TURNABOUT IS FOUL PLAY
“You did it to me so I’m going to do it to you” isn’t appropriate behaviour in a schoolyard. In a region trembling on the brink of an all-encompassing war , where cool heads, informed thinking and sensible compromise are vital, it seems to be the best that egotistical leaders driven by ideology and their political survival can provide.
Crowing at about how Israeli air defences, with a little help from their friends , thwarted Iran’s missile barrage blurs the fact that the ayatollahs in Tehran were backed into a corner they indicated they wanted to avoid.
Considering the potential costs of escalating the tension, one could argue that, for the moment at least, that makes them candidates for applying President Ronald Reagan’s criteria for the Soviet Union in regard to disarmament: “Trust, but verify”.
As reprehensible and archaic-minded the turbaned, bearded and berobed leadership in Tehran may appear to Western eyes, they’re straining to hold power over 90-million people whose history and culture dates back three millennia, under a system based on seventh century religious teaching that has limited public support.
In fact, a recent poll indicates that 89 percent of literate Iranians did not want theocratic rule.
But that’s no reason to assume they love and back their country less than the roughly same percentage of Israelis who have little or no use for Binyamin Netanyahu, or Americans who despise Donald Trump or President Biden, but expect whoever is in power to retaliate for a blatant assault on their nation’s sovereignty national dignity.
COMMON GROUND
There is legal hair-splitting over whether or not embassies and consulates are the sovereign territory of the nation they represent, but the prevailing ethos is that they are inviolate in principle.
Even the Israelis admit bombing Iran’s consulate in Damascus., which prompted the barrage of missiles, drones and rockets fired towards Israel, wasn’t well thought-out. “The Israelis later acknowledged that they had badly misjudged the consequences of the strike, U.S. officials and an Israeli official said.”
That’s a weasel way of saying the Iranian response caught them by surprise, which makes it three for three on the negative side of the score sheet for the vaunted Israeli intelligence services.
Missing the signs before the October 7 Hamas attack was an extraordinary lapse that will haunt the Israeli national psyche in perpetuity.
Whoever thought avenging that by flattening Gazza, killing tens of thousands of women and children and forcing a million-plus civilians to the brink of famine would keep allies unquestioningly in the Israeli camp needs to get out and about more in the world.
Maybe that’s why no one apparently thought the Iranian reaction would be any less vehement than that of Israel, or the U.S. if Iran killed their top generals in a diplomatic facility.
The most predictable would be the wingnut faction in Congress running about with their hair on fire, looking for cameras and microphones to scream “Nuke Tehran”, and its acolytes and allies for good measure.
That would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact they have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to the destructive forces aligned in the Middle East.
Iranian proxies, alone can lay waste on an epic scale. By U.S. State Department estimates, in addition to weapons and training, Tehran doles out more than $100-million a year to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
With Iranian help, Hezbollah, whose fighters are considered better trained, organised and disciplined than many Middle East armies, can make its own weapons and has an arsenal that U.S. military and arms experts estimate includes between 135,000 and 150,000 rockets and missiles.
Unless you measure “victory” by the amount of rubble you create and innocent civilians you can kill and main, nobody is going to “win” if the already monumentally destructive and money-wasting confrontation between Israel, Hamas and by extension Tehran escalates from “you did it so I’ll do it back” into an all-out regional war.
DOVES BEWARE
The Economist magazine quoted Dana Stroul, described as a “former top Middle East policy official at the Pentagon” as opining: “Given how significant this attack was, it is difficult to see how Israel cannot respond.”
With that attitude, if a symbolic white dove flew over the Middle East today, Israel and its enemies would channel Marc Anthony in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caeser”; “”Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”, and tens of millions would be wasted killing a chance for peace before anyone even asked what it was.How much better — and more in keeping with the religious zealotry driving both sides — if the dove were considered to be the one Noah sent out after the first one he dispatched came back with an olive branch: He waited seven days, and according to Genesis (8:12);.” The dove had no need to return to the ark, since it had found a home on land. The ark could soon be emptied, and humanity could begin to establish itself again in the world.”
But that would require cool heads and sensible compromise„ so don’t bet on the flood of violence subsiding any time soon.
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One thought on “TURNABOUT IS FOUL PLAY”
There was a time when Israel had right on their side but no longer.
I have never felt the way I do now about where this extreme right wing zionist Israeli government is taking Israel. There is no place for extremism on either side of this conflict .. and to think that the US is complicit in all of this .. sigh