Seth Frantzman Profile picture
Oct 25, 2021 • 18 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
🧵 One of the most misleading narratives is the claim that the US or Israel threaten “war” with Iran…not only is it the other way around, but it’s all a scam because Iran can’t afford a real “war”…you really think a regime like that would risk the results of such conflict
Consider for a second a member of the Iranian theocratic abusive regime, would be risk losing all that power in a conflict, he knows the average people despise him, he knows he crushed protests before
The Iran regime CANNOT afford war and does everything possible to avoid it, either through threats and boasting and bluffing or working with China, Turkey and Russia or by moving proxy pawns around Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen to put the “conflict” somewhere else
Iran is a chess player, the regime is the king, it is feeble and weak but it has arrayed ♟ pawns all over to put the frontline far from home and create three thousand miles of potential underbelly it can strike at far from home, from the Gulf of Oman to Quneitra
That is why it is always nonsense when someone says that recent US statements mean their could be “war” this is just fear mongering talking point nonsense.
Ask these people who speak of “war”…HOW would a war take place. How would the Iran regime many of them adore and want to protect by creating a war narrative, how would it risk war? Are they kidding?
Iran’s regime doesn’t fight wars at home. It was traumatized by the war with Iraq in the 1980s that almost strangled the “revolution” in its cradle. Since then it decided to do a forward policy of proxy wars in the near abroad, strategic depth
So when anyone says that if there isn’t a deal there may be “war” they are being either naive, deceptive or purposely lying. The regime can never risk war with the US or Israel. It can accept certain amounts of low level conflict and sabotage and proxy conflict but not war
That is why Iran boasts a lot about war but what it invests in is PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY attacks using drones and rockets and piracy at sea and harassing ships with speedboats and empowering militias and recruiting Afghan kids for the IRGC in Albukamal
Iran will indeed fight conflicts to the last Iraqi PMU, the last poor Syrian, the last poor Shi’ite Hezbollah member, the last Houthi, but how many IRGC members lay down their lives? Not many.
Iran had its “great patriotic war” in the 1980s and saw enough martyrs, those old greying men who run the regime know the horror of war and don’t want more
The regime elites have their aesthetic, the ostensibly austere regime, those types like Ahmadinejad or Soleimani who supposedly had monk-like existence with no possessions like they are Franciscan friars…but massive war is not for them
Iran is a calculating regime. Zarif and friends spreads the “deal or war” lie to western publics they try studied snd focus-grouped this concept via opeds to see if fear of more “Middle East conflict” would scare people in the West.
Westerners want peace…Iran fears war…so HOW can there ever be war????? Israel also doesn’t want war and Israel is so far from Iran it can’t ever have a real “war” with Iran. THINK about it. It can’t happen. Just proxies and some strikes or incidents but not total war
So since we all know this, let’s stop the misleading story. Absence of a deal might mean some tensions and nuclear blackmail and if Iran crosses a nuclear red line and tries to detonate a device at home there will be attempts to prevent that.
That’s like if someone tried to stop the guys at Los Alamos from the test in 1945…..but that’s not war, that’s trying to stop a stupid act by a regime that is far too smart to ever really detonate a nuclear weapon anyway…think about it
Everyone knows that when Iran is at the threshold it will get a call from it’s new friends in China and it’s old friend in Moscow and also it’s partner in Ankara who will say “ok you scared the West but don’t do the next step”….
And they is why there can never be war. Iran can risk it. It’s friends will advise it. And that’s how things work. Learn and study the Iranian regime method. Read the Iranian media. Stop listening to western commentators who invented the “war” bogeyman.

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More from @sfrantzman

May 2
There's something about that cartoon of the scorpion and the frog...like somehow Hamas massacred 1,000 people and his olding 133 hostage...to get rid of Hamas you need to bring the PA to run Gaza, but Israel's ruling coalition doesn't want the PA to run Gaza because it views the PA as a larger long-term threat...so it can't come up with a day after plan...and meanwhile the PA keeps trying to isolate Israel, thus resulting in Israel bashing the PA...leaving Hamas to return to Gaza...

Why is it like the scorpion and the frog. Because it's in the "character" of the conflict to be this way. I'm not making a value judgement here on the PA or Israel's actions (Hamas in my view is a genocidal organization that should be destroyed completely)...I'm just saying that it's in the "nature" of the PA and Israel to do this and it prevents positive outcomes...much as the scorpion and frog couldn't work together and instead end up drowning eachother...
Am I saying that the infighting between Israel and the PA will result in them doing a proverbial drowning to eachother...yes I think in the long run unless they can escape this problem...then Hamas will end up running the West Bank and will bring more war to Israel.
Hamas and its backers/hosts view the Oct. 7 attack as a major shift in the world order, and they want to exploit it to isolate Israel on the international stage and bring together Russia-China-Iran-Turkey against Israel...and isolate Israel in the long term by inflaming campuses.
Read 5 tweets
May 1
One of the greatest disasters for the Middle East has been the international community's decision to cement in power extremist militia groups and turn them into "states" basically in the region. This happened with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other groups.
It's important to note that this is not how the international community dalt with similar groups in other countries such as Boko Haram or Al Shabab or the FARC, it's basically only in the Middle East where the UN and international groups and also major powers, swoop in to make sure that Hamas controls Gaza, and keep Hezbollah strengthened in Lebanon and create deals for the Houthis to keep them in power.
It's clear that this suits the agenda of Iran usually, in destroying countries and hollowing them out and bankrupting them and then using them for its agenda. When Hezbollah illegally launched a war on Israel in 2006, instead of ending its impunity, the UN and others made sure to cement it in power to make it exponentially more powerful.
Read 8 tweets
May 1
The coded methods used to downplay Hezbollah attacks on Israel. An example.

The BBC did a report on southern Lebanon which has suffered due to Hezbollah's almost seven months of attacks on Israel. Note, the first part of the article doesn't even mention Hezbollah. Image
This: let's not mention the illegal terrorist group that controls this area and fires rockets from civilian areas...is a common theme when reporting in Gaza as well. Over the years many NGOs would often not even mention Hamas in reports. This is done to in order to make it seem that Israel is "attacking" and to hide the authoritarian extremist groups that control Gaza and southern Lebanon.
We know that western media would never do this if they were talking about "right wing militias" in the West...they wouldn't report about "violence" in the US South in 1965 and simply not mention the KKK...as if the "violence" against African-Americans was just "happening" but no group was behind it.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 30
International organizations that worked to empower Hamas for almost two decades in Gaza are worried that its control of Rafah will end, meaning their partnership with Hamas gunmen who steal the aid will end. They partnered with Hamas and profited immensely. Hamas could not have become what it is, a terror empire, without the collaboration of all the international organizations who work with it and who want its gunmen controlling aid. Hamas is a vast criminal enterprise like Escobar’s cartel was. It’s hard to dismantle a group like this. But it must be done.
Millions, probably hundreds of millions are at risk by these groups who partner with the Hamas gunmen. They preyed on the people of Gaza via Hamas. Hamas was a partner and they outsourced control to Hamas. They hit the jackpot in Gaza when it expelled Fatah in 2007. It’s rare these organizations get control via an authoritarian partner like Hamas. They don’t like working with democracies because it means transparency and critique by those on the ground. In Gaza if someone critiqued how Hamas controls aid…the aid orgs would turn over a name to Hamas and it would remove them. In return Hamas members got jobs at the organizations. Rarely in history have so many NGOs got this windfall of partnership on suffering which they use to get more profit
Gazans were captive to this. They were in a prison controlled by Hamas and by the internationals who wanted Hamas holding the key to the cells. It’s like those private prisons where the corporations profit in the west. Their interest is in having more prisoners, more profit. They wanted Hamas to control this disaster so they could profit. The corporate NGOs partnered with Hamas. When you follow the money, like in The Wire, you’ll find out how it worked.
Read 7 tweets
Apr 30
One of the largest lessons from October 7 for policymakers, strategists, military brass and politicians is to consider the wider ramifications of unlikely scenarios.

What I mean is it's essential to always consider "what if we are all wrong" and to look at unlikely threats and weigh them against their potential to do large, but often discounted, harm.
Think of the chances of the Hamas attack being quiet small, much like the chances of a pandemic breaking out in early 2020, or of 9/11...the chances are small, but the implications are world changing. And each one is not like the chances of aliens landing...these are real world threats that exist but whose probability is low.
Now when we look at Hamas, the chances of a mass cross border human wave style attack may have seemed remote, but it was clearly larger than the chances of 9/11 or a pandemic, because Hamas was training openly for this exact type of attack. The plans existed. Therefore it had a decent chance of happening in some form.
Read 15 tweets
Apr 29
One thing that I’ve never been able to get out of my thoughts since Oct. 7 is that Hamas, which massacred 1,000 people and took 250 hostages, killing some of them over the last six months, is hosted by the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East…and it took American hostages on October 7…and yet it faces no repercussions for doing so. No war crimes charges, no expulsion from the U.S. allies that back and host it.

Do you think if a U.S. ally hosted another terror grouping that targeted a different country and kidnapped Americans that this would be the case?
What gets me is that Hamas isn’t like Hezbollah, it’s not just a terror grouping backed by U.S. adversaries, it’s literally ensconced within a close western ally and openly backed by another western ally. It not only has impunity and cover through this, but the western backing here hasn’t led it to become less dangerous as a terror grouping, rather it became MORE dangerous
Basically Hamas was a relatively small murderous group decades ago. Then it emerged in the Oslo years opposing the western-backed Oslo peace process. Then it took over Gaza from the western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Then something off happened
Read 12 tweets

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