{"id":287052,"date":"2024-05-07T06:35:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T06:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=287052"},"modified":"2024-05-09T06:26:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T06:26:44","slug":"iran-retaliates-and-transforms-regional-and-global-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=287052","title":{"rendered":"Iran Retaliates \u2014 and Transforms Regional and Global Orders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Anti-aircraft fire lights up the night sky over Israel&#8217;s Nevatim Air Force Base on the night of April 13, 2024, following strikes by Iranian missiles<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Kevin Barrett \u2013 The Unz Review May 6, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>On April 13, Islamic Iran launched a retaliatory strike against the genocidal zionist regime. Coming almost two weeks after the zionists had bombed Iran\u2019s consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing eleven people including three senior military commanders, Iran\u2019s delayed retaliation was a historic masterstroke that radically changed the West Asian and global power systems.<\/p>\n<p>The zionist attack on Iran on April 1 had been completely illegal\u2014and tantamount to a declaration of war not just on Iran and Syria, but also on international law and basic decency. It was so outrageous that even the US regime, which normally follows Tel Aviv\u2019s marching orders, had no choice but to deny that it had been informed in advance (and may even have been telling the truth for once). <em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/ecKgI\">The Washington Post<\/a> <\/em>reported: \u201cSenior Pentagon officials were frustrated that Israel did not notify the United States before conducting a strike on an Iranian site in Syria this month, an escalation that they assess increases risks to American forces in the Middle East, US officials said.\u201d That claim may or may not have been truthful, given US officials\u2019 habitual mendacity, but it underscored the fact that the zionist bombing of Iran\u2019s diplomatic mission in Damascus was beyond the pale and had to be publicly denounced, whatever was being said in private.<\/p>\n<p>As in the case of the Trump regime\u2019s dastardly assassination of General Qassem Soleimani on Januuary 3, 2020, Iran had no choice but to forcefully retaliate. The only question was, how and when? Wisely, Tehran decided to take a deep breath and wait till Ramadan was over. Then it delivered a carefully calibrated response, sending Benjamin Netanyahu an Eid fireworks greeting card called \u201cOperation True Promise\u201d consisting of 120 drones, 170 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles.<\/p>\n<p>Iran\u2019s strategic imperative was to deliver a bold and stinging slap to the zionists in such a way as to deter future acts of outrageous aggression, while avoiding drawing in the Americans. Netanyahu has been working overtime for decades to try to trick the US into going to war with Iran on Israel\u2019s behalf, and the beleaguered war criminal in Tel Aviv was undoubtedly hoping to use Iran\u2019s inevitable response to the Damascus atrocity as an excuse for escalation that would entrap the Americans in the quicksands of war with Tehran. (Netanyahu risks going straight from the Prime Minister\u2019s office to prison, so he needs to continually escalate his failed genocide campaign to avoid the political and criminal reckoning that peacetime would bring.)<\/p>\n<p>Iran needed to smack down the zionists hard enough to punish and deter them, but not so hard as to allow American domestic political pressure to force The Collective Biden into Netanyahu\u2019s trap. Killing a large number of Israelis and creating lots of visible damage to civilian infrastructure would have served Netanyahu\u2019s purpose. Wisely, Iran chose to let the tension build for 12 days before scaring the living daylights out of Israelis by filling their skies with projectiles, while deliberately minimizing harm to life and limb\u2014and at the same time sending a forceful message that Iran can raze the zionist entity to the ground any time it chooses.<\/p>\n<p>Former UN Weapons Inspector and US military strategic analyst Scott Ritter has written that Iran\u2019s message to Israel was, in a word, \u201c <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottritterextra.com\/p\/checkmate\">Checkmate<\/a><\/em>.<em>\u201d<\/em> Ritter persuasively argues that Iran demonstrated on April 13 that it can penetrate US and Israeli air defenses using swarms of drones paving the way for showers of ballistic missiles. Most are cheap decoys designed to \u201cunlock the door to the Iron Dome\u201d so the real weapons can get through. And get through they did. Iran scored several direct missile hits on two heavily-defended Negev bases, purposely using missiles with either relatively small warheads or no warheads at all.<\/p>\n<p>The goal was to deliver not death and destruction, but a message: Iran now has the ability to level Israel and destroy US ships and bases in the region. Henceforth, no further actions like the murderous Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus will be tolerated. And by implication, Iran will not permit Israel to complete its genocide of Palestine.<\/p>\n<p>Western media initially downplayed or denied Iran\u2019s success. But it wasn\u2019t long before a senior American official admitted to <em>ABC News<\/em> that five Iranian ballistic missiles hit Nevatim Air Base, damaging equipment and facilities, while four missiles hit the Negev Air base. Those two bases had been the staging areas for Israel\u2019s criminal strike on Damascus.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly Iran hit exactly what it wanted to hit with precisely the missiles it selected. The others were cheap decoys. By raining down ballistic missiles on two of the most protected sites in \u201cIsrael,\u201d as the zionists helplessly cowered in their bunkers, Iran showed the zionists they have no place to hide. Anything and everything in \u201cIsrael\u201d can be destroyed any time Iran chooses.<\/p>\n<p>Iran\u2019s April 13 counterattack, like the Palestinian Resistance\u2019s Operation al-Aqsa Storm of October 7, will go down in military history as a classic showpiece of asymmetrical warfare. The zionist entity spent over a billion dollars on its unsuccessful defense efforts, while Iran spent a small fraction of that on its successful retaliatory strike.<\/p>\n<p>Though Iran\u2019s deliberate avoidance of inflicting mass casualties allowed the zionists and their controlled western media a face-saving way out, by spuriously claiming that they had stopped most of the Iranian (decoy) missiles, all serious military analysts now know that the Iron Dome has effectively been renamed the Iron Sieve.<\/p>\n<p>The zionists\u2019 <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/politics-and-diplomacy\/article-797896\">weak response <\/a><\/em>on April 19 consisted of sending a couple of cheap drones to the general vicinity of Isfahan where the IRGC easily shot them down. That act of conspicuous non-retaliation was a tacit admission that Israel\u2019s plan to drag the US into all-out war is not ready for prime time. Indeed, the zionists are said to have been dissuaded by the US regime from mounting a more serious attack, according to a <em>Wall Street Journal <\/em>report picked up by <em><a href=\"https:\/\/english.almayadeen.net\/news\/politics\/-israel--scaled-back-planned-attack-on-iran-to-avoid-new-cou\">international media<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>According to Ritter, Iran\u2019s defeat of combined US-Israeli air defenses has global implications. Not only have the enormous and ever-expanding missile arsenals of Iran and Hizbullah checkmated the zionists\u2019 regional nuclear monopoly, but by implication the at-least-equally-advanced missiles of Russia and China should have no problem defeating US air defenses. The US empire, with its flotilla of sitting ducks and its 800 now-hyper-vulnerable bases occupying dozens of countries, is about as impregnable as the Maginot Line.<\/p>\n<p>Among the \u201cfog of war\u201d, unconfirmed reports about the April exchanges between Iran and \u201cIsrael,\u201d one stands out: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RealPepeEscobar\/status\/1781652011173253524\">Pepe Escobar<\/a><\/em>\u2019s claim that Netanyahu responded to Iran\u2019s April 13 strike by launching a nuclear-armed F-35 towards Iran with the intention of setting off a high-altitude nuclear airburst whose EMP pulse was intended to fry Iran\u2019s electrical grid. According to Escobar, the Russian Air Force shot down the F-35 as it was leaving Jordanian airspace.<\/p>\n<p>Escobar\u2019s story, which he says is supported by two independent, reliable high-level sources in two different Asian governments, seems improbable for various reasons, including the unlikelihood of Russia being able to shoot down planes in air space nominally controlled by the Americans. But it isn\u2019t inconceivable that the Americans might cooperate with the Russians in such an operation. Both nations share an interest in preventing Netanyahu from dragging them into nuclear World War 3.<\/p>\n<p>Whether or not Escobar\u2019s report is correct, it is obvious that the imploding zionist entity is lashing out in desperation with the apparent aim of taking the world down with it. The zionist genocide of Gaza, increasingly desperate attacks on its neighbors, and ever-crazier words and actions signify that the writing is on the wall: The zionist mad dog is about to keel over, and the only remaining question is how to avoid getting bitten before giving it a decent, relatively nonviolent burial.<\/p>\n<p>The zionists made an existential mistake last October by gambling that they could complete the genocide of Palestine under US protection. Their time-tested m.o., \u201cseize ever-increasing power over the US and force America to do Israel\u2019s dirty work,\u201d has passed its expiration date, because the US empire is no longer what it once was\u2014in large part due to the damage Israel has inflicted on it.<\/p>\n<p>Netanyahu\u2019s minions are currently threatening the Biden regime: \u201cSupport our genocide, or else!\u201d In this case, \u201cor else\u201d implies zionist power to remove team Biden, whether by assassination (<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unz.com\/runz\/israeli-assassinations-and-public-scrutiny\/\">a zionist specialty<\/a><\/em>) or by using financial and media power to throw the election to Trump (or whoever promises to take orders from Tel Aviv).<\/p>\n<p>But as April 13 demonstrated, the US no longer has the power to protect Israel, or even its own bases and ships. And Israel has even less power to protect itself. So, it doesn\u2019t really matter who\u2019s in the Oval Office. Even less does it matter that the zionists can force Congress to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/596097-congress-river-sea-palestinian-ban\/\">pass bills against such expressions as \u201criver to the sea.\u201d <\/a><\/em>The zionist entity, like US global hegemony, is doomed. And though the Entity itself is thrashing out madly and genocidally in its death throes, it remains to be seen whether the managers of the US empire will follow suit and allow or instigate a planetary \u201cnuclear Masada.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/donate?token=8VN-ecynegb7QsuSg29ZFe59vu5eXumegH8-MQwRjWeqE4AoeItdRXsUPGwqMvcV2pb-Tv_m1G1O8L-J\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-175417 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2002\/10\/donate-pp.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"80\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unz.com\/kbarrett\/iran-retaliates-and-transforms-regional-and-global-orders\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The zionists made an existential mistake last October. Their time-tested m.o., of getting America to do their dirty work, has passed its expiration date. Kevin Barrett analyses the implications of Iran\u2019s April 13 strike on Israel <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":285561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Iran","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287055,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287052\/revisions\/287055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/285561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}