The “Don’t” Doctrine Meets The “Just The Tip” Doctrine
By Mitch Berg
Allegations in the Jerusalem Post: the Potato Administration knew that Iran was going to attack Israel over the weekend:
The United States had contact with Iran through Swiss intermediaries both before and after Tehran’s mass drone and missile attack on Israeli territory overnight, a senior Biden administration official said on Sunday.
The official declined to provide details on the contact, saying only that the US and Iran had “a series of direct communications through the Swiss channel.”
The theory: Iran needed to launch a face-saving attack after alleging Israel killed one of their terror leaders. Biden wants the mullahs to save that face.
Every time I think I couldn’t possibly be more ashamed to be an American, President Potato Obama digs the bottom of the barrel a little lower.
April 16th, 2024 at 7:19 am
To be fair, they’re at least not fessing up to knowing beforehand, but that might explain why U.S. fighters were in the air when the attack commenced. However, if we do not see any mockery of the Iranian futility, and a grievous injury of a presumably Muslim Bedouin girl by the flak from the attack, then I will have to assume that yes, they did know beforehand, and did indeed want to allow the mullahs to save face.
April 16th, 2024 at 7:43 am
Aside from “Although you made us do what we did, we really don’t want to escalate beyond this point” there are other reasons for Iran signaling its attack.
1) By telegraphing the attack, Israel’s defenses were put on alert. Personally, I couldn’t think of a better test of “Let’s see what works and what doesn’t before we really need it”, especially in regard to swarm attacks – the new tactic of the future.
2) Iranian missiles and drones are relatively cheap, versus Israel’s iron dome, which is relatively expensive, so the Iranians get to refine the cost/benefit analysis of: “if we toss $n worth of ordinance at them, they have to spend/deplete $y worth of ordinance to counter it”. This is the basis of any war of attrition.
Side note: The Ukrainians (and Russians, I suppose) are using ultra-cheap IKEA -like cardboard flat pack drones that are incredibly inexpensive to produce and deploy. Although they have a short range (30 miles), they are extremely difficult to detect with radar, one could easily see a couple of thousand of them launched simultaneously from Lebanon.
April 16th, 2024 at 9:21 am
Greg,
Regarding your cost benefit analysis.
What do either Iran or Israel care about the costs of ordnance? It’s U.S. taxpayer money that they using.
April 16th, 2024 at 11:09 am
Boss,
Perhaps the mullahs know what Biden and the DFL don’t know, that there is a logical limit to other people’s money.