"Death by a thousand cuts" for Iran—or Israel?

My new interview with ANA News Agency, Tehran

Published today in Farsi at ANA Press

How do you evaluate Bennett's comment about Iran, the “a death by a thousand cuts strategy”?

By blathering about “death by a thousand cuts” (Israeli PM )Bennett is tacitly admitting that he doesn’t have a strategy. Since Biden won’t go along with Israel’s plans for a major war in the region, the Israelis have no choice but to keep doing what they're already doing. They are going to just keep harassing Iran the way they always have. If they escalate their harassment, Iran will of course escalate its retaliation. So Bennett’s slogan “death by a thousand cuts” is a way of disguising Israel’s strategic failure for an Israeli domestic audience. He is implying that the ongoing Israeli policy, small-time harassment, will somehow succeed in the future, even though it never has in the past. That of course is not true; the policy will continue to fail. But Bennett has to put an optimistic spin on the situation for political reasons.

What reasons have forced Israel to change its strategy?

Israel is facing the reality that it’s post-2001 strategy of trying to orchestrate a US war on Iran will not be successful any time soon, if ever.

Since the Zionist-inspired Israeli-assisted neoconservative coup d’état of September 11, 2001, Israel has intended to hijack the US military to overthrow its regional enemies in general and Iran in particular. When Gen. Wesley Clark revealed that the real purpose of 9/11 was to “overthrow seven countries in five years,” he explained that the last and most important country on the list was Iran. 

In 2007 the Israelis were close to their objective of dragging the US into a war on Iran. But Gwenyth Todd, an advisor to the Admiral in charge of the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain, alerted the State Department to a neocon plan to stage an attack on US ships in the Gulf and blame Iran-backed Bahraini Shia forces. Though she was forced to flee for her life, Todd succeeded in derailing the false flag attempt and the planned US attack on Iran. 

Again during the Trump-Bolton-Pompeo era, the Israelis once again nearly succeeded in inciting a US-Iran war. Their agents in the Trump Administration, Kushner, Bolton, and Pompeo, had dialed up tensions. The assassination of General Soleimani nearly triggered the war Israel wanted. Iran’s devastating but fortunately non-lethal retaliation managed to deter Trump and derail Israel’s hoped-for US attack on Iran. 

Today, with risk-averse Biden in the White House and the US in full retreat from empire after its crushing defeat in Afghanistan, Israel recognizes that its chances of tricking the US into going to war against Iran are essentially zero.

How do you see the United States' role in the Israel's new strategy?

The US will continue to verbally and materially support Israel, as it always has. Rich Zionist Jews dominate the US media and financial sectors, and provide about half of the bribes to politicians (euphemistically known as “campaign contributions”) that fuel the ultra-corrupt US political system. So even though many middle-class Jews and other liberal Americans are gravitating away from Israel and toward support for the Palestinians, the domination of the heights of power by billionaire and multi-millionaire Zionist Jews ensures that the US will continue to undermine its own interests by throwing away its money and reputation propping up the Zionist entity for the foreseeable future.

But the US defeat in Afghanistan has dramatically lowered the already-low probability that the US could be tricked into fighting a major war against Iran for Israel. Instead it will support Israel’s continued acts of small-scale terrorism against Iran, including cyber-terrorism, sabotage of energy infrastructure, and so on.

This policy, of course, is not in the US interest. The Americans would do much better for themselves by cutting off aid to Israel and befriending Iran. But that cannot happen for domestic political reasons.

What do you suppose Iran will do to neutralize the Israelis' new plot?

Iran will undoubtedly continue with its policy of steadfast patience in the face of provocation, inflicting limited, proportionate retaliation for Israeli attacks. It will not give the Israelis any hope of arranging a dramatic incident aimed at changing the US and international reluctance to support major escalation against Iran. 

Like China vis-a-vis the US, Iran gets stronger every year in its face-off with Israel. Iran’s and Hezbollah’s ever-improving, ever-more-numerous rockets are becoming an ever-more-effective deterrent to Zionist adventurism. And the slow erosion of US power in the region works to the advantage of independent Iran, and against countries that are dependent on the US, above all Israel. 

In the short term, Iran will defy Zionist and American plots and send fuel and other relief to suffering Lebanon. Israel cannot stop those shipments, because they are a vital interest for Lebanon and any attempt to stop them would be met by Hezbollah rockets.

By continually countering the Zionists’ anti-Iran moves, and drawing red lines where necessary, Iran will outlast Israel. In the end, it will be the Zionist entity that dies the “death of 1000 cuts.”