Currently Online 
Israel using the ‘Rafah model’ in southern Lebanon as officials pursue scorched-earth policy
The Israeli estimate (for a ground assault into southern Lebanon) is months, not weeks. There are plans for the government to vote on a request by the army to call up 400,000 reserve soldiers.
The idea is that Israel must depopulate the south of Lebanon – 10 percent of the mass of that country – and then occupy it, vacant of its population, and turn it into a so-called buffer zone.
The parallels are being drawn by Israeli officials to the situation in Gaza, to the yellow line, which has managed to take up more than 50 percent of the territory.
The Israeli minister of defence himself has instructed the army to demolish Lebanese homes and villages that are near the border, exactly as he did in Gaza. He is using the Beit Hanoon and Rafah model – those were his own words during those instructions.
So that’s the plan, and it will take months. It does explain why the government also plans to extend the state of emergency until mid-April.
Rockets are not stopping from Lebanon, and missiles are certainly not stopping from Iran. Life, normal life, education, the economy, all of it, cannot resume normally so long as Israel conducts these two wars.
Meanwhile Trump is sending another 3,000 troops to the ME
We are seeing several reports that the military in the coming hours is going to sign orders for about 3000 members of the 82nd Airborne Division to head to the Middle East. This is a growing buildup of US personnel. The US has a huge naval force there. We recently heard that they were going to send 3500 marines and three different ships, and now this additional 3,000 [troops].
‘Establishing deterrence, economic gains’ key for Iran to ending war
Negar Mortazavi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, says Iran would want to end the war that was imposed on it on its own terms.
“One is to establish enough deterrence to make sure that once this war ends, it doesn’t come back like it did last year – that they don’t turn into the next Gaza or Lebanon or Syria, or Bibi Netanyahu potentially with US support can go in and mow the grass, again and again,” Mortazavi said.
In addition to establishing deterrence, Mortazavi said Iran would also need “some form of economic gain”.
“This chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz is now giving them ideas – ‘maybe we can charge passage fees like some other places in the world’ – there are those discussions in Iran,” she said, while also citing sanctions relief and reparations to rebuild the country after the heavy damage inflicted by the US and Israeli attacks.
So Trump has no victory conditions other than winning the war every day. Israel is not going to let Trump pull out and will bomb any attempt at negotiations and Iran will not stop until Israel has been restrained.
Prepare for a long war and world wide recession.
