination to other’s interests. The governing coalition’s current lack of resolve when it comes to denouncing the Palestinian catastrophe and upholding the right to Palestinian self-determination can be attributed to slavish obsequiousness to the US (Trump) position on the matter, perhaps abetted by the influence of the NZ Israeli lobby. Whatever ulterior ends the coalition of chaos may think that this approach may serve vis a vis the bilateral relationship with the US, they are sorely mistaken. NZ is just another squirrel looking for that elusive US nut.

2) On the decision to remove Maori words from schoolbooks :

I wrote “a main tool of cultural erasure is to remove all public references in a language other than that of the dominant social group. The CCP does it to the Uyghurs in the PRC. The excuse for doing so is usually to promote assimilation and social cohesion. The real motive is darker.”

I could go on about the attempts to erase indigenous languages and dialects in the public sphere is a host of places, particularly in Latin America, the region I am most familiar with, but also in Canada, the US, Africa and parts of the Pacific. The practice was so common in the colonial past that some linguists have written about the cultural genocide that follows erasing of a native language. When ti comes to identity and cultural preservation, language (and words) matter.

What is also remarkable is that it is well accepted that, rather than “confusing” in the Education Minister’s words, learning other languages at an early age promotes brain development and complex thought. Defending the removal of Maori words from children’s books is therefore doubly retrograde: it is the first step of an attempt at cultural erasure (at least in the public space), bookending similar attempts to remove te reo from public buildings and signage; and it is counter-productive (and counter-factual) as a pedagogical approach. Shame on Erica Stanford and her acolytes! And if a few Maori words are confusing, why not remove all non-English words from school books? Sacre bleu!

3) On the refusal of former Labour Ministers to front up to a public hearing of the Royal Common of Inquiry into the Pandemic Response:

“Why front up to a kangaroo court when the kangaroo judges are the political opposition? Especially after providing written answers to documented questions supplied by the kangaroos about events long in the public domain? Smacks of an ex-post political beat-up best avoided.” The fact that the Inquiry was instigated by ACT and NZ First as a partisan bludgeon after listening to conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers appears lost on the corporate media (partisan media like Plunket, Bridges and Hoskings just megaphone the anti-Labour lines). In fact, Labour should be pushing back harder at the political instigators, for example by questioning how they came to get involved in the witch hunt after actively supporting Labour’s pandemic response at the time, and who feeds them their talking points.

4) On a serving NZDF member is standing trial for espionage.

“The espionage charge against a serving NZ soldier is remarkable. The defendant is accused of working for, at the behest, or on behalf of a foreign State. Many questions arise from soldier’s court martial/trial. 1st: Which State? 2nd: what motive(s)? 3rd: what was compromised?”

Charging an active duty NZDF member with spying is remarkable because that charge–espionage– is only brought if the accused is suspected of working as a covert foreign agent. It does not refer to any domestic interlocutor., patron or client. I seem to recall at the time of the arrest that the soldier was detained for having objectionable material, presumably extremist literature (the military does not court martial people for having porn unless it is of the illegal variety). The soldier was also said to have links to right wing white supremacist groups. So it would be premature and very possibly wrong to finger the PRC as the puppet master (as the usual suspect). Given its other dark activities in NZ, Russia is a possibility. Or some other State. What should be clear is that it would not be an ally of the NZDF like the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France or other countries that routinely share higher-level intelligence with the NZDF (say, on operations, deployments, capabilities and tactics) that the soldier could not easily access unless s/he was in a military intelligence billet.

There could be a mix of motives involved, including money, sex and ideology. The counter-intelligence aspects of uncovering the suspected spy are also worth considering. In that light the trial should be interesting and revelatory, assuming that coverage is not effectively shut down for reasons of national security (yeah, right).

Should it be your inclination, feel free to weigh in within the KP rules of discourse.







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Careful what you wish for.

One gets the sense that Netanyahu has used his post-October 7 military successes (including ethnic cleansing and IDF war crimes in Gaza) to prepare for this moment of friction vis a vis Iran while manoeuvring Trump into a corner on joining the war in pursuit of regime change as much or more than nuclear non-proliferation (as I have pointed out in previous posts, Trump is an empty intellectual vessel devoid of firm policy positions other than those that he thinks serve himself. He is therefore highly susceptible to suggestions that appeal to his vanity and self-interest, such as being “the saviour of Iran” if he joins Israel in the military campaign against the theocratic regime).

Already, the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has broadcast statements claiming that he and his supporters will return to Iran soon after the collapse of the current theocratic regime. Pahlavi is close to Netanyahu and Trump’s inner circle and US-based heirs of the Shah’s exiled supporters (many concentrated in and around LA) are willing to assume control of a post-theocratic government under Reza Pahlavi’s leadership. The stage appears to being set for a regime take-over following military defeat of the ayatollahs.

The trouble is that while many Iranians abhor the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard, they also remember very well what the Shah’s rule was all about (SAVAK, anyone?). They remember well that Israel was the Shah’s best ally, and that Mossad helped train and shared intelligence with SAVAK. So it is not clear that his heirs will be universally welcomed, something that sets the stage for prolonged internal conflict within the Persian power. In addition, with the old leadership gone a new generation of militant leaders may emerge in their place, hardened by their experiences with Israel and its Western backers. They may not prove easily removable or amenable to a negotiated compromise on governing alongside Western-backed groups.

Even if the West gets its way and the ayatollahs are deposed, there is the issue whether a new generation of Iranian expats, many coming from monied backgrounds in places like Southern California, have the skillsets with which to govern a country, and culture, that mixes pre-modern beliefs with post-modern technologies and a ponderous bureaucracy that straddles a stark urban/rural demographic divide. Will the US pour in aid to help them with the task of reconstruction at a time when DOGE is cutting back on all types of US foreign aid? Will Iranians welcome such assistance and the US/Western personnel that deliver it? Or will they resist what could be seen as an affront to their nationalistic and cultural pride?

This is a noteworthy point. Persian nationalism is rooted in millennia, not the last half century. Persians come in many faiths and ethnicities, and what unites them isa rejection of foreign interference in their affairs, especially by Sunni Arabs and Western colonisers (and their descendants). In the US and other interested parties there appears to be a failure to understand how deep Persian nationalism runs as an ideological glue in Iranian society. This could prove costly for the adherents of forcible regime change in that country.

The US and Israel appear to believe that after they bomb Iranian nuclear development and storage sites, military infrastructure and command and control facilities and kill leaders of the revolutionary regime, the people will rise up, the regime will fall, a new government will be installed and everyone will go home happy. The truth is otherwise. Iran will have to undergo a long term military occupation if a new order is to be imposed. Who is going to do that? Iran is a huge country and as mentioned, not all of its inhabitants welcome foreign interference in their affairs. The US and Israel do not have the capability to impose an occupation regime, not does any other State in part because of their realistic unwillingness to do so. So the operative assumption in Washington and Tel Aviv about regime change in Iran seems to be based on a pipe dream conjured up in the war-fevered minds of Trump and Netanyahu’s strategic advisors. And a reality check is also worth noting: the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan this century by Western-led coalitions have not ended well for them or with the stated objectives of their missions being achieved.

Then there is the reaction of the global Shiite diaspora to seeing their most venerated leaders killed, incapacitated or imprisoned by Western powers or those backed by the West. Iran may not be able to defend itself against Israel and the US by conventional and nuclear military means, but it has many unconventional assets at its disposal, and they have global reach. The current tit-for-tat exchanges may be a prelude to a widening regional and perhaps global conflict fought by unconventional means. The end to the current (fairly short) conventional military war may be just the beginning of a protracted unconventional, asymmetrical conflict that could spill into other States in the region and beyond.

And here is another background thought: The modern Western-led international community has always reacted poorly to revolutionary regimes, e.g.: USSR, PRC, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Algeria, Granada, DPRK, etc.. The specific evolutionary ideology matters less than the usurpation of power by force because it upsets the international status quo because it upsets an international status based on acceptance of shared rules and norms (if not values). That is, states agree to get along within established rules of conduct and revolutionaries do not respect that basic rule of the game and seek parametric change in their societies as well as in their relations with the external world..

In response, revolutionary regimes tend to support each other against former colonial and imperialist Western powers, creating a vicious circle of hostile action/reaction. It may be 46 years after the Iranian revolution, but perhaps this is somehow at play here?

Whatever the case, I have a bad feeling that this is not going to end well, except perhaps for Netanyahu (who will receive a boost in domestic support after the Iranian regime is ousted as well as perhaps further delay his court trial on corruption charges and the collapse of his coalition government). Trump is being slow-walked by Netanyahu into joining a war of convenience rather than necessity that may spiral into a deeper regional confrontation that will consume US blood and treasure for some time to come (in exact contravention of Trump’s promises to end US foreign “entanglements”). With the US mid-term elections scheduled for next year, prolonged involvement in Iran may prove damaging to Trump’s allies in Congress and hinder pursuit of the GOP/MAGA policy agenda if they lose one or both majorities in the Deliberative Chambers. Meanwhile, Iran’s allies Russia and China sit quietly on the sidelines, either out of impotence or because they are hedging their bets. One gets the feeling that, especially with regard to the PRC, they are not impotent.

The slanted (often triumphant) Western media coverage of the conflict disguises the fact this may not be entirely over soon, and that whatever its battlefield successes Israel may pay a heavy reputational and diplomatic price for its actions, as the rise of global anti-semitism suggests is in fact now the case.

Dark and sad times ahead, I’m afraid.

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Pre-emptive or preventive?

I do not mean to be pedantic about this sort of thing, but since it lies within my area of supposed “expertise,” here goes:

Unlike what is being reported in the corporate media and by some defense officials, the Israeli strike on Iran was not “pre-emptive.” “Pre-emptive” means “a sudden strike thwarting an imminent attack.” That is not the case here. Iran was not about to imminently attack Israel. What Israel has done is a preventive attack designed to degrade Iran’s nuclear R&D/storage facilities, missile launcher sites and command and control capabilities. The IDF attack is focused on preventing and delaying development of Iran’s nuclear strike capability before it reaches operational status and was telegraphed in advance (remember the US pulling out embassy staff and military families from facilities in the Middle East this week). Both suspected weapons-grade nuclear stores as well as launching platforms were on the target list, as were those responsible for them.

The preventive nature of the move may help moderate the Iranian response. On the other hand, killing the Revolutionary Guard Commander and Deputy Commander is a serious affront that will require a response in order for the Iranian regime to save face among its domestic audiences. So the escalation scenario is real, albeit not as bad as it could be. What is clear is that unlike preemptive attacks, the Israeli preventive attack has no justification in the Laws of War (jus ad bellum) and is therefore illegal under International law. One might understand why the Israelis conducted the strikes and there is plenty of precedent for them, but that does not make them legal.

Just like his response to October 7 with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu has seized his moment of opportunity because, quite frankly, he can. No one will stop him (certainly not the Iranians) and the US backs him, with most of the West tacitly supporting Israel with their silence or tepid responses to the conflict. This, I suspect, is due to Israel’s value as an intelligence partner of the West as much as any other reason.

Let’s see how this plays out….

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Drawing Parallels.

The April 22 attacks by Kashmir Resistance (KR), a (at least tacitly) Pakistani-backed irredentist group in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in which 26 people were murdered, has some unfortunate parallels with the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Although many more Israelis died in the latter (nearly 2000) and the costs to Palestinians living in Gaza (and to a lesser extent the West Bank) from the subsequent Israel war campaign against them have been astronomical (53,000 dead in Gaza alone while the India-Pakistan conflict is just now beginning and its outcome is as of yet undetermined), there are enough similarities between them to offer some observations about them, as well as their differences.

Hamas and Kashmir Resistance are both ethno-religious-nationalist irregular warfare movements that violently resist occupation and apartheid-like segregation. Both are animated by pre-modern if not primordial hatreds. Both are Muslim, opposed to Indian Hindu nationalism in the latter case and Israeli Zionism in the former instance. Both are proxies for other States, those being Iran in the case of Hamas and Pakistan in the case of KR. For their part, in their present political guises both Israel and India (who quietly support each other in their respective conflicts) prefer that their rule lead to consolidation of ethno-States dominated by their respective Jewish and Hindu majorities, including in the disputed territories over which their respective conflicts have periodically erupted.

The October 7 and April 22 attacks were provocations designed to prompt an over-reaction from the stronger State adversary which in turn was supposed to spark a broader conflict that would draw in other actors and create international pressure on, if not popular protests against the respective State adversaries. For a short moment, Hamas appeared to have succeeded, as the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza is by any definition disproportionate and indiscriminate in effect, involving the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in doing so. Hamas’s tactical objective was to spread the IDF thin as it encountered armed resistance in Gaza, the West Bank and coming out of Lebanon, and have Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis eventually join in a multi-front struggle against the “Zionist entity.” This would in turn draw in more actors from the region and elsewhere as public pressure mounted for an end to the Israeli campaign (including in Israel), thereby forcing a diplomatic compromise that recognised Hamas’s status as the main Palestinian interlocutor (rather than the Palestinian Authority). The mounting toll of victims (including hostages taken on both sides) was a pawn in this larger game.

Protests erupted world-wide against the Israelis, causing civil unrest in many Western democracies as well as throughout the Muslim diaspora. Iran and its regional proxies, Yemeni Houthis and Hezbollah in Lebanon, attempted to widen the conflict into a regional war while fomenting pro-Hamas unrest in Arab States. For the first year of the conflict it looked like the Hamas strategy was working, especially after a coalition of US-led nations broadened the fight by sending a naval flotilla the Red Sea to thwart Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the maritime choke point in support of Hamas. This was seen by Hamas and its supporters as confirmation that the West was on Israel’s side regardless of its behaviour and therefore not just anti-Palestinian but anti-Islamic as a whole (because the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran are Shiites while Hamas is mostly Sunni Muslim).

For its part, KR hoped and may still be hoping that an Indian overreaction in the form of attacks on Pakistan and/or ethnographic-religious purges in Kashmir that will lead to Muslim uprisings throughout India and anti-Indian violence in surrounding countries with significant Muslim populations such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That may be wishful thinking.

Whatever initial propaganda gains may have been made in the first six months after October 7, Israel’s response against Hamas and the Palestinian people has been multi-faceted, overwhelming, relentless, devastating and successful. It has ramped up its repression in the West Back while now moving to permanently occupy Gaza. It has intimidated Iran by killing some of its leaders on Iranian soil while launching missile attacks on military facilities, all while threatening Iran’s nuclear sites. It has conducted strikes against the Houthis and Hezbollah in their territories (including in foreign capitals like Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa) and killed scores of their leaders using conventional and unconventional means (such as the pager bombs used against Hezbollah, missile attacks on Iranian diplomatic facilities in Syria and the murder of a Hamas leader in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard guest house). It has occupied swathes of northern Lebanon and western Syria for good measure and shows no signs of withdrawal from anywhere anytime soon.

In other words, the Hamas “sucker ploy” (getting a stronger adversary to over-react to a provocation so world attention is focused on the response, not the initial atrocity) may have worked over the short-term but has now backfired spectacularly because, among other things, no other country or the community of nations appears able or willing to persuade or force the Israelis to stop their scorched earth campaign. In fact, Israel appears to see October 7 as an excuse and window of opportunity for its territorial expansion and direct control of Gaza and territorial strips from neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Syria. Much of that is also due to the US blanket backing of Israel with weapons and aid, something that as of yet is not a factor in the India-Pakistan conflict. But for Hamas, it means that its provocation may well result in its annihilation.

An obvious difference is that unlike the David versus Goliath nature of the Palestinian-Israeli war, the KR provocation has resulted in a peer conflict between two nuclear-armed States, again, with neither receiving the unequivocal backing on any Great Power (in fact, US president Trump initially said that the US should just “let them go to it and sort it out” or words to that effect). More subtly, the India-Pakistan conflict has become a bigger proxy clash between arms weapons suppliers, with Pakistan mostly fielding PRC-made weapons while India has diversified amongst Russian, French and Israeli platforms. That arms supplier competition is an ominous incentive to broaden the conflict into a conventional war.

Israel can engage in a scorched earth campaign against Hamas and other irregular warfare actors because it is a nuclear power with the strongest and most experienced conventional military in the region, one that has no significant challenger to its supremacy. It has cowed Iran and its proxies into acquiescence to its logic of force, if not submission to the new status quo. All with the backing of the US and other Western nations.

The situation is different in South Asia. India and Pakistan are nuclear armed peer competitors (although the Indian military is much larger). Notwithstanding some of the alarmist rhetoric of armchair pundits (including in NZ), neither is interested in using nuclear weapons for non-existential reasons, so this puts a cap on the escalatory potential of the conflict. Whereas Israel is free to mete out collective punishment on Palestinian civilians as it pleases, arguing that they harbour terrorists and disguise the terrorist’s infrastructure (and it is likely that due to their life histories and upbringing many Palestinians do indeed hate Israel and Jews, which still does not justify committing atrocities and war crimes against them), India and Pakistan have to tread more lightly. So far India has targeted “terrorist infrastructure” and air defence systems in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan itself, with Pakistan retaliating with limited air strikes across the border aimed at as of yet indeterminate (presumably military) targets. So long as the Indian targeting remains focused on military sites and irregular warfare proxies’ staging and hiding places, and the Pakistanis limit their response to military targets, then the escalatory potential for the conflict is low. It will be a limited conventional military tit-for-tat rather than a rush towards a conventional or nuclear Big Bang.

This demonstrates the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, at least when in the hands of rational actors like the Indian and Pakistani military leaderships. Civilian groups, politicians and ethno-religious partisan media may agitate for all out war but unless there is a hot-head or two in the high commands of both countries, the chances of either ordering a nuclear strike–a first use one at that–is remote. Not impossible if things do not go as foreseen above, but pretty unlikely in any event.

Truth be told, the Indo-Pakistani conflict is about saving military face and national honour rather than conquest or retribution no matter how much historical baggage is layered onto it by war-mongering actors on both sides.

Perversely, the fact that Israel is (yet) the only nuclear power in the Middle East deters all would-be adversaries from openly posing real existential threats against it. For all of the talk by Iran and its proxies about erasing the “Zionist entity” from the face of the Earth, in practice they steer clear of actually attempting to do so. They know what that will bring, and this was the case before they were militarily and diplomatically neutered by the current Israeli war effort. In a strange way, all of this suggests that in both instances nuclear deterrence works and can be used to a nuclear-capable country’s advantage as a conflict limitation device under given circumstances. That is of no solace to Palestinians of course, but it may spare Indian and Pakistani civilians similar levels of devastation given the different nuclear context in which the conflict has begun.

This is where KR may have erred in emulating the Hamas provocation strategy. Rather than induce a sucker ploy scenario that garners global sympathy for the plight of Muslims in Indian-controlled Kashmir (and elsewhere in India), it has led to a peer clash between adjacent nuclear armed States that have previously fought conventional wars against each other. This very different context suggests that the conflict will not only be a two-sided rather than a one-sided affair, but that interests of State will prevail over ethnographic-religious hatred and ambitions for territorial expansion by either of them. For KR, much like for Hamas but in a different way, April 22 may well have sown the seeds of their own demise, at least as an armed irregular warfare group. Their ideology will remain and give hope to future resistance fighters, but for the moment current exigencies mitigate against widening their war and in fact suggest that they may be sacrificed in the pursuit of larger interests.

Other parallels may well be drawn as the Indo-Pakistani conflict evolves, but for the moment let us leave on this note: Sometimes the lessons learned from the experience of others are not the ones that were hoped for or intended to be.

That is the ultimate parallel of all.