🇮🇷 The intelligence community always assessed that killing the Supreme Leader would rally Iran behind the regime. The funeral crowds just proved it at a scale nobody modeled…
Joe Kent ran counterterrorism for this government, and his verdict on those processions was unsparing: the Israelis outplayed Washington by getting it on board with the assassination, knowing it would set any negotiated exit back tenfold.
Soleimani was a general; this was different.
Now Araghchi sits across the table from Americans knowing his own streets are chanting “death to the compromiser.” Militarily strong, politically unable to concede an inch.
His read on the Bibi visit: Netanyahu won’t push for strikes on Iran proper.
He’ll work the Lebanon seam, quietly pulling Trump deeper into the side deal until the tit-for-tat reignites itself.
And the domestic ground is shifting under all of it.
Rahm Emanuel, a longtime pro-Israel Democrat, just gave a speech calling for sanctions on violent settlers and conditional aid.
Joe’s point: a machine politician like that doesn’t test a message unless the voters already moved.
Where he left me uneasy was the honest part.
No diplomatic solution Trump can accept, no military one the Pentagon can define.
Just a proxy war spreading through Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, with an axis that now retaliates in the open.
@joekent16jan19
