Panto_Villan

ATACMs aren’t well suited to taking out bridges. The Storm Shadows they already have would be better - so probably not. Although apparently Taurus missiles would be the best thing for it.

Russia will have absolutely no interest in discussing an end to the conflict until they know which way the US election goes in November.

Germany is quite an unusual example because the Eastern part remained under direct Soviet occupation for nearly fifty years after the end of WW2, and you could make a decent argument that the Western part remained "occupied" by NATO powers during that time too (albeit in a much less coercive manner). That's far longer than most countries get and is probably quite important in terms of building the institutions that a democracy needs to survive. Japan is arguably the more interesting example of success, where they went from a violent military dictatorship to a law-abiding democracy with only 10-15 years of occupation. I do wonder if Gaza is small enough that a stable government could emerge if external peacekeepers managed to drive out the militants and there was a major rebuilding drive from external aid agencies. Obviously Afghanistan was a distaster, but that's a huge country and has always been famously difficult to control.

I think he can keep up the intensity forever tbh. I doubt he was any less meticulous elsewhere in his career, and it’s clear he absolutely loves his work. He’s also got his family here too, no? I don’t think Lander is playing for our youth team on talent alone.

Indeed. I didn’t say they were exclusively targeting Israeli ships, but they’re making a big song and dance about doing that specifically.

Genuinely not sure. The US and UK are definitely doing bombing them, but I don't know if Israel are joining in - I'm sure they'd like to given the Houthis are targeting Israeli shipping, but given the fact Saudi Arabia is between them I'm not sure if its actually practical.

The one upside of half our starting eleven being in a wheelchair at any given time is that it makes our lineup very hard for our opponents to predict! But it's a huge credit to Emery that we never seem to struggle as much as we expect when we've got a key player out - I think Pau being out was the only time I remember us playing significantly worse over a run of games.

Such a critical result for us, and very impressive after playing extra time during the week (and going 1-0 down). Huge confidence boost for the run-in.

Presumably they’ve also bombed the Houthis in Yemen recently too?

Obviously Ukraine / Israel aid is the headline of the day, but they’ve also passed a bill forcing the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell it. It’ll be quite interesting to see how that plays out.

Yeah. Vote in Senate on Tuesday, Biden can sign it immediately, and munitions could be at the front line in under a week. Took an awful long time to get here, but I’m impressed Mike Johnson has (finally) grown a pair and put his career on the line to get this over the line. Anyway, this just goes to show how important a Biden win will be in November. Europe need to be ready to step up in case Trump gets in, and hopefully the last six months has been a bit of a wake up call on that front.

Someone raised in another thread that it’d a really challenging place for the club to be - lots of strong teams in there, so you probably can’t get away with rotating the team like we did in the early stages of the conference. Yet the prize money is still far, far less than the champions league (and not that much more than the conference). I thought that was a good point. But yeah, it’s kinda amazing that the worst we can do this season is to show a major improvement on last season - which itself was one of the best seasons we’ve had in ages. It’s a hell of a safety net. It’s just a shame the money is so tilted towards the CL really.

That's not what most sources I've seen say, though. A couple of examples: CNN - "The United States has collected specific intelligence that suggests senior Iranian government officials were caught by surprise by Saturday’s bloody attack on Israel by Hamas, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence. The existence of the intelligence has cast doubt on the idea that Iran was directly involved in the planning, resourcing or approving of the operation, sources said." BBC - "The decision to attack, Mr Raz said, was taken "by Hamas, based on its own interests, arising from the Palestinian reality" (this article quotes a bunch of Israeli military figures and academics all saying basically the same thing) Obviously any discussion needs to acknowledge that Hamas benefits from Iranian weapons and training, but that's not the same thing as supporting the Hamas attack on Israel. And that makes sense when you think about it. Iran primarily want Hamas to exist as a deterrent; it's another front that Israel has to worry about if they want to take on Iran. Hamas launching an attack on Israel that isn't part of a wider Iranian plan just gives Israel the opportunity to isolate Hamas and wipe them out, removing an important Iranian piece from the chessboard.

You're assuming Hamas were doing everything under Iranian orders. But the various Iranian-aligned militias are proxies that Iran can influence but don't control directly, and the problem with proxies is that sometimes they do their own thing. I very much doubt the Hamas attack was greenlit by Iran as an attack on that scale doesn't actually serve their interests. You can see that with how Hezbollah acted immediately afterwards; instead of joining in an attack on Israel like you'd expect (and Hezbollah wanted to do), Iran was trying to restrain them. Obviously the leaders of Iran are monsters too. I'm not defending them. I'm just saying the region is a tinderbox right now and Israel is deliberately taking this opportunity to kick Iran in the face as many times as possible, because they'll win if Iran backs down and they'll win if Iran decide to fight back because America (and probably the rest of the West) will be forced to join in on their side. That's great for Israel and terrible for everyone else.

Let's be honest, Israel are the ones provoking all this at the moment. They know the Iranian government is struggling domestically, and doesn't want to pick a fight with Israel right now with all those US forces stationed offshore, so Israel are taking the opportunity to attack as many Iranian-aligned targets as they can in Syria and Lebanon. Including destroying an embassy, which was itself a pretty serious escalation. Of course Iran are going to retaliate. They can't let Israel walk all over them. Israel and Iran are like two boys on the schoolground who have been eyeing each other up warily for ages, throwing the odd jab and insult at each other, but they've both been too cautious to start a proper fight. But now Israel has come out swinging because he knows his big brother is in town.