Israel has launched a full-fledged war on Iran on the pretext of pre-empting the middle-eastern country from developing a nuclear bomb. While the United States has tried to distance itself from the Israeli attack on Iran, it can be anybody’s guess as to how detached and distanced the US can be from action. It cannot be a mere coincidence that Israel launched the attack the very next day of the 60-day deadline the US had set for Iran to sign a nuclear deal. While the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio feigned ignorance about the Israeli action, President Trump said the attack was quite a sweet thing to happen.
It reminds of the US action in Iraq where it made a strong case against Saddam Hussein that he was piling up chemical weapons. Iraq was completely destroyed. Saddam was hanged till death. Iraq’s complete decimation led to rise of the deadly ISIS, which ran amok for many years. Simultaneously, the US-sponsored unrest in Libya dethroned dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi. The entire region was pushed into a state of chaos and anarchy. But no chemical weapons were found anywhere in or around Iraq.
It is not that the US did not know that there were no chemical weapons in Iraq. It knew very much that there were none. But it needed an excuse to attack Iraq and dethrone Saddam Hussein, who was no saint either. He was a ruthless dictator. But that is no reason to make an entire country pay for a single man’s sins. Also, there was no reason to subject him to the summary trial that led to his eventual execution.
The US war on Iraq was preceded by the strong and powerful narrative built by the Western media against Hussein and his chemical weapons. As mentioned, he was no saint and had his faults also, but he was projected as a devil and as a monster who needed to be got rid of in front of the entire world. He was chased and executed after a sham trial. Hussein remained defiant till his last moment when the hangman’s noose was put around his neck. He took the noose shouting Allah-u-Akbar.
Israel appears to be repeating the same method in Iran what the US adopted in Iraq. However, Israel will be committing a grave, rather fatal mistake. Iran is not Iraq. Iraq had been devastated by the Gulf War, which again was the doing of Saddam himself, after he overran an entire country, Kuwait. Iran may be an orthodox theocratic state, but it is also a democracy. The country holds regular elections to choose its government. It is economically and politically more stable than Iraq was at the time of the NATO attack supposedly to prevent production of the chemical weapons.
Also read: Israel-Iran conflict: ‘Threshold war’ is the new reality
Israel has been putting up a strong case about the possibility of Iran building nuclear weapons. After recent attacks, Israel claims that it has decapitated Iran’s capability to produce nuclear weapons. Israel cites the threats posed regularly by Iran that it will completely destroy the Jewish state.
“We know our enemies. We know their ideology. And when a regime builds ballistic missiles, enriches uranium to near weapons-grade and openly declares its intent to destroy us—we believe them,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said in the aftermath of the missile attacks, which killed top brass of the Iranian defence forces.
No doubt Israel has exposed the weakness of Iran’s defence preparedness, but Iran has been hitting back hard and real, inflicting substantial casualties on Israel. But, eventually, Iran will be pitted against the US weapons, which are freely available to Israel.
Iran does have allies like China and Russia. So much so, Iran was believed to be supplying drones to Russia in its war with Ukraine. However, Russia for its obvious engagement in Ukraine will not get involved in another war. China is not known to stick out its neck for someone else, although it may offer some token support. The Arab-dominated Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) is also not much inclined to stand by Iran. Many Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are too deeply aligned with the US to go against its ally, Israel. This leaves Iran practically isolated. How long it can offer resistance to Israel is not too difficult to guess.
The West has also launched a psychological operation on the Iranian regime to the extent of saying that Israel would have killed the supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but was prevented from doing so by the United States. The ‘Supreme Spiritual Leader’ in Iran is the unifying force in the country, since the Islamic Revolution that replaced the Pahallavi dynasty.
There are also attempts to cause a domestic uprising in Iran against the orthodox Islamic regime. There have already been some protests witnessed during the last few years, which have led to execution of many of the protestors. The West may be critical of Israel’s “continuous” war on Gaza, but it appears to be supportive and collaborative towards Israel in its war against Iran; something similar to the NATO action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on the pretext of chemical weapons. In this case the weapons have changed from chemical to nuclear with the same intent. How far Iran is able to resist remains to be seen.
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