Comments on “Of bombs and bluffs”
We thank Caroline Montagu for this comment on today's newsletter:
Thanks for today’s Digest. It has been obvious to me from the first
news of slow flying drones that Iran’s response was carefully calibrated
to ensure it appeared strong to its domestic audience but did not cause
Israeli casualties and raise the game.
Can any intelligent person think Iran would have responded like that
if it had intended to damage Israel? I’ve no doubt it let Washington
know in advance what it was going to do. And the Iranian foreign
minister immediately after said the matter was concluded. It was all so
elegantly done. It’s similar to targeting the US air base in Iraq after letting the US know days in advance.
Cameron is no doubt pursuing the party line and sounds bland but hollow.
And we thanks James Spencer for this comment:
I would disagree that “all sides can claim a victory”. The West has suffered yet another self-inflicted defeat.
The deliberate armed attack by Israeli Air Force F-35s on the
diplomatic territory of Iran – a state with whom Israel is not at war –
was a crime of aggression, from which scourge the United Nations
(particularly its Security Council) exists to protect succeeding
generations.
Despite the UNSC meeting, the West – principally the US, but also its
British vassal – failed to censure or in other way sanction the
perpetrator of this act without fear or favour.
In the absence of that shocking failure to uphold International Law –
or even the “rules-based-order” the West so loudly trumpets – Iran
carried out a performative retaliatory strike. Whether one believes IRI
politicians (any more than any other politicians whose lips are moving)
or not, ‘The “imperative for Iran” to retaliate for the attack on its
embassy compound in Damascus might have been avoided had the U.N.
Security Council condemned the strike, Tehran’s mission to the United
Nations said on Thursday.’ Indeed,
far from discharging their UNSC duty, the West acted at Western
taxpayers’ expense to protect Israel from the consequences of its
law-breaking. That defence may have reduced the chances of a regional
conflict, but it might have been obviated by principled action in the
UNSC.
The West’s failure to act, or even to censure, was probably the
result of domestic political reasons. Next time the issue of Security
Council reform is raised again – in particular the permanent members’
right of veto – it is likely that this egregious and completely
unnecessary failure will be raised as evidence of Western systemic
corruption and self-interest and thus a lack of suitability to retain
the veto. It is difficult not to agree with such an accusation; it is
easy to see why the West is losing the “Global South”.