Why do we keep saving Iran's ass?
They have 10s of millions of ethnic Turks under their control. They back Armenia. Have used their militias to strike our bases. Literally held an exercise on Azerbaijan's border to threaten them. IRGC has made multiple videos showing Azerbaijan as a target.
Soon, they will have nukes. And once they do, forget the idea of a contiguous Turkic World..
Sadly I suspect Iranian influence in our government. After all, HÜDAPAR is literally an Iranian backed Kurdish Islamist entity.
All of this said, yes, allowing the US to use our territory to strike other countries has its drawbacks, but I seriously am beginning to suspect massive Iranian influence in our government. And don't tell me that this neutrality has been going on for hundreds of years. Things are changing quickly, and once they have nukes, they will be a menace.
Frankly I don't believe that Iran is against PKK, YPG etc. At the end of the day they're all Iranic people. They'll do anything they can to prevent Misak-ı Millî, a united Azerbaijan and ultimately a contiguous Turkic world.
Because if Turkish territory or airspace is used in these attacks Iran has the full right to respond. While they lack capable air fleet, their ballistic missile arsenal is enough to level to the ground targets of importance in Turkiye, no matter the range without any opposition, because Turkiye simply doesn't posses anti-ballistic missile defence capable air defence system. It is unfortunate to say, but Turkiye is not ready for a conventional war with Iran, not even for a limited, short standoff. This doesn't mean we can't do damage, this means that the damage that we would possibly receive will be enough to make us sorry. If we want to play big, we must be ready to play big.
We can't enter confrontation with Iran in such an open way and also we don't need to. This is a problem between Iran and Israel including their supporters and not our problem. What will be the best thing to do is fill the power vacuum and exploit the instability that such a confrontation will cause in the best way possible. If we want to think from Turkiye's perspective, a large scale war is not a good thing to happen on Turkiye's borders, because in a possible refugee wave Turkiye will be the country that will take the most of the weight. These refugees are not going to Afghanistan for sure and we simply can't shoot all of them.
In my opinion what we should do is reinforce our position in the metropole areas in the north of Iraq, win and organize the Iraqi Turkmen and annihilate the traitors within them, causing a clear distinction between the supporters of Turkiye and Iranian agents. We should reinforce our position in Azerbaijan and press Armenia to agree without conditions to our proposals and enforce peace.
The situation with the Turks in Iran is complicated. For sure we can exploit the lack of stability in our favor, but people must not be deceived! While millions of Turks live in Iran, most of them are not supporting separatism as the Turkish nationalist medias are propagating. They don't have any difference from the ordinary Iranian citizen in their political views. Before doing such a thing an area exploration and social analysis should be done in order to determine in which areas this initiative will be effective and what will be the prospects for inciting an insurgency. We should know what will be the aim of this. Deflecting the resources of the Mullah regime, separatism or something else.
I think that what we need in Iran is a friendly regime and this change must come either by democratic elections or popular unrest that would cause a "revolution" (which we can support) that will be completed with as little spilled blood as possible. Chaos can cause strategic capabilities that Iran posses to fall into the wrong hands and we don't want this. The biggest danger by these capabilities is the Iranian WMD program. Illegal WMD proliferation is something that we don't want and must be prevented at all costs.
In all of the above points I have the opinion that we shouldn't start something of which we won't bring the affairs to their end. We are fighting various terrorist organizations for decades, deal with various threats and instability in our neighbours for which we are among the main responsible actors. Billions and even trillions of dollars are gone in all of this. If we start something that we can't end, this means many more resources in terms of manpower and money will be wasted for an unknown ending. When it comes to Iran we may even face an existential threat in worst case scenario.
A good reference for something we started to a big extend and can't get to the end with is the Syrian intervention. Was it a mistake to intervene in Syria? No! The mistake was the poor planning and execution of this "operation". In result of this adventure, we are stuck with terrorists on our border, smugglers as our allies, a narco-regime that is hating us to their guts that is blowing up people in our country, the Turkmen project is basically dead, NATO has one more reason to hate us and ~4 million Syrians are in Turkiye (Arab, Kurd, Turkmen, Assyrian etc) that are bringing "cultural richness" to an already polarized and separated society. And no, the US is not the guilty one, but the decision makers in Turkiye who supported the poor plan, trusting the "supreme" US strategic mind.
While we are painting different kinds of dark scenarios I personally think that we are not going to see a conventional war between Iran and Israel. All the work of Iran in the past decades is concentrated at keeping away the focus of the US from Iran. US is currently intervening in all of the region except in Iran. They are busy in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine, we even start to talk about Iranian presence in African countries bordering the Red Sea. We are talking about the Axis of Resistance.
While jokingly remembering the Turkish series "The Valley of the Wolves" from time to time I remember a very good analysis in my opinion of the Aslan Akbey character (the chief of a secret intelligence organization named "KGT") while reviewing the situation in Fallujah, Iraq. The analysis is based on events happening between 2001-2003 and he basically states that Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia are supporting unconventional warfare actors (insurgents) in Iraq and around the world so they can keep the US busy, knowing that the US needs a certain level of available resources in order to continue "bringing democracy" to their countries, knowing that their turn will come too and this is the reason they are trying to pull away the focus of the US to other points at the map. Apart from Aslan Akbey's analysis I think this is especially true when it comes to Iran.
For Iran, entering an all out war with any major power means pulling resources from their regional/global initiative and bringing the focus of Iran's enemies at Iranian mainland. The consequences of such a war will be something that I am not sure if Iran wants to risk both militarily and politically. The rapid changes of balance in the region can result in unpredictable developments that may impact the whole region and mainly Iran and Turkiye as the two major regional powers extremely negatively.
Iranian rhetoric is there for who wants to believe in it. Especially when it comes to the Palestine issue, Iran with its rhetoric is gaining support from Shia, Sunni, anti-Western circles and regimes all around the world. Popular and political support are doors trough which the IRGC infiltrates its agents in the host country or community and starts using the local resources, focusing them towards their own agenda, using them at their disposal. Political rhetoric is important part of the process of "alignment" of a possible partner.
Aslan Akbey was a very wise man...
(Aslan Akbey)
Israel could respond to Iranian attack with an electromagnetic bomb, - i24.
Iran closes its airspace.
