CONSIDERATIONS OF A POSSIBLE WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN

1. The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is unlikely to attempt any land invasion of Israel. Word on the street in the Middle East is that the Israelis can wipe out any number of marching or mechanised land armies with drone strikes. The Iranians would never even get to see a hair of an Israeli's head. They would die in the desert. They won't do it.

2. Any government in alliance with Iran will be conscious of the lethality of Israel's defensive capabilities. They will know the probably fate of a ground force seeking to invade Israel. A land invasion is not going to happen.

3. The activation of Iranian proxy armies (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Assad regime in Syria) does not create an impressive military capacity. Hamas and Hezbollah have each lost about 90 percent of the effectiveness they deployed twenty years ago. President Assad of Syria hasn't been feeling too well either after the ten year civil war he's been through in his own country. Iranian proxies may still be activated in  Lebanon, Gaza and Syria. But they will not have a good time. Iran's proxies in Yemen the Houthi militia are worthless as an offensive asset. Hezbollah, Hamas and Assad sleeper cells may find overseas Israeli assets and Western assets generally in Europe and America and elsewhere to be more vulnerable to attack than Israel itself. In the event of war between Israel and Iran, these attacks on Europe and America and elsewhere by Iranian controlled sleeper cells will happen.

4. Internal threats to Israel from the West Bank have been reduced significantly (again by a factor above 90 percent of what they were) by the erection of a wall barrier defence.

5. The possibility of opportunistic attacks from Jordan is also being somewhat reduced at the moment by the placement of barriers.

6. In any conflict we may predict that the Islamic government of Iran will attempt to attrite Israel from afar using rocketry and anything else it can throw.

7. Israel has no territorial ambitions over Iran or anyone else. But in the event of hot war, it might take territory from Syria or Lebanon if those two  parties allowed, or took part in, attacks on Israel from their soil. Without outside interference, Israel could conquer both of these in a movie moment.

8. If Iran takes out some Israeli cities through whatever missile capability it has or through some other method, Israel's response would be to devastate political and military power centres in Iran. The Iranians know this. Some of them don't care.

9. If Iran has found opportunistic allies in its quest to destroy Israel, ie either Muslim Brotherhood run Turkey or the resovietising Putin regime in Russia, or both, this would present a dilemma for Israel.

10. There is some likelihood that elements of the political and security administration in nuclear armed Pakistan would attempt to facilitate Iran in a war with Israel by supplying Iran with nuclear weapons. If these are used, and Israel in the aftermath of such a strike retains offensive capacity, she will destroy Iran.

11. Israel has a population of above 9 million persons and a land area above 22,000 square miles. Iran's population is above 82 million persons and her land area is put at 636,000 square miles. The Israeli population would be substantially united in any war of survival against the government in Iran which has repeatedly threatened to wipe out Israel. There might be some hindrance of the war effort in Israel from sincere pacifists, from leftists and from sleeper agents (controlled by Putin or others) among the Judiciary, media and political elites. This would have negligible effect on the Israeli war effort but it wouldn't help. There are growing signs of substantial disaffection among Iran's broader population and its government. Estimates suggest many many millions of Iranians are deeply unhappy that their government possessing ten percent of the world's oil for most of the past forty years, has still managed to deliver dire poverty to its people and almost permanent enmity with the rest of the world. Ordinary Iranians are not particularly keen to pick a fight with Israel which I am suggesting most of them believe will spell doom for Iran. We should be aware that when the Iranian government some months ago laid down giant Israeli and American flags along a street thoroughfare for university students to walk on as they entered their campus, most people there refused to walk on the flags. Those few who did walk on the flags were roundly jeered as traitors and government hirelings by the thousands of Iranians who were refusing to do so. Footage of this incident is available on the internet. The Iranian people are much better than their government. After forty years of impoverishment and dictatorship, there are many millions of Iranians, perhaps even a majority, who regard their own government as their real enemy. So the larger population does not necessarily confer on the government of Iran an advantage in going to war with Israel. The vastly larger land area does confer some strategic assets to the Mullahs. Their hope has been continues to be that through rocketry they can turn the small piece of real estate which is the State of Israel into a sea of fire, while their own vast heartland, as large as Western Europe by some measures, is somewhat protected by its very size. I would repeat one of my earlier phrases. If the Mullahs try it, they're not going to have a good time.