[OgsyedIE]

Iran is unlikely to target food and water without being further backed into a corner, since the escalation would mean reciprocal strikes (possibly independently by the KSA air force) on the Kharg and Bandar Abbas export terminals, which have so far avoided being targeted.

[oraphalous]

What corner is there left to be backed into when the the US is trying to assassinate you?

[OgsyedIE]

Oh, certainly the surviving leadership are backed into corners, but they are individual people.

The nation-state is not backed into a corner. For one thing, the west has refrained from using CBRN weapons on urban centres.

[vintermann]

Israel will not tolerate an economically developed or at all democratic Iran. They want Iran to be where Gaza is and Libanon is heading. It's not just the leaders who have nothing to lose.

[applicative]

You would think the hebrew population is just exhausted and hardened and driven a little crazy by several generations of 'deathtoisrael' 'deathtoisrael' drilled into the brains of millions of schoolchildren every year - each /year/'s school intake of impressionable brains is larger than the total world Jewish population. In the end the hebrew-speakers' response will not be simply rational as they are as much mentally affected as the iran citizenry, which is orders of magnitude larger.

It's typical the world community has put up with the naked genocidal intent of the Iran government - which is by now in a sense woven into its constitution and mystical-apocalyptic self-conception - as if it were a musical curious style -- as they build militias saying the same on every border, financing the bizarre suicide campaigns of early 2000s etc. to stop a 2 state solution and keep the party going.

With 'deathtoamerica deathtoamerica' noblesse oblige requires us to pretend it is merely comical. But the 'uppity, arrogant' jewish state is microscopic by comparison with titanic Persian Empire. The disproportion (80x) is far more extreme than even USSR or USA v Afghanistan or USA v Vietnam (30x.

[g8oz]

You're talking about Iran's genocidal intent as if Israel has not just finished actually committing one. And their supposed exhaustion from hate from their neighbors - The truth is they are gleefully hyper aggressive and hyper violent and ultra racist as well.

[Jensson]

Israel doesn't have the power to choose here though, Israel is far from strong enough to invade Iran so it doesn't matter what they think.

[tim-tday]

Nothing like impending death to make a man act like he has nothing to lose.