Any time Iran wants, they can over-saturate Israeli missile defenses, turn off the power and destroy the military bases. That was proven this week.
Israel’s ground forces are incompetent and cowardly. They had grave trouble fighting Hamas. Hezbollah whipped them back in 2006 when they dared attack on the ground. Hezbollah’s troops are seasoned war vetrans, and extremely motivated.
What Israel has is airpower, good intelligence, and the USA.
And nukes.
Airpower’s nice, but it doesn’t win wars. And if all your airbases are destroyed or under constant attack, a lot of it goes away. Neighbouring countries have said they won’t base Israeli airplanes.
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The reason that Israel spends most of its time assassinating leaders and mass-murdering civilians is that it knows it can’t actually win on the ground. It can “clear” areas of Gaza, but it can’t hold them, and Hamas has only a shadow of Hezbollah’s strength.
Without nukes, in a conventional war, Hezbollah might win against Israel: by which I mean that invade and conquer the country. It too has tons of missiles and has been holding back. If Iran went all-in, Israel’s defeat in a conventional war would be certain.
The two things stopping this from happening are America and that Israel has nukes and everyone thinks they’ll use them.
The time of elite Israeli ground forces is gone. It was gone by 1990 or so.
And military technology has changed. In the old days if you didn’t have an air force, that was it: but drones and new missile tech has changed that.
These aren’t your grandfather’s Israelis, and these aren’t your grandfather’s Muslims.