3 Comments

"Soon, it will no longer be possible to make sense of the new paradigm with the logic of the old."

Depends on which new paradigm one is attempting to decipher and which old paradigm's logic one is using.

As a battle for power and influence in the Middle East, the events of the past few days make a lot of sense.

People overlook that Hamas has always been the second rate Palestinian jihadist group behind Hezbollah. Now Hezbollah is taking a back seat to Hamas.

For its part, Iran benefits from a competition between Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two ramping up operations in a bid for influence strengthens Iran's hand in the Middle East. Using the Palestinians as proxy fighters neutralizes Saudi Arabia to a large degree.

Which doesn't mean things aren't on a short road to Armageddon. The Great Powers in Europe did not anticipate the orgy of destruction that WW1 became, and blundered into it in spite of themselves.

The new paradigms are never so terribly different from the old.

Expand full comment

A woman I know in Israel said this was a pretext to go to war with Iran, in her opinion. People as pawns on a war-game chess board...

Expand full comment

Plausible! Not proven, not necessarily the likeliest of all scenarios... but certainly plausible.

Expand full comment