The Israeli rampage in the Middle East is in fact a new U.S. proxy war to avenge its humiliations there in the last two decades
It was good to be back on ‘Dialogue Works’ in discussion with host Nima Alkhorshid.
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Iran Strikes Israel, Next Move? - Russia vs. NATO
Today I was given the opportunity to set out a very different explanation of U.S. policy in the developing regional war in the Middle East/West Asia from what my peers are saying, or from what I myself would have said two weeks ago.
The generally accepted view on the U.S.-Israeli relationship in this war was repeated earlier today by Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a widely watched military expert. He said that it appears the U.S. is now flying blind in the region, or to put it another way is on auto-pilot, following two steps behind Israel.
However, by his own acknowledgment, the successful Israeli bombing of the Hezbollah headquarters and decapitation of its leadership in downtown Beirut was made possible only by direct United States support. The 86 two-ton bombs dropped on the residential buildings to tear deep underground and do the job were American supplied. The intelligence on the whereabouts of the intended victims was provided by the United States, which also brought its AWACS into play off the coast of Lebanon long enough to provide actionable information to the Israelis for their strike.
Let us put it another way: the United States provided Israel with what it needed to do what the United States wanted done. After the confirmed killing of the 30 years plus leader of Hamas, US. officials said the dead man had the blood of American servicemen on his hands and it was good that he had been eliminated.
Then let us consider what Western media are reporting about the limits that Washington is putting on Israel’s coming retaliatory strike at Iran for the ballistic missiles that Iran fired at military targets in Israel a day ago. We are told that Joe Biden has warned Netanyahu against hitting any nuclear sites in Iran. That radical solution to the Iranian nuclear weapons program would surely bring the Russians directly into the conflict given that they are about to sign a comprehensive cooperation agreement later this month with a defense component that effectively makes the countries allies. Since the Americans are duty bound to defend Israel, they would then be fighting Russia, the nuclear superpower, something that the Biden administration is loathe to do. The Israelis are also being instructed not to hit oil and gas installations in Iran since that would drive up global energy prices and do great harm to the chances of the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Does this not sound like Washington’s prohibition on Kiev’s use of ATACMS, Storm Shadow and other long range Western supplied missiles against the heartland of Russia? In both cases, the beneficiary of U.S. military support is being deprived of the possibility of doing great harm to its enemy in a war for survival. The explanation for this similarity is ready to hand: the Israeli rampage in the Middle East is being directed from Washington in the same way as Kiev’s invasion of Kursk and other military operations against Russia are directed from Washington.
Washington is now ready to see Netanyahu fight to the last Israeli to tame the neighborhood for the sake of its Big Brother across the Atlantic. The destruction of the neighborhood by ‘our boy’ in Jerusalem is surely seen by the Neocons who still control the levers of power in Washington as suitable retribution for the humiliations the United States experienced in each of the wars it has ignited or joined in the Middle East over the past two decades. Clipping the wings of Iran has been not only an obsession of Netanyahu; it has been an obsession of successive U.S. administrations since that of Jimmy Carter. Let us remember that the USA is a vengeful and cruel superpower.
I say the Jewish State is being asked to fight to the last Israeli in the knowledge that Israel is being destroyed economically and politically while committing genocide in the neighborhood. The Israeli economy is taking enormous losses from this war which has barely begun, not from destruction of infrastructure by the enemy, as in the case of Ukraine, but by loss of access to shipments of essential raw materials inputs for production, in loss of manpower to operate production since the Israeli army is a nation at arms.
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I take the analytical approach to the Middle East conflict set out above following the logic that the Kremlin used to explain its decision to change its nuclear doctrine a week ago. They have lowered the threshold on use of nuclear weapons and specifically state that they may respond with nuclear arms if attacked by a non-nuclear power that is assisted in the aggression against Russia by a nuclear power. That overturns the normal prohibition on use of these weapons against non-nuclear states and moves the threat also to the nuclear co-belligerent, meaning the USA.
The reason for this change is that the Kremlin sees that the United States has moved away from its longstanding doctrine of global nuclear attack using its triad. With the advances of Russian weaponry, the States understand that an attempted decapitating blow would not prevent Russia from still launching a massively destructive counter blow using unstoppable hypersonic missiles. So, instead, Washington is pursuing proxy wars aimed at decapitating the nuclear capabilities of an adversary like Russia but leaving the States at one remove and claiming to be uninvolved.
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I fully understand that the contrarian view of the relationship between Israel and the USA set out above will meet objections from those who insist that Israel has bought up Congress through its lobbying activities. Reconsidering the actual relations today is only held up by the vanity of these objectors.
There are also other objectors to what I have proposed who ask incredulously how the USA could approve of the Israeli genocide in Gaza which has killed over 40,000 civilians, mostly women and children. To this I answer firstly that the continued supply by Washington to Israel of the munitions necessary to carry out the genocide speaks for itself.
But I have another argument to add to this. I ask the objectors to open their minds to the reality of a vengeful superpower that has itself committed mass murder of civilians on a far vaster scale. We may put to a side the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as something from the distant past. But what about the entirely illegal invasion of Iraq undertaken by George Bush which killed perhaps as many as 1,000,000 civilians when the American forces stormed through the country on a wave of ‘shock and awe.’ Or what about the way tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq were allowed to die in the decade before the invasion for lack of medicines caused by U.S. sanctions on the Hussein regime?
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024