Midnight Oil Blogging

The specter of war with Iran is giving everyone pause, most certainly including me. Israel launched air strikes against the Islamic Republic a few days ago, supposedly with foreknowledge communicated to President Trump. The G7 group, many of the members of which don’t particularly like either President Trump or Israeli Prime Minister, nevertheless agreed that:

“Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” the statement added and said the G7 was “clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

One reason for writing around midnight is that morning has broken over Tehran, which is an odd 7hours and 30 minutes ahead of Eastern Daylight Time in the United States. Iran issued the statement before Wednesday night, “tonight we’ll deliver a surprise the world will remember for centuries,” but in fact the Islamic Republic did nothing. Someone, presumably Israel, hacked Iranian television, pushing messages that civilians should take to the streets and overthrown the government of the mad mullahs. The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly rejected negotiations, but Iran has sent out mixed mesages from other sources.

At least as of this writing, there are no reports of belligerent action between Israel and Iran, but while Israel has, reportedly, significantly damaged Iran’s ability to produce weapons-grade uranium, the job of completely ending the country’s nuclear weapons program has not been completed.

The New York Times reported, at 12:14 AM EDT:

The Israeli military said on Thursday morning that missiles had been launched from Iran toward Israel. It called on the public to enter protected spaces such as communal shelters or safe rooms until further notice.

What will happen? We honestly don’t know.

Overnight, an Iranian missile that got through struck a hospital in Tel Aviv.