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Theory time: Israel is pushing very hard to start a regional war with US involvement before US elections so the next president (the one that won’t be a zombie presumably) has no choice but to continue.
This missile attack is a dramatic warning that Iran can decimate oil production and other regime critical infrastructure in every single American ally in the region. Iranian leadership has been very consistently acting like they are aware that they won’t survive a war with the US.
Didn't they spend the major fraction of their most modern ones just now?
If anything, the expenditure of materiel means that they have diminished capacity as compared to before.
I highly doubt they spent any noticeable fraction of their total capacity yesterday. This is homemade gear not some artefact they bought from soviets half a century ago (like most US enemy gear)
By most estimates this was 5-10% of their supply.
I am interested if you can link some sources
Iran launched 180 missiles. Their total stockpile is estimated around 3000. That would be 6% of the total.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-hezbollah-conflict/card/how-big-is-iran-s-missile-arsenal--earTfWyIeIJgWnm5UHor
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Doesn't really seem to bear out. It mostly seems like Israel has decided "today's the day!" Factors have converged to mean that world-wide support for Israel is likely at its peak, at least for the next 20 odd years. The Booomers and their record-highs of not hating Jews are dying off, Europe is Islamicizing with shocking rapidity, and the American left have adopted identity politics that mean Israel will never again be as supported as it is today, barring a tectonic shift.
So, if your world-wide support is almost guaranteed to decline over the next 20-40 years, but there are still existential threats to your people's survival, do you (A) keep hoping that a post-WW2 UN-led drum circle kumbaya session will resolve everything, or (B) go balls to the wall and beat the everloving shit out of your enemies to the point where it will take them decades to present a real threat again? This calculus likely took place some time after Oct7, because Oct7 provided Israel with casus belli nobody rational could gainsay, and yet Western leftists tried to gainsay it! Articles about how "Israel shouldn't invade Gaza over this" or "won't someone think of the poor Palestinians" were coming out on October 8th. If you're Israeli, how can you not see that and think "right, fuck it, time to settle this shit."
Is Israel trying to get America involved? I doubt it. Israel doesn't want American boots on the ground. Other than some coupons at American defense contractors and maybe some air cover against Iranian missile strikes, Israel doesn't really need much American intervention. Which I know will make the resident JooPosters very angry, but it's true. Israel borders six countries. Or four countries and two territories. Whichever. In no particular order these six are; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, The West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon. Egypt is perfectly content with the status quo. Jordan is perfectly content with the status quo. Syria is a war-torn shit-hole that couldn't invade a wet paper bag much less a foreign country. The West Bank is very firmly under Israel's thumb and will not be getting out from under it any time soon. Gaza has been turned into so much rubble, and Hamas' leadership gutted. Which only leaves... Lebanon. By which I mean Hezbollah. The Lebanese government basically doesn't exist. It definitely doesn't exist in Southern Lebanon, which is where Hezbollah (or Hizbollah, or Hiz'b'allah, or whatever spelling you want to use) operates. In short order Israel has destroyed Hezbollah's leadership, crippled their ability to coordinate, and put thousands of their fighters in the hospital. Without so much as exposing a single IDF reservist to danger.
Will the invasion of South Lebanon go well? Maybe, maybe not. But the build-up sure as shit hasn't gone well for Hezbollah.
PEW Research's current estimates are rather lower, though. (ie. 10,9 % for France in 2050, 11,3 % for UK in 2050 etc. - higher than now but not in line of the 2017 study).
From your link:
So while this article is newer, it is using older data.
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How are they lower? That link says it's 9% the 2017 study puts 10% muslim around 2035 in the "high immigration" projection. It looks much higher to me.
What numbers are you comparing, exactly? If you compare them country-to-country then numbers in at least the major countries (France, UK, Italy, Germany) are below the medium estimate of 2017 for 2050 in the 2022 version.
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I mean how much Islam is going to change the calculation here. Depending on the rest of the makeup of Europe, 11% can be a good sized voting block. Especially if the rest of the population isn’t vocally pro-Israel (and secular people generally are at best indifferent and at worst pro-Palestine). That 11% is laser focused on Israel, and will absolutely insist that any party that wants its vote must support Palestine over Israel. If the rest don’t care enough to make this conflict the center of their voting decisions, then Europe will likely support Palestine simply to capture the Islamic Vote.
That's pretty uncertain, many Muslims don't vote at all and the rest aren't, as a group, that focused on Israel/Palestine (despite the efforts and a drop in share a majority of them still voted for Labour in 2024 UK elections AFAIK).
However, my point was really just mentioning that the Pew projections for Muslim percentages in 2050 have been updated, something that many probably don't know about.
Labour MPs in Muslim-heavy constituencies are probably very vocally pro-Hamas, though. I know it's more typical to vote for the party rather than the MP, but maybe it's different when it comes to Muslims in the UK?
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They want US bunker busters sufficient to get at Iranian reactors under mountains. That is the existential threat. The only way Israel can get to the reactors is to use nukes. Israel's terminal value is preventing Iran from getting nukes. Forcing the US's hand is the only plausible way this happens. To this end they are incentivized to continue escalating in the hope that US has to join, and attack Iran itself, at least from the air.
But Israel already has American bunker-busters, and the F-35s to bypass Iranian air defense. If Israel really wanted to drop a bomb on an Iranian reactor, they could.
I believe that there are degrees of bunker buster missiles. What they have isn't sufficient to get through the mountains near Tehran.
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It seems to me the main risk for Israel is getting dragged into another ground war that ends in a stalemate like 2006, or even a loss. Think Iraq insurgency. Probably why Hizbullah hasn't done too much in response in order to goad them to do such a thing (well, also because they are paralyzed with fear and communications issues). But I don't think either America nor Israel want Americans to physically show up. What the US just did, which is move another carrier nearby, is all Israel actually wants from us (other than maybe more weapons, but those are already flowing, and to not be too critical/pushy, which the admin is mostly doing). Not even Iran actually wants to duke it out -- they thought (wrongly, whoops) that Hizbullah would be enough of a deterrent or proxy.
So yeah. Experience says that the most likely result is more of the same. But if I were an Israeli military planner, and I weren't haunted by my constant skirting around in the rough neighborhood of war crimes (they are toeing the line more than my personal ethics allow but less than genocidal) I would be to avoid going in on foot if at all possible. Politically, it's a bit tougher because of the ~60k semi-permanently evacuated from border regions.
Israel just needs to get the shia population moved to Syria. Loudly threatening ethnic cleansing, or getting local proxies to do it, probably accomplishes this goal as long as they're winning the ground war. Hezbollah can't fight once their base of support is relocated.
Although I wouldn’t put it past Israeli politicians to think about this, I find it a very unlikely scenario
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2006 was one month, then the UN brokered a ceasefire to effect 1701. If both sides adhered to 1701 the war would not be seen as a unilateral victory. Hezbollah being duplicitous in its negotiations reflects poorly on the UN, not on Israeli military.
The previous major effort where Israel got its shit pushed in, it was Yom Kippur. For the first few days, Egypt orchestrated a masterful breach of the Israeli defenses along the Suez, then fought a competent (by their standards) ground campaign against the Israelis. That the Egyptians were losing this ground campaign even before their disaster is ignored, and the Israelis, like any competent entity, pivoted and responded in light of changing facts on the ground.
So too would 2006, had it gone on. Urban peer combat is horrendous, and the Israeli advantage in firepower is negated in such a war. Disciplined guerillas are notoriously difficult to react against following an ambush, so it is uncertain whether an Israeli pivot would have necessarily succeeded, but to claim 2006 is proof of Hezbollahs immunity is insane.
1701, if abided by, was a win condition for the Israelis. Hezb and Hamas all know they cannot actually stand up to even a modest IDF operation. Jihadi group terrorists waste immense amounts of money buying uniforms to cosplay as soldiers, making dramatic videos of themselves in balaclavas and camo ready to fight the dirty jew. In all the combat footage of Hezb or Hamas fighters, not a SINGLE uniform has been seen. Bitching about IDF heavyhanded policing and airstrikes entirely glosses over the total failure of Hamas and Hezb to put up the barest of token resistance. The Iraqis at least had the dignity to die in uniform when fighting the US, and ISIS wears vests to identify themselves clearly.
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