With Iran condemning the US. This is like the calm before the storm with all of the dynamic escalations in play. Dynamic escalations? Escalations that are like a yoyo (out of sight out of mind) but still continue the trend. Let us recap the recent US Houthi airstrikes in Yemen with Trump.
12 Jan 2024 - Trump lashes out at ‘worst president’ Biden over Houthi airstrikes
“Remember, this is the same gang that ‘surrendered’ in Afghanistan, where no one was held accountable or FIRED,” Mr Trump claimed. “It was the most embarrassing ‘moment’ in the history of the United States. Now we have wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Yemen, but no ‘war’ on our Southern Border. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Crooked Joe Biden is the worst President in the history of the United States!”
The USA with three front lines plus the invasion at their Southern Boarder. Now with strikes in Iraq and Syria. Iraq and Syria are part of a land bridge for Iran to Israel or Israel to Iran. The US says it will continue with the air strikes or plow the road if you will.
3 Feb 2024 - ‘Strategic error’: Iran condemns US attacks on Iraq, Syria
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says overnight US strikes are ‘violations of the sovereignty and territorial integrity’ of the two countries.
Iran says the attacks by the United States inside Iraq and Syria are a “strategic error” that will only add to tensions and instability in the Middle East heightened by Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden later said the strikes “will continue at times and places of our choosing”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/3/strategic-error-iran-condemns-us-attacks-on-iraq-syria
Now, for the US we are looking at conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria plus the invasion at the American Southern border. That is not the scary part. For me, the scary part is comments like these.
Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). “It really does feel like the frog being boiled in the water situation,” he said, referring to the allegory of an amphibian unaware it is being cooked in slowly warming water. As reported by Aljazeera on the 30th January 2024.
So you can bet Iran and everybody else in the Middle East would have seen it. That is like linking everybody in at once for the current state of play.
30 Jan 2024 - ‘Frog being boiled’: US troop deaths in Jordan incite Republican Iran hawks
Political rhetoric heats up as Biden says he has decided on response to deadly drone attack blamed on Iran-aligned group.
“I think it’s really scary how far the rhetoric has come and what that means for the decisions that policymakers will make,” said Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). “It really does feel like the frog being boiled in the water situation,” he said, referring to the allegory of an amphibian unaware it is being cooked in slowly warming water.
‘Devastating military retaliation’
US military bases have faced more than 160 attacks since Israel's war in Gaza began on October 7, but the drone attack on Sunday marked the first time US personnel have been killed.
More Boiling Frogs - Let us go back in time to 2015 with Colin Powell. Now this looks like a blog post reporting the news. So I am not sure about the reporting but If you are in the 'There are no coincidences crowd'. I thought there were a couple of interesting comments.
7 Sep 2015 - The Iran Reset is a Boiling Frog
Colin Powell is cautiously in favor of the Iran Reset, so we who oppose it on rational grounds must sit up and take notice. Yet the most telling quote in the linked article was “With respect to the Iranians, it’s don’t trust, never trust, and always verify,”
In my view it boils down (pun intended) to whether or not the US feels it has behaved so badly that we have to give Iran a mile-high-stack of get-out-of-jail free cards on past behaviors – the kind of “reset” that the Obama administration gave Russia.
That these points possibly seem hysteric, or have the taint of conspiracy theory makes my point for me. Rather than reject them because they are outside the mainstream, try to prove them factually wrong, if you can.
https://thepeopleofthesign.com/2015/09/07/iran-reset-boiling-frog/
Not the first time the boiling frog metaphor has been used with regard to the Middle East. Again it looks like a blog post reporting on the news.
9 May 2019 - Boiling a Frog in the Middle East
The announcement came after weeks of Trump administration moves to ratchet up pressure on Iran, from oil sanctions waivers to designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Just this week, John Bolton announced that the U.S. would be sending “a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime” by speeding up the deployment of a carrier strike group to the region.
https://www.cato.org/blog/boiling-frog-middle-east
Another metaphor comes to mind with all the above. 'The pot calling the kettle black'. Who is in the pot and who is in the black?
Again, for the US we are looking at conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria plus the invasion at the American Southern border. With Iran calling the strikes in Iraq and Syria a strategic error. It appears the chessboard is out.