Whose War is Iran Fighting?
The de facto villain in this war against Iran is none other than Israel with an extensive support of U.S. President Donald J. Trump to the war-mongering Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu
With skies over the Middle Eastern shores getting red hot, thick and cloudy, it seems that this oil-rich region will only add fuel to the firepower. And the de facto villain in this war is none other than Israel with an extensive support of U.S. President Donald J. Trump to the war-mongering Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.
In fact, Israel's expansionism has been at the core of the long-standing conflict and political instability in the Persian Gulf and Middle East for over seventy years since the illegal formation of the state of Israel on the Arab land.
A victim of the Holocaust, Jews were driven away by Hitler. It was the Muslim support that helped its surviving members to sustain. Earlier, the political Zionist movement, started by Theodor Herzl was supported by the Ottoman empire, but later Zionism took a political detour.
With the US now blindly supporting the Israeli state and imposing sanctions after sanctions on Iran, Iran had no option left than to attack Israel and the US allies in the Middle East to protect its sovereignty and safeguard its national interest.
Iran's multiple attacks are likely to be met with counter attacks by the combined US-Israel forces or even by the politically and militarily weak Arab regimes working at the behest of the US to advance their geostrategic agenda in the region.
With another simultaneous conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the situation has only turned grave.
In recent past, not so many Muslim countries have pitched against one another as in the present time, triggered by the ugly US power politics and leveraged by the expansist design for Greater Israel.
Unfortunately, all the countries of the Middle East have major allies across power centres. If these attacks and counter-attacks do not stop without delay, which is the likely scenario now, the region will erupt into a full war zone with the support of each country's allies and with outside leaders plunging into it with their shrewd politics, diplomatic might and possible weapons supply either directly or through states serving as conduits or through non-state actors.
India's drifting from its historical pro-Palestine stand during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Israel has added a different angle to the whole regional power configuration. This has made the Israel-Iran conflict more complex with more potential damage.
Iran's attacks are a result of decades long support by the US and allies to Israel despite Israel's criminal records of human rights violations and encroachment of the Arab lands in the name of the promised land.
Also Read: Israeli-American Attack on Iran: A Prelude to Middle East's Destruction
Had it not been for the political might and exceptional Iranian courage to counter the systematic US and Israeli aggression, much of what Israel wants, would have been achieved long ago.
The Arabs have proved spineless and when Iran is forced by the US and Israel to bend, they, instead of protesting against these clear political misdeeds, become part of the US-Israeli design aimed at capturing the Arab oil resources and having free hand to navigate the kingdoms to check important powers in the South and the East.
It has been long debated how a false narrative has been built to support the Israeli claim for a promised land for which this is not the suitable place. However, the truth with which even the Jews agree is that to this land came Prophet Abraham (AS), the ancestor of both Jews and Arabs, from the city of Ur on the river Euphrates.
But this historical narrative is the turned in favour of just the Jews as a material promise for the 'foundation of a greater blessing' vis-a-vis a complete socio-political exclusion of the Arabs since the Balfour Declaration in November, 1917 which announced the British policy that Palestine should be a national home for the Jews, calling it the purpose of God, forgetting that this purpose could be for all the Arab children of Abraham (AS).
In this nefarious process, the pogroms in Tsarist Russia, and antisemitism in Bismarck's Germany are conveniently forgotten. This practical amnesia generates hatred for the Arabs which is further augmented by the illogical US combat support to the Israeli expansionism for Greater Israel at the cost of the Arab Palestinians.
While this is the case, the timing on the other hand of the conflict around the Durand Line leading to an 'open war' as stated by Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif following Taliban's spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid's statement that they were carrying out "large-scale offensive operations" against Pakistani military, cannot be said to be a mere coincidence. It says more than what is being stated by the leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Late night reports said that the Iranian missiles hit US bases in the Middle East: Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al-Salem Base in Kuwait, Al-Dhafra Airbase in the UAE, the US 5th Fleet Base in Bahrain, Prince Sultan Base in Saudi Arabia, and Muwaffaq al-Salti base in Jordan. President Trump says that the US has begun “major combat operations”, whatever that means, as if an invasion wasn't combat enough.
It is time the Arab monarchs take a serious note of the deeper politics and act wisely to steer clear of this hazardous path of destruction that might culminate into a sinister state of anarchy and lawlessness in the entire Middle East, a price that might be too heavy to be paid in cash or liquid.
(The writer, Manzar Imam, has a Ph.D. in International Studies)
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