The United States’ top general on Monday warned Iran not to get involved in the crisis in Israel and said he did not want the conflict to the broaden, as Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired a salvo of rockets onto northern Israel
The White House earlier on Monday said that Iran was complicit even though the United States has no intelligence or evidence that points to Iran’s direct participation in attacks in Israel by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Asked what his message for Iran was, General Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “Not to get involved.”
Israeli shelling on Lebanon killed at least three Hezbollah militants on Monday, and Israel said one of its officers was killed during an earlier cross-border raid claimed by Palestinians in Lebanon.
The cross-border violence marked a significant expansion of a conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza to the Israeli-Lebanese border further north.
This is a pretty empty threat. Realistically speaking the US cannot escalate without facing huge domestic backlash. Public support for US involvement in a new war in a is nonexistent, given the abject an expensive failures of the recent afghan and iraqi wars.
Add the fact that any iranian involvement would go through hezbollah, gives both the us government and iran a way to plausibly deny iranian involvement. The US will do nothing. They might send some troop to “support” israel. They already have. Which is a token gesture at best.
It wouldn’t surprise me terribly if it came to pass that the US populace was ready for blood over this. Nobody in my circle is down to get involved but god only knows what is going through the head of the average person in this country.
Deep in the hangover from the abject failure of the Iraq war, there were goofballs singing “bomb bomb Iran”. We are a warmongering people.
Public support for US involvement in a new war in a is nonexistent
When has that ever stopped a nation from going to war? We all know how easy it is to shift public opinion if the Government, any Government, really wants to do something.
WWI - Lusitania, WWII - Pearl Harbor, Vietnam - Gulf of Tonkin, Gulf War I - Kuwait / Oil, GWoT - Twin Towers
The US will do nothing.
As history shows they will do what they choose and it could be anything from scathing press releases to loaded bombers. They obviously don’t want to get directly involved in a new ME crisis right now but that doesn’t mean they won’t.
Iran: I’m going to involve even harder.
I wonder how we would feel if a country like China or something told us not to get involved in conflicts as if they were the police of something. So if Iran isn’t allowed to get in is the US also banned? Seems a bit whimsical to think that a Middle Eastern country would ignore a Middle Eastern conflict.
What? A country can say whatever they want, it’s the credible threat of getting bombed a few centuries back in time that makes the words mean anything.
I traveled with General Brown as part of a diplomatic engagement while I was stationed at central command in Tampa Florida back in 2017. I even got to sit in on a meeting with him and a foreign minister of defense.
I found him to be level headed, calm and very intelligent. He handled himself well and was everything you would want a general to be. I’m glad to see he’s risen to the position of chief of staff
Oh yeah? Well I traveled with Biden and he seemed unwell as it was past his bedtime and he was sundowning, but his dog didn’t bite me, so that was nice.
