would appreciate some news links / articles to these two.
The Houthi rebels on the the north western border are conducting an insurgency against the state and across the border in to KSA. Supposedly they are maginalised, blah blah. It is Iran that is supporting the rebels with arms and hezbollah fighters via the coast. KSA navy is trying to blockade the coast line and there are Iranian ships in the region there under the pretense of Somalian piracy but are supplying the smugglers with information as to where the KSA ships are.
It is Iran expanding itself in the region and creating distractions so other players have their hands full leaving Iran more room to do its thing at home.
Turkey is expanding in power, Russia is resurgent. Turkey and Armenia have historical issues (some little thing about genocide, no biggy) and have had closed borders for ages. Azerbaijan is Turkey's ally and Russia basically supports Armenia. Armenia owns/controls an enclave in Azer called Nagorno Karabach where there have been countless battles already fought.
Turkey has always said that it would never improve relations with Armenia until they sorted out NK with Azer. However lately there has been movement and Turk wants to be friends with Arm and Azer is afraid that it will be forgotten. Azer has been making substantial wealth from energy sales (think BTC and Iran) and has been doing a lot of military spending (from the Russians who are playing both sides).
Turkey doesn't want an enemy on its doorstep as it spends the next few decades expanding in the region, Azer doesn't want to get left out in the cold , Turkey doesn't want shit with Russia and in the middle of all this you have the US fucking around in Georgia who had a war last August.
You can see the tensions in the regional dynamic, yes? Azer is threatening to launch a major offensive in NK if Turkey looks like they will desert them and that means that Russia will be dragged in to it on Arm's side. Azer is looking to join the CIS to try and nullify the Russia threat....., etc.
Do you see anyone really stepping in here in a regional sense? Obviously Russia and the US will get all puffy chested on the issue, but I have the impression the Arab world is quite partial to the idea of the Israel giving those uppity Persians a touch up. Possibly because the Israeli war machine will be smashing someone else for a change, and probably because the Persians spend so much time and money stirring trouble in Arab affairs. Will the response come from Iran only or will Hezbollah and Hamas stand by the country that funds and trains them?
And if the trouble does start, will the US be able to abstain? They have all these UAV drones in Afghanistan, the temptation to fly a few over the border into Iran.......
Israel doesn't have the military capability to go it alone. IT won't get fly over rights from Iraq, Jordan and Turkey and doesn't have the capacity to do it without. Any and all sea going vessels need Egypt's permission to traverse the Suez, which has been done recently but can be pulled at any time.
Short end is that Israel doesn't have the capacity to go it alone and needs to drag the US in. But, they have the ability to do that. As soon as Israel launches the first missile the Iranians will mine the Straits of Hormuz and just as the world is recovering from the financial crisis oil goes up to $250 a barrel. The US cannot allow that and are drawn in. Plus, Iran will never accept that Israel isn't acting without the US.
So the US has told the Israelis that if there is no diplomatic solution there will be crippling sanctions come december. Those sanctions are cutting the supply of petrol. Iran has lots of oil and gas but it has very limited refining capacity and hardly any of its infrastructure runs on gas (it exports gas to Azer who turns it in to electricity and sells it back to Iran).
However Russia has a beef with the US. Ever since the fall of the USSR the US has been fucking around in the area that Russia sees as its zone of exclusive influence (Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Romania/Moldova, Former Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Georgia and to an extent Afghanistan..., which then places bases and supply routes through Central Asia). Russia wants the US to GTFO and uses Iran as a lever to do that.
Russia supplies nuke technology to Iran (Bushehr and thousands of scientists), is threatening to send S-300 air defense systems that make air strikes on Iranian nuke sites extremely difficult and offers Iran veto support in the UN Sec. Council. So when the US tries to place UN sanctions on Iran cutting their petrol supply, Russia vetoes the UN bill. So US says fuck it, us and the Europeans will create our own sanctions regime cutting our supplies and if any other company from Malaysia, Switzerland or whoever tries to ignore us we will make sure that no bank lends them money, no insurance company will insure them and most ports in the world won't accept them.
Russia says "yeah? Give a fuck! I'll use my own oil supplies, my own trucks, trains and pipelines, own insurance companies and do it myself". At this point China takes courage and does the same. Thus, the US efforts fall apart and Russia says that if the US wants Russia to stop supplying nukes, stop supplying defenses and to come on board with the sanctions the US has to GTFO of Poland and Georgia (if the US does that the Baltics and all the others get cold feet and start friendlying up to Russia again as they have long memories of what it was like only 20 years ago under Russia if you tried to resist).
So there's the pickle.
Israel CAN NOT live with a nuclear armed Iran, nor can it live with an S-300 armed Iran. Israel's red lines are literally months away and they have no choice but to act. If they do, Iran mines the H. Straits and says to US to call its dogs off or oil costs will kill the world and US either has to go in head first or make MAJOR compensations in Eurasia that will set in progress a massive shift in the region that sees Russia turn back to pre-1989 strengths (to a point).
Iran also has a few other responses up its sleeve. IT can try its best and do a decent job of destabilising Iraq at a very fragile time (especially politically speaking as they can barely agree on an election format, the Kurds want to break away and you still have Islamists doing their thing..., not to mention a nice long border that their troops can roll over). Iran can also destabilse Afghanistan to a large degree really fucking with the Americans. Hezbollah also has a significant amount of shelf attacks that they can pull out at any time in South America, the US, Canada, Africa and more than likely Australia to target Jewish and US interests.
The Hezbollah/Hamas angle is an afterthought. If Israel is existentially threatened there will be no care for anything and Lebanon will be a pill of bricks and bodies, same goes for Gaza. You have to remember ANY ACTION IN IRAN WILL NOT INCLUDE TROOPS OVER AND ABOVE SPECIAL FORCES TEAMS.
Any attack on Iran will be from the air and the ocean with small amounts of spec ops in country. That leaves Israel free to deal with Hezb/Hamas and the US free to continue on in Afghanistan and deal with what Iran throws at it in Iraq. However, the US would much rather this all just go away as it needs to deal with Afghan/Pak and wants the fuck out of Iraq. US has economy and health care issues to deal with and doesn't want to waste any more time and money in wars.
As for the rest of the Arabs, of course KSA wants Iran fucked up because they are mortal Shia - Sunni enemies. Iraq is partially now a Shia state, Pakistan is so fucked up itself it can't afford an opinion, Israel is doing its best to drag Syria away from Iran and Hezb and is dangling the Golan in front of them, Egypt has relations with ISrael and would like to be the Arab leader themselves and Turkey is a natural competitor to Iran and wants to lead the Islamic world in a few decades. So no one will come to their aid and most of all, no one wants the fuckers to have nukes because then Iran will have it over them!
However, these countries still have their own domestic concerns and can't be seen in league with the infidels killing other Muslims or even tacitly supporting it. The only thing going here is the Shia Sunni divide but that only goes so far.
I really couldn't be fucked proof reading all of that. Appolagees if their is any speeling mistaks, grammer errers or confewsing for the bits that are strukchural complycated.
