On the impending war with Iran

1. One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg. And then everything went wrong

2. Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong

3. It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you usually end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking

4. Now another thing to understand is that the US Middle Eastern policy has very little to do with foreign policy at all. It is a part of the domestic political games, and is heavily influenced by a very weird form of the domestic identity politics.

5. Unconditional, boundless, unquestioning support of Israel - again, primarily driven by the domestic identity politics in the United States rather than by any rational considerations of the foreign policy - causes an extremely corrupting effect on the Israeli state and society

6. At this point in history, Israel is addicted to tough guy posturing, and in that posturing it heavily depends upon the United States, and the US determination to fund and support its every operation, defensive or offensive

7. Unconditional U.S. support causes a corrupting effect on the Israeli politics stripping it of every incentive to normalise its relations with neighbours and with its own subject, non-citizen population numbering millions

8. At this point, the US may very well get dragged into a war serving no other purpose but to let Netanyahu stay in power. Due to the unconditionality of its support, the superpower is becoming a leverage in the Israeli domestic political games, and a leverage incentivising the government to pursue the most hawkish course of action possible

9. No rational policy in the Middle East is possible without the fundamental reevaluation of relations with Israel. Which is going to happen - in due course - as the generation that has been attached to it for a mix of religious & ideological reasons is ageing and dying

10. Younger generations do not share this religious & quasi-religious faith of the elders, which means that a bizarre form of identity politics that has been defining the course of the US policy in the Middle East for decades is soon to expire
    
    (That means somewhere between one to two decades)

11. Best thing Israel could do - within this time span that lasts only as long, as the last boomer lives, and no longer - is normalise relations with its own subject population in Palestine. And for that to happen, it will have to enfranchise its subjects, there is no way around it

12. And the best thing the United States could do is minimise the damage from the reckless, meaningless adventures in the Middle East, dictated by an irrational attachment to a foreign country