This includes Lebanon and the Lebanese-based military and political organization Hezbollah, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iran, as well as Shi’a militias across Iraq and Yemeni-based Ansar Allah referred to across the Western media as the “Houthis.”
This large group of nations and organizations stretching across the region share a common denominator—they all serve as obstacles to U.S. primacy over the region, with the U.S. itself having waged war directly and/or indirectly against each since the end of World War2.
Just as the U.S. has recruited Ukraine to wage war on Russia by proxy in Eastern Europe and has politically captured and used the island province of Taiwan against the rest of China in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S. has carefully cultivated Israel politically and militarily for decades to serve as a proxy used to carry out assassinations, terrorist attacks, military strikes, and even provoke wars the U.S. itself seeks plausible deniability in regard to.
Toward this end, the U.S. provides Israel with billions in aid annually, including a steady flow of arms and ammunition Israel’s various wars of aggression would be impossible to conduct without. While Washington publicly poses as seeking peace and stability in the Middle East, its continuous support for Israel enables the perpetual conflict and instability undermining the region.
Most recently, the U.S. has repeatedly claimed to have urged Israeli restraint regarding its military operations against Gaza. In practice, however, the U.S. has enabled the large-scale destruction of Gaza through the continual shipment of munitions including thousands of bombs used in Israeli airstrikes, Reuters reported in June of this year.
Despite both the U.S. and its Israeli proxies claiming Israeli actions are done in self-defense, the level of violence has been one-sided, with Gaza all but flattened and tens of thousands left dead, injured, or displaced. In parallel with its operations in Gaza, Israel has carried out strikes against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran—none of whom were involved in Hamas attacks in October last year, according to the Israeli military itself.
All three nations have repeatedly resisted retaliating to these Israeli provocations.
Israel: The Original Ukraine-Style Battering Ram
The nature of Israeli belligerence is transparent, part of a well-documented U.S. policy to provoke wider war across the Middle East the U.S. can then justify intervening in—and war both the U.S. and its Israeli proxies can cite when using weapons and tactics otherwise difficult or impossible to justify—up to and including nuclear weapons.
In 2009, the Brookings Institution in its 170-page paper titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran,” would detail various means to coerce, contain, and ultimately overthrow the government of Iran, including waging war against Iran.
The paper admits how difficult it would be for the United States itself to launch military strikes against Iran, stating:
…any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it.
It also says:
…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it.
An entire chapter was dedicated to the use of Israel to carry out an initial strike on Iran, allowing the U.S. to distance itself from culpability. Titled, “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike,” it explicitly states:
…the goal of this policy option would be to destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities in the hope that doing so would significantly delay Iran’s acquisition of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. However, in this case, an added element could be that the United States would encourage—and perhaps even assist—the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel.
The paper notes that an Israeli strike could, “trigger a wider conflict between Israel and Iran that could draw in the United States and other countries,” giving Washington the pretext it seeks ahead of any war of aggression it itself wages against Iran.
With this policy in mind, Israel’s steady cadence of increasingly provocative attacks against Iran and its allies is easier to understand. The U.S., through Israeli provocations, seeks to provoke a wider war the U.S. itself can wade into, appearing to be aiding an ally rather than initiating yet another war of aggression in the Middle East.
Ultimately, for this trap to work successfully, Iran must retaliate to one of these many provocations, and do so in a way the U.S. and its allies can portray as disproportionate or even “unprovoked.”
So far, Iran’s responses have been exceedingly measured.
Short-Term Revenge vs. Long-Term Victory
Israeli assassinations, terrorist strikes, and even unilateral military strikes have been carried out against both Lebanon and Syria for years without seriously threatening the survival of either nation.
The U.S.-engineered proxy war that had actually been threatening Syria’s survival was defeated through security cooperation within Syrian borders between Syrian forces, Russia, and Iran.
Likewise, Iran has weathered direct and indirect attacks including terrorism, political interference, and assassinations for years without these hostilities seriously threatening the survival of Iran as a nation-state. U.S. sanctions and political interference aimed at undermining and destabilizing Iran have been carefully managed and so far overcome, not through retaliation against the U.S. and its proxies, but through Iran’s close cooperation with and participation in the emerging multipolar world, having joined BRICS earlier this year.
In a much wider sense, as the multipolar world grows in size and complexity and as the U.S.-led international order wanes, Washington’s ability to assert primacy anywhere in the world, including the Middle East, wanes with it. Because of this, Washington is racing against the clock to use what remains of its advantages in economic and military power to eliminate its adversaries before the global balance of power tips further to its disadvantage.
Washington seeks war—by proxy or otherwise—with Iran sooner rather than later. Retaliation to emotionally satisfy a short-term desire for revenge by Iran or its allies to what are increasingly desperate provocations would only be playing into Washington’s desire to trigger a wider, profoundly costlier war that could destroy the whole region.
Instead, security must be increased. Iran and its allies must continue building up their military capabilities as they likewise build up their economic and political power, both within their borders and across the region. Many of the provocations carried out by Israel, including a recent terrorist attack on Lebanon involving electronic devices rigged with explosives and distributed across the country, are entirely predictable and preventable.
For every attempt by the U.S. and its proxies to destabilize the Middle East, the region and its partners must double down on maintaining stability and avoid wider conflict. A combination of continued security and diplomatic efforts are required to ensure future provocations are less effective and more difficult to carry out.
Overcoming these provocations rather than reacting to them will give the Middle East, along with the rest of the world, the time required to continue this fundamental shift in the global balance of power away from U.S.-led unipolarism toward a better multipolar world. But before this can happen, nations must avoid the traps set by the U.S., meant to trigger a destructive war Washington seeks to bury multipolarism with.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”