Context
Explosions rocked Tehran early Friday morning, and Israel’s defense minister said his country’s warplanes had carried out an attack on Iran, raising fears of an all-out war between two of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East.
Neither the scale of the attack nor the damage it caused was immediately clear. The strike was expected to prompt swift retaliation from Iran, likely involving a large barrage of ballistic missiles comparable to that Iran fired during similar escalations last year.
I mean given the nature of the strike, I cannot imagine what they can do in response other than declare war formally, other than if maybe they can take out Israels upper cabinet in response? Missiles wont cut it this time.
My thinking is the reason we haven’t yet seen a declaration of war is because they have to get the word out to all their proxies, and mobilize their forces. They won’t declare war until they are ready to do their response. Declaring war officially and not following up with a massive counter attack would make them appear weak. It’s about timing is my guess.
I’d say that has been the case for the last 20 months.
you arent wrong. But it would become much worse. I don’t think they can afford to look any weaker than they do right now. If they don’t end up declaring war i expect Iran to be a failed state within a year tbh. Since Israel won’t stop, and it will show Iran can’t defend itself.
From what I saw before any attacks happened, their plan was always to retaliate in kind, but also begin focus on developing nuclear weapons.
I would assume they are currently planning their retaliation and production of nuclear weapons, and will likely not want to escalate to full scale war until they get their nukes situated both of these will take time as the strike eliminated military chiefs and scientists so they need to restructure and reorganize.
But this is obviously just assumptions at this point.
Everything i have seen suggests it is already a full scale war on Israels part. It isn’t really up to Iran to have it not be a war if Israel keeps bombing them and won’t stop. Which they’ve indicated they’ll continue to do. So Iran either fights back, and declares war, or it submits and lets all its nuclear sites be destroyed, and the regime probably collapses.
Yeah I made my comment before I saw that Israel was continuing attacks.
Iran definitely couldn’t just sit around even if that would have been strategically sound.
Iran definitely made their force felt though, and their people rallied around them for it. At this point we just have to hope Israel doesn’t go all “Samson” either in retaliation for these waves or inevitable future retaliation. I think Iran is stronger and it’s people more united than Israel expected.
They can’t really do proportional response without risking Israel nuking them.
This reality underlies all of Iran’s actions regarding Israel.
Yeah, which means Iran cannot give up it’s nuclear program at any cost.
Yup, generally speaking, only countries nukes are truly sovereign