Being buffered not least by the Arab peninsula and six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, Iran can count its lucky star that it does not share a border with Israel.
Since 1948, there isn't any mayhem in the region that has been freed from the shenanigans of Israel. In the current genocide against Gaza, Israel knows it has reached a point where any further attacks of Gaza would draw further condemnation from the world.
To diffuse the situation, Israel took two steps. It withdrew its troops from Khan Younis, and put on hold Tel Aviv's plan to attack Rafah in Gaza that borders the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
Israel also pretended to let more international humanitarian aid in although as David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary of the UK said, "Each time Israel promised more aid in, such as January 2024, in the following month, the development assistance would be half of what it was previously."
Speaking in the parliament's Upper House, April 15, 2024, to his own peers in the British upper house, David Cameron must have tried to deflect the UK's own culpability in the war crimes of Israel, he has nevertheless spoken truthfully this time.
But the reality of the nature of Israel is far more devastating than what the ex British Prime Minister cares to admit. According to Professor Avi Shlaim, at University of Oxford, "Zionism has been the most successful public relations exercise of the last century. The Jews have combined their strength in advocacy and persuasion (to abet and aid the existence of Israel)."
Professor Avi Shlaim would know best. Globally well regarded as a top historian on Israel, he was originally born as an Iraqi in a well-to-do Jewish family in Baghdad Iraq. At the age of 5, in 1948, due a series of bombings in downtown Baghdad, all of which were false flags operations planted by the secre agency of Mossad, even Jews in Baghdad that had never lived in fear of the Muslims, began to develop a case of paranoia that Iraq was no longer a safe abode of the Jews.
The parents of Avi Shlaim would emigrate immediately to living in Israel. That was the ploy of the Mossad based on the order given by founding father Israeli David Ben Gurion.
Ben Gurion was an atheist. Yet he had laid the trap for Jews around the Arab world, otherwise known as Sepherdim, to stay in Israel. They complied.
Professor Avi Shlaim would later do his own research in Oxford by delving into various research issues concerning his land of birth i.e. Iraq and Israel that he came to the realization at the British Colonial Museum in London that Israel was capable of false flag operations to induce a mass fear among the world of Jewry to start their life anew in Israel.
Professor Ilan Pappe, who is at University of Exeter in the United Kingdom (UK), not unlike Avi Shlaim, who had once served in the IDF right up until 1967, only to realize that Israel was capable of various machinations to mislead all Jews into believing that Israel was the best hope of securing themselves against the hatred of the world against those who sought to do them harm —- especially albeit falsely Arabs indeed Muslims —- concurred that Israel has got everyone wrapped into Zionism. That defending Zionism is the same as defending Judaism.
Yet this parallel is completely wrong. The moment Israel won the 6 Day War against the likes of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, Syria, the IDF became ever more brutal.
The IDF and Israel had transformed the Jews into believing that the 'chosen people' referred to them to defeat all others that sought to be in Jerusalem and beyond. When, in fact, the biblical notion of the 'chosen people' according to Rabbi Avi Cohen means that Jews, or all those who were born by Jewish mothers, must uphold the best moral excellence. Yet, time and again, Israeli politician and IDF are anything but the latter.
This is where the worst of Israel has begun to take hold even in its genocide against Gaza. Having come to the realization that Gaza has been bombed into smithereens, of which 85 percent of Gaza has been completely flattened in a landscape that measures 5 miles wide and 20 miles long, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his War Cabinet know that there is nothing else to bomb.
If anything, the focus must be on "ceasefire" to facilitate the safe exchange of hostages in Gaza and in the case of Israel, the more than 10,000 men, women and children, that had been placed under administrative detention on the most minor of errors.
Since October 7 2023, it was clear from the get-go, that Israel not only wants to bring Gazans to their 'final solution, ' Israel wanted to throw Iran completely off course, invariably, to repeat the success of the overthrow of the former Iranian Prime Minister Mosagdegh in 1952. Yes, Israel has always wanted to attack Iran and eliminate it, given that Iran has a civilian based nuclear research programs, that can be potentially be hostile against Israel.
But Israel cannot be attacking Iran without the B-52 bomber support of the US.
By attacking the Iranian Revolution Corps Group (IRCG) on Apr 1 2024, where some of its top commanders were killed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was eager to finish off Iran.
In killing the top leadership of the ICRG first in Lebanon then in Syria in February and April 1, 2024 respectively, Tel Aviv were trying to draw the US into attacking Iran, after which the war mongers in Israel, not excluding 90 percent of its society, that want an ever harsher genocide against the Gazans, do want to eliminate Iran.
To Iran's credit, it seized a Portuguese flag in the Gulf of Aden owned by an Israeli shipping merchant, to tow it back to the Iranian waters of the Straits of Hormuz. Within a window of 12 hours, Iran launched close to 300 drones and cruise missiles into Israel. While only few succeeded in hitting Israeli military targets and infrastructures that support the "Garrison State," that is now completely run by the ultra far right of Israel, Tel Aviv could persuade the US and the UK to join Israel to bring Iran to its knees.
But the moment the 300 drones and missiles had been intercepted, of which some of them did land in Israel, Teheran released a cryptic statement to the UN General Assembly, that the "Iranian military operations had been concluded."
Such a statement shows the self restraint of Iran to rely on its national integrity.
Contrary to what Israel's far right had been harbouring, all of them have been transformed into a permanent cauldron to make Iran a basket case in the world. Not unlike the fate of Yemen with a poor human development index of 0.39, worse than Haiti, Southern Sudan and Somalia.
As things are, Iran did not fall into the trap of Israel. Nor will Iran allow itself to be entrapped by the nefarious designs of Israel.
Ironically, albeit belatedly, while various news sources in the US had begun explaining that President Biden had been "played" by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the last six months, since the events of October 7 2023, did not amount to an existential threat. Consequently, one let alone a series that can wipe Israel completely off the map of the Middle East, once again it was the US that erred in molly-coddling Israel. How ?
President Biden, who has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that the latter was on the "wrong course of policy action," respond to the Iranian limited attack on April 13, 2024, by expressing US's "ironclad commitment" to Israel.
As John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago has warned time and again, the US is acting like a "twiddle dee and tweedle dumb," literally stupid, to allow Tel Aviv to spin it like a top. This despite the fact that President Biden had admitted last night that Iran indeed did not attack American assets and forces.
President Biden should understand that Iran, if not the world, is well aware that 68 percent of Israel's ammunition and stockpiles come from the US.
Even the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has accepted the case launched by South Africa but backed by Malaysia and Turkey, indeed hundreds of other countries quietly, that the US is complicitous in this genocide against Gaza launched by Israel. The two entities must take immediate remedial actions to stop it based on the verdict on January 26 2024. For now, it is safe to say that Iran and the whole world can see through the designs of Israel, even the US itself, although due to the influence of Israel lobby, President Joe Biden has chosen to cast a blind eye to the obvious.
Dr Rais Hussin is the Founder of EMIR Research, a think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.
** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.
