Quick Off-the-Cuff On Latest From Alastair Crooke

Wherein I point out that this all comes from humanity's primate nature...

The latest Alastair Crooke interview on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Youtube channel is another must-watch:

Alastair Crooke : Netanyahu Gambles on Slaughter

In it, Alastair makes two main points:

1. Hezbollah has already replaced the commanders killed in the Israeli air strike on Beirut, and has already elected a new head of Hezbollah. This is he: Sayed Hashem Safiyedeen, a cousin of the slain Sayed Hassan Nasrallah.

2. Iran is now under great pressure from both the Axis of Resistance and internal factions inside Iran to take greater steps to respond to Israeli aggression in the region.

Crooke also noted that the passing of Hassan Nasrallah has generated massive marches everywhere in the Muslim world, from Pakistan to India to Iraq and elsewhere. This is because Nasrallah was not just the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, a Shia resistance movement in Lebanon. He was a symbol of anti-colonialism throughout the Global South.

Crooke also noted that despite the severe blow dealth to Hezbollah in the loss of several of the senior leadership, the military capability of Hezbollah remains intact. Very little of its resources were hit during the waves of Israeli bombing over the weekend, as most of it is underground and invulnerable to aerial bombardment.

The main point I wish to address here is point 2: increased pressure on Iran. Crooke says that there is a faction in the Iranian government which is constantly trying to get better engagement with the West, and that the current Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, is allied with them. Crooke says this faction went behind the back of the Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, and attempted to negotiate with the US over the intended Iranian retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Palestinian negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on July 31.

The Americans gave this faction and Pezeshkian assurances that if Iran held back its retaliation that the US would conclude a ceasefire agreement between the Israelis and Hamas in Gaza, and that further Iran would be given sanctions relief and related improved diplomatic relations with the West.

The problem, of course, is that Pezeshkian believed them. A number of commentators have wondered how the hell he could have been that dumb. As do I. After all, the history of US “agreements” is one of utter lies and reneging, the most obvious recent example being Minsk II, the agreement between Ukraine and the break-away Donbass republics since 2015, which were unilaterally abrogated and used to give NATO time to arm Ukraine with the intent of attacking the Donbass republics and starting a war with Russia. Subsequently, Putin himself said that he had been “played” by the West.

Worse, the Iranians already know how they were “played” by the West, specifically the Trump administration, over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the “Iran deal”) from which Trump arbitrarily withdrew, followed by President Biden’s farcical “negotiations” which went on - and nowhere - for a year.

So now Pezeshkian has been forced to admit that the west lied: “Claims by the leaders of the U.S. and European countries who were promising ceasefire in exchange for Iran not to respond to the assassination of Haniyeh were all lies,”

As Crooke put it - and others have echoed this, including Anya Parampil on Judge Nap’s show this morning - Iran, as well as the Axis, and indeed Russia as well, are asking themselves why they take the path of restraint in order to avoid war when the war comes to them anyway.

And this is where I come in…

As I so often have to state - because no one gets it - this is human nature. By that I mean hierarchical primate nature. There is “US” and there is “THEM.” And never the twain shall meet, as the saying goes.

Humans do not recognize any such thing as “humanity.” They can not. It is genetically impossible on an emotional level, whatever can be done conceptually. Humans can only relate emotionally to their own specific “troop” (as primate groupings are called), i.e., their specific family or group of families or at most their specific sub-species. They can not spontaneously have a positive emotional reaction to another “troop”, especially one that differs in physical appearance or behavior. They can have a negative emotional reaction, and that in fact is the “default setting” - the “Other” is regarded as a threat until proven otherwise.

Everyone has repeatedly said that the reason Hezbollah has not gone “all in” against Israel is because they fear that Israel will conduct massive air bombardments on Lebanese civilians, as they did in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006.

Everyone says that Iran doesn’t want to get involved in a war with Israel because they fear the US will attack Iran and a lot of Iranians will die.

All of this is quite true. In other words, Hezbollah will support the Palestinians, but only so far because the simple truth is, Palestinians are not Lebanese nor are they Shia. Iran will support Hezbollah and the Palestinians, but only so far because the simple truth is, Lebanese and Palestinians are not Persians, even though Hezbollah is mostly Shia.

This is what humans do. They can’t do otherwise. They’re all primates. They all share the same 98.5 percent of their genetic code with bonobo chimpanzees. While that 1.5% is significant in providing the differences between humans and chimpanzees in terms of brain capacity and neurophysiology, the bottom line is that the emotional responses are virtually identical. They are only partially ameliorated by conceptual reasoning and social conditioning.

The problem, of course, is that this leads on a human level to strategic and tactical mistakes in a time of conflict across social strata.

As I’ve said repeatedly, most recently in my four-part articles on the current conflict, the upcoming wider war is inevitable. There comes a time when you have to “fish or cut bait.” As someone once said, there comes a time when you have to spit on your hands, hoist the black flag, and begin cutting throats.

When someone clearly intends to kill you, you kill them. This is not a threat - it’s math. You don’t negotiate, you don’t dissemble, you don’t demur. You shoot him in the head. You drop a bomb on him. You poison his morning Wheaties. You do what you have to do to survive. Hopefully you do it with a clear strategy and tactics, but you do it.

As I’ve also said repeatedly, and Crooke has basically said the same thing, albeit in a more diplomatic language, this war is an “eschatological” one, as Crooke puts it. It’s a war between two ideologies, neither of which intend to back down.

Because, as Crooke also pointed out in his previous article where he referred to the “Greek tragedy” as being the result of people behaving as a result of who they are, this is who these people are. The Israeli and the US neocons (and their European equivalents) have to start this war if they want to achieve their goals.

If you have a goal to which you are committed, there are only two outcomes:

1. You do what you have to do to achieve it, or

2. You abandon it (or fail at it, which leads to abandonment, assuming you still live.)

As I pointed out in my previous articles, the US intends to take out China. This is an existential goal for the US, just as it is an existential goal to take out Russia (currently failing and possibly to be abandoned shortly.)

To do this, the US has to take out Iran first. Because Iran will ship oil to China and not ship oil to the US if the US attacks China. Any military strategist will tell you this if they have any brains.

The point is: They Have To. It’s Not an Option To Do Otherwise.

I’ve been saying for the last seventeen years to anyone who would listen (or not) that Israel wants Iran gone. To do that, they have to get rid of Hezbollah first. Since they can’t do that, they have to have US help.

Everyone told me I was crazy. Everyone. A lot of them - including analysts just today on Judge Nap’s show - say that the US “can’t” or “won’t” get in a war with Iran, usually expressed as “the US doesn’t want to” get involved in a wider Middle East war.

Bullshit. Which is why we are where we are right now.

As I said above and in my articles: They Have To. It’s Not an Option To Do Otherwise.

And this is something that I suspect a lot of the Axis of Resistance does understand. But people like Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov don’t appear to understand this. Iranian President Pezeshkian apparently didn’t get it, either. Perhaps they’re starting to get it.

Because they’re primates. Primates make mistakes. They can’t not make mistakes.

When nuclear WWIII starts, it will be because some chimpanzees made a mistake.

Reportedly the new Secretary-General of Hezbollah has a different attitude than his cousin did. Perhaps he “gets it.”

We’ll see. Because it’s time to hoist the black flag and get on with it.