Impact of Iran on resistance forces and people

The US-led Israeli aggression against Iran has imposed a complex landscape that will gradually become clearer. Iran has succeeded in preserving its sovereign gains, relying on a cohesive system of defensive strategies and indigenous capabilities that have exceeded the expectations of its enemies.

Despite the severe blows, and thanks to Iran’s military, security, diplomatic, and popular strength, Tehran has been able to show unprecedented deterrence that have inflicted unforeseen costs on its enemies.

This has been achieved through carefully considered operational performance that has efficiently confounded their calculations, while maintaining its constant readiness for any potential future surprise attack.

Tehran has avoided falling into the trap of depleting its strategic capabilities, which will establish more solid negotiating power in favor of the entire Axis of Resistance.

The legitimacy of the strategic vision of the Islamic Revolution, its institutions, and its alliances (not its arms, as the enemies promote) was strengthened, as it purified the Islamic popular consciousness and mood, which had been polluted by Western propaganda and fabricated nonsense.

The victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran compensated for the setbacks suffered by the peoples of West Asia, particularly after Egypt’s deviation from the resistance front and its subsequent normalization with the Zionist regime.

Over four decades since the blessed Islamic revolution, Iran has been able to shake the foundation of the illegitimate Zionist entity. Thus, the project of David Ben-Gurion, one of the colonial Israeli entity’s founders, has collapsed.

This imperialist project was based on forging strategic alliances with peripheral states (Iran and Turkey) in order to restrain the surrounding states (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt). 

Since the 1990s, despite the heavy toll of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Tehran’s support for Hezbollah led to the May 2000 liberation, victory in the July 2006 war, and the successive victories of Gaza from 2008 to 2021, in addition to defeating the Takfiri project in 2017.

“A million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail. We must stop the Iranian attack on Israel,” Jay Sullivan, the US senator and AIPAC member, wrote on X, making no distinction between Iranians and the Arabs, even though the imperialist project tried hard to present them as opposites. 

What Tehran has established as a firm principle is that accepting the so-called “peace” concessions, as proven by the experiences of Egypt, the PLO, Jordan, and some Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, only breeds more humiliation, submission, and degradation.

Despite the events that have followed the Al Aqsa Flood Operation - including the ongoing attacks on Gaza and Lebanon – and the fall of Damascus, Tehran demonstrated the cohesion and resilience of the resistance project, which some had imagined had collapsed irretrievably.

Most importantly, Iran has demonstrated its institutional depth, structural cohesion, and extremely solid foundation.

What our enemies dub as an Iranian “project” has been evident to the Iranian people and the peoples of the region. It has also been evident to the herds of colonial settlers as Tehran succeeded in undermining the trust between them and their fragile entity that failed to provide them with security throughout occupied Palestine.

In Lebanon, Italy took over command of UNIFIL from Spain in the presence of the head of the committee supervising the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, US General Michael Lenny, who attended despite the warning from the US spy den (the embassy) in Beirut to “take strict security measures” for fear of being targeted. 

Since assuming his position, succeeding General Jasper Jeffers, Lenny will chair a meeting of the committee (which has been suspended since March 11) to review the implementation of UN Resolution 1701.

Given the continued Israeli occupation of tens of thousands of meters of lands along the southern border, including the five points, UNIFIL’s most difficult challenge is whether and how its mandate will be renewed at the end of next August.

This is in addition to its military and civilian personnel and equipment, the value of the general budget, and, most importantly, the extent of its powers, which have not yet been decided. The Lebanese government has been preoccupied with condemning the legitimate Iranian response against the American air base in Qatar, rather than pursuing the renewal of UNIFIL’s mandate.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Army has arrested one of the most prominent ISIS leaders “following a series of security surveillance and monitoring operations”, seizing in his possession “a large quantity of weapons and ammunition, in addition to electronic devices and equipment for manufacturing drones.”

The Lebanese Army clarified in the statement that “the detainee had assumed leadership of the organization in Lebanon after the arrest of his predecessor (who was appointed as a Caliphate of Lebanon) along with a large number of terrorists.

Impact of Iran’s legendary resilience on the Resistance forces and people

 

 

Iran or Israel: which is a bigger threat for Arabs?

For decades I have been reading that Iran is a bigger threat for Arabs as compared to Israel. Today, I was completely shocked when I received a message, originating from Pakistan, indicating names of Muslim countries enjoying diplomatic relations with Israel. It included name of Islamic Republic of Iran.

Initially, I was ready to believe the ignorance of the sender, but then realized that the sender has been thoroughly brain washed or he is part of the group that has been mandated the task of spreading disinformation about Iran. To put the record straight, Iran was the second Muslim majority country to recognize Israel as a sovereign state after Turkey.  After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran severed all diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel, and the government does not recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a state.

As against this many Muslim/Arab countries enjoy cordial relations with Israel. These include Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Morocco. Some of these countries ‘normalized’ relations with Israel under ‘Abraham Accords’. All these Muslim countries have been dished out some favors. In return, some of these countries are now stopping United States from rejoining JCPOA and/or to impose fresh sanctions on Iran.

While Arabs and Iranian has a long history of animosity, the recent anti-Iran stance has been drilled into their brains by Israel and western media. The overwhelming impression is that Iran is playing the role of ‘game spoiler’ and resisting normalization of relationships between Israel and Arab countries.

Israel has also been portraying Iran as ‘proxy fighter’ in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The fact of the matter is that Isreal has been occupying huge landmass belonging to its neighboring Muslim countries since 1967. It has also been constructing settlements on occupied land.

After reorganization of Jerusalem as capital of Israel by the United States, Israel has accelerated the annexation process. Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified his acts to save his premiership. He believes that evicting Palestinians and bringing in more Jews in Jerusalem could help him in prolonging his tenor. His shortsightedness has also ruined ‘Two State’ concept.

It seems, Netanyahu believes that two state policy will weaken Israel, but many Jews believe that if by allocating some land for Palestinians they could buy sustainable peace, it may promote the culture of ‘mutual peaceful coexistence’ rather than living under ‘constant state of war’.

Overtures and Confrontations between United States and Iran

I am an ardent reader of the proceedings of ‘United States Institute of Peace’, particularly on Iran. Today, I am referring to a few snapshots of its recent release on Iran. 

I want my readers to read the briefs but also keep two points in minds: 1) since Islamic revolution in Iran, US has emerged as its worst enemy and 2) every failed attempt to ‘change the regime in Iran’ adds to US frustration and desperation.

Keeping Iran under ‘stringent economic sanctions’ has not weakened it, on the contrary, Iran has emerged the biggest resistance in the creation of ‘US hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula’.

According to United States Institute of Peace, “Half of American adults expect the US to go to war with Iran “within the next few years.”  In a survey conducted by Reuters of a representative sample of 1,007 adults were asked a series of questions from May 17-20 amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran. Some 53 percent of adults considered Iran a “serious” or “imminent” threat. But only 12 percent said US forces should conduct a preemptive attack on Iranian military interests.” 

Since the 1979 revolution, Washington and Tehran have gyrated between hostile actions and diplomatic overtures. Relations have never recovered from the seizure of the US Embassy and 52 diplomats. The US attempted military action to end the drama but eventually turned to diplomacy. Since then, the Islamic Republic has been linked, directly or indirectly, to the deaths of hundreds of Americans, while the US has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iranians. Yet both countries have also dabbled in bold outreach, with mixed results.  

Lately, Acting US Defense Secretary, Patrick Shanahan has reiterated that the US does not want to go to war with Iran. On May 21, he told reporters that recent US moves have deterred attacks on US interests in the Middle East. “Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation,” he said.

US lawmakers have been divided over what to do next to deal with the escalating tensions between the US and Iran. The split is largely along partisan lines. Democrats voiced concern that the Trump administration was leading the US into a new Middle East war. Republicans largely denied that the administration sought war with Iran but emphasized that the US would respond forcefully if its forces in the Middle East were attacked.  

A peep into recent history indicates President Trump’s election produced dramatic change in US policy in 2017. The US withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and the word’s major powers in May 2018. The Trump administration has been following a “maximum pressure campaign” to press Iran to change its policies and negotiate a more comprehensive deal.

Since taking office, Trump has taken an increasingly aggressive posture toward Iran. The tone was set less than two weeks into Trump’s presidency when then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn responded to an Iranian missile test. “The Obama Administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions—including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms,” he said. “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.” 

The recent attacks on ships near a UAE port provided the US an opportunity to accumulate its troops, naval ships and aircrafts closer to Iran to warn of a preemptive attack. Though, both Washington and Tehran have been saying ‘we do not want a war’, it is feared that any adventurous move by any of the proxies could ignite a spark enough to break a war between two mind sets, Zionist and Islamisit.