If Israel became a smoking and waterless ruin —  would the Middle East tumult continue?

© 2026 Peter Free

 

15 July 2026

 

 

Being able to correctly observe and rationally think . . .

 

. . . are the primary keys to constructing sound geopolitical strategy

 

 

It appears that Iran, Russia and China . . .

 

. . . lack both those qualities.

 

If patsy-oriented weakness of mind had legs, those three would be it.

 

 

In Paul Craig Roberts' words . . .

 

. . . here in excerpts, regarding Iran. Notice the essay's title:

 

 

I explained that the tit-for-tat game that Iran and Washington are playing works perfectly for Israel. Israel is the source of the violence.

 

When Washington attacks Iran, Iran should attack the country responsible–Israel.

 

If Israel was bearing the cost, Israel would have some incentive to leave Lebanon alone and to abide by the Memorandum of Understanding instead of undermining the peace negotiations, which Israel has successfully done.

 

© 2026 Paul Craig Roberts, There Are Two Ever-Widening Wars Bringing the World to Its Armageddon Moment, paulcraigroberts.org (13 July 2026)

 

 

This is obvious

 

Yet Iran, like similar prey around the world, continues its self-draining, allegedly 'proportionate' game.

 

When survival is on the line, proportionality should go out the window. One attacks the offender full force.

 

Can you imagine a honey badger submitting to a lion's attack?

 

Instead, Iran has been lackadaisically extending this war forward in time, allowing Israel and the United States to slowly bleed Iran to death.

 

Exactly as the US has been draining Russia and China during recent decades. With similarly 'restrained' counter-responses from both of those nations.

 

Evidently, time substitutes for courage in those two leaderships' complacently convoluted, dither-prone minds.

 

 

How strategically intelligent nations would cope with the United States

 

What follows is an objectivity-based international perspective. I am certain that American military leaders have considered it.

 

At present, the US is grossly overextended, economically and geographically.

 

In truth, the United States is in as exposed a position of weakness, as it has been since rising to globally supreme power.

 

With the onset of the Americans' war on Iran, a strategically more capable Russia would have inserted some of its submarine fleet into the affected waters.

 

China would have raised its submarine and surface fleets to active battle status in the seas surrounding the US-encircled components of the Chinese mainland.

 

And when Trump spouts off again about destroying Iran, Russia and China would eliminate the US Navy's surface, and possibly submarine, presences in both regions.

 

Simultaneously, a more adept Iran (than the one that now exists) would obliterate Israel's capacity to feed and water itself.

 

Israel would vanish as a functioning Core of Satanic Evil.

 

 

The United States would then have to contemplate . . .

 

. . . whether retaliating against all three nations in a full-scale nuclear manner is a good idea — given that a significant portion of the Americans' logistical strength would have already been sunk and shot down.

 

Recall, regarding this, that remaining US submarines could not substitute for surface vessels in carrying troops, weapons and aircraft around.

 

This would leave the option of nuclear retaliation by US ICBMs and its remaining submarines, on the table.

 

However, once American nukes rose into the sky, Russia and China's missiles would do the same.

 

The United States would disappear as a power of any kind.

 

 

Would satisfying Trump's spite . . .

 

. . . via starting a fully engaged nuclear war, be a satisfactory strategic way forward?

 

Or would the American military recognize that it cannot take on the combined and intelligently led military might of those three nations and still win.

 

Motivated by this kind survival-based reasoning, a military-led coup might decide to throttle-down America's neocon-led lunacy.

 

 

The moral? — When the matter is existential . . .

 

. . . stupidity, complacence, and cowardice have to be abandoned.

 

Stalin and Zhukov knew that.

 

Why has everyone afterward been so appallingly dumb?

 

Does wealth breed greed, spinelessness, and complacent states of unawareness?