Sanjay Kumar
What has been feared for a long time has come true: Israel and Iran are at war. This has been building up since October 2023 when Israel launched attacks on Gaza in the aftermath of Hamas’ unprecedented intrusion and assault inside Israel.
Israeli aggression pushes West Asia into an unprecedented crisis that the region has not witnessed since the 1973 Israel- Arab conflict.
The way the Jewish nation has been conducting itself in the last two years it clearly aims to establish complete dominance in the Middle East and the best way to achieve that goal is to weaken Iran, the biggest challenger in the region, to Israel’s aggressive politics.
In the last couple of years the Jewish state has drastically damaged some of the traditional assets of Iran in the Middle East. Hamas is now a debilitated and leaderless organisation. Hezbollah in Lebanon has lost a substantial amount of its military and monetary resources and strength. Houthis are a diminished militia now after constant pounding of their bases and military wherewithal. Syria, a long term asset and ally of Iran, is no longer with the Shia nation after the departure of the Assad family from the helm of affairs.
After debilitating the Iranian’s strategic assets in the Middle East Israel now aims to corner the Islamic republic and pose the biggest ever challenge to the the Ayatollah’s rule.
Israel tested water last year when it launched some attacks on Iran but the Persian country’s retaliation created a deadlock and the aggression stopped.
This time Israel timed the attack at a time when Tehran was preparing itself to participate in the sixth round of talks with the US on Iran’s nuclear enrichment. There was a possibility that a deal might have been struck between the two nations and Iran opening its nuclear sites for inspection.
But Israel did not wait to happen. It not only invaded some of the nuclear sites inside Iran but also killed its nuclear scientists and the top military officer.
The question is: Is Israel’s aggression backed by the USA? Did Washington know about Tel Aviv’s plan to invade the Persian nation?
The conflict that started seems to be panning not according to the Israeli plan. Iran has shown greater resilience than Israel thought of. The Jewish nation too has suffered considerable damage to their lives and properties. Iran has shown that it can penetrate deep inside Israel and harm its strategic assets.
The larger design of Israel is to eliminate the Islamic regime and its assets in Iran and facilitate the installation of a government in Tehran that is friendly to Israel.
Before the Islamic revolution in 1979 Iran and Israel were very good friends and allies in West Asia. They had a deep military and strategic alliance with each other. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has not minced words on the Jewish state’s design and has openly called upon the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic ruler.
No doubt there is a strong discontent among a sizable section of the Iranian people in the country against the regime that suppresses dissent, women’s liberty and free discussion. But this domestic discontent gets overpowered by the strong love of its people for their nation. Forgetting their internal political differences Iranian people are rallying for their government and want to teach Israel a lesson.
If you don’t learn a lesson from history you are condemned by history. The US knows quite well how destructive has been the result of the regime change in Iraq and Libya. How the US had to succumb to the Taliban militia after fighting them for twenty years. The departure of Saddam Hussein and Col Gaddafi from Libya have brought the Middle East region into a political chaos and given birth to the terror groups, like ISIS. The chaos engineered by such inorganic regime change in the Middle East created a refugee crisis that has almost changed the political character of most of Europe. What is the guarantee that people in Iran would be open to an idea to do business with Israel after the regime change?
If Iran’s nuclear programme is a danger to the existential threat to Israel so is Israel’s nuclear weapons. The Middle East needs peace not weapons.
For seventy years Israel has been solely depending on military might to keep going but how long such a strategy will work. Continuous militarization leads to destruction and finally defeat. Israel today is not threatened by Iran’s nuclear programme or Palestinian’s clamour for their land but by its own blind hubris and arrogance of superiority.
The US should intervene and stop the war. The global power can’t remain a mute bystander to the unfolding crisis that threatens to destabilise the Middle East.
Otherwise in this blind lust to kill each other the region would turn bloody and blind each other impacting not only the two warring countries but also other Arab nations which are in the process of economic modernisation and carving a new destiny for themselves.
Israel thinks that by eliminating Iran it can have a peaceful life. But the geopolitical pragmatism demands that it addresses the question of Palestine for a lasting peace for itself and the Middle East.
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Author’s Bio: Sanjay Kumar is a Delhi based journalist who has been covering international affairs and South Asia for over two decades.
