Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and other Related Conflicts in the Middle East (read the rules in the first post)

[Biscuits]

News event: Russia has warned against strikes on Iran's nuclear infrastructure as China called for diplomatic efforts after US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb the country if Tehran did not come to an agreement over its nuclear program.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

So what is China doing to prevent Iran from falling, other than buying oil? After all, Iran is China's most reliable ally in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Gaza genocide has exposed the evil of the U.S./Israeli war machine and created a great demand in many countries around the world who want to see it resisted, but are too cowardly to do it themselves.

In the past week, Trump has completely decoupled the U.S. economy from China. He has imposed tariff rates of 50-70%, far higher than any other country. He has closed off routes that Chinese companies used to use to get around tariffs, via Southeast Asia and Mexico. And a leaked Pentagon war plan has shown that the U.S. military has put the highest priority on going to war with China. China has no reason to hold back anymore to preserve their relationship with the U.S., a country whose elites are preparing for a hot war with China.

No matter what the U.S. does, the ultimate target is China. So when the U.S. is targeting Iran, it is ultimately targeting China. It aims to first solve its Iran problem, and then its Russia problem, so that it can tackle China. This was true with sanctions as well! Iran was the canary in the coalmine when the U.S. started threatening banks against doing business with Iran in the 2000s, and then passed CISADA under Obama in 2010, introducing blocking sanctions and the SDN list against state actors. That was a template for sanctions against China starting in the late 2010s. It will be the same for war. First, they will take down the smaller guy (Iran), then they will go for the boss (China).

As far as the Palestinians, there is nothing that China could do to increase its soft power and goodwill in the world than to more visibly help them, even if other Muslim countries and neighbors refuse. The other Muslim countries want to help, but they refuse rationally, because the U.S. is not dead set against them yet. The U.S. is willing to have them as client states. The same is not true of China. China has already been declared an enemy of the U.S. by bipartisan consensus, just like Iran and the Palestinians. Do not underestimate the power of goodwill in this arena. No matter what laws or sanctions the U.S. government takes, it still requires thousands of private businesses and millions of private individuals globally to cooperate. If the world sees China supporting the Palestinians, who are unquestionably being genocided by the U.S. and Israel, it will be impossible for the U.S. to win hearts and minds against China.

So in my analysis, China cannot allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to fall any more than Russia, and it should take a more active role in providing material support to the Palestinians, even at the risk of pushing Israel away or further alienating the Israeli lobby in Washington. Whether its leaders will be able to perceive and react to the changing situation in time is the issue.

It is more complicated, Iran being China's greatest ally in the region just isn't true. Iran for example has not committed to giving China favorable trade/military export deals. In 2024, even Israel has achieved majority Chinese autos sales, while Iran still hasn't.

Besides a security and economy pact with Iran, China also has one with Saudi. And Saudi unlike Iran can promote oil sales using Chinese currency into the west. Other than that, China also gains intel from Israel, which is positioned closely to US without being loyal to US.

In that sense, China has important interests in all 3 powers in the middle east and unless there is an amazing deal, would not necessarily quickly side with one of them.

But either way I don't see US attacking Iran as it will destroy America's chance to compete with China. An illegal invasion in the middle east coupled with an already plunging economy at home will not just stick a ton of US forces into a quagmire they can't leave (thus leaving Asia completely open). It would affect US' ability to retain overseas assets and affect domestic stability.

To be honest, you can't actively go to war (without disastrous consequence) when your country is divided in opinion and you're in the midst of purges. The risk for US is that they will get randomly militarily jumped by China if China feels like US isn't opening their market enough to make not attacking them worth it. And by starting something with Iran, it basically ensures US is in the worst possible position to survive that scenario.

 

[Barefoot]

Why would US/Israel go to war with Iran?

Houthis are about to go the same way as Hamas, Hezbollah, Nasrallah, Assad, Syria, Iran's president, top generals including Suleimani ...

Who needs enemies when "Iran" is your friend.

Surely the empire has not ammassed enough for an all out war with Iran (not that i think Iran would engage in an all out war, as we have recently seen when they backed down and broke their "promise" after bombing Israel), but have maybe got enough to deal a crushing blow to the Houthis (probably getting all the targetting info they need from someone in Iran).


Also, why did Hamas, Hezbollah, whoever else in Syria and the Iraqis etc, Iran and Yemen, all attack Israel one by one instead of all together - are they dumb, really dumb, or really really dumb?

 

[Minm]

It is more complicated, Iran being China's greatest ally in the region just isn't true. Iran for example has not committed to giving China favorable trade/military export deals. In 2024, even Israel has achieved majority Chinese autos sales, while Iran still hasn't

Where does this obsession with Chinese auto sales come from? Iran has a domestic car industry and has heavy tariffs on cars to protect it. It's an industrialised country that uses civil military fusion to help build weapons. They will never import foreign cars, be they Western or Eastern. They produce more cars than countries like Russia or the UK and hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on it.

 

[obj 705A]

So what is China doing to prevent Iran from falling, other than buying oil? After all, Iran is China's most reliable ally in the Middle East.

China has no allies in the middle east. the main challenges that Iran faces are security threats. China is only active in east Asia plus Pakistan & China follows an isolationist / non interventionist foreign policy for the rest of the world the middle east included.
China has trade relations with the rest of the world but trade relations are one thing and actively intervening to protect smaller countries is another.

China is building CVs & all these dozens of DDGs, SSNs not to go fight the US around the world whenever the US wants to do regime change and change the maps outside of east Asia. but to secure east Asia and regain Taiwan and to protect Chinese shipping globably. as long as the US does not target Chinese civilian ships in the middle east then China will not intervene.

Russia on the other hand does have the desire and the political will to intervene in conflicts globaly to try to stop US imperialist policies but in the middle east so far they failed such as what happened in Syria. hopefully once the shooting starts Russia will aid Iran with intelegence / targeting information and by continuously giving them defensive and offensive missiles. though personaly I find that aid highly unlikely to happen because Russia wouldn't want to risk having Russian weapons hitting American bases in the GCC because that would harm Russia's relations with the GCC.
as for China I am confident that in the event of a US war on Iran. China will stay out of it and will not send a single bullet to Iran as military aid let alone send any missiles. instead China is likely to just condemn the US diplomaticaly and call for peace etc..

personaly I always believed Iran and few other middle eastern countries were driving their countries to the abyss. the writing has been on the wall for some time now. the MENA region is firmly under the military influence of the US. Syria for example should have normalized relations with Israel and ditched it's relations with Russia. become a firm ally of Israel and you will be safe.

same thing goes for Iran. they should have normalized relations with Israel. forget all the talk about "resistance" or whatever. they should have done what Turkey did and send the Shahed / Geran drones to aid Ukraine rather than giving it to the Russians not for the sake of Ukraine because Ukraine is finished regardless. but for the sake of enhancing the relations with the US. in addition they could offer the US to have military bases in Iran.

if I were to give an advice to small countries like Iran , Syria, Algeria etc.. small / weak countries should only care about the welfare of their people and should not try to change the world or enact justice or establish a multipolar world or whatever. leave that mission to the bigger countries. and if a nation of 1.4 billion people with the second largest economy is unwilling to / incapable of changing the world order and instead choses to focus on it's own region in east Asia and for the rest of the world choses to just do trade without establishing firm military alliance (which is what is needed for a true multipolar world in the face American DDGs and bombers changing regimes however they like). then why should much smaller countries volunteer to do what a much bigger country doesn't do!

follow the example of Singapore. Singapore realizes that they are a very small country and that the US is still top dog globably so they focus on themselves rather than trying to change the world. that is why they still lean more towards the US. that is why they imposed sanctions on Russia to appease the US.

I believe in the future MENA will go back to being firmly under the control of the US and Latin America will follow suit with regime changes. meanwhile east Asia will become more and more China's region and Russia's influence in Eastern Europe and especially the post Soviet space will expand and Eastern Europe will go back to being under Russian influence gradualy which is historicaly it's natural place.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

So you completely ignore the effect of geography and the fact that there is a fundamental difference between Iraq and Iran even for the air force: Iraq couldn't even produce parts for their planes while Iran can.

Why don't you calculate the sortie rate out of Diego? This sort of thing has already been worked out by people paid to do this and the conclusion is, it will take a Desert Storm level effort with equivalent buildup time, for much less than Desert Storm level effects.

The scenario I have outlined is very different from the current one, because the countries are not giving up the geographical advantage of the Gulf air bases for the Americans to use, I have posited in the sense of a long bombing campaign to completely destroy Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure. The case is different from the current situation, the Americans want to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, this is a limited objective that can be accomplished without mobilizing a large amount of US Navy and USAF assets to the theater of operations.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

North Korea has an extremely favourable geopolitical geography. They could develop nukes while conventionally threatening Seoul. They neighbour Russia and China. They didn't have to fear attack after leaving the NPT

Iran only has the connection to Russia via the Caspian sea and is always at risk of an Israeli attack. Had they begun a dash for a bomb, Israel would have attacked and potentially even used nukes for that. For a long time, tens of thousands of enemy troops were in Afghanistan and Iraq, just next to Iran. Nuclear development at this threat level was not feasible.

For North Korea, the fast strategy made sense. For Iran, a slow approach is much better and safer. Salami slicing their way towards the bomb.

Hezbollah has always acted as a deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran, so this scenario of total freedom of action against the Iranians makes no strategic sense. There was a real deterrent for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb without the need to be paralyzed by an eventual Israeli attack.

Meanwhile, the Americans were bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and could hardly mobilize the resources necessary to attack Iran without reducing their direct commitments to the other theaters.

Now Iran is paying the price for having been extremely naive in its cautious approach when Israel and the US threaten to militarily attack Iran's nuclear projects.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

News event: Russia has warned against strikes on Iran's nuclear infrastructure as China called for diplomatic efforts after US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb the country if Tehran did not come to an agreement over its nuclear program.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

So what is China doing to prevent Iran from falling, other than buying oil? After all, Iran is China's most reliable ally in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Gaza genocide has exposed the evil of the U.S./Israeli war machine and created a great demand in many countries around the world who want to see it resisted, but are too cowardly to do it themselves.

In the past week, Trump has completely decoupled the U.S. economy from China. He has imposed tariff rates of 50-70%, far higher than any other country. He has closed off routes that Chinese companies used to use to get around tariffs, via Southeast Asia and Mexico. And a leaked Pentagon war plan has shown that the U.S. military has put the highest priority on going to war with China. China has no reason to hold back anymore to preserve their relationship with the U.S., a country whose elites are preparing for a hot war with China.

No matter what the U.S. does, the ultimate target is China. So when the U.S. is targeting Iran, it is ultimately targeting China. It aims to first solve its Iran problem, and then its Russia problem, so that it can tackle China. This was true with sanctions as well! Iran was the canary in the coalmine when the U.S. started threatening banks against doing business with Iran in the 2000s, and then passed CISADA under Obama in 2010, introducing blocking sanctions and the SDN list against state actors. That was a template for sanctions against China starting in the late 2010s. It will be the same for war. First, they will take down the smaller guy (Iran), then they will go for the boss (China).

As far as the Palestinians, there is nothing that China could do to increase its soft power and goodwill in the world than to more visibly help them, even if other Muslim countries and neighbors refuse. The other Muslim countries want to help, but they refuse rationally, because the U.S. is not dead set against them yet. The U.S. is willing to have them as client states. The same is not true of China. China has already been declared an enemy of the U.S. by bipartisan consensus, just like Iran and the Palestinians. Do not underestimate the power of goodwill in this arena. No matter what laws or sanctions the U.S. government takes, it still requires thousands of private businesses and millions of private individuals globally to cooperate. If the world sees China supporting the Palestinians, who are unquestionably being genocided by the U.S. and Israel, it will be impossible for the U.S. to win hearts and minds against China.

So in my analysis, China cannot allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to fall any more than Russia, and it should take a more active role in providing material support to the Palestinians, even at the risk of pushing Israel away or further alienating the Israeli lobby in Washington. Whether its leaders will be able to perceive and react to the changing situation in time is the issue.

I think it is much more worthwhile for China for the Americans to get bogged down in Iran, just as they got bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan for many long years.

 

[Biscuits]

China has no allies in the middle east. the main challenges that Iran faces are security threats. China is only active in east Asia plus Pakistan & China follows an isolationist / non interventionist foreign policy for the rest of the world the middle east included.
China has trade relations with the rest of the world but trade relations are one thing and actively intervening to protect smaller countries is another.

China is building CVs & all these dozens of DDGs, SSNs not to go fight the US around the world whenever the US wants to do regime change and change the maps outside of east Asia. but to secure east Asia and regain Taiwan and to protect Chinese shipping globably. as long as the US does not target Chinese civilian ships in the middle east then China will not intervene.

Russia on the other hand does have the desire and the political will to intervene in conflicts globaly to try to stop US imperialist policies but in the middle east so far they failed such as what happened in Syria. hopefully once the shooting starts Russia will aid Iran with intelegence / targeting information and by continuously giving them defensive and offensive missiles. though personaly I find that aid highly unlikely to happen because Russia wouldn't want to risk having Russian weapons hitting American bases in the GCC because that would harm Russia's relations with the GCC.
as for China I am confident that in the event of a US war on Iran. China will stay out of it and will not send a single bullet to Iran as military aid let alone send any missiles. instead China is likely to just condemn the US diplomaticaly and call for peace etc..

personaly I always believed Iran and few other middle eastern countries were driving their countries to the abyss. the writing has been on the wall for some time now. the MENA region is firmly under the military influence of the US. Syria for example should have normalized relations with Israel and ditched it's relations with Russia. become a firm ally of Israel and you will be safe.

same thing goes for Iran. they should have normalized relations with Israel. forget all the talk about "resistance" or whatever. they should have done what Turkey did and send the Shahed / Geran drones to aid Ukraine rather than giving it to the Russians not for the sake of Ukraine because Ukraine is finished regardless. but for the sake of enhancing the relations with the US. in addition they could offer the US to have military bases in Iran.

if I were to give an advice to small countries like Iran , Syria, Algeria etc.. small / weak countries should only care about the welfare of their people and should not try to change the world or enact justice or establish a multipolar world or whatever. leave that mission to the bigger countries. and if a nation of 1.4 billion people with the second largest economy is unwilling to / incapable of changing the world order and instead choses to focus on it's own region in east Asia and for the rest of the world choses to just do trade without establishing firm military alliance (which is what is needed for a true multipolar world in the face American DDGs and bombers changing regimes however they like). then why should much smaller countries volunteer to do what a much bigger country doesn't do!

follow the example of Singapore. Singapore realizes that they are a very small country and that the US is still top dog globably so they focus on themselves rather than trying to change the world. that is why they still lean more towards the US. that is why they imposed sanctions on Russia to appease the US.

I believe in the future MENA will go back to being firmly under the control of the US and Latin America will follow suit with regime changes. meanwhile east Asia will become more and more China's region and Russia's influence in Eastern Europe and especially the post Soviet space will expand and Eastern Europe will go back to being under Russian influence gradualy which is historicaly it's natural place.

US is under tremendous economic pressure already, due to China.

You're deluding yourself if you don't think China is playing for keeps, for unilateral hegemony.

Why should China with a larger economy and more stable home situation go into expeditionary wars against US when they can just bleed US safely from a distance and close in on the kill later?

The same type of cope as yours was active during Biden's regime. Ask yourself this: is US under Biden in 2024 stronger or is US under Trump in 2025 stronger? China can easily just continue diplomatic/economic pressure. What's the next political step for US? Dictatorship under Trump/Musk? Braziliasation with complete loss of middle class? Do you think this US will be better poised to resist an all out attack than today's US? Then if so it's clear why it's objectively correct to bleed US from a distance like China is doing.

 

[obj 705A]

but have maybe got enough to deal a crushing blow to the Houthis (probably getting all the targetting info they need from someone in Iran).

talking about defeating the Houthis is as realistic as talking about defeating the Taliban.

the Houthis are far much more reslient than Iran or Hezbollah. unlike Hezbollah they don't depend on one guy to lead them and they are no where near as infiltrated as Hezbollah. they are an enlarged militia hardened by war and quite used to losses and are unfazed by them. whether you kill one soldier or a thousand soldier of them or 1 leader or 100 leader does not affect them emotionaly. they just keep fighting as long as they need to.

furthemore the Houthis don't have a nuclear program or any kind of one clear stationary military target that you destroy & call it day (ie: one target that you can destroy resulting in them losing the ability to interrupt shipping).

as long as Yemen is at the straight of Bab Al-Mandeb (newsflash geography will not change) then the Houthis will continue to interrupt shipping.
the KSA launched a ferocious bombing campaign and ground campaign and a blockade for more than a year yet failed to defeat the Houthis due to mountainous terrain and because the KSA and it's allies couldn't bring in enough ground troops even with all the mercenaries they brought.

you cannot defeat the houthis with DDGs and strategic bombers and since the KSA coalation soldiers were not enough the US would have to send a massive ground force in a war which would be as difficult as the war on the Taliban. and personaly I'm confindent that the US has no intention of getting involved in a second Afghanistan.
probably the only way to defeat the Houthis is through a massive nuclear strike.

Also, why did Hamas, Hezbollah, whoever else in Syria and the Iraqis etc, Iran and Yemen, all attack Israel one by one instead of all together - are they dumb, really dumb, or really really dumb?

you talk as if Iran and co actually wanted or expected the 7th of october attack to happen. neither Iran nor Hezbollah wanted or were expecting Hamas to attack and that is exactly why Hamas attacked. because the entire muslim world were starting to forget about Palestine. the KSA and other muslim countries were about to normalize relations with Israel. and even Iran & Hezbollah were strating to forget about Palestine and were not taking clear concrete steps to establish a Paelstinian state. Iran was busy normalizing relations with the KSA and pursuing the lifting of sanctions while Hezbollah was idle & content being the rulers of Lebanon.
so Hamas had to do something to force all the parties in the region to take action.

if I were to paraphrase Sinwar in one of his older speeches before 7th october: "the world wants us to be the polite victim that get's genocided and expelled out of our land while keeping our mouth shut". Hamas had to force a major war to start, to force the lazy muslim world to act to establish a Palestinian state and if no Palestinian state is created and if Gaza goes down then the entire region might as well go down in flames with it.

frankly for Palestine there was no option except the Al Aqsa flood. if they didn't do it then they would have truely been the polite victim that doesn't kick and scream when it gets slowly but surely expelled, genocided and replaced by colonizers.

 

[sheogorath]

Sucking up to israel will only get you so far. Wonder if the salafist erdocucks will keep bending over for netanyahu

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1907554200818495512