So now we know it is possible for something to be both horrific and farcical. The known death toll of the wave of missiles fired by Iran into Israel yesterday is as follows: Israelis 0, Palestinians 1. Yes, the Islamic Republic, in its preening, violent display of solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon against the Great Satan of the Jewish State, laid waste to just one life. That of a 37-year-old labourer from Gaza who’d been living near Jericho in the West Bank, brutally slain by the falling shrapnel from one of Iran’s missiles. The Israelophobes of social media who salivated over Iran’s attack were cheering a military operation that killed yet another Gazan. You couldn’t make it up.
Of course, the merciful lack of Israeli fatalities should not detract from the fact that that was clearly Iran’s aim: to maim and kill the Jews of this nation that it hates above all others. When you fire 180 ballistic missiles at a state, with little advance warning, you know, and in Iran’s case hope, that death may very well ensue. That it didn’t, that only one, poor Palestinian perished under Iran’s rockets, is a testament to the extraordinarily high value Israel places on the lives of its citizens. Its Iron Dome intercepted much of Iran’s lethal arsenal, while its vast network of bomb shelters shielded civilians from the Iranian terror. It would appear that the Jewish desire to survive prevailed over the mullahs’ urge to kill.
And yet even as we grapple with the seriousness of what Iran did, with the criminality of its onslaught, it is important to clock Iran’s weaknesses, too. Are we witnessing the death rattle of Iranian tyranny? It is impossible to overstate the size of the blow Iran has experienced this past week, and this past year. The ruthless theocracy’s entire proxy strategy, its use of Islamist armies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis to shore up its influence to its west, lies virtually in tatters. For now, at least.
Hamas is boxed in, severely weakened as a result of the war it started with its anti-Semitic savagery in Israel on 7 October last year. Hezbollah leaders are being despatched one by one by the IDF. The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, will have been devastating to Iran, both strategically and spiritually. He was the physical embodiment to Iran’s west of its unforgiving ideology, the chief colonial emissary of its imperious theocratic ambitions. Also dead are Nabil Kaouk, deputy head of Hezbollah’s Central Council, Ibrahim Akil, leader of Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces, and Ali Karaki, leader of Hezbollah’s southern front. Just like that, Iran’s heavies, gone. Meanwhile, the Houthis in Yemen are feeling the heat of Israel’s missiles, having been firing their own at Israel for some time.
These armies of anti-Semites were the means through which the theocracy expanded its regressive purview westwards. Where to its east it allies with Russia and Armenia to maintain an axis of influence in the Caucasus, to its west it deployed these legions of religious bigots to do the dirty work of maintaining its influence across the Middle East. Not only against Israel, which, being Jewish, is a special object of the ayatollahs’ animus, but also against Saudi Arabia, long-time foe of Tehran. Yes, Iran and its proxies often did not see eye to eye – Iran seemed in recent months to have distanced itself from Hezbollah in particular – but they remained comrades in soft conquest, allies in the maintenance of Iranian power and ideology.
The Jewish State’s harrying of these terrorist armies has severely dented both Iran’s external strategy and its internal prestige, both its foreign influence and its domestic legitimacy. No one should doubt the confidence boost that the slaying of the theocracy’s foreign representatives will give to Iran’s own bristling youths who are hungry for change. This is a nation that has recently experienced an internal uprising of young women and men tired of being ruled over by religious tyrants, and which now watches as its western flank in the Middle East is swiftly, neatly dismantled by its hated enemy of Israel. It is possible that Iran’s firing of missiles yesterday, for all the violent menace of such an attack, was more a performative yelp by a rattled regime than a declaration of fresh war.
The response of the Biden administration and its media allies to the ratcheting up of Iran-Israel tensions has been striking. Their preferred strategy towards the Islamic Republic is containment, not confrontation. Sometimes the US has rapped Tehran’s knuckles, with sanctions. And other times it has given Tehran a sweetener, such as when President Biden relaxed oil sanctions, allowing Iran to profit to the tune of billions. Now that Israel has taken the fight directly to Iran – or at least to its proxies – these people are freaking out. Israel’s slaying of Hezbollah leaders is a ‘diplomatic humiliation’ for Washington, wails the Guardian. It is proof that America is unable to ‘control its troublesome ally’.
It is such self-satisfied cant. How easy it is for Biden officials who live in leafy DC, and Britain’s liberal scribes who rarely venture from their East London bubbles, to insist that Israel patiently deter Iran rather than clash with it. Missiles paid for by Tehran are not dropping on Shoreditch or Martha’s Vineyard day in, day out. Militants backed by Iran did not recently swarm London or New York City to rape, kidnap and kill civilians. There aren’t Iran stooges mere miles from our towns threatening to excise our ‘cancerous’ presence from our own lands.
7 October changed the game. It made it clear that Iran’s proxies are not just a threat to be carefully monitored but a fascistic menace capable of killing thousands of Jews. Not just something to be deterred but something to be destroyed. I’m going to go out on a limb and say protecting Jewish life is more important than propping up Washington’s clapped-out Middle East policy. What is really ‘troublesome’ is not Israel’s just reaction to Hamas’s mass murder of its citizens, and to Hezbollah’s ceaseless firing of missiles since 7 October, one of which butchered 12 children, but the haughty indignation of pampered Westerners who are lucky enough never to have experienced the existential threat of a pincer movement of racist armies. They should spend more time counting their blessings and less begrudging Israel’s right to defend itself.
The soft sympathy for Iran that we’ve seen on social media these past 24 hours, and even in corners of the mainstream media, is bizarre. Iran is the imperial player in this tale. For all its self-regarding bluster about Hezbollah and Hamas being part of an ‘Axis of Resistance’ – bluster that some Western leftists shamefully embrace – in truth these movements are tools of Iranian expansionism. Iran has bent the entirety of Lebanon to its jealous regional ambitions, by continually boosting Hezbollah there. It has hijacked Palestinian politics and Palestinian life in its deranged crusade to land blows on Israel via its stooges in Hamas. It has cursed Yemen with years of war with its arming and goading of the Houthis against both Saudi Arabia and Israel.
To Iran, these are not free nations, but lowly outposts for its own political ambitions and religious ideology. Israel, in countering Iran’s pitiless exploitation of various states to prop up its fundamentalist worldview, is behaving far more like a ‘resistance’. It is resisting Iran’s proxy war on the Jewish nation and its bending of vast swathes of the Middle East to its theocratic will. That many Western leftists sympathise more with the religious hysterics who use and abuse less powerful states than they do with the democratic state of Israel tells us all we need to know about their moral disarray and their drift from reason. They masquerade as anti-imperialist while openly empathising with Iran’s imperious creep through supposedly sovereign lands.
Few things in politics are simple. One should always tease out the complexities, embrace the nuance. But to my mind, what is happening right now is pretty straightforward. You are either on the side of a barbarous theocratic regime that oppresses and murders women, workers and minorities and whose allies recently carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, or you are on the side of Israel. It’s time to choose.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
And yet even as we grapple with the seriousness of what Iran did, with the criminality of its onslaught, it is important to clock Iran’s weaknesses, too. Are we witnessing the death rattle of Iranian tyranny? It is impossible to overstate the size of the blow Iran has experienced this past week, and this past year. The ruthless theocracy’s entire proxy strategy, its use of Islamist armies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis to shore up its influence to its west, lies virtually in tatters. For now, at least.
Hamas is boxed in, severely weakened as a result of the war it started with its anti-Semitic savagery in Israel on 7 October last year. Hezbollah leaders are being despatched one by one by the IDF. The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, will have been devastating to Iran, both strategically and spiritually. He was the physical embodiment to Iran’s west of its unforgiving ideology, the chief colonial emissary of its imperious theocratic ambitions. Also dead are Nabil Kaouk, deputy head of Hezbollah’s Central Council, Ibrahim Akil, leader of Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces, and Ali Karaki, leader of Hezbollah’s southern front. Just like that, Iran’s heavies, gone. Meanwhile, the Houthis in Yemen are feeling the heat of Israel’s missiles, having been firing their own at Israel for some time.
These armies of anti-Semites were the means through which the theocracy expanded its regressive purview westwards. Where to its east it allies with Russia and Armenia to maintain an axis of influence in the Caucasus, to its west it deployed these legions of religious bigots to do the dirty work of maintaining its influence across the Middle East. Not only against Israel, which, being Jewish, is a special object of the ayatollahs’ animus, but also against Saudi Arabia, long-time foe of Tehran. Yes, Iran and its proxies often did not see eye to eye – Iran seemed in recent months to have distanced itself from Hezbollah in particular – but they remained comrades in soft conquest, allies in the maintenance of Iranian power and ideology.
The Jewish State’s harrying of these terrorist armies has severely dented both Iran’s external strategy and its internal prestige, both its foreign influence and its domestic legitimacy. No one should doubt the confidence boost that the slaying of the theocracy’s foreign representatives will give to Iran’s own bristling youths who are hungry for change. This is a nation that has recently experienced an internal uprising of young women and men tired of being ruled over by religious tyrants, and which now watches as its western flank in the Middle East is swiftly, neatly dismantled by its hated enemy of Israel. It is possible that Iran’s firing of missiles yesterday, for all the violent menace of such an attack, was more a performative yelp by a rattled regime than a declaration of fresh war.
The response of the Biden administration and its media allies to the ratcheting up of Iran-Israel tensions has been striking. Their preferred strategy towards the Islamic Republic is containment, not confrontation. Sometimes the US has rapped Tehran’s knuckles, with sanctions. And other times it has given Tehran a sweetener, such as when President Biden relaxed oil sanctions, allowing Iran to profit to the tune of billions. Now that Israel has taken the fight directly to Iran – or at least to its proxies – these people are freaking out. Israel’s slaying of Hezbollah leaders is a ‘diplomatic humiliation’ for Washington, wails the Guardian. It is proof that America is unable to ‘control its troublesome ally’.
It is such self-satisfied cant. How easy it is for Biden officials who live in leafy DC, and Britain’s liberal scribes who rarely venture from their East London bubbles, to insist that Israel patiently deter Iran rather than clash with it. Missiles paid for by Tehran are not dropping on Shoreditch or Martha’s Vineyard day in, day out. Militants backed by Iran did not recently swarm London or New York City to rape, kidnap and kill civilians. There aren’t Iran stooges mere miles from our towns threatening to excise our ‘cancerous’ presence from our own lands.
7 October changed the game. It made it clear that Iran’s proxies are not just a threat to be carefully monitored but a fascistic menace capable of killing thousands of Jews. Not just something to be deterred but something to be destroyed. I’m going to go out on a limb and say protecting Jewish life is more important than propping up Washington’s clapped-out Middle East policy. What is really ‘troublesome’ is not Israel’s just reaction to Hamas’s mass murder of its citizens, and to Hezbollah’s ceaseless firing of missiles since 7 October, one of which butchered 12 children, but the haughty indignation of pampered Westerners who are lucky enough never to have experienced the existential threat of a pincer movement of racist armies. They should spend more time counting their blessings and less begrudging Israel’s right to defend itself.
The soft sympathy for Iran that we’ve seen on social media these past 24 hours, and even in corners of the mainstream media, is bizarre. Iran is the imperial player in this tale. For all its self-regarding bluster about Hezbollah and Hamas being part of an ‘Axis of Resistance’ – bluster that some Western leftists shamefully embrace – in truth these movements are tools of Iranian expansionism. Iran has bent the entirety of Lebanon to its jealous regional ambitions, by continually boosting Hezbollah there. It has hijacked Palestinian politics and Palestinian life in its deranged crusade to land blows on Israel via its stooges in Hamas. It has cursed Yemen with years of war with its arming and goading of the Houthis against both Saudi Arabia and Israel.
To Iran, these are not free nations, but lowly outposts for its own political ambitions and religious ideology. Israel, in countering Iran’s pitiless exploitation of various states to prop up its fundamentalist worldview, is behaving far more like a ‘resistance’. It is resisting Iran’s proxy war on the Jewish nation and its bending of vast swathes of the Middle East to its theocratic will. That many Western leftists sympathise more with the religious hysterics who use and abuse less powerful states than they do with the democratic state of Israel tells us all we need to know about their moral disarray and their drift from reason. They masquerade as anti-imperialist while openly empathising with Iran’s imperious creep through supposedly sovereign lands.
Few things in politics are simple. One should always tease out the complexities, embrace the nuance. But to my mind, what is happening right now is pretty straightforward. You are either on the side of a barbarous theocratic regime that oppresses and murders women, workers and minorities and whose allies recently carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, or you are on the side of Israel. It’s time to choose.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
Iran defending itself with precision Hypersonic missile strikes on legitimate IDF military targets, among which were the Tel Nof air base where a large number of Israeli tanks were destroyed and the Nevatim air base where a number of F- 35 fighter jets were destroyed.
This is unlike Israeli operations, where the more civilians killed, the better.
Iran has proved again that the “Iron Dome” is useless against Hypersonic missiles.
But what would replace the current regime? In the Middle East - one could say in developing countries in general - the choice is often not one between 'good' and 'bad' but between 'bad' and 'worse'.
Would you rather have the likes of ISIS running places like Iran and Syria? Think hard before you answer.
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