alastair crooke has little confidence in bibi or his gang, nor do i;

Of course, a victory narrative was too valuable to be foregone. Yet nonetheless, unexplained events matter.

On Saturday, an Israeli force of some 100 aircraft attacked Iran from a stand-off position in Iraq, some 70 kilometres outside the Iranian border.

A Wall Street Journal author, Walter Russell Meade, Distinguished Fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote: “Israeli warplanes didn’t only cripple Iran’s air-defence systems and inflict painful blows on its missile-producing facilities. They also sent a message that Israel knows where Tehran’s strategic vulnerabilities are, and it can destroy them any time it wants”.

Russell Mead adduces from this reading his key point: “Military forces that have access to American military technology and intelligence-gathering capabilities can wipe the floor with militaries that rely on Moscow … American technology is the gold standard in the world of defence – even more so for a country such as Israel that has significant intelligence and technological capabilities”.

The western ‘war of imagined, created reality’ thus reaches out beyond Ukraine – to arrive in Iran.

The Narrative – U.S. tech and its Intel as ‘invincible – must be maintained. To heck with the facts. There is too much at stake to forsake it for truthfulness.

A more sober and experienced observer however, notes after four days examination, that, succinctly put:............more.....