Iran-Israel Russian Roulette

The expected has happened. After Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, 2024 killed seven personnel including three senior Iranian commanders, Tehran launched a 300-strong missile and drone attack on Israel.

This is a first, Israel territory being attacked by an adversary state. Although Israel claims 99 percent of the missiles and drones were shot down, it has admitted an air base in southern Israel allegedly used to launch the Damascus strike suffered minor damage.

To those exulting in Israel’s incredibly efficient Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, a word of caution. Iran’s response to the Damascus atrocity was a carefully calibrated retaliation to ensure its honour would be salvaged but not lead (hopefully) to an escalation of hostilities.

This is borne out by subsequent statements from Tehran that it considered the tit-for-tat ended, warning nevertheless that if Israel chose to strike back at Iran, a more resounding slap awaits it.

Escalation of the unprecedented exchanges between Tehran and Tel Aviv is something the entire world, including Israel’s main supporter the US, is trying to avoid.

Relying on the fact that Tehran conveyed its intentions to launch the attack on Israel 72 hours earlier to Washington through indirect means, and which allowed the US, UK, and shamefully, Jordan to help Israel shoot down the missiles and drones, it seems obvious that Iran bowed to internal, regional and worldwide pressure to respond, but had no intention that this appropriate response should go any further.

The fly in this ointment, as usual, is the aggressive Zionist state led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right government. They have already put their heads together to work out how to hit back at Tehran.

This would be a piece with its original intention to hit the Iranian consulate in Damascus to trigger a wider war, in which Netanyahu hoped to drag in the US-led west.

Washington has conveyed its ‘steer clear’ stance in any such scenario, but that still may not stop madman Netanyahu. However, perhaps we should take a step back and examine Netanyahu’s motives, which on reflection may not appear as crazy as at first glance.

Netanyahu and his reactionary government were caught with their pants down by the Hamas raid into Israel on October 7, 2023. Much has been made in the west and elsewhere of the ‘brutality’ visited on Israelis living and working in the kibbutzim near the breached Gaza border.

However, some of the more sensational initial claims have not been found truthful, such as raping women and slaughtering children. What, you may ask, was Hamas up to, what did it hope to achieve, and how far has it succeeded, at what cost? First, some context.

The Israeli state was preening for many years, having reduced the once reputable Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to a perceived ‘sub-contractor’ of the Israeli state under the leadership of Yasser Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas.

The repeated intifadas of the occupied Palestinians having failed, the resulting ‘lull’ was taken advantage of by the US to float the so-called Abraham Accords to open the door to acceptance and recognition of Israel by surrounding and even relatively distant Arab states.

Some of these johnnies such as the UAE have already moved in that direction, others such as Saudi Arabia were poised to proceed. If successful, this trend would have accorded Israel its triumph and encouraged its moves to deny Palestinian existence, let alone any (dead in the water) two-state solution.

The Israeli settlements in the West Bank would have swamped whatever remains of the Palestinian inhabitants, Gaza would have remained the biggest open-air prison in the world under more or less direct Israeli rule.

In other words, a complete and total annihilation of the Palestinian people, with the very real possibility of wiping them off the surface of the earth.

Given this context and trend, Hamas planned its brilliant tactical move of October 7, 2023, in which a lightning raid into Israeli kibbutzim near the Gaza border was carried out by first disabling the Israeli electronic eyes and ears installed on the border fence, and, before the Netanyahu government or famed Israeli Defence Force (IDF) could react, retreat with Israeli hostages back into Gaza.

Since then, despite partial exchanges of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails during short lived pauses in the genocidal slaughter in Gaza, Netanyahu’s status has been blown out of the water.

To save his political skin therefore, he has insisted on continuing the Gaza slaughter of helpless Palestinian civilians and come under pressure from the families of the still held hostages demanding an end to the Gaza war and safe return of their loved ones, not to mention vast portions of Israeli opinion castigating him for a monumental blunder of being caught with his pants down on October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival, hence his obstinacy in continuing the Gaza slaughter, knowing when and if the war stops, he is a goner.

Of course the cost of his political ambition to remain in power is being paid by the Palestinians, mostly in Gaza, but increasingly also in the West Bank.

Israel has never been as isolated in the world as it is today. Its actions from hereon may be likened to the dying throes of a desperate regime, quite possibly in the long run, the Zionist state itself. Ne’er a moment too soon, one might add.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024