Netanyahu Wanted Wider War; Houthis Shatter His Containment Plans

Trump Struck Iran… Then Panic Took Over

Right, so the tangerine toddler Donald Trump has managed the rather impressive feat of taking a helicopter incident near the Strait of Hormuz, using it as his excuse to hit Iran again, so much for claiming he wanted out of this mess, and then watching US-linked bases across Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan come under fire. Trump wanted a strong response, Trump ordered strikes on Iran, and Iran answered by pushing America's regional military network straight into the firing line. Bahrain and Kuwait reported air defences active, Jordan got pulled into the same story, and the immediate official line from those states was that attacks had been intercepted or repelled, with no immediate confirmed casualties or damage. So let's get the first thing straight before anything else, because the headline is not that Trump looked tough as he would love it be. The headline is that Trump's show of strength left US positions having to defend themselves, and that's a rather different story, isn't it? Now, the Apache helicopter story. I touched on this yesterday, it was unclear why it came down at the time, but now it's the route Trump took into this latest mess, so let's deal with it properly. A US Army Apache went down near Hormuz, the two crew members were rescued, and Trump has now said Iran had shot it down. That claim is the bit he used to justify what came next, but the incident itself was nowhere near a neat, closed, settled fact when the response was being sold to everyone. The crash was under investigation, the cause was not immediately reported and if Iran had shot it down, you’d think there would have been hell up a lot sooner. Reporting around it included the possibility of a collision with an Iranian drone, with intent not cleanly established in the way Trump needed it to be for his simple war-president pose now, emphasis on the simple. He played it down at first, because of course he did, saying the pilots were fine and treating the whole thing as something short of a catastrophe, he had the Strait under control according to him didn’t he? Perhaps it was decided it was too embarrassing to blame Iran at first, but then the machinery around him turned it into a reason for strikes. So what changed? Another phone call with his boss Netanyahu maybe? We don’t know. But it’s quite the journey, that, going from not a big deal to bombing Iran on the back of an incident nobody had actually settled. There's your first problem, and it sits squarely with the man who decided uncertainty was good enough for escalation.

Netanyahu Wanted Wider War; Houthis Shatter His Containment Plans

Right, so Israel hit Beirut, Iran answered having warned them against doing just that, and now the Houthis are back on the scene. The Yemeni Armed Forces have claimed missile strikes toward Jaffa and then declared Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea banned, with Israeli-linked movement treated as a military target. So not only is the Strait of Hormuz now shut, so is the Bab el Mandeb Strait it seems! [CLIP] That is the cost Netanyahu now has to carry, because the war he has been widening through Lebanon, Iran and Gaza has pulled Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, the Houthis back into the fight, and the price is ships. Israeli-linked ships. Red Sea movement. A route Israel needs to look boring, safe, insured, manageable and open. Yemen has now said that route is tied to the war, tied to Israeli action elsewhere, and no longer something Israel gets to treat as separate from the fire it keeps spreading. So the question is not whether the Houthis have issued another angry statement. The question is why ships are being targeted now, and why Netanyahu’s own escalation has handed Israel one more route it cannot simply assume will stay quiet.

Iran Hammers Israel; Netanyahu Gets Trapped At Gaza’s Aid Gate

Right, so Iran fired missiles at Israel after Israel struck Beirut, and COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry body that controls civilian coordination and access for Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory, said crossings into Gaza would be closed until further notice as a result, including Kerem Shalom and Rafah. So Netanyahu's government took a hit from Iran, and then, right on cue, took it out on Gaza, as Gaza's humanitarian lifeline gets squeezed at the crossing. For all the language around security measures, escalation management, ceasefire pressure and humanitarian reassurance aid still has to pass, in the end, through one very simple object, that being a closed gate. Netanyahu now carries the question of whether his response contained the crisis or dragged another live wire into it, and he comes out of it looking less like a man controlling escalation and more like a man reaching, again, for the one lever he can still pull whenever the bigger war starts getting away from him. COGAT sits under Israel's Defence Ministry and helps control how Gaza is managed from the outside, the crossings, the permits, the coordination, the practical routes through which people, goods and aid can move or be blocked. So when COGAT says crossings are closed, that is not background noise, it is Israel's control system saying out loud which part of Gaza's life support is being tightened. Kerem Shalom is one of the main cargo crossings used for aid and goods into Gaza. Rafah is the crossing tied to the Egypt-Gaza border, and in political terms it has become one of the words that means whether Gaza has any exit at all, any relief, any route that is not run through Israeli permission. Once those names turn up in the same sentence as "closed until further notice", the story has already moved well past the missile exchange and into who can Israel punch down on after getting their backsides handed to them and of course the answer is always those who can fight back the least.

Israel Hit Beirut; Iran Put Its Airbases On The Menu

Right, so Israel struck Beirut's southern suburb after widening its attacks across Lebanon, Israeli-linked reporting framed it as a warning, an equation-setting attack, rather than some uniquely urgent assassination that could not wait all in defiance of that supposed ceasefire in place, things Israel never seems to trouble itself with anyway. And at this point, well, Iran then decided it had had enough. Israel hit Beirut, and Iran fired back by dropping Israeli airbases into the middle of the story. That is the one outcome Netanyahu spent weeks trying to dodge, and he walked straight into it the moment he treated Dahiyeh like somewhere he could lob a warning shot. Iran launched missiles. The IRGC named Ramat David Airbase, and later Iranian claims named Nevatim and Tel Nof as well. So the answer to the obvious question is yes. Iran tied its response to Beirut, as they have always said was their red line, and what it pointed it’s missiles at was Israeli military infrastructure. And Trump gets pulled into all of it on the spot, doesn't he, seeing as he had been leaning on Netanyahu to go easy on Beirut while telling anyone who would listen that he is the one calling the shots on Iran. Netanyahu sent Beirut a warning. Iran sent one straight back. Trump spent the day trying to keep his own ally from making the whole thing worse, as if it could actually get any worse here.

Iran Burns Through US Reapers; Losses Force Trump Into Drone Hunt

Right, so Iran has just done something no enemy of the United States was supposed to manage. It has run the most expensive air force on earth out of drones. The US has reportedly lost nearly 30 MQ-9 Reapers in its war with Iran, and now the Air Force is going cap in hand to General Atomics, the company that builds them, only to be told there are fewer than 10 "new" MQ-9As left for any customer anywhere in the world. So the superpower that outspends the entire planet on its military is not topping up losses like it is changing batteries in a remote control. It is rummaging for spare drones from a model that is no longer in proper production, while Donald Trump keeps selling American power as if the machine were limitless. It isn't. Iran has shoved the US into the stockroom, and the stockroom is nearly bare. And that same fallout is already turning into a possible $2bn counter-drone sale to Kuwait, because the moment Gulf bases start carrying the risk, Washington's answer isn't restraint. It is another invoice. The MQ-9 Reaper is not some side gadget in this story. It is a large remotely piloted aircraft used by the US Air Force for surveillance, intelligence-gathering and strikes, carrying sensors, cameras, data links and weapons while pilots operate it from somewhere else. No wonder Washington loves it. It can sit over a target area for hours, watch, track, hit, guide other aircraft and do it all without a pilot sitting inside the thing being shot at. General Kenneth Wilsbach, a senior US Air Force commander, has described the MQ-9 as perhaps the most valuable player of the Iran war, which is not exactly a throwaway line when the same platform is taking serious losses. The US military has used Reapers heavily in Operation Epic Fury, the American campaign against Iran, including in missions involving mobile targets and higher-risk areas. That makes the loss rate politically very awkward, because the aircraft Washington relies on for reach without pilot risk is also the aircraft being consumed at a rate the Air Force now has to explain.