COMMENTARY / OPINION
IRAN UPDATE, AUGUST 4, 2024 by Annika Ganzeveld, Andie Parry, Siddhant Kishore, and Nicholas Carl
Aug 4, 2024 Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET – ISW Press
The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
CTP-ISW defines the “Axis of Resistance” as the unconventional alliance that Iran has cultivated in the Middle East since the Islamic Republic came to power in 1979. This transnational coalition is comprised of state, semi-state, and non-state actors that cooperate to secure their collective interests. Tehran considers itself to be both part of the alliance and its leader. Iran furnishes these groups with varying levels of financial, military, and political support in exchange for some degree of influence or control over their actions. Some are traditional proxies that are highly responsive to Iranian direction, while others are partners over which Iran exerts more limited influence. Members of the Axis of Resistance are united by their grand strategic objectives, which include eroding and eventually expelling American influence from the Middle East, destroying the Israeli state, or both. Pursuing these objectives and supporting the Axis of Resistance to those ends have become cornerstones of Iranian regional strategy.
We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
Iran and its Axis of Resistance will most likely conduct a coordinated, large-scale drone and missile attack on Israel in response to Israel killing Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. CTP-ISW previously outlined this scenario as one of the most dangerous courses of action that Iran could pursue.[1] Iranian state media reported on August 4 that Iran and the Axis of Resistance will conduct a “quadrilateral operation” against Israel.[2] The operation would reportedly involve Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias conducting coordinated strikes on Israel at the same time as Iranian forces. Iranian state media added that Hezbollah seeks to attack Israel to retaliate for Israel killing a senior Hezbollah officer in Beirut on July 30, while the Houthis seek to retaliate against Israel for the IDF airstrike on July 20 that hit Houthi military targets in al Hudaydah, Yemen.[3] The leader of Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, Akram al Kaabi, published an image on August 4 signaling his intent to participate in an attack on Israel.[4] Three anonymous US and Israeli officials told Axios on August 4 that Iran and the Axis of Resistance could conduct their coordinate attack as soon as August 5.[5]
Iran and the Axis of Resistance will probably conduct an attack that is more escalatory than the drone and missile attack that Iran conducted against Israel in April 2024. Iran and its allies fired around 170 one-way attack drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles at Israel in the April 2024 attack. Iran designed this strike package of over 300 projectiles to inflict serious damage on Israel and sought to thereby establish deterrence. But the United States, Israel, and their allies intercepted the vast majority of projectiles, so that the Iranian attack did significantly less damage than Tehran intended.[6]
Iran could modify the April 2024 attack model in at least four ways to increase the likelihood of inflicting serious damage on Israel.
[Ed.: Excellent article!]
Saudi Journalist tells the truth about Hamas & the Palestinians [8:08 with English Translation] forwarded by Rina
What Saudi author and media personality Rawaf al-Saeen thinks of Palestinians and their cause.
Arab countries are curiously very silent about what is happening in Gaza.
They do not want to side with Hamas because they know the truth to begin with and to top it all, are anti Iran/SHIITE, to say the least.
The Abraham Accords are still strong and solid.
Holy Anger Hit Iran! Israeli F-35 Stopped Iran’s Heart There! Hezbollah Made a Mistake in Panic! [8:31]
August 4, 2024 Raptor News – In this news report, you can find information about the escalation of conflicts between Israel and Iran. It includes details of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) responding to Iran rocket attacks, indicating a deepening of the conflict in the Middle East and the potential involvement of Iran-backed groups like Hezbollah. Developments in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen are also covered. The conflicts involve the use of missiles, drones, and naval forces. Additionally, it emphasizes the close monitoring of the situation in the region by the United States, NATO, and Russia. It is noted that Putin’s administration could escalate tensions between Ukraine and Russia, and attention is drawn to military movements in critical regions on the world map. Despite efforts by air defense systems, the conflicts persist. Our news also highlights the roles of leaders such as Netanyahu, Biden, Trump, and Zelensky in crisis management.
BREAKING: Israel Braces for Iranian RETALIATION, Launches Preemptive STRIKES [17:30] Yair Pinto
Aug 4, 2024 TBN Israel – TBN Israel’s Yair Pinto reports on the Israel-Hamas War. Following the recent assassinations of key Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, Israel is preparing for a potential counter-strike from Iran. The IDF has already launched pre-emptive attacks on Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and eliminated a high-level Hamas terrorist in Gaza. With the US moving military assets into the region, Israel is bracing for a multi-front assault involving missiles, rockets, and UAVs from Iran and its proxies.
Absurd connections: Israel, North Korea and nuclear war Louis René Beres
If North Korea became a party to nuclear threats against Israel, Israel’s actual war would always be against Iran, and North Korea would be operating against Israel solely as Iran’s nuclear surrogate. Opinion.
Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd.” – Tertullian
Aug 4, 2024, 7:59 AM (GMT+3) – For conspicuous reasons, the likelihood of direct war between Israel and Iran is “high.”[1] What remains inconspicuous is that such a war could quickly or incrementally involve North Korean military assets. Even if Israel were able to keep Iran pre-nuclear, an already nuclear North Korea could still multiply and magnify Iranian aggressions. In this scenario, North Korea would function as a witting surrogate of Iran.
What arguments could support such a portentous conclusion? In a worst case scenario, Israel would find itself facing a direct military conflict with Iran’s state ally in Pyongyang, one in which Israel could lose its presumptive upper hand during competitive risk-taking. Any such loss would be the result of Israel no longer being the sole nuclear power during crisis escalations. In strategic parlance, this signifies a prospective Israeli loss of “escalation dominance.”[2]
Such calculations would be perplexing, and not for the intellectually faint-at-heart.[3] At the same time, going forward, purposeful Israeli solutions could be discoverable only by gifted strategic thinkers, not by politicians, pundits or the assorted marionettes of artificial intelligence. Regarding incentives for North Korea to undertake potentially grave risks on behalf of Iran, the most recognizable encouragements would coalesce around Iranian oil.
If Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi terror attacks on Israel should lead to direct and protracted warfare between Israel and Iran, North Korean involvement could more immediately immobilize Israel. In nuclear terms, Israel would likely be in an unfavorable position to engage Iran’s PRK proxy because Israel is a “50 target state.” Even in its still pre-nuclear iteration and without tangible North Korean backing, Iran would be a “1000+ target state” with long-range strike capabilities.
Israel could soon have to face a newly-nuclear Iran and an already-nuclear North Korea simultaneously.[4] And this is to say nothing about variously possible Russian and/or Chinese interventions undertaken for Iran, or about plausible Indian and/or Pakistani involvements.
Pakistan, a nuclear Sunni Islamic state, is improving its ties to Shiite Iran while remaining supportive of Sunni Saudi Arabia. Nuclear India, the long-time foe of Pakistan, is also strengthening its ties to Iran by way of Chabahar port.[5] Pakistan has openly embraced a “counterforce” or warfighting strategy of nuclear deterrence, one that could confront Israeli decision-makers with altogether unprecedented existential hazards.
In the final analysis, it could be left up to the United States to support Israel’s survival against Iranian, North Korean and potentially Pakistani aggressions. This conclusion would identify scenarios in which Iran-backed jihadist terror attacks[6] on Israel wind up retrospectively as the original precipitants of a regional or global nuclear war. Presently, Iranian surrogate forces are visibly operational in all Palestinian Arab territories (especially Gaza), Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Mali and Somalia.
Justice System Going After Our Soldiers is Waking up the People to the Injustice of the System [14:21] Avi Abelow
Aug 1, 2024 – Israelis have recently found out that Israel’s justice system calls released Hamas terrorists in Gaza in order to ask them about complaints about Israeli soldiers during their jail time. This is just the latest of a number of cases where the justice system has exposed itself as looking out for the rights of our barbaric terrorist enemies instead of looking out for Israelis and our holy IDF soldiers.
The HOT ZONE: July Ends with a Bang [VIDEO 55:40] PETER A. MCCULLOUGH, MD, MPH
Single Assassin Crooks Aided and Abetted by Security Team, Biden’s Awkward Withdrawal, Olympic Trans Assault
AUG 04, 2024 – Please join us this week in closing out July 2024 with our production of the Hot Zone with my co-author, true crime investigator, historian, and best-selling author John Leake. Leake’s analysis of more video coming forward on the Butler, PA mass shooting injuring former President Trump, David Dutch, James Copenhaver, and killing Corey Comperator, has several important revelations. There appears to be just one shooter, 8 shots, four of them hit human targets. Crooks was on the roof of the AGR building in plain view of local police who had weapons drawn. The roof appears to be intentionally left unsecured. Crooks was given plenty of time to set up with a rangefinder, drone, and even an upright run across the AGR building to his spot as Trump was speaking. In nearly an hour, not a single police officer or secret service person sounded the active shooter alert protocol to secure Trump and clear the venue. If even communications were out, one of the cops could have shot his gun into the air to warn everyone. They had plenty of time. Crook’s parents, coworkers, and friends are suspiciously silent as if an airtight government gag order came down on his circle. Nothing has been said about Crooks social media profile or his appearance in a BlackRock commercial on education. House and Senate investigations have not produced enough momentum to trigger a special prosecutor from the Department of Justice. Oddly, the least concerned person in the entire story appears to be Donald Trump himself who continues with the Secret Service from rally to rally; most recently he was back in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
It was mounting pressure from fellow democrats and celebrities, the Trump assassination attempt, and finally an embarrassing bout of acute COVID-19 in six-time vaccinated President Biden that prompted an awkward withdrawal from the presidential race. His first letter simply said he is dropping out. About an hour later, a more proper letter indicated he is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris as the Republican nominee for President. Team Biden had weeks if not months to plan for this transition. Thus, when it happened it looked clumsy and poorly executed.
On to the Paris Olympics where a transgender-infused opening ceremony outraged Christians as Jesus and the Last Supper was mocked by portly men and women painted bright blue and other colors pretending to be the opposite gender. Leake said they were poor advertisements for Olympic-style disciplined fitness and cautioned us not the take the bait. Later after the show, we learned of male boxers who competed against women, nearly knocking them cold and grabbing Olympic victories before stunned and outraged fans. It appears the world has lost its mind in this edition of of the Hot Zone.
Marxist Past, Present, and Future by Linda Goudsmit
Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is – CHAPTER 30
August 4, 2024
Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses asymmetric psychological and informational warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. America’s children are the primary target of the globalist predators.
The woke leftists advocating Marxist Cultural Revolution in America continue to believe in “real” socialism—Karl Marx’s perfect socialist society, the perfect communism that transcends private property. Woke young people have yet to discover that they are means, not ends, in globalism’s War on America. The woke are useful idiots, Marxist soldiers conscripted into service to collapse America from within, whose lives will be terminated once their usefulness expires. There is no place for agitators in the globalist managerial Unistate.
We all live our lives within a historical context. Understanding history is essential for making sense of the present, and for being able to anticipate the future. James Lindsay’s warning, “A Note to Young Woke People,” in his May 2, 2023, New Discourses article, “Intersectionality Is American Maoism,”[i] provides a compelling description of tomorrow for woke idealists participating in America’s Cultural Revolution today:
A Note to Young Woke People
I think you’ll find what I have to say to you mostly incomprehensible, but you need to hear it.
This is what you are participating in, whether you know it or not. This is what your schools and universities and influencers are miseducating you—brainwashing you—into. Western Maoism. Maoism with American characteristics. And this is what you need to know about where it goes. The whole philosophy is based upon the formulations of Georg W. F. Hegel’s vision for how to move History to its intended “End” (the right side of history), and what Hegel said about you is this: “History uses people and then discards them.”
As a movement Woke believes itself to be the movement of History. History is using you to move itself. It will discard you. You know how everything in Woke philosophy is “temporal,” “spatial,” and “contingent”? So are you. You are a contingency for the Woke movement. You have your time—until you don’t. When you become useless or a hindrance to the movement of History, you will be discarded. Every Marxist and Hegelian movement in history has proceeded this way, and this one will not be different. I wish you luck with that.
What you need to understand about the people you’ve been trained to see as your “enemies,” or “transphobes,” “racists,” “fascists,” “homophobes,” or whatever else is that most of the people you think are those things are not those things at all. You have been trained to hate, allegedly in the name of “stopping hate.” These people are, by and large, trying to warn you, not trying to uphold “oppression.”
What you need to know about the people in the movement you’re supporting, including your friends in the movement, is that you’re less than disposable to them. Contingent barely covers it. The Woke movement pretends to care about you—or, worse, “people who look like you”—but it does not. It is using you so its sociopathic fringe can gain power over society, using you as cannon fodder for their unconventional political warfare apparatus. Instead of living your life, growing, learning, preparing a future, you’re doing activism, for them. And they will discard you. Will. You are worse than disposable once they get power: you’re a problem.
Two Cheers for the Mossad by Rafael Bardaji
July 31, 2024 Voz – Since 1967, Israel’s strategic and military orientation gradually marginalized the option of preemptive strikes, and anticipation gave way to a defensive concept that essentially relied on the ability to discover what the enemy was up to, rely on warning signs and be able to react in time.
This system, as is logical, placed the emphasis on good — excellent — intelligence, both via external, internal and military channels. And this system, as we know, dramatically blew up on Oct. 7, when Hamas, against all expectations from Israel, launched an invasion on Israeli soil in a spree of blood, barbarism and destruction. There are still many today who wonder how such a failure of intelligence was possible, unable to correctly interpret the signals coming out of Gaza and prevent such a large-scale attack. As in the U.S. with Al Qaeda on 9/11, I imagine that part of the responsibility lies in groupthink, lack of imagination and bureaucratic reluctance to confront disruptive options.
The fact that all the agencies involved in intelligence on Hamas thought the same thing did not set off any alarm bells; quite the contrary.
It should be remembered that after the tragic surprise of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, Israel instituted profound changes in order to avoid further surprises. There was, for example, the creation of a unit of “devil’s advocate” intelligence, charged with challenging commonly accepted assumptions, scenarios and ideas. Likewise, different organizations were empowered to avoid an intelligence monopoly based on the idea that with more eyes, less would escape or go unnoticed.
But as we also know after Oct. 7, when you cry wolf many times, people stop paying attention. And intelligence had taken the devil’s advocate approach as just another quip, not as an element to keep paying real attention to. Likewise, the fact that all the agencies involved in intelligence on Hamas thought the same thing did not set off any alarm bells; quite the contrary. But we well know that when all the generals think the same, there is a problem.
Oct. 7 was, therefore, much more than a blow to Israeli society and the institutions charged with defending it. It was a torpedo to Israel’s waterline, to the idea of an infallible Israel in its intelligence operations and to the idea of an invincible Israel. And that is what it is fighting against not only in Gaza, but in the north against Hezbollah, in Syria against Iranian militias, in Yemen against the Houthis (who have agreed to sacrifice their own country for the sake of Tehran’s expansionist strategy) and also against the Iranian regime that threatens the very existence of the Jewish state.
It is in this context of existential questioning that the work and successes achieved by the whole of Israeli intelligence, from the Aman (military intelligence) to the Mossad (external intelligence), passing through the Shabak (internal intelligence), must be understood and appreciated.
Jonathan Pollard: TRICKS Up Israel’s Sleeve? [9:14]
AUGUST 2, 2024 Machon Shilo
Jonathan Pollard: Would Turkey Invade Israel? [17:57]
AUGUST 3, 2024 Machon Shilo – Discussion between Jewish hero Jonathan Pollard and the head of Machon Shilo, Rabbi David Bar-Hayim
Tehran Meets DIVINE JUSTICE! Series of Consecutive AIRSTRIKES On Iran’s Most Secret Airbase! Israel [9:03]
AUGUST 3, 2024 Baron Global – In this news report, you can find information about the escalation of conflicts between Israel and Iran. It includes details of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) responding to Iran rocket attacks, indicating a deepening of the conflict in the Middle East and the potential involvement of Iran-backed groups like Hezbollah. Developments in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen are also covered. The conflicts involve the use of missiles, drones, and naval forces. Additionally, it emphasizes the close monitoring of the situation in the region by the United States, NATO, and Russia. It is noted that Putin’s administration could escalate tensions between Ukraine and Russia, and attention is drawn to military movements in critical regions on the world map. Despite efforts by air defense systems, the conflicts persist. Our news also highlights the roles of leaders such as Netanyahu, Biden, Trump, and Zelensky in crisis management.
