With or without the US (and several other nations) the question is where will Israel hit in Iran to retaliate?
Some suggest that their offensive missile launch areas should be target #1.
Others suggest that the nuclear sites should be target #1.
But hitting them in the gut of there economy also makes sense to target their income as the target #1.
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
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Could This Be Israel's Counterstrike On Iran?
War Breaks Out With America Rudderless
Today's Iranian missile barrage on Israel is partly a consequence of America running without a functioning President who could have helped rein in the warring parties in the Middle East. It's also in part a consequence of our proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine. As ZeroHedge noted in its recap of the attack, the Iranian government announced that it had consulted with Russia prior to striking Israel.
With the U.S. in a proxy war with Russia, Russian diplomacy was off the table. As a result, more people will die. It's unclear as of yet how many casualties were caused by Iran's missile barrage, but, ironically, one caught on video was a Palestinian.
Israel has promised to retaliate against Iran, raising the question of what that retaliation might look like. Coincidentally, the famous military strategist Edward Luttwak suggested a target earlier this week.
Luttwak: "Israel Should Hit Iran Where It Hurts"
In a post on Unherd, Luttwak suggested Israel strike Iran's Kharg Oil Terminal (he uses the alternate spelling, "Khark").
As Luttwak wrote there,
This all means that Iran’s export revenues must now pay for a bewildering range of military expenditures abroad, in US dollars rather than home-made rials. Beyond the upkeep of foreign allies starting with Hezbollah, there are the imported components and supplies consumed by the domestic Revolutionary Guards, with its 125,000 troops and a naval force. This includes the imports of Chinese and North Korean missile and rocket components, as well as the foreign-currency costs of the entire nuclear programme which proceeds at a very large scale.
In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. It’s true that Iranian farmers grow pistachio nuts and other exportable crops, and that there are some manufacturing exports, even if Tabriz’s famous carpets are out of fashion. Yet at the last count, in 2023, oil accounted for 83% of Iran’s exports. [...]
In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometres off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometres from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeidah in Yemen — a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again yesterday.