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US Faces Defeat in Geopolitical War in Gaza

M.K. Bhadrakumar

October 15: One hundred years after the Arab Revolt (1916-1918) against the ruling Ottoman Turks amidst the impending defeat of Germany and the Triple Alliance in World War I, another armed uprising by the Arabs has erupted — this time around, against Israeli occupation, in the backdrop of the looming defeat of the United States and the NATO in Ukraine War — presenting a thrilling spectacle of history repeating unabridged.

The Ottoman Empire disintegrated as a result of the Arab Revolt. Israel too will have to vacate its occupied territories and make space for a state of Palestine, which of course, will be a crushing defeat for the US and marks the end of its global dominance, reminiscent of the Battle of Cambrai in Northern France (1918) where Germans — surrounded, exhausted and with disintegrating morale amidst a deteriorating domestic situation — faced the certainty that the war had been lost, and surrendered.

The torrential flow of events through the past week is breathtaking, starting with a phone call made by Iran’s President Sayyid Ebrahim Raisi to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday to discuss a common strategy toward the situation following the devastating attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, against Israel on October 7.

Earlier on Tuesday, in a powerful statement, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had emphasised that “From the military and intelligence aspects, this defeat (by Hamas) is irreparable. It is a devastating earthquake. It is unlikely that the (Israeli) usurping regime will be able to use the help of the West to repair the deep impacts that this incident has left on its ruling structures.” [For more on this, see another post by Bhadrakumar below.]

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Raisi’s call to the Crown Prince aimed to “support Palestine and prevent the spread of war in the region. The call was good and promising.” Having forged a broad understanding with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held discussion with his Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, during which he called upon Islamic and Arab countries to extend their support to the Palestinian people, emphasising the urgency of the situation.

On Thursday, Amir-Abdollahian embarked on a regional tour to Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Qatar through Saturday to coordinate with the various resistance groups. Notably, he met Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha. Amir-Abdollahian told the media that unless Israel stopped its barbaric air strikes on Gaza, an escalation by the Resistance is inevitable and Israel could suffer a “huge earthquake,” as Hezbollah is in a state of readiness to intervene.

Axios reported on Saturday citing two diplomatic sources that Tehran has delivered a strong message to Tel Aviv via the UN that it will have to intervene if the Israeli aggression on Gaza persists. Simply put, Tehran will not be deterred by the deployment of 2 US aircraft carriers and several warships and fighter jets off the shores of Israel. On Sunday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan acknowledged that the US couldn’t rule out that Iran might intervene in the conflict.

In the meantime, while Iran was coordinating with the resistance groups on the military front, China and Saudi Arabia shifted gear on the diplomatic track. On Thursday, even as the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was heading for Arab capitals after talks in Tel Aviv, seeking help to get the hostages released by Hamas, China’s Special Envoy on the Middle East Zhai Jun contacted the Deputy Minister for Political Affairs of the Saudi foreign ministry Arabia Saud M. Al-Sati on the Palestine-Israel situation with focus on the Palestine issue and the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, in particular. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.

On the same day, an extraordinary event took place in the Chinese foreign ministry when the Arab envoys in Beijing sought a group meeting with Special Envoy Zhai to underscore their collective stance that a “very severe” humanitarian crisis has emerged following Israel’s attack on Gaza and “the international community has the responsibility to take immediate actions to ease the tension, promote the resumption of talks for peace, and safeguard the Palestinian people’s lawful national rights.”

The Arab ambassadors thanked China “for upholding a just position on the Palestinian question … and expressed the hope that China will continue to play a positive and constructive role.” Zhai voiced full understanding that the “top priority is to keep calm and exercise restraint, protect civilians, and provide necessary conditions for relieving the humanitarian crisis.”

After this extraordinary meeting, the Chinese Foreign Ministry posted on its website at midnight a full-bodied statement by Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi titled China Stands on the Side of Peace and Human Conscience on the Question of Palestine. This reportedly prompted a call by the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan to Wang Yi.

Interestingly, Blinken too called Wang Yi from Riyadh on October 14, where, according to the state department readout, he “reiterated U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself and called for an immediate cessation of Hamas’ attacks and the release of all hostages” and stressed the importance of “discouraging other parties (read Iran and Hezbollah) from entering the conflict.”

Succinctly put, in all these exchanges involving Saudi Arabia — especially, in Blinken’s meetings in Riyadh with Saudi FM and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, while the US focused on the hostage issue, the Saudi side instead turned the attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The state department readouts bring out the two sides’ divergent priorities.

Suffice to say, a coordinated Saudi-Iranian strategy backed by China is putting pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire and to de-escalate. The UN’s backing isolates Israel further.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s exit is to be expected but he won’t throw in the towel without a fight. US-Israel ties may come under strain. President Biden is caught in a bind, harking back to Jimmy Carter’s predicament over the Iran hostage crisis in 1980, which ended his bid for a second term as president. Biden is already backtracking.

Where do things go from here? Clearly, the longer the Israeli assault on Gaza continues, the international condemnation and demand to allow a humanitarian corridor will only intensify. Not only will countries like India which expressed “solidarity” with Israel lose face in the Global South, even Washington’s European allies will be hard-pressed. It remains to be seen whether an invasion of Gaza by Israel is anymore realistic at all.

Going forward, the Arab-Iran-China axis will raise the plight of Gaza in the UN Security Council unless Israel retracted. Russia has proposed a draft resolution and is insisting on a voting. If the US vetoes the resolution, the UN GA may step in to adopt it.

Meanwhile, the US project to resuscitate the Abraham Accords loses traction and the plot to undermine the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian rapprochement faces sudden death.

As regards the power dynamic in West Asia, these trends can only work to the advantage of Russia and China, especially if the BRICS were to take a lead role at some point to navigate a Middle East peace process that is no longer the monopoly of the US. This is payback time for Russia.

The era of petrodollar is ending — and along with that, the US’ global hegemony. The emergent trends, therefore, go a long way to strengthen multipolarity in the world order.

(Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. Courtesy: Indianpunchline, the author’s blog.)

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In another blog post posted on 13 October, ‘Iran Warns Israel Against its Apocalyptic War’, Ambassador Bhadrakumar writes:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spoken for the first time on the explosive situation (in Gaza), in his capacity as the Commander-in-Chief of Iran’s Armed Forces. In an unprecedented move, excerpts of Khamenei’s remarks have since been relayed in Hebrew to the Israeli audience.

Khamenei’s statement warns Israel against any rash moves that it may come to repent later. Khamenei anticipated Israel’s “irreparable defeat.” He said “the killing Palestinian men, women, children, and elderly, desecrating the al-Aqsa Mosque, beating worshipers, and letting loose armed settlers to attack the Palestinian people are among the atrocities committed by the Zionist regime.”

Khemenei made three key points in his speech:

• First, Israel is on the wrong path by embarking on such a war against Gaza. “The rulers and decision-makers of the Zionist regime and their supporters should know that these actions will bring a greater disaster upon them, and the Palestinian people, with a firmer determination, will slap their hideous faces harder in response to these crimes.”
• Second, the rumour “spread by the elements of the Zionist regime and its supporters” about the involvement of “non-Palestinians (read Hezbollah) including Iran” in the recent events is “nonsense.”
• Three, most important, Khamenei prefaced his remarks by describing Iran’s armed forces as “the steel fortress of security, honour and national identity.” He recalled Iranian armed forces’ brilliant record in the eight-year war with Iraq, which was also a world war, and later, in thwarting the US’s “wicked plot” to create ISIS and destabilise the region, Iran being the ultimate target.

Khamenei was all but explicit that Iran’s armed forces are in a state of readiness and have the capability to defend the country if push comes to shove. That said, he also made a nuanced remark that “The entire Islamic world is obliged to support the Palestinian nation.”

The bottom line is, in Khamenei’s words, “From the military and intelligence aspects, this defeat (of Israel) is irreparable. It is a devastating earthquake. It is unlikely that the usurping regime will be able to use the help of the West to repair the deep impacts that this incident has left on its ruling structures.”

Indeed, Israel faces a serious existential crisis due to the disunity within and the irrelevance of its military prowess to meet the challenges of the hybrid war it is experiencing. Iran, therefore, sees that the advantage lies with the axis of resistance.

Interestingly, Egypt has disclosed that it had warned Israel about an impending large-scale attack by Hamas but the latter failed to act on it. To be sure, there is going to be stocktaking within Israel at some point. Prime Minister Netanyahu will be hard-pressed to explain. On the other hand, typically, he will try to cover up and whip up xenophobia with war cries to distract attention.

In the big picture, it is inconceivable that given the catastrophic consequences, the US will dare to attack Iran. But the temptation will be there to roll back the Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon using the present opportunity and, second, seriously destabilise the Syrian situation while Russia remains preoccupied in Ukraine — that is to say, make a desperate attempt to undo the gains of the so-called Axis of Resistance led by Iran through the past decade and more. Therefore, there is no question that this remains a potential flashpoint as far as Iran is concerned, and Tehran will remain vigilant about not losing ground in the Levant.

The heart of the matter is that the US and Israel are confronting today a vastly different Iran than they have been used to through the past four decades and more since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Consider the following:

• Iran is no more in isolation and it has successfully overcome the Western sanctions;
• BRICS membership is a game changer for Iran’s integration into the global community.
• Iran is a threshold state in its nuclear weapon programme, enjoying strong relationships with Russia and China and can even tilt the balance in the co-relation of forces in West Asia and neighbouring regions and even internationally.
• Iran is no longer entrapped in a debilitating regional rivalry with Saudi Arabia and the easing of the conflict situations in Yemen and Syria creates space for Tehran to manoeuvre on the diplomatic arena. (Iran’s foreign minister is actively coordinating with his counterparts in the region.)

All of this enables Iran to move to the next phase of development and advance its global presence and expand its influence. Suffice to say, Iran is steadily outstripping Israel in the power dynamic of the region. Being a much smaller country with an uncertain future which is called upon to adjust to the new reality of US retrenchment, Israel is no longer in the same league as Iran. The Hamas operation exposes this geopolitical reality.

A protracted war in Gaza will be a colossal drain on Israel’s resources and can only weaken the country. Its outcome remains anybody’s guess. But on the other hand, Israel believes that it has no diplomatic options, either. On top of it, if Hezbollah enters the fray, all that happened last Saturday in Israel will seem a picnic. With its massive stockpile of advanced missiles — close to 200,000 rockets trained on virtually every nook and corner of Israel — Hezbollah has the capability to destroy Israel comprehensively.

Principally, the deployment of two US aircraft carriers in Eastern Mediterranean is intended to send a strong message to Hezbollah. On the other hand, it also highlights that in addition to Ukraine and Taiwan, the West Asian theatre will continue to engage the US for a foreseeable future. If this is not imperial overstretch, what is it? Something has to give way.

These are early days. Meanwhile, the EU’s united front on Israel’s war with Hamas is already showing its first cracks. On Monday, within hours of the announcement that the EU would put €691 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority under review, with all payments immediately suspended, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stepped in to retract, saying the Commission “will not suspend the due payments” as “punishing all the Palestinian people” would have “damaged the EU interests in the region and would have only further emboldened terrorists.”

Disagreements have appeared between EU countries on the conflict. Historically, Israel-Palestine is one of the most divisive issues in the EU. Several countries — including Ireland, Luxembourg and Denmark — sought a reference to de-escalation in the EU joint text on the conflict, which was opposed by others. France, the Nordic states, Belgium and Ireland traditionally support a position that is seen by some other countries as too pro-Palestinian.

Quite obviously, with hardly any country in the Global South — other than a handful of cases such as India — rushing in to express “solidarity” with Israel in its apocalyptic war with Gaza and the contradictions within Israel waiting to implode sooner rather than later, Tehran is justified to believe that it is on the right side of history.

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The Geopolitics of Al-Aqsa Flood

Pepe Escobar

Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was meticulously planned. The launch date was conditioned by two triggering factors.

First was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flaunting his ‘New Middle East’ map at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he completely erased Palestine and made a mockery of every single UN resolution on the subject.

Second are the serial provocations at the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, including the straw that broke the camel’s back: two days before Al-Aqsa Flood, on 5 October, at least 800 Israeli settlers launched an assault around the mosque, beating pilgrims, destroying Palestinian shops, all under the observation of Israeli security forces.

Everyone with a functioning brain knows Al-Aqsa is a definitive red line, not just for Palestinians, but for the entire Arab and Muslim worlds.

It gets worse. The Israelis have now invoked the rhetoric of a “Pearl Harbor.” This is as threatening as it gets. The original Pearl Harbor was the American excuse to enter a world war and nuke Japan, and this “Pearl Harbor” may be Tel Aviv’s justification to launch a Gaza genocide.

Sections of the west applauding the upcoming ethnic cleansing – including Zionists posing as “analysts” saying out loud that the “population transfers” that began in 1948 “must be completed” – believe that with massive weaponry and massive media coverage, they can turn things around in short shrift, annihilate the Palestinian resistance, and leave Hamas allies like Hezbollah and Iran weakened.

Their Ukraine Project has sputtered, leaving not just egg on powerful faces, but entire European economies in ruin. Yet as one door closes, another one opens: Jump from ally Ukraine to ally Israel, and hone your sights on adversary Iran instead of adversary Russia.

There are other good reasons to go all guns blazing. A peaceful West Asia means Syria reconstruction – in which China is now officially involved; active redevelopment for Iraq and Lebanon; Iran and Saudi Arabia as part of BRICS 11; the Russia-China strategic partnership fully respected and interacting with all regional players, including key US allies in the Persian Gulf.

Incompetence. Willful strategy. Or both.

That brings us to the cost of launching this new “war on terror.” The propaganda is in full swing. For Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Hamas is ISIS. For Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Hamas is Russia. Over one October weekend, the war in Ukraine was completely forgotten by western mainstream media. Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel tower, the Brazilian Senate are all Israeli now.

Egyptian intel claims it warned Tel Aviv about an imminent attack from Hamas. The Israelis chose to ignore it, as they did the Hamas training drills they observed in the weeks prior, smug in their superior knowledge that Palestinians would never have the audacity to launch a liberation operation.

Whatever happens next, Al-Aqsa Flood has already, irretrievably, shattered the hefty pop mythology around the invincibility of Tsahal, Mossad, Shin Bet, Merkava tank, Iron Dome, and the Israel Defense Forces.

Even as it ditched electronic communications, Hamas profited from the glaring collapse of Israel’s multi-billion-dollar electronic systems monitoring the most surveilled border on the planet.

Cheap Palestinian drones hit multiple sensor towers, facilitated the advance of a paragliding infantry, and cleared the way for T-shirted, AK-47-wielding assault teams to inflict breaks in the wall and cross a border that even stray cats dared not.

Israel, inevitably, turned to battering the Gaza Strip, an encircled cage of 365 square kilometers packed with 2.3 million people. The indiscriminate bombing of refugee camps, schools, civilian apartment blocks, mosques, and slums has begun. Palestinians have no navy, no air force, no artillery units, no armored fighting vehicles, and no professional army. They have little to no high-tech surveillance access, while Israel can call up NATO data if they want it.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”

The Israelis can merrily engage in collective punishment because, with three guaranteed UNSC vetoes in their back pocket, they know they can get away with it.

It doesn’t matter that Haaretz, Israel’s most respected newspaper, straight out concedes that “actually the Israeli government is solely responsible for what happened (Al-Aqsa Flood) for denying the rights of Palestinians.”

The Israelis are nothing if not consistent. Back in 2007, then-Israeli Defense Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said, “Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.”

Ukraine funnels weapons to Palestinians

Only one year ago, the sweaty sweatshirt comedian in Kiev was talking about turning Ukraine into a “big Israel,” and was duly applauded by a bunch of Atlantic Council bots.

Well, it turned out quite differently. As an old-school Deep State source just informed me:

“Ukraine-earmarked weapons are ending up in the hands of the Palestinians. The question is which country is paying for it. Iran just made a deal with the US for six billion dollars and it is unlikely Iran would jeopardize that. I have a source who gave me the name of the country but I cannot reveal it. The fact is that Ukrainian weapons are going to the Gaza Strip and they are being paid for but not by Iran.”

After its stunning raid last weekend, a savvy Hamas has already secured more negotiating leverage than Palestinians have wielded in decades. Significantly, while peace talks are supported by China, Russia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – Tel Aviv refuses. Netanyahu is obsessed with razing Gaza to the ground, but if that happens, a wider regional war is nearly inevitable.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah – a staunch Resistance Axis ally of the Palestinian resistance – would rather not be dragged into a war that can be devastating on its side of the border, but that could change if Israel perpetrates a de facto Gaza genocide.

Hezbollah holds at least 100,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, from Katyusha (range: 40 km) to Fajr-5 (75 km), Khaibar-1 (100 km), Zelzal 2 (210 km), Fateh-110 (300 km), and Scud B-C (500 km). Tel Aviv knows what that means, and shudders at the frequent warnings by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that its next war with Israel will be conducted inside that country.

Which brings us to Iran.

Geopolitical plausible deniability

The key immediate consequence of Al-Aqsa Flood is that the Washington neocon wet dream of “normalization” between Israel and the Arab world will simply vanish if this turns into a Long War.

Large swathes of the Arab world in fact are already normalizing their ties with Tehran – and not only inside the newly expanded BRICS 11.

In the drive towards a multipolar world, represented by BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), among other groundbreaking Eurasian and Global South institutions, there’s simply no place for an ethnocentric Apartheid state fond of collective punishment.

Just this year, Israel found itself disinvited from the African Union summit. An Israeli delegation showed up anyway, and was unceremoniously ejected from the big hall, a visual that went viral. At the UN plenary sessions last month, a lone Israeli diplomat sought to disrupt Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi’s speech. No western ally stood by his side, and he too, was ejected from the premises.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping diplomatically put it in December 2022, Beijing “firmly supports the establishment of an independent state of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty based on 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. China supports Palestine in becoming a full member of the United Nations.”

Tehran’s strategy is way more ambitious – offering strategic advice to West Asian resistance movements from the Levant to the Persian Gulf: Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hashd al-Shaabi, Kataib Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and countless others. It’s as if they are all part of a new Grand Chessboard de facto supervised by Grandmaster Iran.

The pieces in the chessboard were carefully positioned by none other than the late Quds Force Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem Soleimani, a once-in-a-lifetime military genius. He was instrumental in creating the foundations for the cumulative successes of Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine, as well as creating the conditions for a complex operation such as Al-Aqsa Flood.

Elsewhere in the region, the Atlanticist drive of opening strategic corridors across the Five Seas – the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Eastern Mediterranean – is floundering badly.

Russia and Iran are already smashing US designs in the Caspian – via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) – and the Black Sea, which is on the way to becoming a Russian lake. Tehran is paying very close attention to Moscow’s strategy in Ukraine, even as it refines its own strategy on how to debilitate the Hegemon without direct involvement: call it geopolitical plausible deniability.

Bye bye EU-Israel-Saudi-India corridor

The Russia-China-Iran alliance has been demonized as the new “axis of evil” by western neocons. That infantile rage betrays cosmic impotence. These are Real Sovereigns that can’t be messed with, and if they are, the price to pay is unthinkable.

A key example: if Iran under attack by a US-Israeli axis decided to block the Strait of Hormuz, the global energy crisis would skyrocket, and the collapse of the western economy under the weight of quadrillions of derivatives would be inevitable.

What this means, in the immediate future, is that he American Dream of interfering across the Five Seas does not even qualify as a mirage. Al-Aqsa Flood has also just buried the recently-announced and much-ballyhooed EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-India transportation corridor.

China is keenly aware of all this incandescence taking place only a week before its 3rd Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. At stake are the BRI connectivity corridors that matter – across the Heartland, across Russia, plus the Maritime Silk Road and the Arctic Silk Road.

Then there’s the INSTC linking Russia, Iran and India – and by ancillary extension, the Gulf monarchies.

The geopolitical repercussions of Al-Aqsa Flood will speed up Russia, China and Iran’s interconnected geoeconomic and logistical connections, bypassing the Hegemon and its Empire of Bases. Increased trade and non-stop cargo movement are all about (good) business. On equal terms, with mutual respect – not exactly the War Party’s scenario for a destabilized West Asia.

Oh, the things that a slow-moving paragliding infantry overflying a wall can accelerate.

(Pepe Escobar is a columnist at The Cradle, editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. Courtesy: The Cradle, an online news magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.)