Strategypage has an interesting take on the Israel-Iran low-level war:
Israel has changed its approach to the war against Iran in Syria. Now the Israelis are attacking Iranian targets day and night and are taking credit for each attack. Senior Israel political and military leaders are now using the Internet to remind the Iranian IRGC commanders that they are losing and unable to do anything about it. This is done deliberately to destroy the myth the IRGC has been creating back in Iran about how IRGC forces are about to destroy Israel. In fact the IRGC mercenaries in Syria have had success fighting ISIL and other Islamic terrorist rebels but not much else. Israel is now convincingly pointing out the IRGC lies and calling the IRGC incompetent and an embarrassment to Iran. A lot of Iranians agree with that.
Is Israel perhaps unwilling (at least at this point) to strike first? Is Israel taunting Iran's nutballs to get them to lash out with assets in Lebanon to give Israel the excuse to launch a massive ground raid into Lebanon to seriously wound Hezbollah before it can return from the Syrian war and re-focus on Israel?
Strategypage has this as well:
Iranian allies Hezbollah and Hamas are both threatening “war with Israel.” Such threats are not made without Iranian permission. That has long been the main Israeli fear, that Iran would support a simultaneous attack by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. ... Iranian hard liners (mainly the IRGC or Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) have the most to lose by backing such an attack and then having to face the blowback in Iran for failure. Then there is the “use it or lose it” angle. For over a year anti-government (and anti-IRGC) demonstrations in Iran have persisted and grown. Iranians are angry over all the money being spent to support Hezbollah, Hamas and military operations in Syria. Over 2,000 Iranians have died in Syria, most of them IRGC personnel and five to ten times as many Iranian mercenaries (mainly Afghans), Iran pays death benefits to the families of the mercenaries killed and the Iranians are finding out how much these wars really cost and how that prevents the Iranian economy from improving. Many of the senior clerics who control the religious dictatorship that runs Iran would like to curb the power of the IRGC and the current crises is beginning to look like a good opportunity. Thus many IRGC leaders would see an all-out attack on Israel as something to be attempted sooner rather than later when it is no longer possible.
Could IRGC (the Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran) decide to launch a war--one that Israel may be geared up to fight on their terms--before they lose the opportunity and under pressure from the open humiliation Israel is inflicting on them in Syria?
And there is much more in the Strategpyage post, so do read it all.
