The Iranian Regime Has Demonstrated That It Is A Paper Tiger – Its Rhetoric in Inverse Proportion to its Actions
Last week’s pager attack on Lebanon signalled the beginning of the Lebanon war. It exposed the hypocrisy behind Western denunciations of terrorism. The triggering of explosives in 5,000 pagers, irrespective of whether the target is Hezbollah, fits every definition of terrorism. It killed dozens of civilians, including children.
As Michael Walzer, author of “Just and Unjust Wars” and co-editor of “The Jewish Political Tradition” wrote in the New York Times,
the explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday were also very likely war crimes — terrorist attacks by a state that has consistently condemned terrorist attacks on its own citizens….
the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and wounded thousands of others, came when the operatives were not operating; they had not been mobilized and they were not militarily engaged. Rather, they were at home with their families, sitting in cafes, shopping in food markets — among civilians who were randomly killed and injured.
Terrorism is
the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.
The definition in Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000 is all but useless.
1. serious violence against a person;
2. serious damage to property;
3. endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action);
4. creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
5. action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
No. 1 could be applied to the Metropolitan Police whose violence is a matter of record. No. 4 could be applied to the ‘reforms’ to the NHS proposed by Keir Starmer and equally to the privatisation of the NHS by previous Tory governments for the sake of profit. But of course western governments never think of their actions as ‘terrorist’. If endangering a person’s life is the definition then we should have no standing army! Not in itself a bad idea.
I would define ‘terrorism’ as the use of violence and terror against a population, for political reasons. The classic non-state terrorist groups are ISIS and Al Qaeda. Groups which have a substantial political base such as the IRA, the ANC and PLO were not terrorist though all of them were called that at the time. Terrorists don’t win elections and don’t have a mass base.
Amnesty International posted this report of Israel’s pager attack:
Another witness who was shopping in the southern Beirut suburb of Borj al-Barajne when she saw women and children screaming and running, described the scenes as apocalyptic. “People were running all around me, but my legs couldn’t move,” she said. She later saw young men lying on the ground and dozens of ambulances arriving.
People were running all around me, but my legs couldn’t move
A witness to a pager explosion in Beirut
Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab analyzed 12 videos showing the pagers exploding in crowded civilian areas, such as residential streets and grocery stores, as well as in people’s homes. A verified video of the skyline of Beirut show large smoke plums over at least 10 locations in residential areas.
Lebanon’s Minister of Health, Dr. Firas Abiad, described the attacks as “the epitome of indiscriminate attacks” adding many caused “life-changing injuries”.
Israel’s Bombing of Lebanon – same old story
One witness confirmed to Amnesty International media reports stating the pagers beeped before detonating causing some people to bring them up to their faces to check the screens. A mechanic in Sour described how a friend’s pager started beeping:
He took it in his hands, I was looking at it, and it said ERROR. I turned around to get my cigarettes, and I was still right next to him, and then the pager exploded. He lost his hand and both his eyes.
It is not only Hezbollah fighters who were killed and injured but civilian employees of Hezbollah including health workers. Not that there is any justification for targeting Hezbollah members in this indiscriminate way.
The silence of the world’s leaders – Biden, Starmer, Scholtz etc, is deafening. International law only applies to the enemies of the West, never its friends. Because there is no doubt that the planting of booby traps is explicitly outlawed.
The use against civilians of booby traps is prohibited by the Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices. Article 2 of the 1980 Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons provides that a “Booby-trap” means
any device or material which is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act”
It is understandable therefore that Lebanese Resistance, taken by surprise with many of its members injured and killed, has not yet been able to co-ordinate its response to Israel’s savage bombing.
As is normally the case, Israel’s bombing has primarily focused on and killed civilians. Only today the United States announced a further $8.7 aid to Israel. There is no war, no act of aggression, no war crime or atrocity by Israel that the United States will not support.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken simply lied to Congress about reports from the U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance, which concluded that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.
The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known in late April. Because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid, the U.S should have cut off military aid. In fact it expanded it.
Blinken and Biden did not accept either finding. On May 10 Blinken stated to Congress that:
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo which described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.
Despite the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel was ‘plausibly’ committing genocide and its later order to Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah and the ICJ’s later ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank were illegal Israel has ignored the rulings of the world’s highest court. International Law has been shown to be completely useless when it comes to preventing genocide because it has no effective mechanism to implement its decisions.
In Lebanon we can also assume that whatever war crimes Israel is planning will also be ignored. Israel’s launching of an aggressive war against Lebanon is a war crime. This issue was considered by The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be the ‘supreme international crime’. It led the Court to issue 12 death sentences against the major Nazi war criminals in 1947.
To date the Lebanese Resistance, which opened a second front on the border with Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, has been careful to limit its attacks to Northern Israel and military targets whereas Israel has deliberately targeted civilians in South Lebanon as a way of creating a buffer zone.
To date the response of the Lebanese Resistance has been cautious and hesitant given its reported stockpile of 200,000 missiles. Of course it is difficult to know what effect the pager attack has had but it is likely that the resistance is calibrating its response to Israel’s attacks. If this is true it may prove a costly mistake. The longer Israel carries out its bombing campaign the likelier it will be that it destroys the missiles and their launchers.
What is more likely to bring Israel’s military to heel will be the launching of 1,000 or 2,000 missiles a day. The Iron Dome missile defence system would be overwhelmed. Targets need to be widened to cover economic infrastructure such as oil refineries, energy and airports.
The Lebanese Resistance also needs to make it clear that if Israel continues to target civilians then it will not consider itself bound by the Geneva Convention on war. In Gaza Israel has attacked hospitals, schools, churches, mosques – indeed every facet of civilised life. The Resistance cannot afford to show restraint when the word doesn’t even appear in the Zionist dictionary.
Thousands of mosques, churches, homes, restaurants, colleges and other buildings have been turned to rubble across the Gaza Strip as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
What will be crucial also will be the assistance of other Arab groups. With the exception of the Houthis, all Arab states to one degree or another wish to please or come to terms with U.S. imperialism. This includes Iran and Syria. Although Iran’s’ support for Hezbollah in terms of weapons supply has been crucial to their ability to continue to fight Israel, this has been done, not because of solidarity with Lebanon and the Palestinian people but because Iran wishes to extend its influence in the Middle East. Iran has attempted on numerous occasions to try and reach an agreement with the United States, most notably the Nuclear Agreement with President Obama that Trump tore up. It has already made its peace with Saudi Arabia.
Iran’s problem has always been that Israel wants to be the unchallenged hegemon in the region. Because Israel is the United States’ attack dog, whose purpose is to intimidate any radical Arab group or movement, there will never be a chance that the US will agree to its peace feelers. The US harbours a desire to return to the days of the Shah of Iran, who was the US’s favourite dictator.
The Iranian regime is not therefore interested in solidarity for its own sake. It is not a revolutionary or even a progressive regime. On the contrary it has waged a campaign of terror and oppression against its own people: women, workers, national and religious minorities (Jews are the only exception to this, thus proving the accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against it are nonsense).
Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979 with the US’s blessing because the alternative was a revolutionary workers regime. The CIA actually enabled Khomeini at the time although later they fell out. Under Reagan Iran became embroiled in the Iran Contra Scandal when Iran paid for arms the US supplied it with knowing full well that some of the money would fund the Contras, the US-backed terrorists who were then fighting the Sandanistas in Nicargua. Israel too supplied captured PLO weapons to the US in order that the Contras could be armed.
It is therefore no surprise that the Iranian regime has made it clear that it will not be taking part in any attacks on Israel. It has not responded to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chief in Tehran despite its threats at the time.
The one thing that the US does not want is a region wide war because in such a war the complicity of its own Arab client states will become all too clear. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have been supplying Israel with goods bypassing the Houthis blockade on the Red Sea. The involvement of Iraqi Hezbollah, who would almost certainly find themselves in confrontation with King Hussein’s forces might pose a threat to an already unpopular regime. At the same time it will bring into even sharper focus US bases in Jordan and Northern Syria.
The Middle East is dotted with unpopular, repressive dictators and regimes that are in alliance with Israel. A war that sucks in forces across the region cannot but help destabilise those regimes.
In order to defeat Hezbollah Israel needs to wage a ground war as Israeli generals are already threatening. The problem with this is that the Israeli army has already proved wanting in the war against Hamas. Hezbollah fighters are vastly more experienced than Hamas fighters having fought in Syria’s civil war in aid of Syrian dictator, Assad.
In 2006 Israel troops were forced to withdraw from Lebanon when they launched a ground offensive. There is no reason to believe they will fare any better this time around.
Before the war on the Palestinians in Gaza Israel’s military had an undeservedly high reputation as an effective fighting force. But its main role in the past two decades has not been in armed combat but in maintaining a repressive military dictatorship in the West Bank.
Israel is very good at killing civilians but it finds armed opponents a much more difficult proposition. In Gaza the claim that it has lost some 370 soldiers and a few thousand injured are ludicrous. On December 2023 Israel’s claim that 1593 soldiers had been injured was shown to be a lie when Ha’aretz discovered that at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon alone 1,949 soldiers had been treated for injuries. Given that most of its tanks and armoured personnel carriers have been put out of action the figures for Israeli military deaths, 346 are ludicrous. It is likely that the Israeli military has lost at least 3,000 and probably more dead and up to 10,000 injured.
Israel’s army is already battle worn. Its reservists are now refusing further call-ups, hence the attempt to draft the Ultra-Orthodox who prefer studying the Talmud to taking part in military adventures to secure the Promised Land.
Others, like Michael Ofer Ziv have refused to fight at the horror of what he has seen. He described to CNN how
One minute, he was looking at soundless footage of airstrikes he ordered; the next, he was on his phone watching unfiltered videos of Palestinians shrieking, carrying their loved ones who had been killed because of the Israeli military.
“This is happening in real life and has an actual effect on those people… at some point, your brain kind of cannot disconnect those two things anymore,” he said.
Once he connected those dots, there was no going back.
Asked for comment, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN that Ofer Ziv’s claims around targeting were “baseless, unfounded, and misrepresent the sensitivity, precaution, and strict obligation to international law with which the IDF selects and pursues its targets.”
If the Lebanese war does turn into a fully fledged war it could bring the very existence of Israel, as the United States’ settler colonial watchdog, into question. The genocide in Gaza, conducted in the full glare of the international media has destroyed the moral argument for Israel’s existence as a Jewish supremacist state. Our leaders may repeat clichés about ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ but when pictures of murdered children enter peoples’ living rooms only the brain dead still accept that Gaza’s children pose a threat to a nuclear armed state.
Tony Greenstein
