caitlin's first sentence below sums up my feelings and thoughts about the iran/israel game;

It’s like if someone ran up and sucker-punched somebody at the bar, and then everyone started screaming at the guy who just got punched that he’d better leave the other guy alone and stop being a bully. 

Iran appears to be poised to launch an attack on Israel in retaliation for the Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which killed 16 people including multiple Iranian military officers. Iranian forces have already seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran continues to vow that it will soon retaliate for the embassy attack at an undisclosed time.

Iran has reportedly said through Oman that the scope of the attack will be calibrated to avoid escalation into an all-out regional conflict. Reuters reports that Washington does not expect the retaliatory attack to be large enough to draw the US into war, so both Washington and Tehran appear to be saying basically the same thing about what’s coming. So as things stand right now it seems both sides see it as unlikely that this will be the spark to ignite a new war of profound horror in the middle east.

What’s really interesting about this situation right now is how western empire managers and propagandists have been framing the coming Iranian retaliation to suggest that Iran is about to attack Israel out of the blue, completely unprovoked. As though bombing an embassy would not be considered an extreme act of war by any nation anywhere on earth.........more........