Senior officials in the White House and the Pentagon have sounded off a series of threats, warnings and accusations in Iran’s direction related to the explosion of violence in Gaza and southern Israel in the wake of the surprise attacks into southern Israel by Hamas-led militants beginning October 7.
“I spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu I don’t know how many times, but again this morning, and already we’re surging additional military assistance to the Israeli Defense Force, including ammunition, interceptors to replenish the Iron Dome, and we’ve moved the US carrier fleet to the Eastern Mediterranean. And we’re sending more fighter jets there to that region, and made it clear – made it clear to the Iranians: Be careful,” Joe Biden told a group of American Jewish leaders assembled in Washington Thursday.
A day earlier, Biden National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed there was “broad complicity…by the Iranians” in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. “I mean, because of the long-lasting support to Hamas. Hamas wouldn’t have been able to function at all had it not been for propping up by the Iranian regime.”
That said, Kirby admitted that the US has yet to see “any specific evidence that tells us they were witting, involved in the planning, or involved in the resourcing and the training that went into this very complex set of attacks over the weekend.”
Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog accused “proxy commanders in Iran” of “supporting and directing” Hamas. “This war waged against us marks a line in the sand. Now is the time to stand firm with Israel in support of its just and moral battle in the face of an abhorrent enemy,” Herzog urged. The Israeli military appeared to contradict the president, however, with an IDF spokesman saying Monday that while Iran was “a major player…we can’t yet say if it was involved in the planning or training.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also got in on the blame game for some reason. “While we have no proof that Iran operationally supported this cowardly attack, it is clear to us that without Iranian support Hamas would never have been able to launch this unprecedented attack,” Scholz said Thursday.
Claims by Western and Israeli officials were also backed by major legacy media, which dutifully began manufacturing consent for a possible conflict with Iran even before officials did, with the Wall Street Journal claiming, citing ‘senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah,’ that Iranian security directly helped plan Hamas’s surprise raids, and that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers were directly involved. The outlet was forced to walk back its allegations after US intelligence sources said that Iran may have known about the operation, but not its timing or scale.
What is Iran Saying?
Iran, which has faced decades of terrorist and sabotage attacks and assassinations at the hands of US and Israeli intelligence-backed proxies, offered a calm, measured response to the allegations.
“We have no role in making decisions on behalf of any party in the region, including the Palestinian nation…What concerns us is that we consider the resistance of the Palestinian people to be a legitimate resistance,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani early this week, adding that “accusations related to the Iranian role are based on political reasons.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei elaborated on Tuesday. “Supporters of the usurping regime, and even some people from the regime itself have said some nonsense over the past couple of days and it’s still continuing. They have said the Islamic Republic of Iran is behind this move. They are wrong,” Khamenei told crowds in Tehran. “Those who say what the Palestinians did was caused by non-Palestinians have not yet gotten to known the Palestinian people and make wrong calculations,” he added.
Traveling to Beirut, Lebanon on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned that if “the Zionists keep up their war crimes, there exists every prospect that other resistance movements” could enter the conflict. “We are in Beirut to announce with a loud voice that, along with other Muslim countries and governments, we do not brook the Zionist regime’s crimes against the people of Gaza,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also commented on the allegations against Iran.
“Now, I’ve heard that Iran is being accused of all grave sins, as usual, without evidence. There is no evidence. Let’s see how it goes. I hope common sense will prevail,” Putin said at an energy forum in Moscow on Wednesday. Russia’s position on the crisis is clear, Putin added, emphasizing that the “root of all problems” lies in the lack of an independent Palestinian state.
12 October 2023, 07:25 GMT
US Can’t Afford Three-Front Conflict
“It’s very simple,” says Konstantin Blokhin, a lead research from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Security Studies. “First of all, most of the Israeli establishment and part of the American establishment close to the Republican Party are maniacally obsessed with the idea of regime change in Iran,” Blokhin told Sputnik, recalling that many Republicans have joined in calling for “preventative strikes,” possibly even nuclear strikes, against the Islamic Republic.
With the Israeli crisis threatening to drag the US in, Blokhin said that Biden’s “be careful” warning makes sense, because it would leave the US “little room for maneuver”, since both major parties “are pro-Israeli in their essence,” and a failure to intervene could result in a loss of face for Washington.
“If this new conflict starts, if there is an expansion of the conflict zone and Iran is drawn into it, then of course the United States will become involved. And of course this is a headache for the United States, because it already has the Ukraine problem, plus now the problem in the Middle East. And thirdly, it’s worth remembering that the US considers the Asia-Pacific region to be its most important region,” with an increasingly powerful China needing “to be contained,” according to Washington’s doctrinal planning.
“Just imagine if these three centers of tensions were to become inflamed, forcing the US to disperse its resources. And such a dispersal is usually the path to defeat. Under Biden the US left Afghanistan, they may lose to Russia in Ukraine, Iran could strike Israel. Meanwhile, the United States positions itself as a guarantor of international security to its allies…If damage was done to its closest ally [Israel, ed.], the US’s image around the world would be damaged,” Blokhin noted.
As for the US decision to send another carrier strike group to the Middle East as a message to Iran, Blokhin said Tehran probably isn’t afraid of such an “instrument of intimidation,” and has the technical capability to sink American aircraft carriers.
But perhaps the biggest “headache” for Washington and Tel Aviv may lie in the Islamic World’s growing consolidation on an anti-American and anti-Israeli basis, “even between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have some contradictions, today I think that many will forget about these contradictions, and will consolidate on this anti-Americanism,” Blokhin summed up.