We have previously been here. Never has it ended nicely. There is no end to it. Whether or not they have Fordow’s Mount Doom in the bag, some bunker-busters are also not going to put an end to it. The moment Israel and the United States replace diplomacy with brutality, the reverse always occurs in the Middle East. Always.
Since 1956, when the United States last stepped in to prevent Israeli (as well as British and French) aggression against a neighbor, there has never been an exception to the rule.
It’s not like certain American and Israeli governments haven’t been able to compromise. Israel’s peace with Egypt, Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its conversion to the Palestinian Authority, as well as more recent normalizations with Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan, as well as the near-normalization with Saudi Arabia, are just a few of their many diplomatic achievements that deserve Nobel Prizes. Last but not least was the 2015 agreement with Iran, which undoubtedly prevented Iran from enriching uranium until the present president rashly withdrew during his first term, laying the groundwork for his flimsy bombing last night.
Since 1956, diplomacy has consistently been more successful than military action. Both Israel and the United States have reverted strategic advantages, sparked terrorist explosions, and fostered fanaticism each time they have used war or any other form of military option. Bombing Iran won’t make that go away. It will open a new and dangerous front, one of which will be the acceleration of Iran’s and other nations’ nuclear arms races as they realize that only nuclear weapons can stop attacks, as North Korea has done.
Last night, the president boasted that the attack completely destroyed three Iranian nuclear installations. This brag had the rhetorical clarity and simplicity that his fabrications rely on to make his followers swoon, but it lacked the childish vocabulary that shows a lack of knowledge that his followers are too ignorant to care about. George W. Bush experienced the same sunset glow after his address on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, which included the premature deaths of 300,000 Iraqi people and 4,400 Americans.
The Pentagon qualified the president’s remarks this morning to cause serious harm, which is as accurate as ellipses in military parlance. The after-action twerking was hampered by political thorns. He had repeatedly breached his promise since 2015 to never start a war that would last forever. This was a huge risk with little planning and no congressional approval, and there was no proof that Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, let alone that it was endangering American interests.
Imagine, for example, that Iran now begins killing American troops and civilians, or that it sends energy prices skyrocketing by destroying Saudi Arabia’s oil industry or blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil and gas tankers, as The Economist wrote on June 19, warning against an attack days before it occurred. Or it might strike tower complexes in Qatar or Dubai, starting a wave of foreigners who drive their economy. Mr. Trump would need to strike back.
No more imagining. As required by more than 50 years of American tragedies in the Middle East, the president decided to enslave himself to Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal rule in the same way as his predecessor and on a regular basis.
What were they expected to do, you ask, to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons? Since Iran is still far from having a bomb and diplomacy is the preferred course of action, the question captures the either-or simplicity of last night’s broadcast, when there was never a choice between attacking or allowing Iran to get one.
Nevertheless, let’s say that Iran obtained the weapon. What distinguishes it from admitting that North Korea and Pakistan have a nuclear war? Iran is more stable and predictable than either of these. Pakistan supported the Taliban against the 21-year American occupation of Afghanistan, ultimately defeating the American occupation, while simultaneously harboring Osama bin Laden for years in the same city that held its nuclear weapons and successfully blackmailed the United States for billions in aid.
That’s prior to the more racist notion that Iran’s possession of a bomb is unacceptable while Israel’s (or the US, for that matter, the only nation ever to employ nuclear weapons) is acceptable. Given that Israel, the United States, and Russia are the most destructive nations on the earth today and have the largest death tolls, bigotry combines moral mendacity in the face of war for war, soul for soul. The conflicts fought by Israel and the United States in the Middle East served as a model for what historian Barbara Tuchman dubbed the march of folly, which describes how the haughtiness of big nations, from Troy to Vietnam, causes them to become oblivious to their own transgressions (and losses).
Israel became the occupying force for 4 million Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank after its stunning 1967 war, which was misinterpreted as a win. In 1978 and 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the assurance that it would eradicate the Palestine Liberation Organization from its northern border. With the 1983 bombing of the French troops’ and U.S. Marines’ barracks in Beirut, which killed 299 personnel and left Reagan running with his tail between his legs, Hezbollah—a more deadly indigenous militia—was born out of the 1982 invasion.
Israel waged wars against Hezbollah in 1993, 1996, 2006 (dubbed the “birth pangs of a new Middle East” by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice), and 2024. Despite its degradation, Hezbollah has not disappeared.
With the exception of a few more pragmatic prime ministers, Israel has always opposed Palestinians’ right to exist and the two-state solution, which became an unavoidable option following the 1993 Oslo Accords. Israel funded the growth of Hamasto intended sow discord among Palestinians out of fear of a West Bank unified with Gaza under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. As the New York Times documented in 2023, it did so with billions of dollars, courtesy of American complicity and taxpayers, all based on the essentially incorrect conclusion that Hamas lacked the capacity and inclination to launch a large-scale attack.
Israel produced an uncontrollable beast. The monster that American presidents have refused to control is Israel. In Gaza, the two dynamics came to a head. The ongoing slaughter in Israel is just as terrible as a nuclear strike, but ordinary methods are utilized to accomplish the same goals, and a submissive America excuses, finances, and celebrates them.
Don’t even rinse. Simply repeat. In 1981, Israel struck Iraq’s Osirak complex on the well-known pretext that the country was developing nuclear weapons. 22 years later, it didn’t stop the US from invading Iraq on the pretext that it possessed WMDs.
George W. Bush and his entourage of American media, which included Thomas Friedman, Judith Miller, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria, and David Remnick, made the following claim prior to the start of the war: The United States has the potential for a unique strategic opening. The Middle East’s long-standing reactive strategy can now be changed to a proactive one that stabilizes Gaza, restrains [Iraq’s] nefarious goals and endeavors, and establishes the framework for a new order based on stability, integration, and amicable ties.
The West has written a great deal of nonsense about the Middle East because of its orientalism, a disease that believes only the West knows what those stupid Arabs, Persians, and Pashtuns need. Those are in a different league. We all know what happened next.
The hitch is that Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, wrote the passage I ascribed to Bush above yesterday. He argued in the New York Times why Israel and the US ought to strike Iran. In that bracket, I simply changed Iran to Iraq.
There has been no change. Israeli and American illusions are as lethal as ever. A tragedy is defined as a calamity that was predicted. That s what the president started last night, foreclosing on the only viable option there was. Mission Accomplished is what’s left.
FlaglerLive’s editor is Pierre Tristam. A version of this piece airs on WNZF.
Pierre’s Recent Columns:
|
