Iran's expected response between Mossadegh and Nakir | Politics

The world awaits the outcome of the declared Iranian threat to strike Israel, in response to its assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who was in Tehran at the official invitation. Will Iran actually fulfill the threat, or will it limit itself to words, as its Arab neighbors have accustomed us to for decades, waiting for the right time and the desired strategic balance?

Regardless of what happens, since a definitive answer might lead us into an unfavorable speculation, it is clear that there are two wishes or bets in the Arab, and perhaps Islamic, world, whose owners hope that their horses will win. One group hopes and says that Iran will not respond this time, and the other group confirms and says that the response is coming inevitably.

As for those who hold the first wish, they pray that Iran will submit, turn back on its heels and not respond, in order to achieve two things. First, so that they can tell the people: Have you seen the truth of what we have been saying to you for ages? Iran and Israel are working on the same path, which is to besiege the Arab world and thwart every effort to advance it. And based on this statement, the second thing follows, which is that these people want to tell the people in all Arab countries, rich and poor, desert and urban, east and west: Let those who intended to enter Iran bear the consequences of their actions. They have brought evil upon themselves, so we are innocent of every duty dictated by all religious and historical considerations and the bonds of faith and kinship. Ismail Haniyeh (may God have mercy on him) intended to enter Iran and met what he met!

They also want to throw dust in the eyes of the people, most of whom are certain that those who went to Iran had the doors of Arab capitals closed in their faces, were persecuted and imprisoned on fabricated charges, and some of them are still behind bars.

As for those who hold the second conviction, that Iran will inevitably respond, their views vary, as some of them draw from sectarian views, and some of them also pray for a response because they believe in resistance, whatever its nature, as an approach and a path to liberation and freedom. Both are with this resistant approach, even if the final goals differ, and there is no harm in that.

But behind the justifications of the owners of the first wish are other ulterior motives. They see that the Iranian setback they wish for provides them with a popular pretext to evade any religious, moral or humanitarian responsibility towards the suffering of the people of Gaza and the horrors of the genocide committed by Israel and those who support it in Palestine in general, as if Iran were closer to Palestine than they are in blood, race, geography and history. They also resort to history, bringing up stories and tales from it, most of which are undocumented, to confirm to us that those who killed Hussein bin Ali, may God be pleased with them, were the same ones who hosted “Abu al-Abd” and he was assassinated on their land.

They also hope that Iran will not respond, so that it will be with them in the ranks of the defeated in the war, the failures in peace, the ones who accept humiliation and degradation, after their dignity and pride have been insignificant to them, and they have been submissively exposing their backs to the whips of the white colonizer for two centuries, and they have been humiliated and submissively offering to its protégé Israel, for 76 years, the duties of guarding, obedience, and begging.

Iran, which is besieged by the West, which these people deny, has managed to transform into a regional power that can adjust the balance, change calculations, and perhaps impose new equations with soft power and hard power alike. We do not say this to flatter Iran, nor to praise it, nor to agree with its policies or sectarian biases, and the events, developments, and bloodshed that have resulted from them in several Arab countries.

Some of them even hope that Iran will not respond so that the efforts of Israel and its army will not be dispersed, and it will not be able to eliminate Hamas and the resistance, as they hope and want. They also want the situation not to escalate into a regional war, which would create a new reality that would impose equations that would overturn all the calculations and visions that were promised to the people.

But these people, as they bury their heads in the sand, forget that the Iranian retreat they wish for is more dangerous to the future of the entire region than the response; because it means an Israeli victory, even in the foreseeable future. After all the assassinations of scientists and military leaders inside and outside Iranian territory, Israel may feel that its long arm can reach higher and higher Iranian and Arab levels each time, and it does not fear or dread the consequences.

These people forget that the victorious and raging Israel does not have mercy on its prey, whether those writhing under its fangs from the people of Palestine, who have been resisting for a hundred years or more, or those in its regional jungle waiting, their resolve failing, for their turn to be eaten without resisting, even with the weakest of faith. If they believe that America will protect the weak, then they should review history, ancient and modern, because America, like all mighty empires with brute force, does not have mercy on the weak, and whoever wants it to keep him alive, and I do not say have mercy on him, must submit and submit until he reaches the status of someone who lives in the mud, and does anyone live in the mud except the lowest levels of creation?

These people forget that it was the West that created Israel to be a permanent base that would secure its interests and control over the entire Middle East, based on its evangelical Christian heritage and its secular ideology, which sees the world as mere lands that must remain, with all its people and creatures, and its resources, as slave labor for it, so that its material consumerist prosperity can continue without limits. And whoever among the owners of those lands tries to change or revolt will be met with a big stick until he submits again, except for those whose dignity and independence are more precious than the whole world. And whoever does not realize this should ask Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, and Vietnam, which defeated France and America, and Algeria, which offered millions of martyrs and defeated France.

But when humiliation and dignity are equal in the pursuit of life, even under the whips, it does not matter who the master is.

Those who hope that Iran will not respond talk about the possibility that Israel will resort to nuclear weapons in response to any Iranian attack. If they had calculated and weighed their equations well, they would have found that Israel’s resort to weapons of mass destruction against a major country in the region would bring destruction to the entire region from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea, and that it would not resort to threatening to do so unless it feels that its existence is threatened.

When things reach this point, the West will mobilize, as it is doing today, its horses, its arrogance, its fleets and its soldiers. But will Israel be allowed to use nuclear weapons? Or does Israel not care about those who created it and does what it wants? So why, then, have those who warn of the dangers of the Israeli nuclear option not realized the dangers in the final outcomes, and prepared the equivalent equipment that would make the West think a thousand times before the situation leads to this option?

They also warn of the dangers of the Iranian nuclear option, and threaten a similar option if Iran acquires it. If we Arabs had made it in response to Israel’s presence there, since it acquired it with Western assistance in the first decade of its existence, we would not now be facing a historic impasse, from which some of us find no way out, except more resignation and submission.

Resorting to nuclear weapons by Israel is not an easy option for itself, nor for the West that keeps it alive, gentlemen. The day America used it to force Japan to surrender in World War II, it was in America's hands alone.