It’s still all fake, even though real people are dying
Apr 18, 2024
We are now a little over six months into this latest outbreak of fighting between Israel and Palestinians. Since Hamas launched its raid into Israel on October 7, 2023 that sparked this latest conflict, the underlying issue of how Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully next to one another has not been resolved. Not only has it not been resolved, no movement towards such a resolution has been made by any of the parties to this conflict.
Hamas does want to end the Israeli state, but it is incapable of doing so. It is relegated to such self-sabotaging acts as the October 7th raids and hostage taking. Israel would be very happy to see the Palestinians permanently leave the Gaza Strip, but it is incapable of making this a reality due to the objection of its American sponsor. It is relegated to bombing Gaza and inflicting a massive amount of suffering on the Palestinians, with deaths in the five figures and famine now being reported by various agencies and organizations, such as the EU.
Hezbollah would love to invade Israel and wipe out the Jewish state, but it is incapable of doing so, and lives in fear of what the Americans would do to them should they ever launch an attempt. Hezbollah is relegated to lobbing firecrackers here and there against isolated Israeli positions.
Iran repeatedly states that it would like to end the “Zionist state” once and for all, but it cannot do so out of the same fear that its Hezbollah proxy shares with it. Instead, Iran is playing a very, very long game in which it sponsors its anti-Israeli proxies and waits for an anticipated decline in American power/American support for Israel in order to strike at some point in the future. Iran and Israel have been engaged in a tit-for-tat struggle for some time now involving proxies and targeted assassinations, with Iranian military figures in Syria bearing the brunt of the attacks courtesy of Israeli forces. It was the recent Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus that killed two Iranian generals and several officers that sparked the retaliatory action from Iran this past weekend.
The Iranians vowed revenge for this attack, one perceived to be an escalation, and one that many feared could lead to the outbreak of a regional war.
Back in November, I wrote this essay in which I applied Baudrillard to this present conflict, arguing that it is effectively a simulation of a war, and that it would not lead to a general regional conflagration:
Geopolitica
The War In Gaza Is Not Happening
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November 9, 2023
It’s no secret that there’s money to be made on the internet as a content creator who traffics in sensationalism, hysteria, and other forms of obvious (yet often tantalizing) forms of clickbait. We are inundated with it on a daily basis, but if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t exist in the first place.
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My argument was put to the test this past weekend, when Iran launched a retaliatory strike against Israel by way of drones and ballistic missiles. The world held its collective breath for a few hours, hoping that an all-out war would not result. As of today, no regional war is taking place, and an Israeli counterstrike against the Iranians has yet to take place.
The Iranians themselves immediately communicated to the world that they were not interested in an all-out war with Israel, but had to launch a strike to save face. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations put out a statement shortly after the launch of the drones and missiles:
Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the UN Charter pertaining to legitimate defense, Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!
This was a very clear message that Iran sought no wider war. “The matter can be deemed concluded”, is about as clear as it gets. It would react to any attack on Iran, of course:
The drones & Cruise missiles heading for Israel are only the 1st wave… I expect there will be more until the morning. Interesting fact is Iran generally prefers surprise attacks but the US seemed to know about them ahead of time. To me this isn’t a case of US intelligence intercepting Iranian lines— the fact that US officials knew in advance even the exact time the attacks would start could signal that Iran has an open line of communication to the White House. This means Iran clearly doesn’t want regional escalation. We’ll see if Biden can stop himself from pouring gasoline on this newest fire as he usually tends to do.
Iran says that it gave Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, and the USA 72 hours’ advance notice of its attack on Israel. All the parties, bar the Americans, agree that this did happen.
According to The Intercept, most of the drones and missiles headed Israel’s way were struck down by the US-led forces, and not by Israel’s Iron Dome:
More than half of Iran’s weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, by commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph.
The extent of the U.S. military operation is unbeknownst to the American public, but the Pentagon coordinated a multination, regionwide defense extending from northern Iraq to the southern Persian Gulf on Saturday. During the operation, the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan all shot down the majority of Iranian drones and missiles. In fact, where U.S. aircraft originated from has not been officially announced, an omission that has been repeated by the mainstream media. Additionally, the role of Saudi Arabia is unclear, both as a base for the United States and in terms of any actions by the Saudi military.
In calculating the size of Iran’s attack and the overwhelming role of the United States, U.S. military sources say that the preliminary estimate is that half of Iran’s weapons experienced technical failures of some sort.
“U.S. intelligence estimates that half of the weapons fired by Iran failed upon launch or in flight due to technical issues,” a U.S. Air Force senior officer told The Intercept. Of the remaining 160 or so, the U.S. shot down the majority, the officer said. The officer was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive operational matters.
The Israelis credited themselves with the shoot-downs, and disputed US claims that they weren’t warned in advance of the attack. A few missiles did make it through the US-led defensive operation and the Israeli Iron Dome defensive system, but the damage resulting from these exceptions was very minimal according to Israeli sources.
I am going to side with the Iranians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Turks, and Israelis over the Americans, and accept that the Iranians did indeed give fair warning of their retaliatory strike. They announced their strike before the drones and missiles even entered Israeli airspace. On top of that, their statement at the UN considering the matter to be “closed”, only goes to show that this retaliation was entirely performative and not an actual strike that sought to maximize damage to Israel and its military capabilities. It was a show for the audience, a simulation of retaliatory warfare.
Internet chatter fell into the usual two disputing camps: “It’s happening!” vs. “It’s not happening”. The former party insisted that this strike was genuine and would result in the beginning of an all-out regional war involving the Israelis, Iranians, and the Americans too (if not all-out warfare, then at least concrete steps towards such a war). The latter argued that this retaliation was fake, nothing more than a face-saving gesture by Tehran. Most of you already know which side I took.
Iran’s attacks on Israel appear to have been performative, said Michael Singh, fmr sr director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council. This was “a slow-moving, thoroughly telegraphed, and ultimately unsuccessful retaliation.”
Between “nothing ever happens” and doomster catastrophising is the constant ratcheting up of the baseline level of international disorder we currently experience as normality. The trend is ever-upward, but within the context of the moment, each escalation seems underwhelming.
Our current normality is aberrant: in waiting out the Big One we accept a degree of international instability that is in itself already historic, is rapidly reshaping the global system, and perhaps has already achieved the effects of the big war we dread.
I insist that this is the best take on the past six months in the Middle East.
Almost no one wants a regional war. Iran certainly doesn’t, judging by both its words and actions. Nor do the Americans, either. The Americans are the only party to this conflict that can actually end it, but they lack the will to do so for domestic political considerations. As I (and Aris) have said repeatedly in the past, much of the world is held hostage to the US electoral cycle. This is a testament to the strength and power of the United State of America.
The lack of will on the part of President Biden to rein in the Israelis makes them a wild card in this conflict. In the Realist School of International Relations Theory, all states have a check on their actions that requires them to act rationally. As Mearsheimer and Walt (both realists) have argued, the carte blanche given to Israel time and time again has led them to pursue irrational behaviour as there is no check on their behaviour at present. For example, two Israeli centrists, Gantz and Eizenkot, favoured an immediate retaliation on Iran no matter the consequences that would result from it:
What stopped it? A call from Joe Biden i.e. a “check”.
Stephen Bryden also makes an important point by highlighting the fact that in the Jordanian and Saudi participation in the shoot down of the Iranian drones and missiles, Arab states came to the defense of Israel for the time ever in history.
No one wants a regional war.
…..but the Israelis might be the exception, and the Israelis are more than willing to risk it. Per CBS News:
Some Biden administration officials are expecting Israel to make a limited strike inside Iran, a senior U.S. official tells CBS News’ David Martin. But Israel is not sharing its targeting with the U.S., so the U.S. does not know what form the Israeli retaliation will take or when it will happen. The U.S. also doesn’t know if Israel will give the U.S. a heads up, but as of right now there has been no notification.
The fear that the Israelis are trying to drag the USA into a regional conflict is no secret:
Biden told Netanyahu Israel demonstrated an extraordinary ability to defend itself & defeated an unprecedented attacks, and should consider it a victory. The US opposes any Israeli retaliation against Iran and will not take any part in it.
“An Iranian military security official has revealed that the US contacted the Islamic Republic, asking the nation to allow Israel ‘a symbolic strike to save face’ following Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile barrage this weekend.”
A simulated counterstrike against a simulated retaliatory attack, with the USA being the key vector of communication in both. More than anything to date, this proves just how much of this conflict is one of American conflict management and resolution, and not a real war, as I argued back in November of last year. This image was making the rounds during the Iranian strike, showing that many people are ‘hip’ to my argument:
Patrick Porter, think tanker, academic, and scholar, is also on Team Not Happening:
Ok, prediction: an all-out war in the ME is not at hand. The calibrated, signalled nature of Iran’s overnight attack, deliberately giving Israel & its allies every chance to suppress it, suggests desire to retaliate without going to brink. Risky brinksmanship yes, gloves off no.
As I am writing this, we do not know what the Israelis intend to do. Most likely, their war cabinet has not yet come to a final decision. Egyptian sources suggest that the Israelis have agreed to not launch a counterstrike against Iran in return for the Americans agreeing to their attack plan for Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
The containment of this conflict by the USA has been almost entirely successful. The Red Sea escapades by the Houthis have caused a headache in global shipping, and the pin prick attacks on isolated US outposts in Syria and Iraq have pretty much come to an end. Containment is one thing, but ending this conflict is a totally different matter. The USA has the ability to do so, but lacks the will. This lack of will allows Israel to exploit the conflict for its own perceived interests, even if it comes at the cost of a wider war, one that no one wants (and almost certainly won’t happen), but one side is willing to risk.
