When I was briefly in Venezuala, my client’s joint venture partner described a politician as someone who would get in front of a mob and call it a parade. I first thought to use it to describe how the US, at least per recent major media stories, is attempting to depict Iran’s failure to (yet) strike back at Israel over its assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran as the result of US diplomacy.
While we’ll discuss the patent ridiculousness of this claim in more detail, it would be foolhardy for Iran to move in haste, which is what acting by now would amount to. Among other things, Iran has coalition partners, in the form of other members of the Axis of Resistance. In the past, they have only coordinately loosely and have not even always informed each other in advance of big moves, notably Hamas not alerting Iran to its October 7 attack. We can see from the US dealings with NATO members over Ukraine that this process is like herding cats. And NATO has an existing organization and one hopes, decision structure (although Aurelien described long form in a recent post, really not for the sort of activities NATO fancies to take on).
So delay here could solely be due to a Middle Eastern version of nenawashi,1 of reaching consensus. The idea that the US, which not only can’t curb Israel, but regularly has its welfare state Ukraine misbehave, can influence Iran is absurd. So the only was the Venezuela quip work is to elaborate on it: the US is trying to get in front of a mob and call it a parade but is so clueless that it does not see that it is at the tail end and the mob is moving the other way.
So let’s use a well-known American image instead:
The Oz schtick includes intimidating settings, threat displays, and comprehensive information.
Today the looming threat of the Iranian (and Hezbollah and Hamas) retaliation is barely a news item in the Anglosphere media. Admittedly American have the attention span of goldfish, and it could be some time before Iran acts, between needing to get its allies on the same page and agree on tactics and targeting, organizing the related logistics, and shoring up defenses likely to on the “to do” list. In keeping, the Western media has largely ignored Iran getting its allies on the same page, via calling an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which took place Wednesday in Jeddah. Importantly, Saudi Arabia issued a second condemnation of the Haniyeh killing in addition to joining the official statement, which included deeming “Israel, the illegal occupying power, fully responsible for this heinous attack.”
But the US is trying to persuade anyone paying attention that it is having a significant effect on Iranian decisions. This comes after repeated and embarrassing examples of not even being able to get Israel to pretend it respects US entreaties. The assassination of Hamiyeh, a, perhaps the, Hamas chief negotiator was a slap in the face to Biden and Blinken, who have been doggedly depicting the fantasy of a ceasefire as something that might get done. In a bizarre display of desperation, one recent peace plan iteration, which was no different than the old ones, was depicted by spokescritters as an Israel plan. Aside from that being obviously false, Israel’s pointed silence was confirmation. The Administration soon admitted it was a Biden scheme.
Iran and even more so Hezbollah are well aware of the potential economic and social costs of precipitating a wider war. That is why there responses have been, to use the cliche, measured, meaning they have either amounted to tit for tat or modest escalation. So for the US to act as if they somehow have educated Iran and its fellow Axis of Resistance members on this matter is remarkable, yet sadly typical, arrogance.
The Washington Post took the lead in telegraphing this new US party line on Tuesday, in Biden scrambles to defuse the ticking Iran-Israel time bomb. This article was depicted as “opinion” because it cam in spook whisperer David Igantius’ column. Representative sections:
President Biden… has conducted an intense round of diplomacy and military preparation to stave off a catastrophic war in the Middle East.
The White House effort has included back-channel talks with Iran to urge restraint, blunt warnings to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to obstruct a cease-fire in Gaza, and the dispatch of a U.S. naval and air armada to protect Israel and other U.S. allies if deterrence fails….
The Iranian response has been complicated by seeming confusion over the circumstances of Haniyeh’s death. Tehran at first claimed he was killed by an Israeli missile, requiring a similar Iranian response. But officials say that Tehran has concluded privately that he was instead eliminated by a concealed bomb, perhaps prompting a different response…
Tehran may also be dissuaded by the U.S. show of force this week, and secret White House communications passed via the Swiss embassy in Tehran and the Iranian mission at the United Nations. “Iran understands clearly that the United States is unwavering in its defense of our interests, our partners and our people. We have moved a significant amount of military assets to the region to underscore that principle,” a senior administration official messaged me.
The spin is mighty thick. The claim that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb first came implausibly fast via the New York Times, followed by an even more implausible version in the Telegraph (the latter being highly suspect by the number of sources it claimed to have from the Iran government).
By contrast, Arab news accounts cite eyewitnesses saying a projectile hit the guest house. And Alastair Crooke describes how a colleague was in the same building when Haniyeh was killed. At 13:10, Crooke recounts how the impact took out one section of the side of the building and part fo the roof and was clearly an external impact, not a bomb.
The fact that US sources can posture with straight faces that Iran is confused over what happened in its own guest house, when it is perfectly capable of doing forensics, is an insult to Iran as well as reader intelligence.
We highlighted early that in the same Judge Napolitano show (see at 17:15), that Muslim states and much of the Global South have concludes that “The West wants war.” To Iran, that means further appeasement in the form of negotiated and limited retaliation is no longer on, since the Western media has consistently depicted Iran being measured as an admission of weakness. That was confirmed in the very same Washington Post the following day with this story:
As we and others have recounted long form, the Iran attack was very successful and should have put Israel back on its heels. Under textbook conditions, with Iran attacking only pre-agreed military targets, Iran struck every one with pinpoint precision, defeating Israeli defenses at its best-protected sites. Yet the media hypes the fact that Iran sent a wave of 300 very slow moving and cheap drones, that were meant to draw fire and reveal more about the US, Israel, UK and French and were all destroyed, is perversely presented as a victory to divert attention from the damage done by more powerful missiles, as intended. If any of the drones had gotten through, that would have been a sign of serious Western weakness as opposed to Iranian strength.
Now this piece could merely signify that the US officials are so deluded that they think counterparties in the Middle East will heed what they say, which given Blinken, is entirely possible. Or that they are going into overdrive to try to calm nerves after the market indigestion early in the week.
But there’s an additional sign of US over-obvious eagerness to delay Axis of Resistance action. From a new story in the Wall Street Journal, Biden, Leaders of Egypt and Qatar Urge More Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Next Week. The subhead ought to elicit derision: The countries say they are prepared to offer a proposal to bridge the differences between Israel and Hamas.
After Israel assassinated Haniyeh and now finance minister Ben Smotrich further poisoning the well by depicting Israel as justified in starving all Gazans but hindered by international pressure, the US has the gall to act as if a ceasefire is anything other than a fantasy? Israel’s government wants genocide. The only point for them for a ceasefire would be to give the IDF a breather so they could regroup and then better do more of the same.
A careful reader will discern that this trio is selling vaporware:
In a joint statement issued Thursday, the leaders urged Israel and Hamas to meet for negotiation on Aug. 15, an invitation the U.S. says Israel has welcomed…
Officials didn’t provide details of the proposal that the three leaders said in their statement could resolve “remaining implementation issues in a manner that meets the expectations of all parties.”
It seems that the US is pumping for yet more useless negotiations as a delaying tactic. I can’t imagine Hamas will fall for that, and could take the Russian posture that talks and military action run on independent tracks. After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Israel only very briefly halted the prosecution of the war at a few points for humanitarian relief.
These stories all fail to give much (or any) weight to the real deterrent, that Israel uses an Iran/Axis of Resistance attack as the pretext for firing a tactical nuke. Israel used the deaths of Druze schoolchildren, a population that Israel has never much cared about, in what was almost certainly collateral damage from Israel air defenses against a Hezbollah attack, as the pretext for assassinating Hezbollah official Fuad Skukr. So Israel has already established it will use just about any justification for escalation. The implication is that if Iran does anything other than engage in yet another puppet show response, Israel could go whole hog.
The US flogging yet more pointless talks might also be to buy Israel and the US more time to prepare, particularly since US military assets all over the Middle East are exposed. A projectile strike on the Iranian government guest house would seem to require US targeting assistance, making the US a co-belligerent.
Given the givens, it would behoove Iran to act quickly….if it can get all its moving parts lined up, which is not a trivial task. But Lawrence Wilkerson argued that there are some Axis of Resistance plays that would not be hard to tee up, yet could be very effective. He suggested firing 150 missiles a day, every day. That level of steady barrage would drain Israel and the US of air defenses in theater in a very few months, while Iran and its friends could keep up that pace for easily a year.
Even so, Israel would work out soon enough that it would be rendered defenseless. Does it then fire its nuclear missiles? It seems with armageddon as the Israel trump card, the only possible successful countermeasure would be widespread fire/targeting suppression and perhaps a devastating first strike. The Russians have already sent Iran a very powerful electronic warfare device.
Have Russia or Iran tested any electromagnetic pulse bombs so that they too could be deployed?
In other words, Iran is the antithesis of reckless. The stakes are high and potentially existential But Iran also knows following the Western tame retaliation ploy is a sucker’s game. How they square this circle is over my pay grade. The balance of factors suggests they will move as soon as they possibly can. But that still may wind up being a bit of a way away.
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1 My Japanese colleagues translated it as “patting the roots” as in making sure a newly-planted tree was in properly-prepared dirt. Contrary to Western images of the Japanese, this process was not at all nice. But grievances and concerns were aired and fixes and horse trades made.
I wonder if the Olympics are another reason for Iran’s delay. The idea of them being a time of global truce is tattered but still may have appeal for some.
Sochi Games as precedent?
I’d go farther;
Sorry, I don’t know who first said this.
And insist that it’s not hot and his hands are npt burning? Then agajn, these people are pretending that Biden is still US president and is doing something…
I wonder if in the grand scheme of things if Iran were to attack Israeli positions in Gaza under the pretext of the “genocide convention “ or launching a barrage from Syria since they are already at war with Israel, would that temper the escalation to tactical nukes.
Iran is the antithesis of reckless. I’ll add the US is the antithesis of diplomacy.
Thanks, Yves. A couple of factors that you point to but which I’m sure start to threaten authorial speculation overload are to what extent the sympathetic major powers, Russia and China, are part of the cat herd the Resistance is trying to manage, and how the Resistance is reading Israeli internal political dynamics. Do they think they could create sufficient strain to bring down the currently dominant Zionist ultras, without prompting a nuclear attack? (And it’s likely that conflict over the use of nukes is currently very high.) How much longer can the Israelis endure the economic strain of the war at its current pace, or a notch or two higher? My guess is that the ultras are worried about this and realize that increased out-migratioin, investment flight etc don’t constitute viable grounds for nuclear escalation.
There were some reports on X that Iran was going to retaliate during the Tisha B’Av holiday (August 12-13) which would be deeply symbolic as the holiday is mourning the destruction of both Holy Temples.
I think the premise of your article is correct though, in that Iran is getting all of its ducks in a row before it does something massive, so while an attack on the holiday would deeply symbolic to Israelis, I don’t think Iran is going to put itself in a position wrt not being able mitigate any retaliatory strike. Plus they need to clean house because it is now obvious elements in their security apparatus are thoroughly compromised.
And you are absolutely correct that the West is thoroughly deluded that they can manage this, especially since the Israeli provocation violated the ancient law of hospitality that still has a strong hold in Iran and across the Levant and ME. While that law may mean little to neocons/neolibs driving us into WW3, it is a deep humiliation to Iranian people, which I see daily on X with many of the regular joe, apolitical, Iranians I follow (whom I initially followed to get a peek at daily life there).
Iran doesn’t have to only worry about Israel’s ability or inability to defend itself.
What the USA (and Britain and other European countries) will do in response to any attack on Israel always has to be a part of their calculation.
>>>In a joint statement issued Thursday, the leaders urged Israel and Hamas to meet for negotiation on Aug. 15, an invitation the U.S. says Israel has welcomed…
The new Hamas political leader is far more hard-lined and maximalist than Haniyeh.
Is Bibi playing 4-D chess and purposefully trying to prolong the war, or is he/IDF-Mossad Establishment just stumbling from crisis to crisis, trying to demonstrate to the Israeli public that Israel is winning the war?
….you make the call. my vote is that their stumbling in the dark trying to score any victory to offset the gradual frog-boil of IDF deaths
Time to call on the famed psychologist, Lord Petyr Baelish, aka Littlefinger, of the Game of Thrones:
We already know Israel is committed to genocide and ethnic cleansing, so being known, this actually cannot rate as “the worst reason”.
As I said in an earlier post, I think they are looking for/ready to create an excuse to use a tactical nuclear weapon. They are willing to gamble no one will dare respond in kind because that would quickly lead to civilization-ending nuclear exchanges.
I still maintain that Israel is the epitome of a Security State; it exists to offer safety to Jews. Or, to use Clausewitzian terminology, “perceived safety” is Israel’s center of gravity. Just look at the blood lust caused by the sudden insecurity and insult of a few hundred militants escaping their open-air prison and taking hostages.
So, every day the Axis of Resistance delays and keeps Israeli citizens running for shelters and cellars when they hear any siren is weakening that center of gravity. Israel doesn’t feel safe and secure, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
That said, naturally it takes a great effort and time to synchronize the retaliation even at an elementary level. And if the Axis members are synchronizing, it means this time they are striking for effect, not merely for show. To properly deplete or destroy Israel’s missile defenses, the strike has to come in waves. And so on.
Magnier is wondering if the Axis members have shared the type of targets among them, assuming that Israel will retaliate in kind. So each would hit what it is itself least vulnerable. Makes sense, but I don’t know.
All that said, it seems that Russia has issued a NOTAM banning Russian night flights to Israel for a week, starting today. Psyops on behalf of a friendly nation, or a subtle way of starting the clock? Who knows?
Another reason for Iran to delay its response is the need to integrate the new Russian equipment and their crews into Iran’s air defence system .
What’s key here, I think, is that the US has several generations of being the most important single player on Middle Eastern issues. It’s not quite as influential as it likes to think it is, but it still has a larger voice than anyone else on many questions. More importantly, the premise in Washington, and among the domestic and foreign lobbies that Washington wants to impress, is that this dominance is as strong as it ever was, and that Washington remains the single, essential player on all ME issues.
But that’s not true now. The problem is that none of the main actors–Iran, Israel or the US–want a major ME war. Of course the US and Israel would be quite happy to see Iran destroyed, but they know that the consequences (directly for Israel, and indirectly for the US just before an election) are unacceptable. Iran would no doubt like to see an end to Israel, but knows that the consequences would probably be more than they could tolerate. So nobody wants a general war, but the various partners aren’t talking to each other. Moreover, the US has diminishing influence over Israel (though probably some still with the military) and effectively none with Iran. If the US had behaved differently, it could be in a position to influence Israel to back off in Gaza, in return for Tehran making a smaller reprisal attack than it otherwise would have done. That would be the sensible outcome, but the US now no longer has enough influence over Israel to make such an approach to Iran of any value.
Paradoxically, therefore, whilst the Iranians know that a massive reprisal risks provoking a general ME war which they don’t want and which could hurt them badly, all over a mainly-Sunni area a long way from their borders and a radical Sunni organisation they are not especially close to, nobody can give them a convincing reason not to behave like that, because no-one can assure them that a more measured response will actually lead to de-escalation on the Israeli side. This is a conundrum without a solution, and it’s no surprise Tehran is trying to figure its way out.
Meanwhile, the US has no choice but to pretend to still have the influence it has lost. It’s going to have to keep doing the same thing because there’s nothing else it can do. At the very least, it’s desperately hoping to avoid the crisis getting much worse before November.
The assassination of Hamiyeh, a, perhaps the, Hamas chief negotiator was a slap in the face to Biden and Blinken, who have been doggedly depicting the fantasy of a ceasefire as something that might get done.
Thanks for this essay. I also tend to agree with what you have written here, so my perceptions align more or less with your analysis. Some deviations, though, below.
I would point out that the idea that Americans are good negotiators is in itself absurd. Biden and Blinken want to shout and dictate terms. Then they want to engage in bad faith and repudiate whatever doesn’t suit their fancy. Just as the U.S. elites want no cease-fire in Ukraine, so they don’t want an end to the genocide in Palestine.
I would also point out that for a country like Iran with four thousand or so years of continuous history, “now” doesn’t mean what it means to Americans, who think that Kamala Harris had changed the whole political debate in six days. So revenge is a dish eaten cold, and a month or four months of planning are minor. (This also applies to dealings with Greeks, Italians, and Chinese.)
Alessandro Orsini, who has gotten himself into all kinds of “good trouble” for his positions against both wars, wrote a column for Fatto Quotidiano that has me thinking these past few days. (And, no, getting a link out of FQ is one of the great Mysteries of Italy: sorry.)
Orsini thinks that Israeli society is cohesive enough that, say, a bombing campaign by Iran isn’t going to have an effect. We see polls that some two-thirds of Israelis want war and lots of war, as gristly as war can be. Iran isn’t going to bomb the Israelis into stopping their torture of Palestinians.
Iran, on the contrary, according to Orsini, has restraints on its behavior. Internally, the country isn’t a cohesive, even with the new reformist president Pezeshkian. (Consider Pezeshkian as the main target of this event … hmmm.) Iran cannot cause an overthrow of the Israeli government by long-distance bombing. Iran cannot invade. We are seeing some of the limitations on this supposedly new style of war. One can fly in drones, but if one can’t invade and hold territory, then what is the strategy of the war? Remote-control bombing? (Likewise, the soft underbelly of sanctions.)
So Iran is going to have to be measured and judicious in its response.
One should not forget that the results of the tender mercies of the U.S. of A. and Israel are the degradation of Lebanon and Syria. These are not accidents. Lebanon is quite small, which means Hezbollah has limits, too.
So the Iranians can bomb infrastructure, which is what seems likeliest to me. As I have mentioned, some power in the Middle East should destroy the two U.K. bases on Cyprus, which would change the balance of power in the region considerably.
And to operate at the most basic level of tit for tat, I assume that the Beelzebubian Smotrich isn’t sleeping at home these days.
Conversely, and Orsini points this out, which is something we have discussed here at Naked Capitalism, the Israeli government wants the U S of A to have troops on the ground in the Middle East and to fight Iran to the last American.
Even someone as obtuse and morally diminished as Blinken has to have recognized the Israeli strategy as a problem.
Another obvious reason for the delay is the time it takes to set up and test all the new military assets that Iran received from Russia. Many observers have noted the number of cargo flights from Russia carrying military hardware.
This is all high tech stuff. Imagine the difficulty in assembling, placing, calibrating, training, practicing, etc.
Do Iran and Israel exist under the condition of MAD, even absent Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon? If Israel truly believed that a no-holds barred missile attack on Tel Aviv in response to its own launching of a nuclear strike would effectively end the Israel state, then Israel should (in theory at least) be deterred from launching such a strike.
Iranian Missile Cities are a conceptual answer to the nuclear threat from Israel; Iran will always have enough missiles left to annihilate Israel.
It seems like the state increased alert on the part of Israel and its military partners is already creating costs for Israel, not only in stressing the military resources on high alert for days, but also the knock on effects of all the foreigners evacuating and their airlines avoiding the area, etc.
In this sense the delay is an already an attritional victory. To the extent that Netanyahu is relying on an escalation to draw the US in to a wider conflict, Iran’s restraint frustrates him, and turns up the heat on the boiler of Israeli domestic politics.
To the point about Israel potentially using a nuclear weapon, there was this incident earlier in the week:
Panic in Beirut as Israeli warplanes break sound barrier three times within minutes
Note that this occurred on 8/6, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. This might be a bit of a stretch, but if you add three days (the number of sonic booms in the demonstration) you get 8/9, the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing.
In any event, this incident had no military value that I can conceive (though I am far from an expert), but the basic symbolism is clear — we can attack Beirut unmolested with considerable force, and nukes are an option.