By Ameer Ali –

“Deposuit potentes De sede et exaltavit humiles” (He has putdown the mighty from their seat and exalted them of low degree). These words of W. H. Longfellow ring a bell when one looks at the turn of events surrounding the US-Israel war against Iran. Never in the history of US military adventures in the Middle East did it experience such an embarrassing setback as against Iran in the aftermath of February 28. In Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan US virtually had no credible resistance against its military might and walked away with incredible arrogance after causing maximum destruction and bloodshed. In fact, something along that scale was the original intention of Donald Trump and his Israeli partner Benjamin Netanyahu who planned to walk away in two-week time after destroying the so-called mullah regime with its non-existent nuclear arsenal and replacing that regime with that of the Pahlavi Dynasty. At one point Trump even trumpeted that he would even destroy Iran’s entire civilization. But after spending an expected one trillion dollars according to Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert from Harvard Kennedy School, it is Iran and not US that appears to be setting the agenda for possible regime changes in both US and Israel.

The fourteen-point memorandum signed between US and Iran a few days ago in Switzerland is expected to “turn over a new leaf” US-Iran relations according to US Vice President J. D. Vance. However, until that memorandum is ratified in sixty days’ time it remains a fragile ceasefire like Trump’s other ceasefires. Unless Trump intervenes directly to keep Israel out of South Lebanon this ceasefire cannot last long. In the meantime, Iran’s blockade over Strait of Hormuz and US’ counter blockade will be removed, oil and gas would resume transportation via the strait and nations across the continents could have a sigh of relief expecting their economic pain to ease at least for now.

Among those fourteen points are five crucial ones, which really show that Iran is negotiating from strength and not weakness. Mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, $300 billion for Iran’s reconstruction from yet unknown quarters, termination of all US sanctions against Iran, release of Iranian frozen assets and negotiation over Iran’s nuclear and uranium enrichment program under the supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency are vital issues on which Iran would not yield, and the fate of the memorandum lies on US ratifying them. (That Iran has no nuclear weapons at present and that the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned their production are open secrets). However, Iran has proved itself capable not only of defending its territory against any foreign threat but also attacking US bases anywhere in the Gulf region and Middle East. The main reason why Israel revolted against this memorandum is that it wanted Iran’s nuclear and Uranium enrichment programs be destroyed completely or transferred to another destination so that Israel could remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East.

The chief loser in this development is Israel. It was Israel and the Zionist lobby in Washington which pressed Trump to bomb Iran in the first place. Now, having lost that gamble and allowed Iran to gain the upper hand in negotiations, Netanyahu’s own future personally and of his Likud Party politically are in jeopardy. That is why in sheer desperation Israel insists on occupying South Lebanon in the name of fighting Hezbollah’s so-called terrorism. But Iran insists on Israeli withdrawal. Trump is in a dilemma. Is there a way out of this predicament?

The absence of any mention about the future of Gaza and West Bank in the memorandum indicates that Israel might be compensated by allowing it to annex these two territories permanently into Eretz Israel. Already Trump and Israel are actively working to strip Jordan’s historic custodianship over Al-Aqsa with a plan to convert it into a multifaith centre so that its Islamic identity would be destroyed forever. Trump’s son-in-Law Jared Kushner and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are reported to be championing this sinister design. That is why the omission of Gaza and West Bank in the memorandum gives room to suspect that Iran is ready to sacrifice the cause of Palestine in exchange for its own national benefits. Are the Qatari and Pakistani negotiators also a party to this devil bargain?

Revenge of History

The Middle East tragedy since 7 October 2023 originated in 1948 when that Zionist entity called Israel was planted at the heart of Arab world. None of the Arab leaders since then realised that this entity would remain an existential threat to all their kingdoms and governments and that they should either individually or collectively build their own defence capabilities against the new enemy. Instead, what they did was to surrender that vital sector at the feet of dominant Western powers starting with Britian and then switching to US. The American bases in the Gulf region speak volumes about this surrender. Even after 1970s when petro dollars started flooding the national coffers of a few of them to an extent that they could have, as the Economist commented at that time, “paved their deserts with gold” they chose instead to invest that wealth in the West and tried to recreate at home the image of those legendary Arabian Nights. When the struggle for an independent Palestine led by PLO became an irritant to them after 1970s, they went along with the Western powers to endorse whatever solutions offered by those powers. The so-called Oslo Accord was virtually a blueprint for the eventual absorption of Palestine by Israel. To make the situation worse one or two Arab regimes like UAE and Saudi Arabia were already normalising their relations with Israel from behind the scenes. When Libya and Iraq tried to challenge the US made Middle East Order and were militarily destroyed by US as a result other Arab regimes remained as spectators because of their historic disunity. Trump’s Abraham Accord in 2020 was an open invitation to these regimes to formalise their relations with Israel. UAE and Bahrain did so immediately, and the others were almost ready to join in when Trump was defeated at the midterm elections. Iran however remained an outsider to these developments and after 1979 chose to reject US leadership altogether and Israel’s claim to military dominance over the Middle East. The rest is history.

In short, Israeli genocide in and physical desertification of Gaza, killings and forced eviction of Palestinians by Israeli settlers – all designed and endorsed by the Israeli government in West Bank – the killings, destruction and occupation of Southern Lebanon under the pretext of fighting Hezbollah terrorism, and the bombing of Iran by US are all history’s revenge on a disunited Arab world. Its natural allies are in the East and not in the West. Even the Prophet looked at China as a repository of knowledge and wanted his followers seek that knowledge from that quarter. When will the Arab intelligentsia wake up to this truth?