The Middle East has, for some time, been a powder keg where degrees of violence are tolerated with ceremonial mania and a calculus of restraint. Assassinations can take place at a moment’s notice. Revenge killings follow with dashing speed. Suicide bombings of immolating power are carried out. Drone strikes of devastating, collective punishment are ordered, all padded by the retarded notion that such killings are morally justified and confined.
In all this viciousness, the conventional armed forces have been held in check, the arsenals contained, the generals busied by plans of contingency rather than reality. The rhetoric may be vengeful and spicily hysterical, but the states in the region keep their armies in reserve, and Armageddon at bay. Till, naturally, they don’t.
To date, Israel is doing much to test the threshold of what might be called the rule of tolerable violence. With Iran, for instance, it has adopted a “campaign between the wars”, primarily in Syria. For over a decade, the Israeli strategy was to prevent the flow of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah, intercepting weapons shipments and targeting storage facilities. “Importantly,” writes Haid Haid, a consulting fellow for Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, “Israel appeared to avoid, whenever feasible, killing Hezbollah or Iranian operatives during these operations.”
But the state of play has changed. The Gaza War, which has become more the Gaza Massacre Project, has moved into its seventh month, packing morgues, destroying families and stimulating the terror of famine. Despite calls from the Israeli military and various officials that Hamas’s capabilities have been irreparably weakened (this claim, like all those battling an idea rather than just a corporeal foe, remains refutable and redundant) the killings and policy of starvation continues against the general Palestinian populace. The International Court of Justice interim orders continue to be ignored, even as the judges deliberate over the issue as to whether genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip. The restraints, in other words, have been taken off.
The signs are ominous. Spilt blood is becoming hard currency. Daily skirmishes between the IDF and Hezbollah are taking place on the Israeli-Lebanon border. The Houthis are feverishly engaged with blocking and attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, hooting solidarity for the Palestinian cause.
On April 1, a blood crazed strike by Israel suggested that rules of tolerable violence had, if not been pushed, then altogether suspended. The attack on Iran’s consular offices in Damascus by the Israeli Air Force was tantamount to striking Iranian soil. In the process, it killed Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and other commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Zahedi’s deputy, General Haji Rahimi. Retaliation was accordingly promised, with Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, vowing a response “at the same magnitude and harshness”.
It came on April 13, involving 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles, all directed at Israel proper. Superficially, this looks anarchically quixotic, streakily disproportionate. But Tehran went for a spectacular theatrical show to terrify and magnify rather than opt for any broader infliction of damage. Israel’s Iron Dome system, along with allied powers, could be counted upon to aid the shooting down of almost all the offensive devices. A statement had been made and the Iranians have so far drawn a line under any further military action. What was deemed by certain pundits a tactical failure can just as easily be read as a strategic if provocative success. The question then is: what follows?
The Israeli approach varies depending on who is being asked. The IDF Chief of Staff, General Herzi Halevi, stated that “Israel is considering next steps” declaring that “the launch of so many missiles and drones to Israeli territory will be answered with retaliation.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was taloned in his hawkishness, demanding that Israel launch a “crushing” counterattack, “go crazy” and abandon “restraint and proportionality”, “concepts that passed away on October 7.” The “response must not be a scarecrow, in the style of the dune bombings we saw in previous years in Gaza.”
Cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who is a voting member of the war cabinet alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, is tilting for a “regional coalition” to “exact the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us. And most importantly, in the face of the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will unite and become stronger.” The immediate issues for resolution from Gantz’s perspective was the return of Israeli hostages “and the removal of the threat against the residents of the north and south.”
Such thinking will also be prompted by the response from the Biden administration that Netanyahu “think very carefully and strategically” about the next measures. “You got a win,” President Joe Biden is reported to have told Netanyahu. “Take the win.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also expressed the view that, “Strength and wisdom must be the two sides of the same coin.”
For decades, Israel has struck targets in sovereign countries with impunity, using expansive doctrines of pre-emption and self-defence. In doing so, the state always hoped that the understanding of tolerable violence would prevail. Any retaliation, if any, would be modest, with “deterrence” assured. With the war in Gaza and the fanning out of conflict, the equation has changed. To some degree, Ben Gvir is right that concepts of restraint and proportionality have been banished to the mortuary. But such banishment, to a preponderant degree, was initiated by Israel. The Israel-Gaza War is now, effectively, a global conflict, waged in regional miniature.
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Legions of fuck-wits prevail, hiding behind the ever-blundering tired old skirts Britain and America.
Who will rid the world of this murderous regime?
I bet the Palestinians in Gaza wish they had an ‘Iron Dome’ protection system !
I bet the Europeans breathed a sigh of relief after exporting their problem to sit on the Palestinians doorstep.
The Balfour declaration was a Brit masterstroke, and a surprise for the Middle East.
Got those belligerent Zionists off our back, and of course there were conditions attached.
Like, to treat the first nations people with respect.
Now if you have a mindset centered on just doing what you can get away with, then conditions are meaningless and criminal behavior becomes the norm.
If the US and Eurpeans think they can sidestep the fruits of their “declaration”, then this could be the nasty war that comes back to bite them.
Got to give it to the Israeli media spokesperson interviewed on ABC RN this morning.
He said that the IDF did not admit to the missile raid on the Iran consulate in Damascus that killed several ranking Iranian officials and led to this retaliation. He then said that the building destroyed in Damascus (by somebody) was not recognised by Israel as an Iranian consulate and thus not on Iranian sovereign soil.
TM: … and in a weird twist, the IDF is considering what action to take in “retaliation”. Seems they want to escalate this to a full-blown Middle East war, which would keep the nutandyahoo in power for longer.
Whilst Britain, France & Russia gave rise to the original carve-up and scheme of imperial deviousness (mock apologia) and commerce / trade dominance (whilst conveniently sidelining the Arabs), nearly 50 years later with the Americans up to their gills in it, the absurd UN Res 181 cast the die, and (convenient to the west) everyone on the ground went sick.
Rabin & Peres nearly had it sorted with Arafat, until the greedy and hateful Netanyahu put a knife (or should I say bullet) in it.
Ever since, Netanyahu has peddled greed, hate, spite and vengeance and jewish supremacy. Eventually he managed to mind-fuck a significance of Israelis.
Now we are left to the incompetent, criminally corrupted Netanyahu, Likud and IDF to sort out this mess of their own making, and they don’t have a plan other than antediluvian murder, mayhem and lies, hoping on the continuing blind eyes of their backers.
With the guilt of Britain, America and other Europeans backing them, it is now down to them to sort it out. Just how much more blood are they willing to be let?
Clakka is right to raise some old and unresolved material, for the “western world” was ashamed, embarrassed, inhuman, in regarding centuries of jewish degradation, finally coming to a filthy murderous conclusion under Hitlerism. To wash the bloodied hands and simultanously get rid of the jews from Europe glowed and opened as a better “final solution”, but at the expense of nobodies who had never really existed, the Palestinians, utterly betrayed by the British connivers and Truman’s deceptive turncoat selfishness. Sick.
Call it what it is ….. A pre-meditated deliberately planned strategy by the Zion@zis and IDF to ”DRIVE ALL PALESTINIANS INTO THE SEA” thus displacing and dispossessing Indigenous Palestinians for the benefit of fresh Zion@zi colonists and settlers escaping the Russian conscription, American chaos or European disinterest, to occupy the new residential developments erected after American, European and likely Middle Eastern money has cleared away the present destruction and re-built the Gaza Strip on land gifted or sold by the Israeli government of Netanyahu ….. all with the complicity of the US NE military industrial complex with their political puppets and the disinterest of the western European powers.
I was under the impression that the US had lost control of events in West Asia, but I just came across this.
The Brookings Institution is a Washington-based think tank funded by both the US government and military.
In 2009 it published a paper titled “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran.”
Just as the RAND paper on destabilising Russia became reality, “Which Path to Persia”is now being realised also.
We could be forgiven for thinking that events in West Asia at the moment seem to be unpredictable, almost out of control, but the options outlined in the paper have been, and are now, on display.
There are chapters regarding “diplomatic options” which suggested engaging with Iran in a deal regarding its nuclear program, then unilaterally abandoning the deal, and then using its failure as a pretext to apply further pressure on the Iranian government and economy (Chapter 2: Tempting Tehran: The Engagement Option).
There are chapters that suggest methods of creating unrest within Iran, by using US government-funded opposition groups, and even through supporting US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organizations like the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) (Chapter 7: Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority and Opposition Groups).
Other chapters detail a direct US invasion (Chapter 3: Going All the Way: Invasion) and a smaller scale air campaign (Chapter 4: The Osiraq Option: Airstrikes)
Finally, a whole chapter is dedicated to using Israel to trigger a war the US could then appear reluctant to wade into afterwards, (Chapter 5: Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike).
Since 2009, each of these options with the exception of direct invasion has either been tried (in some cases multiple times) or is in the process of being implemented. Even direct invasion could be considered as part of Ch.5.
The so-called Iran Nuclear Deal signed under the administration of US President Barack Obama, was unilaterally abandoned under the administration of US President Donald Trump, and efforts to revive it were blocked under the administration of US President Joe Biden. This is an illustration of not just how faithful US foreign policy unfolded in regard to the paper’s contents, but it also shows the continuity of this policy regardless of who sat in the White House or controlled the US Congress.
Today, one of the most dangerous options explored appears to be fully in motion, with the US and Israel deliberately creating an environment for war and repeatedly provoking Iran to trigger it.
However, since the paper was written, developments have occurred that could put a spanner in the works.
Iran now has serious missile capability and capacity, a factor not figured into the 2009 calculations, when it was most likely expected that sanctions would prevent any significant economic or military development by Iran.
Add to that the missile capability of Yemen, an ally of Iran, and the willingness of the Yemenis to assist in the defense of their allies. Both Iran and Yemen can strike Israel without leaving their own borders.
It’s all very well to have a war plan, but it will fail if it does not factor in the plans of the opposing side.
After vetoing the UN resolution on Palestinian statehood yesterday, the US representative said, with a straight face, “Our veto against Palestinian statehood does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood”.
The world is run by idiots.
Steve Davis
Without this act of total cynicism by the US Palestine would have been on a path to full UN membership.
The resolution had to first be voted on by the UN Security Council, which has 15 member nations. Twelve countries voted in favour of it (80% in favour) two abstained from voting and the United States opposed it. If it had passed, the resolution would have gone to the 193-member General Assembly — where no country has veto powers to block resolutions — and would have passed making Palestine the 194th member of the United Nations.
We have to get rid of the pernicious veto power in the Security Council !
Quite right Terence.
The processes of the UN structure have been problematic from the start, but were also helpful in keeping the Cold War cold.
Now that US power has waned and Third World power has waxed, the UN system is being pushed and pulled in ways not seen before, and showing signs of irrelevance.
Getting rid of the SC veto and forcing all resolutions to the floor of the Gen. Assembly would help, but unfortunately, we will be forced to endure years or even decades of chaos and anguish before the system is overhauled or replaced. The idiots are not going to give up power without a struggle.