Drumbeats of war?

So I made the mistake of opening Drudge early this morning, and found Trump has cancaled the agreement with Iran, and the Israelis are preparing their bomb shelters.

Guess what? They had been cheating on it. Everyone sort of knew this, but then the Israelis stole a basketful of documents to prove it in writing, so it was a bit hard to continue to pretend.

StrategyPage has this about the Israeli operation, and about Israel worrying about Iran.

The Iranian government prefers to retaliate against Israel indirectly. Iran has long used foreign proxies (like Hezbollah or other non-Iranian Islamic terrorists) to attack Israel. Iran does not have modern weapons (because of decades of sanctions) and Iranian leaders are smart enough to realize that Iran itself trying to attack Israel would most likely result in another humiliating Iranian defeat. Israel has anti-missile defenses against Iranian ballistic missiles. Yet Iran has enough of these missiles to attempt a “saturation attack” on Israel using explosive or chemical warheads. Iran could also use a “dirty” warhead by adding radioactive material to a high explosive warhead. A few of these missiles landing in Israel, especially in a major urban area, would be a great propaganda victory. But Israel also has ballistic missiles (armed with nuclear warheads) and, worse, hundreds of modern fighter-bombers that could hit two key economic targets using smart bombs.

a long summary of the problem which is bookmarked for later reading on my tablet, since it is early morning here and I am still half awake.

Sigh.

I hear that there have been a lot of demonstrations in Iran against the government, but that hasn't hit the news due to censorship.

the reason behind the Iranian agreement was not only to keep them from getting nukes but to encourage the moderates to take over from the mullahs, but that last hasn't happened (it's not religious zealotry: the mullahs families are getting rich while the country is getting poor).

And of course, the Saudis are quietly making nice with Israel, since they figure the Persians are a bigger enemy.

as for Iran: They used to have a lot of Jewish people living there, but most have fled. There are a lot of them in the Los Angeles area of the US, and there are so many of them living in Israel that the Iranian government put an office there for them to vote in the election.

Wikipedia article on the Persian Jews

and yes, the Philippines has a lot of Iranians studying here, because our universities are taught in English and the degrees are recognized as good.

Wikipedia page