Israel is vowing to wipe out Hamas in a relentless onslaught on the Gaza Strip but has no obvious endgame in sight, with no clear plan for how to govern the ravaged Palestinian enclave even if it triumphs on the battlefield.
I wonder whether Iran can actually spare an outright war. There is clearly a lot of anti-government energy flowing in Iran, and that won't have been stamped out by their crackdown on it.
I wonder whether most everyday Iranians would support a war with Israel.
Granted, it's not likely Iran gets directly involved - they'll just drive their Hezbollah prop.
I wonder whether Iran can actually spare an outright war. There is clearly a lot of anti-government energy flowing in Iran, and that won’t have been stamped out by their crackdown on it.
I guess it depends on how much the "helping our fellow Muslims" stuff works. I know it would in Egypt at least.
Iran wouldn't need to radically shift their budget... the revolutionary guard gets buckets of oil money and maintains a constant high state of readiness.
I think that was a little bit different in that a) everyone (the West included!) expected Ukraine to just roll over, and b) a lot of those troops weren't told they were actually going to war, they thought it was just a training mission... the poor bastards.