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by kaveh_h 71 days ago
Who directly in this war has conducted them rationally at at all times? Did Iran drip feed missiles to Hezbollah and Yemen, perhaps. That sort of tactic was used at a much larger scale when US provided arms to Iraq against Iran in their war in the 80s. Israel attacks against it’s neighbors and caused mass refugee flows is also mostly a result of UK, US and France’s foreign policy in the early 20th century when Israel was being established. Israel funded by US of 300 billion dollars is also a kind of proxy.

It’s hard for most people to have actual objective views and see things from multiple perspectives and your statement is showing clear bias in this regards.
1 comments
JumpCrisscross 71 days ago
> Who directly in this war has conducted them rationally at at all times?

At all times? Nobody. Until last summer, the most strategically buggered was Hamas. Their miscalculations directly lead to a weaker position and a negative return on their goals.

That changed following last year’s airstrikes—then it was Iran. (Though in relative terms, probably still Hamas.) Since this war, it’s might be the U.S.

> That sort of tactic was used at a much larger scale when US provided arms to Iraq against Iran

We didn’t maintain Iraqi arms as a deterrent against Iran. Drip feeding arms into a war of attrition to be a pest has strategic rationale. Drip feeding arms, arms meant to intimidate through the prospect of overwhelming force no less, into air defenses below replacement rates is just dumb.

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fc417fc802 71 days ago
> Drip feeding arms, arms meant to intimidate through the prospect of overwhelming force no less, into air defenses below replacement rates is just dumb.

That probably depends on the cost of the arms, the cost of the interceptors, and any number of other externalities or indirect goals. If you can reliably induce high end interceptors to fire against cheap rockets (granted, that's a big if) you are definitely winning the immediate economic exchange.

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JumpCrisscross 71 days ago
> If you can reliably induce high end interceptors to fire against cheap rockets (granted, that's a big if) you are definitely winning the immediate economic exchange

Tactically sensible. Strategically foolish.

The deterrent value of Hezbollah’s arsenal was in overwhelming Israeli defenses and causing loss of life. That is what democracies, first and foremost, respond to. (Second being cost of living.) Spending a potent deterrent to play economic attrition with Israel, a rich country with a richer friend, was stupid.

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