Armageddon in the Middle East - Part 1 - Why It's Inevitable

Wherein we explain why a Middle East war is inevitable - and how the consequences of the world being wrong - since forever - could lead to World War III...

Sep 16, 2024

Warning - This is going to be a big post. So I'm going to break it up into four parts. Each part is also going to be long - and likely cut off by your email service. Remember that there are links to the full article at the top of the email, and that your email service usually provides another means at the bottom of the email to view the full email in a new tab.

On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas conducted an attack on the Israel occupation.

While the world engages in an orgy of "virtue signaling", either over the alleged - and thoroughly debunked - "atrocities" committed by Hamas, or the genocide being conducted by Israel, this article will explain the consequences of those actions and the events that preceded them.

This is a tract that should be shared by every reader to every social media outlet they frequent. This tract should be read by everyone because it describes the situation which may well lead to World War III and a nuclear Holocaust which will beggar the "Holocaust" that the Israelis use to justify their own "barbarity."

I am on record for many years - as Andrei Martyanov likes to say - asking the question: "Why is Bibi Netanyahu still alive?" How is it that becoming Prime Minister of Israel is not a death sentence? And why is it that the Muslim world, including Iran, and still more so the Palestinians, are not their executioners? Why is Netanyahu still alive? Security doesn't exist. Anyone can be killed. People in all sorts of "high places" have been.

Why is it that the Palestinian Liberation Organization spent years hijacking planes and committing other "terrorist acts" and yet the leaders of Zionism remain alive? When The People's Will in Russia invented terrorism in modern times, they did so with the intent of killing the leaders of Czarist Russia. They did not devote their time to killing civilians in random terror attacks. They attempted to assassinate their enemies.

If someone is trying to oppress or kill you, you defend yourself - you kill them. This is not "terrorism" - it's math. As someone once said, "Armies cause problems by killing many, when the solution to all problems is to kill one - the right one."

When the Zionist Jews came to Palestine, they adopted terrorism as their means of displacing the indigenous Palestinians, expelling the British colonial government and gaining control of Palestine. They directed their terrorism at Palestinian civilians and the British military, primarily. They have continued to conduct terrorism against civilians ever since, and not only inside Israel and against Palestinians. Zionism at its heart is fundamentally a terrorist cult.

The Palestinian resistance was basically incompetent until one Major General Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian officer in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) instructed them in how to build tunnels, as well as instructing Lebanon's Hezbollah organization in the same skill., among other skills.

It was Soleimani who basically designed the Axis of Resistance as the forces opposed to Israel are referred to these days. Details can be found in the Wikipedia entry on him. He was the one who designed Hamas use of tunnels, Hezbollah's use of tunnels, coordinated the Iraqi and Syrian Shia militias in the region, defeated ISIS in Iraq, defeated ISIS in Syria by being instrumental in bringing the Russian intervention in 2015, and much more. In particular, he was instrumental in getting Iran to support the Houthis in Yemen, which including warning Donald Trump in 2018 that if the US threatened Iran, the Red Sea would be lost to the US. And he was right.

This one man is essentially the architect of the destruction of Israel and the removal of US influence in the Middle East.

And that is what is going to happen. And it is inevitable.

Let's take a look at the reasons why...

Economic Reasons

The US needs control of Middle Eastern oil:
Israel needs control of Palestine land for its economic future.

Here are two articles from well-known economist Michael Hudson and a third from Aleks at Black Mountain Analysis explaining point number 1:

Point number one is basically about oil and US hegemony, to wit, US hegemony can't exist without the US neutering Russia and China, especially China, and that can't be accomplished without controlling Middle East oil first.

The US can't allow Iran to keep solidifying its position in the region and its alliance with China and Russia and its potential to control the Persian Gulf in event of a war with Russia or China, nor allow the Yemenis to control the Red Sea movement of shipping. The US can't "pivot to China" without controlling the Middle East. And of course the US needs to control the oil there for its own use before attacking China.

They have to do this because the Middle East, especially Iran, will not support a war with China and will be able to control oil and logistical shipping in the Red Sea, the gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean which will be critical for US military operations against China. Not to mention that the Middle East is important for China's economic capabilities and expansion and energy supply.

So the US has to widen the war and take on all the Axis of Resistance in order to achieve its geopolitical goals of hegemony. Just as attacking Russia was a geopolitical necessity for the US, so is attacking the Middle East.

Here are three articles explaining point number 2:

Richard Medhurst - The hidden reasons behind the war on Gaza (Part I) - and the Video Version
Ben Gurion Canal - a rival to the infamous Suez Canal in Egypt.
Israel: a demographic ticking bomb in today’s one-state reality - Claudia De Martino and Ruth Hanau Santini - Aspenia Online

tl;dr - The short version is that Israel sees tremendous economic and financial opportunities that will secure its economic future - but only if there are no Palestinians in Gaza. Alternatively, if there are Palestinians in Gaza, they will get the enormous economic and financial opportunities - and that the Zionists can't allow since, along with the superior population growth rate of Palestinians both inside and outside Israel, that would enable the Palestinians to "out-grow" Israel and reduce Israel to essentially an "apartheid state" - in reverse.

Religious Reasons

tl;dr - As quoted in 7) above:

This performance has distracted the western world from understanding fully what radical ministers in Netanyahu’s government have been planning: One key commitment of Netanyahu’s Cabinet colleagues is to build the Jewish (Third) Temple on Temple Mount, where al-Aqsa Mosque presently stands. Plainly put, this implies a commitment to demolish al-Aqsa and build a Judaic Temple in its stead. The second key pledge is to found Israel on the biblical ‘Land of Israel’. Again, plainly put, this would dispossess Palestinians in the West Bank; as National Security Minister Ben Gvir made clear, they would face a choice: leave or live under subservience in a Jewish supremacist state. The third is to institute Jewish law (Halakha) in the stead of secular law. This would divest non-Jews in Israel of their legal status. Put together – the Judaification of al-Aqsa; the founding of the State upon the biblical ‘Land of Israel’ and the ending of secular Basic law – Palestine and the Palestinian people simply are erased. Three weeks ago, Netanyahu waved a map of Israel as he gave his address at the UN General Assembly; have a look: Gaza and the Palestinian territories do not appear on it at all. They are erased. The situation is as existential as that. These are the stakes that ultimately underlie Hamas’ military forces’ extreme provocation into Israel. It is intended to break the paradigm (it is not a cry for some kind of return to the Oslo framework).

And from 6) above:

SS: Christian Zionism is actually the dominant form of Zionism. It has been since before the Zionist movement emerged in the 1870s, 1880s – there were Christians calling for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine from the 1820s, 1830s and the Balfour Declaration with the demise of the Ottoman Empire that Britain's entry, if you like, into the Middle East having defeated the French was to colonise Palestine. And he saw the role of the Jews as serving the best interests of the British Empire. Christian Zionism predates Jewish Zionism by at least 50 years and today dominates the Zionist movement at least 10 to 1, probably nearer 20, 30 to 1. For every Jewish Zionist, there are 20 or 30 Christian Zionists and therefore Netanyahu knows he needs the Christian, particularly the Christian right in America, Canada, Sweden, Holland and in much of Europe in order to maintain his position and to continue the expansion of the Zionist agenda in Palestine.

And from 8) above:

Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who also served as Israel’s Defence Minister, had this to say in a video interview on the forces taking over in Israel:
“When you talk about Smotrich and Ben Gvir: They have a Rabbi. His name is Dov Lior. He is the Rabbi of the Jewish Underground, who intended to blow up the Dome of the Rock – and before that the buses in Jerusalem. Why? In order to hurry up the ‘Last War’. Do you not hear them talking in terms of the Last War; or of Smotrich’s concept of ‘subjugation’? Read the article he published in Shiloh in 2017. First of all, this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse”. “My hair stands on end when I say that – as he said it. I learned and grew up in the house of Holocaust survivors and ‘never again’. It is Mein Kampf in reverse: Jewish supremacy: and therefore Smotrich says: “My wife won’t go into a room with an Arab”. It is anchored in ideology. And then actually what he aspires to – as soon as possible – is to go to a big war. A war of Gog and Magog. How do you start the flames? A massacre like the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs? Baruch Goldstein is a student of this Rabbi. Ben Gvir has hung up Goldstein’s picture in his house”. “This is what goes into the decision-making process in the Israeli government”.

Here is the map of the Zionist plan for the Middle East from 3) above:

People, including most of the pro-Palestinian analysts, don't get that this entire situation was planned by the US neocons and the Israelis for at least twenty years and intended since the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the US' Iranian dictator, the Shaw of Iran in 1979.

There is one exception to the general lack of appreciation that war is inevitable - Alastair Crooke. Crooke has been precisely identifying the underlying forces involved in the situation since before October 7, but especially since. He is almost the only voice who "gets it".

The War Is Planned

Here is some evidence in support of the assertion that this war was planned...

Brian Berletic has on his Youtube channel frequently gone through the 2009 Brookings Institute paper (PDF download) which lays out in detail the plan to start a war between the US/Israel and Iran. The only reason it hasn't happened before this is as I've said repeatedly since at least 2006 and possibly 2003 (and the paper confirms): 1) Hezbollah, and 2) they need a way to blame Iran for the war.

Quoting Brian:

There are entire chapters regarding “diplomatic options” which laid out plans to appear to engage with Iran in a deal regarding its nuclear program, unilaterally abandoning the plan, and then using its failure as a pretext to apply further pressure on the Iranian government and economy (Chapter 2: Tempting Tehran: The Engagement Option).
There are chapters that detail methods of creating unrest within Iran, both by using US government- funded opposition groups (Chapter 6: The Velvet Revolution: Supporting a Popular Uprising) and even through supporting US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organizations like the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) (Chapter 7: Inspiring an Insurgency: Supporting Iranian Minority and Opposition Groups).
Other chapters detail a direct US invasion (Chapter 3: Going All the Way: Invasion) and a smaller scale air campaign (Chapter 4: The Osiraq Option: Airstrikes).
Finally, a whole chapter is dedicated to using Israel to trigger a war the US could then appear reluctant to wade into afterwards, (Chapter 5: Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike).
Since 2009, each and every one of these options has either been tried (in some cases multiple times) or is in the process of being implemented.
Washington’s Greatest Fear is that Iran Won’t Retaliate

Then there is the previous agreements between the UK and Israel, as cited by Mark Curtis in Declassified:
UK military support for Israel’s genocide was pre-planned - Mark Curtis - 26 April 2024 - Declassified UK

Then there is the secret military agreement signed between the UK and Israel in December 2020. Declassified discovered the existence of this accord from a tweet by the Israel Defense Forces. The UK government never publicised it. Ministers have subsequently refused to make the accord public “for national security reasons”.

Then there is this shadowy, well-bankrolled group of prominent neocons and fellow travelers:
United Against Nuclear Iran: The Shadowy, Intelligence-Linked - Group Driving the US Towards War With Iran - Alan MacLeod - MintPress News

What these individuals all have in common is that they are board members of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a shadowy but influential organization dedicated to pushing the West toward a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Founded in 2008, the group is led by neoconservative hawks and has close ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. It does not divulge where it receives its copious funding. However, it is known that right-wing Israeli-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson was a source. There is strong circumstantial evidence that Gulf dictatorships may also be bankrolling the group, although UANI has strongly denied this. In 2019, Iran designated UANI as a terrorist organization.

Read my lips: This has been planned since before October 7, 2023. Everything that has occurred since (except Israel's dismal failure to damage Hamas) has been planned, including all the farce about "Biden is furious with Netanyahu" and "Netanyahu hates Biden" bullshit. Those two have known each other for forty years - they know exactly who they're dealing with. Biden is an ardent Zionist and warmonger just like Netanyahu.

People think the US President is in charge of US foreign policy. No - he's not. He's under the thumb of the people who got him in office - the donors, the MIC, the Deep State, the financial institutions, etc. That power structure does not understand the true US national interests and thus is incapable of "negotiating" anything which would actually serve those legitimate national interests.

Another of Brian's videos covers the exact question: Who controls US Foreign Policy?

Finian Cunningham puts it best in a Strategic Culture article:
No, Biden Is Not Being Played by Netanyahu. U.S. Imperialist - Policy Is the Systematic Problem - Finian Cunningham - Strategic Culture

It is, in my opinion, a crucial mistake to view United States-Israeli relations in terms of individual politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv purportedly manipulating each other.
What we are dealing with here is a systematic and structural issue of U.S. imperialist power. It is a fundamentally flawed premise to view this unprecedented slaughter in Gaza as somehow the result of Biden being taken for a ride by Netanyahu.
Now, this does not in anyway suggest that the Israelis do not manipulate U.S. politics. Of course, they do.
Their vast lobbying and sympathetic corporate-owned media are self-evident. But we should never forget the order of things, that the Zionist regime is an attack dog for U.S. imperialism.
What the American people and the rest of the world need to realize is that the U.S. imperial power is – like all imperial powers – intrinsically genocidal. Conquest and war are the essential functions. Israel and Ukraine are not tails wagging the U.S. dog. They are manifestations of the criminal U.S. global power.
The problem is not individual politicians. The problem is the U.S. system.

As was pointed out recently, IIRC it was by ex-CIA officer Larry Johnson, the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on July 31, 2024, in Iran was coordinated with the US because the movement of US ships and other assets occurred immediately after the assassination and that is not possible without ordering that movement before the assassination.

Here's another absolute must-view: Unregistered 268: Max Blumenthal.
Max Blumenthal at his best laying out chapter and verse on the real situation in Israel, how Israel's so-called "liberal Zionism" is dead and replaced by genocidal messianic nationalist Zionism, how all the Israeli Prime Ministers were in favor of this, how the international institutions are helpless to do anything, etc.

People forget that the Hamas operation on October 7 was in response to a planned
provocation - the Israeli threat to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque as detailed here:
Netanyahu Coalition Goes Full Provocation -- As the US Escalates in Syria - Alastair Crooke - Al Mayadeen English - 9 Sep 2023

People forget that the Hamas operation was called "The Al-Aqsa Flood." The Israelis knew that Hamas would have to respond to that provocation. They just didn't understand how effective that response would be. But that doesn't matter because the Israeli plan was always to undertake the operation against Hamas which they are undertaking now.

The Israelis also understood that Hezbollah in Lebanon would respond to this operation - and that would give Israel reason to attack Hezbollah. And with Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden as President, the US would be obliged to directly support Israel in Lebanon. And the US will, of that there can be no doubt.

The only problem for the neocons and the Israelis for the last 15 years since 2006 was in getting a casus belli to justify a wider Mid-East war and a US administration that would be crazy enough to commit US troops in support of that war. There was also the problem of getting an Israeli administration crazy enough to be willing to directly commit genocide and risk Israel's survival in such a war as well as turning Israel into a pariah state which had lost all its previous "legitimacy" (however spurious) in the eyes of the world.

Well, in Biden and the current Israeli government, they got what they wanted.

And as Alexander Mercouris likes to say, "The neocons have no reverse gear." They always double down on a plan no matter how likely it is to fail as seen by everyone else. Ukraine is a prime example.

What this means is that Israel and the US are intent on finishing off all their enemies in the Middle East - from the Palestinians to Hezbollah to Syria to Yemen and especially Iran. This is why Israel deliberately attacked the Iranian Consulate in Damascus.

For their part, the Axis of Resistance, which has been preparing for just this event for the last twenty years under the design and leadership of Soleimani, are also ready for the final conflict. From Hamas to Hezbollah to Ansar Allah to Iraqi Shia militias to Iran, they are ready to fight the US to an Afghanistan-like debacle.

So all these "negotiations" and other mainstream media reported nonsense are merely an instance of Ali's "rope-a-dope" tactics; cover stories; lies; charades; information warfare. Both sides know where this is going and nothing is going to stop them from getting there.

Again, most of the commentators on the situation just don't get it. They are so far from seeing reality that they would need the Hubble Telescope to see it. They take everything emanating from Tel Aviv and Washington at face value and attempt to analyze the situation from a "rationalist" perspective which assumes that the various actors are all acting in their rational self-interest. This leads to false conclusions like "no one wants a regional war" or that there are conflicts between the Israeli and the US governments. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Of course Iran "doesn't want a wider war." They are obviously aware that despite the West's current military weakness, they can still bomb much of Iran's infrastructure (until they run out of bombs, of course) and kill a lot of Iranians, despite Iranian air defenses. The real takeaway, however, is that they want the US - and Israel - gone from the Middle East - because otherwise nothing changes. It's like living with a very painful ingrown toenail or piriformis syndrome (both of which I've had) or some serious illness. Action has to be taken regardless of the inconvenience.

The US and Israel "got's to go."

Everyone has calculated this is going to require a wider war regardless of anyone's personal wishes.

Everyone keeps saying "the US doesn't want a wider war." Yes, it does. Who is "the US", paleface? If the electorate is ignorant, all of Congress is behind it and the neocons are running the show, does it matter if a bunch of other people in the Beltway - a minority whose number we can not actually know - are opposed? Iran, on the other hand, as I say, is fully aware of the consequences. But they want the US gone from the Middle East anyway, along with Israel.

This is one of those sayings that people dredge up when they haven't thought it through. I keep saying what "the US wants" is to avoid being BLAMED for starting a wider war. This is basic human nature: deliberately make a massive mistake, then try to avoid blame - beforehand, if possible. I excoriate myself for my desire to eat a quart and a half of ice cream, or two medium meat pizzas - then I do it anyway!

Worse, there are still some people babbling about a "two-state" solution which was never a workable solution. Even Russia and China have been deluded that such a thing was possible and appear to continue to labor under the mistaken notion that organizing the various Palestinian political factions into one coherent political entity would facilitate that outcome. Such an outcome is obviously valuable for after the Zionist regime has been eliminated, but it's not going to materially effect that removal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this statement (in Russian) in July, 2024, at the UN Security Council:

In this regard, it is important to restore intra-Palestinian unity, which we have always sought to promote by providing an opportunity for representatives of various Palestinian movements to conduct a much-needed dialogue on the Moscow platform. We are convinced that the Palestinians are capable of determining their own future without outside interference, no matter how much someone would like to decide everything for them and against their will. That includes Gaza's future as an integral part of a Palestinian state. We are all aware of the behind-the-scenes contacts and plans that predetermine the future structure of Gaza and the entire Palestinian state. Although there is practically no talk about the state. I believe that everyone should respect the principle of "not a word about Palestine without Palestine".

Lavrov doesn't get it. There is Palestinian unity. Almost all the Palestinians support Hamas. What there isn't is a unified Palestinian government; it's split between Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). If Lavrov can come up with a plan to eliminate the PNA or force it to agree with Hamas, that would be laudable, but also irrelevant. Unless the Palestinians in the West Bank are prepared to confront Israel as Hamas is doing (and they are - they are only restrained by the PNA and its collaboration with the Israeli government), only Hamas will remain as the only real government of Palestine because only Hamas is confronting the Zionists in proper terms, i.e., militarily. Hezbollah is in support of Hamas and the Palestinian people, not the PNA. For them, it only matters what Hamas does, not the PNA. I suspect the same goes for Ansar Allah and the rest of the regional militias. For its part, Iran has always said it would respect whatever decision the Palestinians make.

I see what Lavrov wants to do, but it's irrelevant on the ground.. He's putting the cart before the horse. Get the Zionists out first, then worry about unifying a Palestinian government. Once the Zionists are gone, the Palestinians can have a civil war, who cares? That's their internal problem. The regional threat to peace are the Zionists.

Wikipedia has an entry called "State of Palestine" which explicitly states that the PNA is in charge of the State of Palestine. And this: "On 15 November 1988 in Algiers, Yasser Arafat, as Chairman of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), issued the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which established the State of Palestine."

So technically, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, Palestine is already a "state" just as the Donbass regions were before being incorporated into the Russian Federation. And they already have representation by the PNA in various missions and embassies.

Now, of course, the PNA is crap controlled by Israel and Hamas are the only real spokesmen for Palestine. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by almost everyone except Russia. So I view the entire issue as irrelevant. No one needs to "speak for" the Palestinians except Hamas because they have the guns. And they have spoken as stated: "No Zionist entity in Palestine."

It also doesn't matter what Russia does diplomatically. Nothing will happen in the UN Security Council. Nothing will happen in the UN General Assembly. If Hamas isn't represented in the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation), nothing will happen there. The time for talk is over. Now the only thing that matters is military force.

I suspect the Russians, at least, are beginning to learn that their previous desire to have good relations with Israel, primarily because of their interests in Syria and a stable Middle East in general as well as the presence of substantial numbers of Jewish former Russian citizens in Israel, is no longer tenable. The apparent recent arming of Iran with Russian advanced fighter aircraft, air defense systems, and electronic warfare systems appears to confirm my impression.

My Original Solution

I have previously suggested a "solution" to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. That solution was for the UN to reverse its 1947 partition of Palestine and its 1948 recognition of the state of Israel. Instead of defining a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, it would recognize a Palestinian state based on the 1947 borders.

A new Constitution would be created for the new bi-national state by a commission of neutral international legal scholars. Subsequently, it would be voted on by Palestinians and Jews in a referendum of adoption.

Then new governmental body elections would be held. Anyone who held power in either the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or the Israeli state would be barred for standing for office in order to sideline the extremists on both sides.

Once the new bi-national state was established, then peacekeepers can be brought in to insure order until such time as the population has reverted to dealing with their own life problems rather than making war on each other.

This "solution" of mine was never going to be implemented and is no longer tenable, if it ever was. It was born of my own ignorance of the depth of Zionist corruption, both in Israel and the West.

First, any "peace-keeping force" needs to have neutral credibility. Neither the Arabs nor the West have it. The force would have to be composed of units from significant military powers. Basically this means Russia and China, possibly including Turkey, India and Iran (under control of the "senior" powers.) This would never be allowed by the West.

Second, disarmament of Hamas and militias would not be sufficient. The issue of Israel's nuclear arsenal needs to be brought up and placed under international control, specifically that of the peace-keepers referenced above, and eventually eliminated under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. People forget that Israel is one of the few countries which have actively threatened to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear regional neighbors.

Third, this entire scenario of a Palestinian state will not work as long as any significant number of Zionists are present in the area currently called Israel. Why?

At the moment, the Palestinians are technically an "occupied people" and are thus legally under the protection of international law. That such international law has been ignored since 1967 (and really since 1947 and before) by the world doesn't change that fact.

But as soon as Palestine becomes a state - and some disgruntled Palestinian throws a rock across the new border and hits an Israeli with it - Israel will claim all the legal right to "defend itself" - as it does now - against a Palestinian state - not a subjugated people.

And only the intervention of the international community could prevent that.

The Actual - And Inevitable - Solution

All of which is moot as it is now clear that both Israel and the US are intent on the expulsion and/or genocide of the Palestinians as well as the destruction of all of Israel's and the US' enemies in the region and that the Axis of Resistance is intent on preventing that by any means necessary.

No "peaceful solution" can occur until the Zionist state is eliminated. If the West can not force the Zionist regime to stand down, then the Axis of Resistance must do so.

For seventy-five years, the US and the West have coddled and nurtured - for their own economic and hegemonic motivations - a bunch of racist fanatics in Palestine who are motivated by the most ridiculous fantasies of a "fortress Israel" controlling all of the Middle East. They provided them with nuclear technology and looked the other way when they constructed between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, including submarine-launched tactical nuclear warhead cruise missiles. They look the other way as these lunatics arrested, tortured, murdered and massacred people in Palestine and Lebanon, bombed Syria, conducted assassinations throughout the Middle East and Europe, and even attacked a US Navy ship and murdered a significant number of its crew.

It's past time to recognize that Israel can not be "saved" - as people like Jeffrey Sachs seem to want - and must be eliminated from history as it was once before - when at that time it was also an aggressive political state against its neighbors as most of the Middle East was. The Romans fixed that problem eventually, if temporarily. It's time that happens again.

Scott Ritter made a big argument some time ago saying "no one wants a Mid-East war". He's wrong. Everyone does. Everyone sees that the final confrontation is happening over Palestine.

As long as Palestine was on the back burner, everyone could just do tit-for-tat and kick the can down the road. Hamas and Israel blew that plan out of the water. Both decided now is the time to finish this. Hamas did so in coordination with the Axis of Resistance which wants to eliminate Israel and Israel did so in coordination with the US neocons who desperately need a diversion from the failure in Ukraine and also wish to finish their plan to destroy Iran before pivoting to China.

Ritter argues that Iran's best plan is to let this conflict in Gaza play out because Israel's economy won't recover from it and the Zionists will start to leave Israel and then a two-state or on-state solution can be negotiated. Other people have suggested that all the Axis of Resistance has to do is wait until Israel collapses on its own.

Bullcrap. Netanyahu is going to attack Lebanon - if not Iran directly. He has to. Once that happens, all bets are off. US involvement is then guaranteed and the escalation to Iran will be quick.

The Axis of Resistance current strategy is to bleed Israel and the US just as Russia has bled Ukraine and NATO. Let the US and Israel run out of bombs and missiles. Hamas isn't going anywhere and neither are the Palestinians. Despite the death toll in Gaza, there remain a million and a half or more Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas has lost only ten percent of its force, if that. Even Israel can't kill that many that fast.

So the Axis has plenty of time to be patient and wait for the inevitable moment when Israel and the US escalate to the point where the Axis can attack and claim to be the defenders. Just like US Presidents, no one wants to be the one blamed for starting a new war - except the crazies in Israel. So everyone is tit-for-tatting slow-motion escalation. But when Netanyahu goes into Lebanon, the gloves will come off.

I keep pointing this out - that any US President will start a war as long as he thinks he won't be blamed for it - but absolutely no one seems to get it. Every dumb-ass American has an inbred respect for the office of the President and no one appears capable of recognizing that every occupant of that office is a corrupt warmonger owned by the real power structure - or he wouldn't be there. There will never be an independent President or a "third party" President.

So the issue is: how they can widen the war without making it obvious to J. Random US Asshole that the US is responsible for a war that will eventually be lost with thousands of dead US soldiers and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead foreign civilians.

The answer is: bomb people all around the Middle East until someone reacts sufficiently severely enough to sell it to the dumb US electorate as a casus belli for war.

People keep talking about how little effect the bombing has in these cases. But that's irrelevant. The goal is to get a casus belli. The US has done this in most of its wars. It wanted to get into WWII, so it embargoed Japanese oil to which the Japanese responded with Pearl Harbor. Look up the phrase "Remember the Maine!" And of course, 9/11.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor quoted the neocon Wolfowitz before 2003, "Let's just get the US army into Iraq!" - and then they'll figure it out. Except as Macgregor pointed out, this doesn't work. But it doesn't matter that it doesn't work. The goal is the war itself, win or lose. As we anarchists say, "War is the health of the state."

People keep talking about what Biden - or Harris or Trump - "could do" or "should do" in response to the conflict. No one seems to get that these people in the administration can not and do not want to do the things everyone is saying they "need to do."

First they can not - because the Israel lobby holds their jobs in their hands - and no human being is going to trash his livelihood - i.e., his survival - and more importantly, his status in society - which is the same thing - just to help someone else. That's not human nature. Look at human history. It just doesn't happen.

Humans are hierarchical primates. The alphas hold their position by being absolutely ruthless to the betas to the point of killing females and children. The alpha chimpanzee upon assuming control of the group rips apart all the young sired by the earlier alpha. So imagining Blinken gives a rat's ass about dead Palestinian children is just delusional. He cares infinitely more about his station in life as Secretary of State of a nuclear hegemonic power than he does about anyone else.

Second, they do not want to - because they are already supportive of Israel and are basically white racist imperialists to begin with, just like the Israelis. What part of "Blinken is Jewish" don't you people get? His father was Donald M. Blinken, a co-founder of the investment bank Warburg Pincus and later served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary. His father, Maurice Blinken, was an early backer of Israel and founded the American Palestine Institute which helped persuade the United States to back the creation of Israel. Do you see the inherited white racist imperialism embedded in that family history?

Another nonsensical claim: Israel won't invade Lebanon because Israel can't win in Lebanon.

Israel is NOT in a position to invade Lebanon. They haven't been for years.

That means nothing. Scott Ritter made the same mistake on Garland Nixon's show, claiming that since the IDF is objectively in a bad way, short on tanks, ammo, their troops exhausted from 10 months of fighting, Israel can't invade Lebanon and can't win if they do. What he fails to understand is that Israel does not intend to win against Hezbollah...on its own. They fully expect the US to enter the war directly, with air and naval power, and if necessary, boots on the ground.

Ritter, of course, would object that the US doesn't have the manpower or logistics to sustain a major Middle East operation. Even assuming that is true it also means nothing.

The point I'm making is that it does not matter whether either the US or Israel can in fact take out Hezbollah or Iran or anyone else. What matters is that they believe the US can do this. Ritter and most other military commentators don't seem to get this. Ask Andrei Martyanov whether there is any military competence left in the US or NATO military, or whether there ever was any military competence in the civilian political leaders. Andrei has written four books on the subject.

So again, it does not matter whether the US and Israel objectively can defeat Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Iran. What matters is that they - out of ignorance and chutzpah and a mythology of their military omnipotence after decades of bombing defenseless civilians - believe they can.

Historically any two countries - or three in this case, including the US on Israel's side - with this much enmity over decades have to go to war at some point. It's what humans do.

Scott Ritter said on August 12 that the US won't come to Israel's aid because of the usual faux reasons, including "there's an election." So what if there's an election? The candidates will have to decide whether to abandon Israel to its fate, or try to prevent it. That's not a decision they can postpone until after the election if the war starts with a major attack on Israel before the election.

And Israel can't wait. Once this war starts, Israel is going to get hammered fast. The US military will have to respond forcefully. While it's possible that the conflict will not get up to full speed before the election, it's to the Axis' advantage if it does. Forcing the US to commit means the trap will have been sprung. It will have to be continued no matter who wins - because neither candidate can afford to back out once the US starts, because 1) they get called "traitors", and 2) they lose the Zionist donor class support, and 3) the opposing party will crucify them in Congress for the next four years.

So if the war starts before the election, the US will commit - because both candidates have already said they would and they can't afford not to.

Before this is ended by the Axis of Resistance, it's likely at least ten percent of the population of Gaza will be killed, which would be around 200,000 with another equivalent or higher amount wounded.

The Axis of Resistance is prepared to pay that price if it means the elimination of Israel and the West from the Middle East forever. That is what is at stake in this conflict.

Alastair Crooke summed the situation up well:
An Intricate Fabric Of Bad Actors Working Hand-In-Hand: So Is War Inevitable?

In a sense, the Israeli-Islamic conflict now may only be resolved in this kinetic way. All
efforts since 1947 have seen the divide only deepen. The reality of the necessity of war is permeating widely the consciousness of the Arabic and Islamic world.
A Greek tragedy is one in which the crisis at the heart of any ‘tragedy’ does not arise by sheer mischance. The Greek sense is that tragedy is where something happens because it has to happen; because of the nature of the participants; because the actors involved make it happen. And they have no choice but to make it happen, because that is their nature.

In Part 2, I'll be discussing what Martyanov and the Russian military calls "Correlation of Forces and Methods" - i.e. who are the players and what are their military capabilities.

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Denis

Denis’s Substack

Sep 16

I've only read part one. It's a masterpiece with three more parts I have to read. It's the best analysis of the Mid-East I've read. Sure glad I didn't skip over this 4 part article. Now on to part 2. lol

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Roger Boyd

Geopolitics And Climate Change

Sep 17

Excellent piece Richard, it is so important to understand that Israel is simply a tool of US Imperialism and that the US needs to take out Iran before it can pivot East. The recent deeper military alliance with Russia could be game changing. The other variable is the now obvious defeat in Ukraine, the imperialists may also want another war to take the focus away from their utter failure there.

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