( Tomdispatch.com ) – One, erratic and often unhinged, blew up the U.S.-Iran accord that was the landmark foreign policy achievement of President Obama’s second term. He then ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general visiting Iraq, dramatically raising tensions in the region. The other is a traditional advocate of American exceptionalism, a supporter of the U.S.-Iran agreement who promised to restore it upon taking office, only to ham-handedly bungle the job, while placating Israel.

In November, of course, American voters get to choose which of the two they’d trust with handling ongoing explosive tensions with Tehran across a Middle East now in crisis. The war in Gaza has already intensified the danger of an Iran-Israel conflict — with the recent devastating Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria and the Iranian response of drones and missiles dispatched against Israel only upping the odds. In addition, Iran’s “axis of resistance” — including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria — has been challenging American hegemony throughout the Middle East, while drawing lethal U.S. counterstrikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

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It was President Donald Trump, of course, who condemned the U.S.-Iran agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) while running in 2016. With his team of fervent anti-Iran hawks, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, he took a wrecking ball to relations with Iran. Six years ago, Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and, in what he called a campaign of “maximum pressure,” reinstituted, then redoubled political and economic sanctions against Tehran. Characteristically, he maintained a consistently belligerent policy toward the Islamic Republic, threatening its very existence and warning that he could “obliterate” Iran.

Joe Biden had been a supporter of the accord, negotiated while he was Obama’s vice president. During his 2020 presidential campaign, he promised to rejoin it. In the end, though, he kept Trump’s onerous sanctions in place and months of negotiations went nowhere. While he put out feelers to Tehran, crises erupting in 2022 and 2023, including the invasion of Israel by Hamas, placed huge obstacles in the way of tangible progress toward rebooting the JCPOA.

Worse yet, still reeling from the collapse of the 2015 agreement and ruled by a hardline government deeply suspicious of Washington, Iran is in no mood to trust another American diplomatic venture. In fact, during the earlier talks, it distinctly overplayed its hand, demanding far more than Biden could conceivably offer.

“Natanz,” Digital Imagining, Dream, Realistic v. 2, 2024.

Meanwhile, Iran has accelerated its nuclear research and its potential production facilities, amassing large stockpiles of uranium that, as the Washington Post reports, “could be converted to weapons-grade fuel for at least three bombs in a time frame ranging from a few days to a few weeks.”

Trump’s Anti-Iran Jihad

While the U.S. and Iran weren’t exactly at peace when Trump took office in January 2017, the JCPOA had at least created the foundation for what many hoped would be a new era in their relations.

Iran had agreed to drastically limit the scale and scope of its uranium enrichment program, reduce the number of centrifuges it could operate, curtail its production of low-enriched uranium suitable for fueling a power plant, and ship nearly all of its enriched uranium stockpile out of the country. It closed and disabled its Arak plutonium reactor, while agreeing to a stringent regime in which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would monitor every aspect of its nuclear program.

In exchange, the United States, the European Union (EU), and the United Nations agreed to remove an array of economic sanctions, which, until then, had arguably made Iran the most sanctioned country in the world.

Free of some of them, its economy began to recover, while its oil exports, its economic lifeblood, nearly doubled. According to How Sanctions Work, a new book from Stanford University Press, Iran absorbed a windfall of $11 billion in foreign investment, gained access to $55 billion in assets frozen in Western banks, and saw its inflation rate fall from 45% to 8%.

But Trump acted forcefully to undermine it all. In October 2017, he “decertified” Iran’s compliance with the accord, amid false charges that it had violated the agreement. (Both the EU and the IAEA agreed that it had not.)

Many observers feared that Trump was creating an environment in which Washington could launch an Iraq-style war of aggression. In a New York Times op-ed, Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, suggested that Trump was repeating the pattern of unproven allegations President George W. Bush had relied on: “The Trump administration is using much the same playbook to create a false impression that war is the only way to address the threats posed by Iran.”

Finally, on May 8, 2018, Trump blew up the JCPOA and sanctions on Iran were back in place. Relentlessly, he and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin piled on ever more of them in what they called a campaign of “maximum pressure.” Old sanctions were reactivated and hundreds of new ones added, targeting Iran’s banking and oil industries, its shipping industry, its metal and petrochemical firms, and finally, its construction, mining, manufacturing, and textile sectors. Countless individual officials and businessmen were also targeted, along with dozens of companies worldwide that dealt, however tangentially, with Iran’s sanctioned firms. It was, Mnuchin told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “a maximum pressure campaign for sanctions…. We will continue to ramp up, more, more, more.” At one point, in a gesture both meaningless and insulting, the Trump administration even sanctioned Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, a move moderate President Hassan Rouhani called “outrageous and idiotic,” adding that Trump was “afflicted by mental retardation.”

Then, in 2019, Trump took the unprecedented step of labeling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s chief military arm, a “foreign terrorist organization.” He put a violent exclamation point on that when he ordered the assassination of Iran’s premier military leader, General Qassem Soleimani, during his visit to Baghdad.

Administration officials made it clear that the goal was toppling the regime and that they hoped the sanctions would provoke an uprising to overthrow the government. Iranians did, in fact, rise up in strikes and demonstrations, including most recently 2023’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, partly thanks to tougher economic times due to the sanctions. The government’s response, however, was a brutal crackdown. Meanwhile, on the nuclear front, having painstakingly complied with the JCPOA until 2018, instead of being even more conciliatory Iran ramped up its program, enriching far more uranium than was necessary to fuel a power plant. And militarily, it initiated a series of clashes with U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf, attacked or seized foreign-operated oil tankers, shot down a U.S. drone in the Straits of Hormuz, and launched drones meant to cripple Saudi Arabia’s huge oil industry.

“The American withdrawal from the JCPOA and the severity of the sanctions that followed were seen by Iran as an attempt to break the back of the Islamic Republic or, worse, to completely destroy it,” Vali Nasr, a veteran analyst at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and one of the authors of How Sanctions Work, told me. “So, they circled the wagons. Iran became far more securitized, and it handed more and more power to the IRGC and the security forces.”

Biden’s Reign of (Unforced) Error

Having long supported a deal with Iran —  in 2008, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, in 2015, in a speech to Jewish leaders — Joe Biden called Trump’s decision to quit the JCPOA a “self-inflicted disaster.” But on entering the Oval Office, Biden failed to simply rejoin it.

Instead, he let months go by, while waxing rhetorical in a quest to somehow improve it. Even though the JCPOA had been working quite well, the Biden team insisted it wanted a “longer and stronger agreement” and that Iran first had to return to compliance with the agreement, even though it was the United States that had pulled out of the deal.

Consider that an unforced error. “Early in 2021 there was one last chance to restore the agreement,” Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me. “He could have just come back to the JCPOA by issuing an executive order, but he didn’t do anything for what turned out to be the ten most critical weeks.”

It was critical because the Iranian administration of President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, responsible for negotiating the original accord, was expiring and new elections were scheduled for June 2021. “One of the major mistakes Biden made is that he delayed the nuclear talks into April,” comments Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Princeton University scholar and a former top Iranian official who was part of its nuclear negotiating team in 2005-2007. “This was a golden opportunity to negotiate with the Rouhani team, but he delayed until a month before the Iranian elections. He could have finished the deal by May.”

When the talks finally did resume in April — “gingerly,” according to the New York Times — they were further complicated because, just days earlier, a covert Israeli operation had devastated one of Iran’s top nuclear research facilities with an enormous explosion. Iran responded by pledging to take the purity of its enriched uranium from 20% to 60%, which didn’t exactly help the talks, nor did Biden’s unwillingness to condemn Israel for a provocation clearly designed to wreck them.

That June, Iranians voted in a new president, Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric and militant supporter of the “axis of resistance.” He took office in August, spent months assembling his administration, and appointed a new team to lead the nuclear talks. By July, according to American officials, those talks on a new version of the JCPOA had reached “near complete agreement,” only to fall apart when the Iranian side backed out.

It was also clear that the Biden administration didn’t prioritize the Iran talks, being less than eager to deal with bitter opposition from Israel and its allies on Capitol Hill. “Biden’s view was that he’d go along with reviving the JCPOA only if he felt it was absolutely necessary and to do it at the least political cost,” Parsi points out. “And it looked like he’d only do it if it were acceptable to Israel.”

Over the next two years, the United States and Iran engaged in an unproductive series of negotiations that seemed to come tantalizingly close to an agreement only to stop short. By the summer of 2022, the nuclear talks once again appeared to be making progress, only to fail yet again.  “After 15 months of intense, constructive negotiations in Vienna and countless interactions with the JCPOA participants and the U.S., I have concluded that the space for additional significant compromises has been exhausted,” wrote Josep Borrell Fontelles, the foreign policy chief for the European Union.

By the end of 2022, Biden reportedly declared the Iran deal “dead” and his chief negotiator insisted he wouldn’t “waste time” trying to revive it. As Mousavian told me, Iran’s crackdown on the Woman, Life, Freedom revolt in the wake of its “morality police” torturing and killing a young woman, Mahsa Amini, arrested on the streets of Tehran without a veil, and increased concern about Iranian drones being delivered to Russia for its war in Ukraine soured Biden on even talking to Iran.

Nonetheless, in 2023, yet another round of talks — helped, perhaps, by a prisoner exchange between the United States and Iran, including an agreement to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues – resulted in a tentative, informal accord that Iranian officials described as a “political ceasefire.” According to the Times of Israel, “the understandings would see Tehran pledge not to enrich uranium beyond its current level of 60 percent purity, to better cooperate with U.N. nuclear inspectors, to stop its proxy terror groups from attacking U.S. contractors in Iraq and Syria, to avoid providing Russia with ballistic missiles, and to release three American-Iranians held in the Islamic Republic.”

But even that informal agreement was consigned to the dustbin of history after Hamas’s October 7th attack doomed any rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

The question remains: Could some version of the JCPOA be salvaged in 2025?

Certainly not if, as now seems increasingly possible, a shooting war breaks out involving the United States, Iran, and Israel, a catastrophic crisis with unforeseeable consequences. And certainly not if Trump is reelected, which would plunge the United States and Iran deeper into their cold (if not a devastatingly hot) war.

What do the experts say? Against the possibility of a revived accord, according to Vali Nasr, Iran has concluded that Washington is an utterly untrustworthy negotiating partner whose word is worthless. “Iran has decided that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans and they decided to escalate tensions further in order to gain what they hope is additional leverage vis-à-vis Washington.”

“Biden’s intention was to revive the deal,” says Hossein Mousavian. “He did take some practical steps to do so and at least he tried to deescalate the situation.” Iran was, however, less willing to move forward because Biden insisted on maintaining the sanctions Trump had imposed.

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, however, catches the full pessimism of a moment in which Iran and Israel (backed remarkably fully by Washington) are at the edge of actual war. Given the rising tensions in the region, not to speak of actual clashes, he says gloomily, “The best that we can hope for is that nothing happens. There is no hope for anything more.”

And that’s where hope is today in a Middle East that seems to be heading for hell in a handbasket. 

Copyright 2024 Bob Dreyfuss

Via Tomdispatch.com

Defending itself from Iran’s drones and missiles cost the Israelis alone an estimated 4-5 billion shekels ($1.08-1.35billion). This does not include the cost to US citizens of $1 billion in countering Houthi and Iranian missiles and drones targeted at Israel. Israel’s initial limited response on April 19 through a drone attack on a military base in Isfahan leaves room for de-escalation of tension over a full-scale war.

Iran’s first direct attack on Israel hit the Nevatim airbase, a mere 40 miles south of Jerusalem, practically implying an Iranian credible deterrence capability if the potency of the deterrence is questioned. Prospects for a wider conflict in the region involving Russia and China remain, risking an ultimate nuclear exchange that should remain ‘unthinkable.’ Strategic partners Russia and China have Tehran’s back, and their role in West Asia’s conflict will only grow if the US doesn’t keep Israel in check. Whilst the war in Gaza and the Lebanon-Israel border continues. Israel’s unrelenting assault on Gaza, killing over 34000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, with the vast majority women and children, has turned public opinion against Israel. And, Israel’s attempts to destroy UNRWA — the backbone of relief efforts in Gaza — with its slow, meticulous, and often arbitrary inspection of trucks have further complicated aid delivery.

What indelibly marks these events, aside from the military and political calculations and implications for the region, is that they have occurred in violation of provisions of international law, including, but not exclusively, the breach of sovereignty, international humanitarian laws, laws of war,  crimes against humanity, wars of aggression, and according to a preliminary ICJ ruling, possibly the articles of 1948 genocide convention. Israel’s ‘ironclad’ supporter, the United States, is construed, therefore, as an accomplice in the crime of genocide through its arms transfers to Israel, and vetoes in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to end Israel’s almost seven-month-old military operation in Gaza. 

Al Jazeera English Video: “Nearly 200 bodies found in mass grave at hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis”

A closer look at the post-Cold war period since 1990 reveals persistent US violations of international law, generally related to the 75-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The United States has paid a heavy financial and political, and now explicit moral, price for its protection of the state of Israel. But the biggest victim of this ‘special relation’ has been the very foundation of the liberal international order. The United States’ (along with its Western allies in NATO) double-standard views and application of provisions of international law have been detrimental to an orderly global governance, A major culprit for such liberal/illiberal dichotomy in rhetoric and practice is the US blind commitment to the state of Israel.  

The end of the Cold War promised the End of History and the beginning of a ‘New World Order.’ It promised that globalization of trade and finance and the technological revolution in information technology, transportation, and communication means the falsity of a looming ‘Clash of Civilizations.’ 

The United States experienced almost unprecedented economic prosperity in the 1990s and the European allies celebrated the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The Eastern European countries abandoned communism and joined the ranks of capitalist countries and the European Union. China continued with its miraculous economic performance welcomed Western investments and traded and cooperated in the Security Council curtailing the Iranian nuclear program. Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation similarly welcomed privatization. But,   structural adjustment policies resulted in a defunct privatization of state-owned properties, and with inadequate legal and institutional mechanisms to prevent the rise of the new oligarchs and ‘parasitic capitalism.’ 

Ironically, the new world order was to emerge on the ruins of Iraq after the 1990-91 first Persian Gulf war. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 on 29 November 1990 authorized the first UNSC collective security action against an aggressor since the 1950-53 Korean War. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 triggered the first Persian Gulf war, but we also witnessed 30 scud missiles hitting Israel as Saddam Hussein attempted to expand the war and turn it into another Arab-Palestinian-Israeli war. The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) was a bloody confrontation between two Muslim countries with opposing views on Islam, power politics, and what constitutes national interest. Yet, the revolutionary state in Iran saw the liberation of al-Quds (Jerusalem) to follow the liberation of Shia holy sites in Kerbala and Najaf in Iraq. Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric and actions have remained steadfast since the advent of the revolution. 

The US Mideast policy immediately after WWII focused primarily on countering communism and securing the flow of cheap oil from the region which demanded dealing with authoritarian Arab regimes fearful of both the threat of communism and radical ideas that may threaten the status quo on the resource power parameters in the state-society relations. Still, the thorny Palestinian issue was two-pronged, and the Arab states fought against and cooperated with Israel to contain Palestinian nationalism. The Arab Israeli wars have always involved competing Arab, Israeli, and Palestinian nationalisms, compounded with inter-Arab states’ political rivalries, sectarianism, and US (and Israeli) interventions during and after the Cold War. Recall, the Arab-Israel-Palestinian wars with such hallmarks, including 1948, 1956, 1967-70, 1973, and 1982-85 (Lebanon) wars.

Regional wars bearing similar traits and related to the wider Palestinian nationalism include the first Persian Gulf War (1990-91), Intifada I (1987-1990), Intifada II (2000-2005), Lebanon (2006), and 15 wars involving Gaza alone since 1948, including the Gazan wars of 2008-09, 2014, 2018-19, and now the ongoing 2023-24 war. No wonder, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the mother of all wars in the region. The conflict over the years has fed the radicalization of politics in the region. The Islamic movements have rallied around the issue of the liberation of Palestine and al-Quds (Jerusalem) to mobilize popular support in advancing political and religious legitimacy in the absence of a viable democratic rule. The 22 authoritarian Arab states, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Türkiye have also been intimately involved with the Palestinian issue.   

The United States has relied on its hard and soft power to lead a liberal global order since World War II. The Cold War preoccupation with polarity and deterrence based on a doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) complicated the plans for a liberal international system, beginning with the creation of the Bretton-Woods gold-based, fixed-rate exchange system and its institutions—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). The principle behind the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) eventually developed into the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, as the Europeans’ attempts at integration since 1951 progressed into the creation of the European Union in 1993. Other rule-based regional economic integration also appeared in Asia, Africa, South and North America. Contrary to the unstable interwar period that saw the rise of Nazism and Fascism, the post-WWII ‘peaceful’ international system witnessed 51 founding members of the UN in 1945 increase to 193 countries today. 

The United States’ commitment to the security of the state of Israel has been a dominant theme in its Middle Eastern policy since its creation in 1948 but also at the expense of its advocacy for a liberal-based international law and order. The US has over decades dispensed billions of dollars in economic and military aid premising it on Israel as a strategic ally in countering communism, helping the flow of oil, and keeping Arab radicalism at bay. Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding, collecting about $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance. The US diplomatic coverage of Israel also is unconstructive; the UN data shows it has vetoed dozens of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1972.

A review of debates in Congress and data analysis also shows, “Members of Congress have consistently debated and passed resolutions in support of Israel and in repudiation of its foes, showing strong bipartisan support for Israel.” The US’s unequivocal support of Israel has seen it prevent resolutions condemning, among others, violence against protesters, illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank built since 1967. The US meanwhile has obliged its NATO allies, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan in its quest to protect Israel and in support of authoritarian Arab states!

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the ‘mother of all conflicts’ in the MENA region that has intimately influenced or been influenced by Arab nationalism, the Islamic movements, the radicalization of politics, and overall governance in the region. To the neglect of elsewhere in Africa, the Sahel region has experienced five military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, and Gabon. Whilst, Tunisia, Chad, and Sudan have experienced constitutional coups and widespread violence in the case of Sudan. The US Africa Command since 2008  has been involved in military training of African states to counter the Russian and Chinese military and economic inroads in the Continent.  

The restoration of a global liberal order necessitates a uniform and unbiased application of the expectations, norms, and laws of international law. Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel from Gaza, the world has witnessed the continuing degradation of the norms and laws and the expectations of behavior in the so-called international liberal order. The Israeli overreaction to the Hamas attack resembles the United States’ initial response to the terrorist attack on its soil on September 11, 2001. In that instance, the United States, for the sake of revenge, self-defense, or the restoration of international order, took measures that violated the very norms, laws, and expectations of the international system which Washington had championed for decades. The United States in less than a month began bombing Afghanistan and quickly overthrew the ruling Taliban regime and chased al Qaeda fighters across the border into Pakistan and elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond. This story, however, did not end there. The US declared a ‘War on Terror’ resulting in a policy of regime change beginning with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, Moammar Qaddafi in Libya, and unsuccessful attempts in Syria and Yemen.  

Estimates of direct civilians killed due to American military intervention totals stand at least 400,000 since 9/11. The number of people killed indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, including in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, is estimated at 3.6-3.8 million, though the precise figure remains unknown. This brings the estimated total of direct and indirect deaths to 4.5-4.7 million. Similarly, the Israeli overreaction after the tragic events of October 7, 2023, resulting in 1200 Israelis killed, has already led to 34,000 Palestinian dead, with women and children accounting for the majority, not accounting for thousands injured, maimed, traumatized, and remain unaccounted for. The deadly Israeli assault on Gaza has also led to the death of many journalists, members of the NGOs, and the destruction of hospitals and mosques. 

International law today remains incomplete and in need of drastic structural changes, e.g., a reform of the UNSC membership and power structure, a revisiting of the adjudication power of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) and its ‘compulsory’ jurisdiction, the World Trade’s provisions for labor and environmental protection, and a serious re-commitment to empower UN and its functional agencies with necessary resources. The United States unconditional support for Israel and its lack of attention to the welfare of peoples in the MENA region, as well as elsewhere in the developing world, in pursuit of peace, human security, and good governance, is detrimental to the universal compliance and voluntary adherence to the norms and rules of international law.    

Viewers accustomed to American media will likely blame Iran for any intensification of hostilities. In fact, however, virtually every act of aggression that has taken place in the region since October 8^th is rooted in Israel’s ‘war’ on Gaza, which has deep roots not only in the European colonial past but in religious mythology and a Zionist ideology that is rigid, chauvinistic and exclusive. All three factors underscore the belief that Jews alone have a right to historic Palestine.

Across America, as the carefully choreographed Iranian “attack” played out like a fireworks display on our television screens, Hudia –a friend of mine in Rafah, Gaza—recorded her thoughts:

“Was Iran allowed to attack Israel so that the world’s attention would be drawn away from Gaza? If so, it was successful. Here in Gaza, however, Israel’s destruction did not stop for one second. Iranian missiles broke apart in the skies to our east, but the drones and bombs over our heads remained intact until they exploded on the ground, scattering debris and human bodies.”

On Saturday morning, 13 April 2024, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported 33,634 Palestinians killed and 76, 214 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7^th. By Monday morning, 15 April 2024, the death toll had increased to over 33,800 – an addition of nearly two hundred bodies—but global attention was now focused on Iran.

For the US and Israel this was a win. Herzl Halevi, Chief of Staff of Israel’s military, promised a response –a sinister pledge since Iran’s “attack” was supposed to have been the conclusion to Israel’s April 1^st bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus in which Israel targeted what is considered sovereign Iranian territory, according to the 1961 Vienna Convention.

The Young Turks Video: “Israel Attacks Iran After Vowing Retaliation”

With this strike, Israel killed 16 people, including seven IRCG soldiers, two of whom were high-ranking officers, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haj Rahimi.

Halevi and his associates in Israel understood the attack in Syria would have consequences beyond fulminations against the ‘Zionist entity.’ For the first time in its history, the Islamic Republic of Iran struck back at Israel. But this was little more than a face-saving measure.

Iran gave the US fair warning –allowing it to caution its embassy staff in Israel not to travel – and appears to have aimed most of its weapons at the Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel, where the F-35 that struck Damascus began its flight. This was a largely symbolic strike, one that aimed “to minimize casualties while maximizing spectacle.”

Iran is uninterested in regional war, least of all one that involves the United States. Why then are the Israelis so keen to hit back at Iran?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken the opportunity to justify a retaliatory attack. He has openly sought such a war for nearly 30 years. Although US President Joe Biden told Israel the US would not participate in any Israeli action against Iran, he has repeatedly told Israel US support is “ironclad”. If Iran attacks Israel again US participation is therefore guaranteed.

The American Israeli tango taking place has other curious features. When the US bombed several Middle East targets after three American service personnel were killed at Tower 22 in Jordan, Iran called on allied militia groups to cease all attacks against US bases in the region. After the Israeli strike in Damascus the Iranians held the United States responsible, placing US troops in danger yet again.

Rather than express anger at Israel, the US, UK, and France blocked a UN resolution condemning Israel’s actions.  Iran’s offer not to hit back militarily if the UN condemned Israel’s actions was ignored. The United States was therefore instrumental in fueling Iran’s counterattack.

In Egypt and Qatar, Hamas negotiators have repeatedly demanded a permanent ceasefire in exchange for all the hostages taken on October 7^th, yet Israeli negotiators have consistently refused insisting they must defeat Hamas in Gaza before the fighting stops. One result has been a surge in Hamas’ popularity across the Middle East; another is that the hostages remain in captivity. The US vetoed three UNSC resolutions demanding a ceasefire, abstained once, falsely claiming the resolution was “non-binding;” and continues to entertain Israel’s plan to invade Rafah.

With global attention focused on Israeli-Iranian tensions, Netanyahu can claim at least a partial victory. What better way to salvage Israel’s image, battered by its genocidal actions in Gaza, than to spearhead an assault against the “Axis of Resistance”?

Israel can again claim it is a tiny, beleaguered nation fighting valiantly against “terrorism” and Islamic ‘treachery’ with Hamas (and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) portrayed as the agents of Tehran. As such, Hamas is but one arm of the sinister ‘octopus’ whose head is the Islamic Republic and whose other arms include Hizbullah of Lebanon, Ansar Allah of Yemen, Syria, and various Iraqi paramilitaries.

For some in the West, Palestine is just a fig leaf covering the Axis’ greater goal of destroying Israel, instrumentalized by antisemites and shadowy anti-enlightenment villains determined to overthrow Western civilization. The protection of the Jewish State then becomes a moral duty.

Instead of being seen as a rogue nation pulverizing the Gaza Strip into oblivion, Israel will try to convince the world that its destruction of Gaza is to protect the world we know. If Palestinians have already been dehumanized to the extent that genocidal murder and displacement raise few eyebrows, they can be partly de-nationalized as well. Palestine will no longer be the central issue; our core Western values, of which Israel is a key representative, are under threat.

Is this the framework Netanyahu and his cohorts here and in Israel wish to reinforce? If so, they can ‘rightly’ conclude that demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and ignoring Iran’s attack are suicidal. Hudia writes,

“Iran’s attack did nothing but divert attention from what’s happening here. Hundreds of Iranian drones and rockets evaporated into the atmosphere achieving nothing but heightened tensions with Israel, giving them greater license than ever to carry on with genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

( RFE/RL ) – Israel had vowed to make Iran pay for Tehran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack on April 13.

But Israel’s suspected military response early on April 19 appeared to be limited in scale and scope and aimed at de-escalating tensions with Iran.

Tehran said it shot down three quadcopter drones outside the central city of Isfahan, which is home to key military and nuclear facilities. Unnamed U.S. officials said Israel used missiles in the attack.

Experts said the use of small quadcopter drones, which are unable to travel long distances, suggests the attack was carried out from inside Iranian territory.

Israel has not claimed the attack in Isfahan. But experts said the suspected Israeli response sent a clear message to Tehran.

Raz Zimmt, a senior researcher at the Israeli-based Institute for National Security Studies, said Israel’s use of quadcopter drones, if confirmed, suggests its aim was to “expose the vulnerability of the Iranian security forces” on their own turf.

Zimmt said the attack was not without its risks, but out of all the options available to Israel, it was possibly the least risky.

“At this stage, deniability is vital to lower the risk. I think that if Israel takes responsibility for what happened — and there is sometimes this tendency among Israeli politicians – this would make it more difficult, not impossible but more difficult, for Iran not to retaliate.”

CNBC TV Video: “Israel launches strike on Iran: Here’s what to know”

Reuters quoted an unnamed Iranian official as saying that Tehran “has no plan to strike back immediately.”

Israel has been accused of previously attacking military sites in Isfahan with small drones. In January 2023, a military factory was hit. Three months later, Iran said it had foiled a drone attack on a Defense Ministry complex in the city.

Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that if Israel was behind the Isfahan attack, it was carried out in a manner “that carried the least risk of an Iranian retaliation.”

Iran’s April 13 attack was a response to the suspected Israeli air strike on the Iranian Embassy compound in Damascus on April 1 that killed seven Iranian commanders, including two generals.

Tehran said its attack showed that a “new equation” had been established and that Iran would not let Israeli strikes on Iranian interests abroad go unanswered.

But on the same day as the Isfahan attack, Israel was accused of targeting air defense systems in Syria, a key ally of Tehran where Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has a presence.

Zimmt said Israel wanted to send the message that “first, we retaliated, and second, we attacked in Syria and not just in Iran, meaning we are not ready to accept this so-called ‘new equation’ that the Iranians are trying to force on us.”

Mohammad Zarghami of Radio Farda contributed to this report.

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Via RFE/RL

On Friday morning, Israel launched missile strikes on military bases near the Iranian city of Isfahan.

A desperate Netanyahu, seeing Western support for his total war on Gaza collapsing, began this tit-for-tat cycle by launching an assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers at the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria on April 1^st 2024.   The Israeli government knew what they were doing.  Netanyahu was baiting Tehran into a reaction, which he got.

Iran responded with a missile and drone barrage on April 13. Almost all these projectiles, however, were shot down by the United States, since Iran had openly telegraphed its intentions.

The context for this exchange of strikes is the Israeli assault on Gaza. Netanyahu’s government has killed more than 34,000 people.  The numbers are not clear, since the ones under the rubbles of Gaza cannot even be calculated.

14,000 children.

Today, Gaza is worse than Dresden after the war.  

Hamas, of course also committed atrocities against the Israeli population on October 7. Over 600 innocent, noncombatant Israelis were killed, alongside more than 400 Israeli military personnel.  Many of the civilians were peace-loving people, who disagreed with their own government’s punitive policies toward the Palestinians. The response of the far-right wing Netanyahu government, however, has been vastly disproportionate.

Another issue between the two countries has been Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program to create fuel for its reactor. Netanyahu fears that it can easily be militarized, and had created a spectacle at the UN showing off Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities.   

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) refuted him, insisting that Iran has no military nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s charges obscured the imbalance of power between the two countries. Considering that Israel has 300 nukes, Iran, which has none, can be wiped off the map in a matter of minutes.

The IAEA’s assurances notwithstanding, the Israeli government under various Israeli administrations has assassinated nuclear scientists inside Iran. 

Israel, with the help of the expatriate Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization, which was until recently on the US State Department terrorism list, also stole nuclear data from Iran.

Then, Trump came along, and he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, to which Iran had scrupulously adhered, mothballing 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program for promised sanctions relief that was never granted.

The decision to rip up the deal was made in Tel Aviv, not in Washington. 

Now, Mr. Netanyahu  has a last chance to get his allies to rally behind him when both his support at home and internationally has dissipated. Since the war in Gaza has not gone well and has isolated his regime, his government, a very right-wing government, is looking for alternatives.

CNN Video: “Israel has attacked Iran, US official tells CNN”

The Islamic Republic has been been building deterrence by supporting the various groups in the Middle East, whether Houthis, Hezbollah or Hamas.

Several IRGC commanders were assassinated, including Ghassem Soleimani. 

The shadow war has continued.  Hezbollah launched missiles at the territory of Israel.   Houthis fired on cargo ships in support of Gaza. 

In his most recent speech at the UN, the Israeli ambassador compared the regime in Tehran to the Nazi regime.   How can an educated person even compare the two?  The Nazi regime eliminated millions of Jews and others. 

Iran has the largest Jewish community after Israel.  Khamenei is no Eichmann, despite what Netanyahu keeps alleging.

We, as Iranians and Iranian Americans wish for a better Iran without the rule of the clerics.   But not at the expense of the disintegration of Iran.  There is no question that has been Netanyahu’s wish. 

Many years ago, at a conference at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, I remember the notorious Michael Ledeen had invited non-various actors from different ethnic minorities of Iran. Those speaking on their behalf did not even represent the Iranian minorities.  At the end of the conference, where Paul Wolfowitz was also there, (the one who advised Bush to go to Iraq) all the speakers said we want a united Iran.

It was a total failure. 

To this day, Iran has been a united nation and Iran is a nation state. 

Iranians want a regime change but not by the help of any foreign entities, but rather with their own volition.

No war is going to solve anything.   We are all united against a war on Israel or the Israeli nation and on Iran and the Iranian nation.

We need clearer, sounder voices to come to the fore.

 In the words of the great Sufi poet of Iran, Rumi,

“Out beyond the idea
of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field, I’ll meet you there.”

We are for peace.   But those in power in Israel and in Iran do not want peace. 

They are itching for war.

Since Congress, which appears to have a disproportionate number of genocidal maniacs in its ranks, is all right with the Palestinians being subjected to mass murder, it should come as no surprise that they are all right with their remaining unfree from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

As often has been the case in American history, the House of Representatives has failed to understand its role in the Constitution. The representatives might like to consult their own website, which notes that the First Amendment says,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The resolution passed Wednesday is a blatant attempt to abridge the freedom of speech. That is why it is a resolution and not incorporated into a law, because the law would be struck down immediately. As for the resolution, it is hateful hot air.

The resolution alleges that the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is “antisemitic.” They seem to be worse readers of texts even than they are constitutional scholars. The phrase doesn’t mention Jews. It says that Palestine will be free.

Palestine is currently not free.

However, on 13 December, 1993, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher signed the Oslo Peace Accords. These accords, which have the force of U.S. law, specified that Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank by 1997 and turn their governance over to the Palestine Authority, that is, the state of Palestine. Had the Oslo accords been implemented, then from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, Palestine would have been free.

They were not implemented because the accords were deliberately derailed by the far right wing Likud Party led by Binyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu boasted about his role in ensuring that Palestine did not become free. The Likud wants to annex the West Bank and Gaza and to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population (which the New York Times is forbidden to tell you).

Video: “Netanyahu boasting about Manipulating America and derailing Oslo peace process”

So the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” can be read as an insistence that Oslo, which is US treaty law, actually be implemented.

The congressional resolution insists that the phrase must mean that the state of Palestine would constitute all the land of historic Palestine, i.e. the area of the British Mandate of Palestine. In such a scenario, there would be no place for Israel.

However, in those Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, signed by the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, that organization agreed to recognize Israel.

So supporters of the PLO and of the state of Palestine obviously do not mean by the chant to take back away that recognition. In fact, the ones who reneged are the Israelis, who took back away their recognition of Palestine.

It may be that some people who use the phrase “from the river to the sea” mean it in an anti-Israel fashion. That it always has this sense is not something that members Congress, most of whom are signally ignorant of the Middle East, can stipulate. If we stop letting Congress play ventriloquist with Palestinians, and listen to actual Palestinians, what do we hear?

Yusuf Munayyer wrote in Jewish Currents, “I wasn’t concerned with Israel’s identity crisis over whether it could be both Jewish and democratic; I was concerned that Palestinians were being denied basic rights throughout their homeland. My column, “From the River to the Sea,” would be focused on the unity of the Palestinian experience and how all Palestinians faced a shared struggle with Zionism regardless of where they lived.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”

MSNBC: “Rep. Rashida Tlaib responds to House censure vote”

Congress complains that the phrase seeks to deprive the Jewish people of the right of self-determination. But the Jewish people in the sense of followers of the Judaic religion are not a national unit. American Jews are Americans. If Congress is saying that all Jews everywhere have the right of collective self-determination and that it can only be exercised in historic Palestine, then it is saying that the 6 million American Jews are deprived of that right. The resolution reduces American Jews to second-class citizens in the US. What could be more antisemitic than this resolution?

The statement is not about the Judaic religion but about the political doctrines of Zionism, which Congress is attempting to impose on us all. Moreover, the perspective adopted in the congressional resolution is not that of garden variety Zionism but that of the most extreme, fascistic forms of the ideology, which rule out a Palestinian state and any basic human rights for the 14 million Palestinians, who surely have as much right to collective self-determination as the 16 million Jews.

In contrast, the Mandatory authority in British Palestine, given that charge by the Versailles Peace Conference and its San Remo satellite conference after World War I, in its last official pronouncement of London’s vision of the future, the 1939 White Paper, said:

“The objective of His Majesty’s Government is the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State in such treaty relations with the United Kingdom as will provide satisfactorily for the commercial and strategic requirements of both countries in the future. The proposal for the establishment of the independent State would involve consultation with the Council of the League of Nations with a view to the termination of the Mandate.

The independent State should be one in which Arabs and Jews share government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.”

The mandatory authority envisioned that the Palestinian people in its charge would be no different from the Syrian people under French rule, the Iraqi people under British rule (class A mandates), or the people of French and British [formerly German] Togoland, which were Class B mandates. British Togoland became part of Ghana and French Togoland became the Togolese Republic or Togo. There is today a Syria, an Iraq, a Togo. There is no Palestine. International law was thwarted by hard line Zionists, in the crimes of whom Congress is an accessory after the fact.

The League of Nations and then the United Nations were committed to ending the problem of statelessness and would not have wanted the Palestinians to be colonized forever, and forever to lack collective sovereignty.

Again, this principle was made explicit by the British government:

“His Majesty’s Government are charged as the Mandatory authority “to secure the development of self governing institutions” in Palestine. Apart from this specific obligation, they would regard it as contrary to the whole spirit of the Mandate system that the population of Palestine should remain forever under Mandatory tutelage. It is proper that the people of the country should as early as possible enjoy the rights of self-government which are exercised by the people of neighbouring countries.”

So the first nation to pledge that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (by 1949!) was the United Kingdom, the mandatory authority to which the League of Nations and then the United Nations forwarded the rule of Palestine. Moreover, its pledges in this regard have continuing force in international law regarding the ultimate disposition of the Palestinian people.

The UN General Assembly partition plan of 1947 was no more than a (remarkably pro-Zionist) suggestion and did not have the force of law. Only the UNSC has executive authority, and that body never adopted the plan. Both the Zionists and the Palestinians rejected it. Some Zionist apologists pretend that David Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders accepted the plan, but then why did they usurp territory such as the Galilee that was not awarded to them? Ben Gurion wrote in his diary when Israel was founded in 1948 that its borders were not specified in the constitution, just as those of the United States had not been in its. He had in mind an expansionist Manifest Destiny, and tried to annex Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Palestinian Gaza and southern Lebanon, and officials around him plotted to get the West Bank from the late 1950s. Does that sound like he accepted the UNGA map?

Moreover, the Palestinian rejection of the UNGA proposal is no grounds for forever denying them the right to citizenship in a state, which is denied to no other people in the world. That is, there are peoples who chafe at the citizenship they have, such as Syrian Kurds, but there is no other group of several million people who have been kept stateless for many decades the way the Palestinians have been.

An end to this statelessness is one of the things that is meant by “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Congress has repeatedly obstructed any attempt to end Palestinian statelessness or to realize the vision of even the British colonialists, supercilious and racist as they were. Congress is clearly much more so. “It is proper,” British officials maintained, “that the people of the country should as early as possible enjoy the rights of self-government which are exercised by the people of neighbouring countries.” “As early as possible” was not envisioned in 1939 as some date after 2024.

( ProPublica ) – A special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses.

But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.

The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December, according to one person familiar with the memo. “They’ve been sitting in his briefcase since then,” another official said.

A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica the agency takes its commitment to uphold U.S. human rights laws seriously. “This process is one that demands a careful and full review,” the spokesperson said, “and the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question.”

The revelations about Blinken’s failure to act on the recommendations come at a delicate moment in U.S.-Israel relations. Six months into its war against Hamas, whose militants massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 more on Oct. 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to local authorities. Recently, President Joe Biden has signaled increased frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the widespread civilian casualties.

Multiple State Department officials who have worked on Israeli relations said that Blinken’s inaction has undermined Biden’s public criticism, sending a message to the Israelis that the administration was not willing to take serious steps.

The recommendations came from a special committee of State Department officials known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. The panel, made up of Middle East and human rights experts, is named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief author of 1997 laws that requires the U.S. to cut off assistance to any foreign military or law enforcement units — from battalions of soldiers to police stations — that are credibly accused of flagrant human rights violations.

The Guardian reported this year that the State Department was reviewing several of the incidents but had not imposed sanctions because the U.S. government treats Israel with unusual deference. Officials told ProPublica that the panel ultimately recommended that the secretary of state take action.

This story is drawn from interviews with present and former State Department officials as well as government documents and emails obtained by ProPublica. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment.

Al Jazeera English Video added by IC: “Blinken: Israel is taking steps to get aid in”

Over the years, hundreds of foreign units, including from Mexico, Colombia and Cambodia, have been blocked from receiving any new aid. Officials say enforcing the Leahy Laws can be a strong deterrent against human rights abuses.

Human rights organizations tracking Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks have collected eyewitness testimony and videos posted by Israeli soldiers that point to widespread abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.

“If we had been applying Leahy effectively in Israel like we do in other countries, maybe you wouldn’t have the IDF filming TikToks of their war crimes now because we have contributed to a culture of impunity,” said Josh Paul, a former director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and a member of the vetting forum. Paul resigned in protest shortly after Israel began its bombing campaign of Gaza in October.

The Leahy Laws apply to countries that receive American-funded training or arms. In the decades after the passage of those laws, the State Department, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, followed a de facto policy of exempting billions of dollars of foreign military financing to Israel from their strictures, according to multiple experts on the region.

In 2020, Leahy and others in Congress passed a law to tighten the oversight. The State Department set up the vetting forum to identify Israeli security force units that shouldn’t be receiving American assistance. Until now, it has been paralyzed by its bureaucracy, failing to fulfill the hopes of its sponsors.

Critics have long assailed what they view as Israel’s special treatment. Incidents that would have disqualified units in other countries did not have the same result in Israel, according to Charles Blaha, the former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights and a former participant in the Israeli vetting forum. “There is no political will,” he said.

Typically, the reports of wrongdoing come from nongovernment organizations like Human Rights Watch or from press accounts. The State Department officials determining whether to recommend sanctions generally do not draw on the vast array of classified material gathered by America’s intelligence agencies.

Actions against an Israeli unit are subject to additional layers of scrutiny. The forum is required to consult the government of Israel. Then, if the forum agrees that there is credible evidence of a human rights violation, the issue goes to more senior officials, including some of the department’s top diplomats who oversee the Middle East and arms transfers. Then the recommendations can be sent to the secretary of state for final approval, either with consensus or as split decisions.

Even if Blinken were to approve the sanctions, officials said, Israel could blunt their impact. One approach would be for the country to buy American arms with its own funds and give them to the units that had been sanctioned. Officials said the symbolism of calling out Israeli units for misconduct would nonetheless be potent, marking a sign of disapproval of the civilian toll the war is taking.

Since it was formed in 2020, the forum has reviewed reports of multiple cases of rape and extrajudicial killings, according to the documents ProPublica obtained. Those cases also included several incidents where teenagers were reportedly beaten in custody before being released without charges. The State Department records obtained by ProPublica do not clearly indicate which cases the experts ultimately recommended for sanctions, and several have been tabled pending more information from the Israelis.

Israel generally argues it has addressed allegations of misconduct and human rights abuses through its own military discipline and legal systems. In some of the cases, the forum was satisfied that Israel had taken serious steps to punish the perpetrators.

But officials agreed on a number of human rights violations, including some that the Israeli government had not appeared to adequately address.

Among the allegations reviewed by the committee was the January 2021 arrest of a 15-year old boy by Israeli Border Police. The teen was held for five days at the Al-Mascobiyya detention center on charges that he had thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at security forces. Citing an allegation shared by a Palestinian child welfare nonprofit, forum officials said there was credible information the teen had been forced to confess after he was “subjected to both physical and sexual torture, including rape by an object.”

Two days after the State Department asked the Israeli government for information about what steps it had taken to hold the perpetrators accountable, Israeli police raided the nonprofit that had originally shared the allegation and later designated it a terrorist organization. The Israelis told State Department officials they had found no evidence of sexual assault or torture but reprimanded one of the teen’s interrogators for kicking a chair.

Brett Murphy is a reporter on ProPublica’s national desk. His work uncovering a new junk science in the justice system known as 911 call analysis won a George Polk Award, among other honors. Murphy joined the newsroom in May 2022, after working as an investigative reporter at USA Today, where he covered labor, criminal justice and the federal government.

Via ProPublica

For decades, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a “shadow war.”

Falling short of direct military confrontation, this conflict has been characterized by war through other means – through proxies, cyber attacks, economic sanctions and fiery rhetoric.

Events over the last few weeks in the Middle East have, however, changed the nature of this conflict. First, Israel – it is widely presumed – broke diplomatic norms by bombing an Iranian mission in Syria. The operation, in which 12 individuals were killed – including seven officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp Quds Force – ratcheted up the stakes.

It also crossed a new threshold. Never before had that many Quds Force or other Iranian military officials been killed in a single attack by Iran’s adversaries. Almost immediately, rhetoric from leaders in Tehran indicated Iran would respond swiftly and dramatically.

Then, on April 13, 2024, Iran responded by crossing a line it had, to date, not crossed: launching a direct attack on Israeli soil.

Iran’s attack against Israel was also qualitatively and quantitatively different than anything Tehran had directly attempted before. Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that it consisted of at least 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 surface-to-surface missiles. The attack was launched from positions in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

In physical terms, the barrage caused little damage. Hagari said that 99% of the projectiles sent by Iran were intercepted by air and missile defenses, and that only one person was injured. For now, it appears that Tehran is content with its own response; the Iranian Mission to the United Nations posted a message on social media following the attack indicating that the operation had concluded.

But as an expert on national security and the Middle East, I believe the Iranian attack was not about inflicting physical damage on Israel. It was more about Iran attempting to restore deterrence with Israel following the Damascus incident and showing strength to its domestic audience. In so doing, Tehran’s leaders are also conveying the message that should Israel conduct more aggressive actions against Iranian interests, they are willing to escalate.

Friends, then longtime foes

Iran and Israel have been adversaries virtually since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the Shah of Iran fled the country to be replaced by a theocracy. New leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini broke the former regime’s ties with Israel and quickly adopted a strident anti-Israel agenda both in words and policy.

In the decades since, Israel and Iran have inflicted harm on the other’s interests in both the physical and virtual worlds. This has included major terrorist attacks backed by Iran against Israeli interests in Argentina in 1992 and 1994, Tehran’s backing of Hezbollah’s grinding insurgency against Israel in southern Lebanon, and the major operational support provided to Hamas that in part enabled the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials have blamed Israel for the killing of senior military officials and scientists related to Iran’s nuclear program in Iran or elsewhere in the region.

The lack of open acknowledgment by Israel of the killings was to create the illusion of plausible deniability and implant doubt about who was actually responsible.

In recent years, Iran has relied heavily on its “axis of resistance” – militant groups in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza that share some of Tehran’s goals, notably in regard to countering Israel and weakening U.S. influence in the region. In the monthslong conflict sparked by the Oct. 7 attack, Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq network have repeatedly attacked Israeli and U.S. interests.

‘A clear message’

So what comes next? A lot will depend on how Israel and the U.S. respond.

Officially, U.S. President Joe Biden has stated that in repelling the Iran missiles and drones, Israel had sent “a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten [its] security.”

But there are reports that Biden has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Israel should “take the win” and could not rely on the U.S. supporting any offensive operations against Iran.

CBC News Video added by IC: “Israel vows retaliation after Iran attack”

A number of factors will determine whether Iran and Israel continue to launch more attacks against each other out in the open, or revert to shadow warfare.

These include how each side reads domestic sentiment. Netanyahu is already facing pressure based on his handling of the war in Gaza and previous domestic concerns regarding attempts to influence the Israeli Supreme Court, among other matters.

Likewise, inside Iran, the United Nations reports that two years after major public protests inside the country based on socio-economic conditions, the regime in Iran continues to ruthlessly suppress dissent.

Apart from domestic considerations, both Iran and Israel will also weigh the risks of more open confrontation against their current operational capabilities. Here, it seems clear that neither Iran nor Israel can decisively win a prolonged military campaign against each other.

Israel’s powerful military certainly has the ability to launch air and missile strikes against Iranian interests in the region, as they have already demonstrated in Syria and Lebanon for many years. And Israel probably could do the same for a short period of time directly into Iran.

But Israel would face major challenges in sustaining a prolonged combined arms campaign in Iran, including the relatively small size of the Israel Defense Forces compared with Iran’s military, and the physical distance between both countries. Israel has openly conducted military exercises for years that seem more focused on simulating air strikes and perhaps special operations raids against a smaller number of targets inside Iran, like nuclear facilities.

Moreover, launching a new front by directly attacking Iran risks diverting Israeli resources away from more immediate threats in Gaza, the West Bank and its northern border with Lebanon.

Of course, Israel has fought and won wars with its regional adversaries in the past.

But the conflicts Israel fought against its Arab neighbors in 1967 and 1973 took place in a different military age and prior to the development of drone warfare, cyber operations and support to Iranian-backed proxies and partners in Israel’s immediate neighborhood.

Wary of further escalation

A similar type of campaign against Iran would be unlike anything Israel has faced. Israel would no doubt find it difficult to achieve its objectives without a high-level of support from the United States, and probably Arab countries like Jordan and Egypt. And there is no indication that such backing would be forthcoming.

Iran, too, will be wary of further escalation. Tehran demonstrated on April 13 that it possesses a large – and perhaps growing – inventory of ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles.

However, the accuracy and effectiveness of many of these platforms remains in question – as evidenced by the seeming ease in which most were shot down. The Israeli and U.S. air and missile defense network in the region continues to prove reliable in that regard.

Given the realities and risks, I believe it seems more likely that Iran will seek to revert back to its unconventional warfare strategy of supporting its proxy axis of resistance. Overt attacks, such as the one carried out on April 13, may be reserved for signaling resolve and demonstrating strength to its domestic audience.

The danger is now that war has come out of the shadows, it may be hard to put it back there.

Javed Ali, Associate Professor of Practice of Public Policy, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Iran struck because Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on April 1 had the consular annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus bombed, killing high-ranking Iranian officials, including Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and seven other officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Those officials were there at the invitation of the Syrian government, and embassies are protected from military attack by the Vienna Convention.

Iran cited Article 51 of the United Nations Charter for its counter-strike on Israel, which guarantees states the right of self-defense. Embassies are considered national soil.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical Leader, had said Wednesday at his Eid al-Fitr sermon: “The consulate and embassy institutions in any country are the soil of that country. The evil regime made a mistake and must be punished and will be punished.” He added, “The events in Gaza showed the evil nature of Western civilization to the world. They killed thirty-odd thousand defenseless people; aren’t these human? Do they not have rights?” He also said, “They showed what kind of civilization this is. A child is killed, in the mother’s arms. The patient dies in the hospital. Their power cannot touch … the men of the resistance; so they target the lives of family members, the lives of children and the oppressed, the lives of old men.”

Al Jazeera English Video: “Israel’s war on Gaza live: Blasts, sirens as Iranian missiles intercepted”

Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York wrote on X,

“Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the UN Charter pertaining to legitimate defense, Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!”

Tehran is saying that with this exchange, “the matter can be deemed concluded.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not looking for an all-out war.

It was not only the strike on the Iranian embassy that set the stage for Iran’s barrage, but also the six months of intensive Israeli bombing of the Palestinians of Gaza, in which the vast majority of those killed were innocent noncombatants, with 70% being women and children and many others noncombatant men. The death toll now stands at 33,686 Palestinians. Only a small clique of militants committed the horrific October 7 attack on Israel, without telling anyone else what they were planning. There is no military or other justification for using an artificial intelligence program to identify all members of Hamas’s paramilitary (some of which is the equivalent of a neighborhood watch for local security) and to murder them from the skies along with their spouses, children, extended families, and neighbors.

Iran is pledged to defend the Palestinians and has been made to look ineffectual and foolish by the ongoing Israeli atrocities, which have set the blood of the publics in the Middle East to boiling and much raised the esteem in which they hold Iran. The embassy strike was the last straw. If Iran did not reply to it at least symbolically, its credibility, and any deterrence it was perceived to have, became a joke.

Netanyahu for his part was attempting to provoke Iran, in the hope that Tehran would take the bait. He knew that even Washington had come to see Israel as the aggressor in Gaza, and that he was losing support in Congress. He knew that if the issue became an Iranian attack on Israel, the Western capitals would all rally around him and forgive him at least for a while for having brought the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazis into his cabinet and then gone Amalek on tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

In the end, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards let their devotion to the late Gen. Zahedi sway their emotions and they fell for Netanyahu’s trick.

Earlier on Saturday the naval section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps boarded and confiscated a container ship in the Gulf of Oman that belongs to the company of one of Netanyahu’s billionaire backers. While this action violated the law of the sea and can’t be condoned, it was a wiser way of replying to the embassy attack than sending missiles against Israel. It hit Netanyahu where it hurts and no one would have cared about it in the outside world.

Now, we have to suffer with Netanyahu proclaiming his victimhood (he started it) and suffering through statements of solidarity with his fascist government in the face of the ayatollahs, with the ongoing genocide in Gaza cast into the shade.

As many observers are pointing out, this very dangerous situation was caused by President Joe Biden’s mishandling of the Gaza crisis. He should have cut Netanyahu off at the knees by January 1, once it became clear that the Israelis were implementing their notorious Amalek imperative, which implied genocide. By vetoing 3 United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire and by undercutting the only one he allowed to pass by branding it nonbinding, Biden let the butchery continue apace. It continued the past week, during which Israel continued to bomb the bejesus out of Gaza, to kill hundreds of innocents, and to starve them (despite phony pledges to let more aid in, on which Netanyahu did not follow through.)

Biden, UK PM Rishi Sunak and other leaders could also have defused the deliberate provocation of Iran by Netanyahu by simply condemning the embassy attack of April 1 and defending the Vienna convention. Again, the Iranian mission to the UN said this plainly:

“Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated.”

Instead, Biden and his allies declined to condemn Netanyahu’s action, continuing the North Atlantic insouciance toward Israeli war crimes and continuing the implementation of their double standard whereby International Humanitarian Law applies only to white people. That is, there is not as much difference between Trumpian white nationalism and Biden’s foreign policy as it might seem on the surface, though Trump is of course far worse.*

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*earlier syntax problem fixed.