The actions on the US-Israel side so far (deeply cutting non-defense discretionary spending, decoupling from international trade, assassinating secular leaders who can be replaced, bombing three locations which can be rebuilt) only make sense as the near-term prelude to a major ground invasion. If the invasion doesn't happen the US will be left with a self-inflicted economic growth wound and no way to explain it, and Israel will be left with an adversary that believes itself to be facing an existential risk, that is able to enrich uranium, and that would not trust any treaty negotiations.
Realistically speaking I don't see how we would get credible evidence that there would not be a permanent war, not when so many people have been trying to create one for so long. Who would be able to promise that?
I can't give you a prediction with timing either, because Israel would have to claim that Iran had rebuilt its facilities for the US to get pulled back in again, and an outsider has no way of telling when they would choose to do that.
Did you believe Trump and his people when they campaigned on not attacking Iran while claiming repeatedly that Harris would if elected. If so did can you admit you were wrong and need to adjust your priors?
The self-inflicted economic wound is nothing more than Trumpnomics. If the numbers look bad he will just say they are fake or solved by GDP growth or tariff revenue.
Iran already knows that Israel can decapitate them at will, but not occupy them. Nothing has changed with these strikes.
Bombing nuclear facilities and killing scientists kicks the can down the road and that has worked for decades. But the US/Israel coalition is also trying to negotiate or orchestrate regime change, which could provide a more lasting impact.
The population of Israel is 1/9 the population of Iran. The population of the US in 2003 was 10x the population of Iraq. Huge difference in what it takes to actually attempt to occupy a foreign country with a hostile populace.
While I am first to admit that my basic assumptions have been severely tested by the last news cycle, I do think it is very naive to think this is the end of hostilities.
Both the US and Israel currently have leaders that have to be seen as "wartime leaders" to extend their rule beyond what their respective country's laws usually permit, because otherwise they both very likely will end up in prison.
This is not true of Bibi. No law limits how much he can serve. The only legal block for him remaining in power is that he's undergoing various criminal trials, which may or may not end with him being found guilty.
There is, of course, a lot of pressure for him to resign or for various other things to happen that he is currently managing to put on hold due to the war, but that's legal, and doesn't require wartime.
It is true of Bibi that he should be in prison instead of leading Israel, for many reasons. There's speculation that he knew about Oct 7th before it happened, and let it happen so that he could maintain his power. Now it's war with Iran. I'm really not sure how far he would go to stay in power.
I admire your faith in the system. Neither party wants to see presidents prosecuted, because basically every president remaining alive could be easily convicted of a slough of war crimes and other crimes against humanity for their actions in perpetuating the American Empire.
This isn't even to say they are individually imperialists, but every last one, as soon as they take the oath of office, immediately begins getting their hands soaked, drenched in blood. They can't not. That's what the system does and that's all it can do. And the few candidates who ran on the idea that that should be changed were roundly rejected by their associated party, and an independent has received, at most, 5% of the vote?
Nah. Trump was never going to see anything, even for his particularly egregious offenses. I knew it in 2018 and I still know it. If he ever faces the most meager iota of consequences I'll eat my favorite hat, and post video here.
Except that Trump was being actively prosecuted when he was re-elected. By the DOJ, by a special prosecutor, and by the Atlanta DA. None of these were performative, none were condemned by the party in charge, all had a fairly high probability of eventual conviction.
"War crimes" and "crimes against humanity" sound a lot like offenses to so-called international law (cough, treaties).
> By the DOJ, by a special prosecutor, and by the Atlanta DA. None of these were performative, none were condemned by the party in charge, all had a fairly high probability of eventual conviction.
What does that matter when getting elected was apparently all he needed to dodge the entire thing? There's no evidence at all that said prosecution will resume when (if?) he leaves the White House, he's had free reign to demolish the case against him while in power, and again, all of this hinges on the Justice system actually holding a president accountable for crimes, international or otherwise, which has yet to be done, ever.
Even NIXON didn't actually get prosecuted for anything and (at least before Trump) he was the most crooked president ever, and his crooked actions in office persist to this day in the form of the war on drugs. When you're president, apparently, crime is just legal. It was for Nixon, and it has thus far for Trump.
Nixon was going to be impeached and removed from office. The House Judiciary Committee had already voted to impeach, so the motion to impeach was headed for the full House. He resigned because he knew he couldn't stop it.
It's true that he wasn't going to be imprisoned, but he wasn't going to "dodge the entire thing". I don't know whether he would have been prosecuted or not; Ford pardoned him before we got a chance to find out.
> What does that matter when getting elected was apparently all he needed to dodge the entire thing?
Well it is relevant to your statement that neither party wants to see a president get convicted. And understanding there is some wiggle room in your exact phrasing, the dems presumably wouldn't have permitted or endorsed the prosecution if they didn't want a conviction.
> getting elected was all he needed
I mean, getting elected president of the United States is probably one of the hardest things to do. I don't like that he has immunity while holding office but the voters used their authority over the justice system to excuse him. It sucks, but it means the DOJ and Atlanta DA office didn't get their day in court. Well, DA Willis kinda shot herself in the foot, but that's beside the point.
> There's no evidence at all that said prosecution will resume
That doesn't change the fact that he was being prosecuted and in all likelihood would have been convicted of numerous felonies. None of the facts will change in four years except that Trump will either be dead or pardon himself.
> Even NIXON didn't actually get prosecuted for anything
He wasn't convicted because he was pardoned. This is a good example to your earlier point of the US not wanting to suffer the disgrace of a president being convicted. But that has limits that we witnessed with Trump. It's unfair to say the justice system won't hold presidents accountable when it doesn't actually get the opportunity due to a pardon from the executive or, in Trump's case, the will of the electorate.
I suspect the Biden DOJ miscalculated badly. They wanted to let Trump be the convicted as late in the 2024 election cycle as possible, in order to mess up the Republican campaign. (Almost a mirror image of what happened to the Democrats when Biden decided not to run.) But Trump was able to delay the process until it was too late.
If my suspicion is right, that was one of the more spectacular political miscalculations in American history. If I'm wrong... well, maybe the DOJ was investigating and stuff, but from the outside it looks like they wasted a year that they really could have used.
It would be completely on-brand for the dems to slow roll the prosecutions only to have the entire thing blow up in their faces and let a criminal off the hook.
That said, the Jan 6 prosecutions followed the traditional, deliberate bottom-up approach. The classified documents case was derailed by a maverick Trump judge but would eventually see a jury. The Georgia state charges were hamstrung by their chosen RICO path and Willis's ill-advised romantic entanglement. It could be that Biden and the DNC stayed out of it in a deliberate attempt to take the high road and/or avoid handing Trump a political defense.
On January 7 everyone thought Trump's political career was over and that he could only delay justice. Alas, he set up a very large inflation time bomb in 2020 and the rest is history.
