Nasser Kandil
Albinaa’ Newspaper August 6, 2024
For some time now there has been Russian insistence that the existing tension internationally is the start of the roll towards a nuclear venture. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly talked about this, stating that Russia will activate her nuclear system in anticipation, and has dispersed some of her nuclear arsenal in Belarus as a precaution, and later said that Russia was studying the prospect of supplying long-range weapons in response to supplying the Ukraine with weapons capable of reaching the Russian interior. He visited South Korea and spoke of strategic cooperation at all levels, and when Washington dispersed in Germany mid-range weapons which included nuclear missiles, he considered this a sufficient cause to suspend all agreements pertaining to the reduction of mid-range missile arsenals.
In juxtaposition to Russian warning about malicious American intentions to push a nuclear confrontation with Russia a step forward while hiding behind the Ukraine, and Russian reports about endeavors to supply the Ukraine with what can allow it to possess tactical nuclear weapons in order to prevent a Russian victory deemed an actuality by high-ranking NATO commanders, the Americans have been talking about how to confront the nuclear possibility under the pretext that the Russian President could be the initiator in taking the nuclear road, in view of his public discourse about tactical and strategic nuclear superiority decidedly favoring Moscow, and considering it a temptation for risk taking, with Foreign Affairs magazine devoting a whole issue for the discussion of the prospect of Russia’s resort to the nuclear option.
This discussion was occurring away from our region. However, the region is entering an escalation stage not remote from the possibility of its transformation into the prime area of international confrontation between the Great Powers, in spite of Moscow’s and Beijing’s lack of engagement in the ongoing conflict in Gaza in a manner hoped for and expected by Palestinians and Al Mukawama forces. Over the past week, a number of developments have occurred which have opened the eye to a change in the American position from the headline of freezing the Middle East and shutting down its conflicts to enable focus on confrontation with Russia and China, to a new headline, that the region is in a state of open war with 3 major integrated dossiers: the dossier of the strengths and weaknesses of the occupying entity, the dossier of the American occupation of Syria and Iraq, and the dossier of Iran’s regional stature, and the consequences internationally on American influence, and on Washington’s standing in the confrontation with Russia and China.
Because of such change, and prior to the escalation we find ourselves in, the Russian President, for the first time spoke, in an extraordinary summit with the Syrian President, about high-level escalation heading to the region, and made a remarkable reference that it concerns Syria, which in turn makes it possible to consider all the events which occurred after his statement as partial steps in the translation of the escalation he warned of, and which was decided in Washington during Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s visit. It is how the Majdal Shams incident, then the pretext of taking revenge on Hezbollah, followed by Iran and the assassination of the Chief Palestinian Leader, Ismail Hanieh, then American talk about the right to self-defense, and then protection from any response, all become links in one chain.
What opens the door for an obligatory reason for discussion of the nuclear prospect in the region is that the traditional balance of power between Al Mukawama’s front, headed by Iran and at its heart Syria, and the unified American Israeli front, does not favor America and the occupying entity to go into a venture of the magnitude which the assassinations have portended. The last 10 months witnessed a number of confrontations sufficient to unequivocally deduce American Israeli impotence from the Red Sea to the occupied northern Palestine, to Gaza. And in the absence of any indication of a change in American readiness to send hundreds of thousands of troops to engage in an unending large-scale war which will not end in Washington’s favor, it becomes necessary to discuss the possibility of granting a green light to the occupying entity to use tactical enriched and effective weapons, capable of inflicting great damage to large military installations, but in the traditional and not nuclear sense. There are those who say that some of these weapons were tried on a small scale in the war in Gaza, and have destroyed towers and residential complexes composed of several buildings, and killed hundreds.
Washington’s backing away from readiness to negotiate the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq, the decision to maintain her occupation in eastern Syria, granting cover to Netanyahu to detonate the region, and readiness to protect him, is not even minimally changed by American leaks about American anger at Netanyahu’s actions and considering them an effort to involve her in a large-scale war it does not want, with Washington, all the while, amassing all its military and weapons in the region, and finding no way of avoiding a confrontation except by Palestinian acceptance of a resolution well below the minimum of their demands, and Iran and Al Mukawama forces backing away from a suitable response commensurate with the transgressions and aggressions and the crimes against them, from Yemen to Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. The implication is placement of matters between an American Israeli political victory or a large-scale war Washington says it is forced to fight along with the occupying entity, a war it had prepared all the requirements for in advance.
Is the invisible stitch explaining all the riddles and fluctuations this continued playing at the edge of the precipice in the hope for
Al Mukawama’s retreat, and in the event that does not happen, no American objection to an Israeli venture using modern American weapons built on nuclear technology which could make a difference in a traditional war, and then claiming that they are Israeli weapons used without Washington’s knowledge, and what has happened has happened, a replica of what is going on now with the assassinations, calling them before they occurred self-defense, and demanding after their occurrence from those whose leaders were killed to exercise self-control to prevent escalation.
In face of this possibility, Sergei Shoigo appears in Tehran, and some experts propose the necessity for Iran to discuss revising its decision not to produce nuclear weapons, after this has become a necessity for deterrence, and the talk here is about the new variety of nuclear tactical weapons of limited and localized diffusion and impact but very effective within the geographical circles they are used, and about looking to Russia and China for firmer positions and more effective support. All this gives the appearance that the desire to close the dossier of the region halfway is receding at a large pace, as is the attempt to isolate the wars in the region from the greater international conflict, making the equilibrium derived from this round the basis for the new international equilibrium.
In the past, the nuclear prospect was excluded from discussion because it was considered the destruction of the world, but the talk today is about a different genre of weapons based on nuclear technology capable of changing the course in traditional wars without leading to a war that destroys the world. So should exclusion from discussion still apply to this prospect?
