Today the Chief of Staff of Iran’s armed forces, Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, explained for anyone who cared to hear, what their Tuesday, Oct. 1 attack on Israel was about: “After Martyr Haniyeh’s assassination, Iran went through a tough period of self-restraint amid repeated requests by the Americans and Europeans, who would ask us to exercise self-restraint so they would establish a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.” However, Israel’s constant provocations undermined the process, and the assassination of Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah was the last straw. So, Bagheri explained that Tehran took a measured action: Iran targeted the “center for terrorism,” the Mossad spy agency; the Nevatim air base, which houses Israel’s F-35s; and the Hatzerim base, which had enabled the assassination of Nasrallah. Further, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in the hours after Iran’s Oct. 1 launching of missiles, clearly explained to European foreign ministers that Iran had sent its message, a lawful response, and that they were finished—unless Israel “plans retaliation.”
U.S. President Joe Biden can be as exasperated as he chooses over his inability to corral Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu into a ceasefire, but Bibi and his “Eretz Yisrael” (Greater Israel) gang of racists never planned to conclude a peace deal or, for that matter, to retrieve the hostages. They planned to oppress their neighbors and take their land. The pattern was clear—provoke, provoke and provoke until the target can’t take it anymore. The inevitable explosion of violence occurs. Rinse and repeat.
The bully method works when applied against the relatively unarmed. Israel’s neighbors get bullied and then get to choose—either suffer the “slings and arrows,” hoping the bully will get tired, or strike back and get hit with massive firepower. And what is left of your population gets to rinse and repeat. It’s awful to watch—but that much more hellish to experience.
London and Washington can’t pretend innocence over this method. There are differences, but since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a similar game of provoking Russia, with NATO moving further and farther East, breaking promises and agreements, until the target cracks. The difference is that Russia has thermonuclear weapons, so there is no “rinse and repeat.” It is one relentless showdown—until it’s not.
President Joe Biden was asked yesterday whether Israel should retaliate by hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities. He’s against that, so his efforts are to get Israel to pick targets a level below that—striking oil fields and refineries, or military facilities. This is a man that evidently never learned to play chess, or perhaps checkers, more than one move at a time. Iran has been “played” by the U.S. while tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children were slaughtered and, for Iran, that deadly game is over. Iran just sent Washington a message that the days of their “unilateral self-restraint” are over. That next Israeli retaliation, even if below the level of hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities, simply means that Iran will counter and Israel’s follow up will be the nuclear facilities—and generalized war with direct U.S. involvement.
As Israel graduates from Gaza to Iran, the trigger for the direct involvement of the U.S. is imminent. Israel pretends that Iran carried out the classic “unprovoked” attack and retaliates, triggering Iran’s announced retaliation—and Israel’s now hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities. Yet even this planned escalation may not unfold as planned. Overnight, the two worlds—the regional war and the intercontinental—sort of collided, as Israel carried out airstrikes in Syria, in very close proximity to the Russian air base at Latakia. The thermonuclear showdown is here—with only the particular trigger in question.
At an historic conference today in Lima, Peru, co-sponsored by sponsored by the Russian embassy in Peru, San Marcos University, and the Schiller Institute-Peru, founder of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed the ambassadors in Peru of BRICS nations of Russia, Brazil, China, Egypt, and India, with South Africa’s ambassador in Chile participating remotely. She opened:
“The tension in the world affairs has never been stronger in human history. On the one side, the genocide happening in front of the eyes of the world public and the terrifying threat of the possible extinction of mankind in a global nuclear war; and on the other side, the concrete perspective for the creation of a new economic system, where the aspiration of the Global South nations for development, prosperity and a fulfilled life for all of its citizens is about to come true. This tension characterizes the end of the epoch of colonialism, which started about 500 years ago, and is now about to end—one way or another.”
May the ears of the deaf be unstopped.
