RE: Strait of Hormuz and the Iran War – Part 2: Reasons for War and the Bigger Agenda

A huge amount to unpack in this post and there is plenty of good analysis.

But there are also some big flaws.

1 Israel is not isolated and is far more influential and powerful globally than ever.

This is in the normal sense of the influence of powerful nations, not some foolish conspiracy theories which you are correct to debunk.
Israel is also far less reliant on the US than ever and has massively increased defence self-sufficiency. Bibi is pushing an END to US Aid to Israel. You missed this important point.

India is a huge but quiet counterweight to US dependency and has been a major defence supplier to Israel (as well as Israel's largest defence customer).

Many South American countries (Argentina, Venezuela, Columbia, El Salvador and others) have shifted dramatically to be pro-Israel and are moving Embassies to Jerusalem and recognising Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights.

What is actually happening is that Europe is declining economically, isolating itself and making itself increasingly irrelevant. Certain European countries engage in meaningless virtue signalling "sanctions" of Israel or Israeli people, while European defence and technological dependence on Israel increases year by year. Huge European defence purchases of Israeli weapons are making Israeli defence companies extremely profitable.
Europe has no real options other than (expensive but generally good) US weapons or (better and cheaper) Israeli weapons. Europe faces an awakened and wounded bear in Russia and is not prepared to fight with the bravery or suffer the massive human cost Ukraine has. Greece and Cyprus have formed a formal military alliance with Israel - directed at Turkey.

Europe is also increasingly reliant on Israeli gas (via Egyptian LNG) and proposed pipelines.

2 The US Israel relationship is more complex than you present and the US was the junior partner in the Iran War and bore most of the costs.

The facts are that Israel decided that it was going to attack Iran to stop an imminent nuclear breakout threat. The US decided it needed to join to protect its troops and allies in the Gulf and also because it needed to stop Iran going nuclear. Rubio confirmed that Israel said it was going alone and the US decided to join. This is unlike in the 12 day War when the US stayed out except at the end.

The facts are that Israel's extraordinary early successes (which the US didn't believe possible) paved the way for the more risk averse US military to join.

Israel conducted the majority of the the strikes in the first part of the war and also did by far the most damaging ones. Only later in the war when Iranian air defence was gone and the B-52s joined did the US catch up to Israel on sortie and strike numbers.

While US military losses were very light, they were still higher than Israel's (because any number is higher than zero). Israel still has not lost a single plane or soldier to direct Iranian attack. It suffered some civilian casualties but heavily skewed to the earlier parts of the war.

The US has also suffered from their inability to fully protect their allies from Iranian attack. In contrast the UAE was able to properly protect itself because Israel provided defensive systems which are demonstrably better than US systems.

Of course it is not in US or Israeli interests to note this reality. But certainly in the region, Israel is more powerful than the US.

3 The Straits of Hormuz is not an Israeli interest and only a US one indirectly. Its usefulness to Iran as leverage is limited.

While Europe, Asia and others have suffered from Iranian attempts to close the Straits of Hormuz (that never fully succeeded and are less and less effective each day) Israel & the US have not.
Israel has zero reliance on the Straits and benefits from higher oil prices because it is a major gas exporter and the gas is priced based on Brent Crude. Petrol prices barely moved in Israel and they have never been a political issue.

The US also doesn't rely on Hormuz and as the world's largest exporter of petroleum products also benefits as a whole from higher oil prices. But because the super profits of oil companies aren't passed onto consumers at the pump there is a political cost (which could easily be removed by cross subsidisation from supra-profits like Israel, Australia and many other countries do).

However the US is indirectly impacted because of its Gulf allies (which need to export their oil and gas) and their Asian allies (which need the oil & gas) and a general sensitivity to the global economy.

So Iran has some leverage over the US because of Hormuz, but zero on Israel.

4 You have Israeli public opinion quite wrong.

You are using a left biased source reknown for push polling.
Israeli support for the war on Iran was and is 95% (a stark contrast to division on most other issues).

5 Israel is stronger than ever and is the clear military superpower of the region.

Israel is very obviously much better off. All its enemies have had their military power to threaten Israel completely destroyed. Israel controls substantial new strategic territory in Gaza, Syria & Lebanon. The Lebanese government has formally agreed to long term Israel occupation (until Hizbollah is disarmed and disbanded).

Its economy is booming, in part because of huge defence deals driven by its military success.

Far from needing to detach itself from the US, Israel has managed to have very strong relationships with the world's two strongest powers- US & India and decent relationships with the other two major powers Russia and China.

No other country has such good relationships with US, India, Russia and China.

The success of Israeli weapons systems and failure of Russian and Chinese one vs Iran and also in India vs Pakistan has made Russia and China very focussed on good relations. Russia does not want Ukraine getting Israeli weapons. China doesn't want Taiwan getting them either.

Israel is also an important market for China as all other advanced economies have shrinking consumer bases (demographic collapse) and are increasingly heavily tariffing Chinese products.