Garrison Davis

I think that sometimes we see this...

This very puerile analysis has taken hold on the left in the United States, which suggests that Israel is entirely driving the bus here, that they cajoled the United States into doing this war, and that they're telling the United States what to do, when, where, and how.

I think that's a very juvenile way of understanding this.

Hawks in the United States have wanted war with Iran for decades.

Trump talked about it in his first term.

Trump also still clearly harbors resentment for Obama, quote-unquote, getting bin Laden.

and wants a sort of similar commander-in-chief win, his confidence was significantly bolstered after the Venezuela operation.

And he thought he could effect a regime change here quickly and then extract tribute from a client state, as he appears to be doing from Delcy in Venezuela now, right?

This has not worked so far in Iran.

Israel, on the other hand, has continued with its own campaign, which is an extension of what we have seen it doing in Gaza, what we are seeing it doing in Lebanon, which seems to be to cripple any state in the region, any population in the region that opposes it, right?

But it genuinely seems that its goal here is to leave itself sort of the only functioning polity in the region and to destroy any other armed actor with very little concern for the loss of innocent life.

The United States in the last week has lost significant aviation resources after Iranian ballistic missiles struck an airbase in Saudi Arabia.

They damaged at least one E-3 AWACS aircraft and then a handful of KC-135 air-to-air refuelling aircraft.

This is not an insignificant loss.

This is half a billion dollars of aviation wiped out in a single strike.

And these are not aeroplanes that the United States has a large number of, right?

Iran also hit a Kuwaiti tanker this week.

A drone seems to have hit it off the coast of Dubai.

It caught fire.

There was potential for an oil spill, but what I'm seeing at the time of recording this is it has not been one so far.