Nasser Kandil
Albinaa’ Newspaper August 9, 2024
Things are completely different this time compared to when the occupying entity targeted the Iranian consulate in Damascus. From a sovereignty perspective, the Israeli aggression reached the Iranian capital, Tehran, and not an Iranian consulate or embassy, and not on foreign soil considered part of the Iranian territory. The target was not an Iranian military official in the state’s structure, which gives Iran control over the ability to a draw a suitable ceiling for avenging his blood, especially given the state of war Syria is living, but a VIP Guest attending the openly declared diplomatic occasion of the inauguration of the elected President. The aggression, this time, comes after Iran announced her determination to respond to any attack targeting its symbols and/or sovereign establishments, thereby attacking her sovereignty and stature, while the attack on the consulate was based on contrary assumptions, that Iran had no wish to respond.
This distinctness demands on those who were hesitant about taking a position about the consulate, under the pretext that matters were interwoven and confusing to them, to take a clear position vis a vis the current aggression. It also makes incumbent on those who then saw the expected Iranian response as media hype and merely based on reserving the right of response, and those who do not react seriously to the risk of a stumbling towards a grand scale war resulting from the provocative harassment of Iran, to hurry and deal with the threat of response this time as a dangerous incendiary fireball rolling before them. As for the ones acting from a unique commitment to standing by the occupying entity as a foreign policy tradition, they should calculate well before becoming involved in political stances covering the aggression, or from getting even more involved through practical operations under the logo of enabling the occupying entity to face the Iranian response.
A simple comparison between Washington’s behavior in each of the incidents of the strike on the consulate and aggression on Iran says that Washington knows today that targeting Iran is not an extension to the existing fiery competition over Syria, but a big encroachment on the capital of a state which holds significant regional weight, and which had shown its seriousness in using its power to defend its stature and dignity. American President Joe Biden had previously stated that had it not been for American protection, “Israel” would have been destroyed by the Iranian response, while Washington and its numerous political and military chiefs who had issued numerous declarations disavowing any role in the strike on the Iranian consulate, dealt lightly with a momentous incident of the magnitude of an attack on Iran and the assassination of the No. 1 Palestinian Political Leader and the Chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau, the martyr Ismail Hanieh. When Iran announced her intention to respond to the attack on her consulate, Washington initially stood in observation of the situation and then said that it would ensure that “Israel” is capable of protecting itself in the face of the Iranian response. Her response in this instance was placing all its forces and weapons on high alert and thrusting them in the region to stand by the entity. Moreover Washington deliberately wasted the opportunity Iran made available by going to the Security Council to discuss the attack on her capital, and turned the Security Council podium into a platform for attacking Iran instead of seeking de-escalation achievable with a cease fire in Gaza.
American threats to Iranian stability and economy made by high-ranking officials in the Biden Administration in American newspapers, if Iran’s response to the entity is big and painful, adds more reason to say that Washington is complicit in the attack on Tehran and the assassination of the most prominent Palestinian leader Ismail Hanieh, just like her rush to grant the entity what it called self-defense two hours after the Majdal Shams explosion, which the entity’s military blamed Hezbollah for, an hour after its occurrence. This makes this round of escalation Washington’s round, albeit executed by Tel Aviv on its own behalf and as an attempt to exit its dilemma, as well as in proxy for Washington, who wants to trade regional stability with a decree legitimizing occupation of Syria and Iraq, and to close the door on the demand for withdrawal through negotiations or through operations against it by Al Mukawama. The American formula is a war with a ceiling drawn by the tolerance capacity of the occupation’s army and its interior front, just as the ceiling of the war in the Ukraine is drawn by the tolerance capacity of the Ukrainian army. All talk of mediation is part of psychological warfare, with the pressures, threats, and maneuvers aimed at aborting the response, or diluting it.
Like a poker player, Washington is betting on feigning that it is coming with a winning round because it has confidence of its hand, aiming for the other players to withdraw despite their stronger hands. Her problem is that the Al Mukawama Commanders play not poker, but chess, which has no place for luck, manipulation, or slickness, but for intelligence, experience and mastery, the sustenance of Al Mukawama forces in the war of the minds, which was one day announced by Al Aqsa Deluge.
