TrendMacro conversation with Haviv Gur on where America and Israel go next in the war against Iran

The war against Iran is part of a global US strategic initiative to deprive China of forward bases and points of choke-point control such as Venezuela, Panama and Cuba. The economic interdependency of Iran and China has been severed, whatever else the war outcomes may turn out to be. Iran’s military industrial base has been set back at least a decade. Israel was not the instigator. It joined as a willing partner and has been a beneficiary. Trump may not have the stomach for continued active warfare as the mid-terms near, but China’s utter failure to come to Iran’s aid in any way reveals it as an unreliable partner, and that alone is a major US strategic victory. In a fragile ceasefire that, for the moment, is somewhat tying Israel’s hands in Lebanon, Israel has nevertheless been given a great gift in the significant degradation of its last-standing existential enemy. The US is not interested in regime change. So long as the martyrdom-driven death-cult of Iranian theology persists, the war between Iran and Israel can never be over, and future threats to the region and the Strait of Hormuz have to be expected. Other Persian Gulf nations who might have been Iran’s allies have all been alienated from Iran by its missile and drone attacks against them. At this point they are most interested in investing in hardened infrastructure for oil production and refining, and transport alternatives to the Strait.