The Trajectory Of The Axis Of Resistance
Judge Nap had a fascinating discussion today with Alastair Crooke which revolved around the war of attrition that the Axis of Resistance is waging against America and Israel. I’ve transcribed/edited about 15 minutes of the 35 minute video.
In the portion below Crooke explains that the Axis of Resistance is a fluid networking of like minded nation states but also less formal movements, which look to Iran for guidance based on Iran’s track record of success in resisting the American Empire. Nevertheless, this Axis is not run in a top down manner but by consensus. It is based asymmetric forms of warfare that keep up a constant pressure, but with shifting points at which the pressure is applied. In this way it maintains the escalatory initiative.
We also see that the American Empire is losing its hold over the Middle East, losing it to BRICS. We saw this just recently when we discussed the seemingly sudden shift of the UAE, threatening to break its land bridge to Israel if Israel doesn’t stop blockading aid to the starving Gazans. This UAE shift might not have occurred in the past, but the financial hold of the West is no longer what it was.
Crooke also discusses the ultimately Biblical model of the Zionist Project, which has forced Israel into a no win straitjacket that mandates a genocide as the only way to maintain the position it believes itself to be entitled to. But which is setting itself at odds with the world.
Lastly, and of great importance to US politics, there is a fascinating passage in which Crooke states that Trump is envisioning a new version of his Abraham Accords in which Iran would participate. This is reassuring for those who think that Trump is stuck in his past campaigns and unable to rethink a changing world. The question that arises, of course, is whether it’s all too late—the Neocons have thrown it all away through their war on Russia, while the world shifted to BRICS. It’s a hint, however, that Trump is watching the Middle Eastern demographic in the US closely.
Alastair Crooke: The Resistance to Israel is Ready
[15:40]
AN: What role do you see Iran playing in any resistance to Israel's imperialism, whether it's to expand the borders of Israel or whether it's the genocide against the Palestinians or both?
AC: Iran has played a very shrewd diplomatic game for many years now, and I followed it quite closely over this period. Iran has put a new form of military thinking together because, of course, it was quite clear to them that the United States had dominance of the skies through its air force. So the Iranians set out to remake their own air force. It's not a conventional air force. It's an air force of smart, earth hugging cruise missiles and swarms of AI driven drones, and this has provided a deterrence. They've embedded these throughout the geography of Iran. The other part of their strategy is they've created a coalition of likeminded movements that are not just the nation states in the region--Lebanon, Syria, Yemen--but also semi-independent movements that work by consensus, rather than by direction from Iran.
This allows the Axis to increase the heat incrementally, to move the heat elsewhere, but always keeping escalatory dominance with them and not with Israel--Israel is forced to always respond. The result--and you see this reflected in the Israeli press--is that there are multiple fronts open. Israel has economic problems but, more than anything else, they have internal problems. There's an internal war within Israel as well as an external war that they're having to fight. If they end up fighting Hezbollah it will not follow the conventional view in the West. In the West the assumption is that Israel, with active support from America, will bomb Hezbollah and southern Lebanon back to the stone age. That was what they tried, unsuccesfully, to do in 2006, and I assure you Hezbollah's capabilities are now a lot more sophisticated.
What does Iran want to see? Where is this going? Iran has always suggested it's in favor of a Palestinian One State solution, a Palestinian State. The solution is simply that Israel would give up its Zionist element and just live in the region like ordinary citizens within the region, but they would not have special rights over the subordinate population that shares the territory with them. That is their aim--to go back to how the region was hundreds of years ago.
Israel has been awarded a military edge by the United States and so Iran's game is one of long-term attrition, rather than of fighting and killing Israelis. It's a strategy of simply bringing Israel to the point of exhaustion and a sense of defeat, in which it's forced to reconsider the whole project of Zionism--whether it can continue--and look for some solution.
I'll tell you a surprising anecdote, but I remember it well. Once when I was in Israel, talking to the head of the Israeli Atomic Commission--the agency running the nuclear policy--he said, 'You know, we'll go on like this but one day, believe me, suddenly Israel will start talking to the Iranians.' And he said that, after that, America would follow suit and, long after that, the Europeans would get there. And he said to me, the only way out of this is going to be when we all recognize that it's important to bring Iran into the situation. Incidentally, Trump said something quite similar over the weekend. He said, 'Oh, I'm going to get the Abraham Accords,' okay, but he said, 'And Iran will probably be part of it.' Which was a very striking, important change of language, because until now he's just said, 'We sanctioned them into the dust when I was in office,' and now he's saying, 'Yes, Israel needs to be part of the region and Iran will be part of that framework.’
So this raises a couple of questions. Do other Persian Gulf nations resent the Abraham Accords? Hasn't Iran not only survived but thrived, just like Russia, withstanding American sanctions? Does Israel realize that if it attacks Hezbollah it will incur the wrath of that AI air force that Iran has? There are dissidents within Israel who understand the danger and they keep warning. General Brik was one of them, but there have been others that have said, 'We engage militarily with Hezbollah at our peril, because we will be destroyed.’ Hezbollah has the ability to take out the entire infrastructure across Israel--airports, ports, all of these infrastructure projects, right to Eilat.
This is serious deterrence but Israel seems to be compelled down that route because it's not prepared to give up its present paradigm of Zionist hegemony from the River to the Sea. If they want to keep that then they will inevitably have to go to war with Hezbollah, and people realize that. What do the Arab states think about it? Well, the Arab population I'm told is is explosive. Remember the native population of some of those Gulf States is smaller than a small city. 80% [90% in the UAE] of their populations are workers brought in from India or Pakistan or Bangladesh [or the Philipines--there are growing Christian minorities that are increasingly accommodated] to supply the manpower and the waiters and the servants.
The point is that the Gulf States have been totally dependent. Look at the way they built themselves up on Tech. They've turned themselves into Green Tech instruments, and this has been through Israel. And who has supported that? Well, this is Wall Street channeling its venture capital through Israel into these Gulf States to make money. But now most of that tech world in Israel is closed down. What does this mean for the business model of those Gulf States? Is it so good to be part of the Abraham Accords or do they need to look to China and do they need to look to Iran and Russia? Are they stuck in the old model or should they look to the the new model, which is the Heartland, the new BRICS version of the economy that is opening up across the whole of Central Asia. The most exciting part of the economy now is actually in the North in Vladivostok, where there's an extraordinary integration of China and Russia that is producing all sorts of new economic and technical innovations. [The UAE and KSA have led the way, shifting to BRICS.]
AN: You're painting you're painting a very gloomy future for the Israelies if they continue their destruction of Gaza. Does prime minister Netanyahu recognize that he's playing with fire?
AC: Yes, Netanyahu understands very well this is why he keeps using these apocalyptic terms, that Israel is fighting for its life, this is the great Armageddon battle that's coming, we have have to have complete Victory. This feeling is shared by nearly all Israelis. The polls confirm it. They do not believe it's possible to survive--as they have survived as a Zionist project--when other states no longer fear them. It's been that military edge of fear that has been the survival of Israel and they feel that's gone since the 7th of October, and eroding every day since--unless they can restore that in some way. But you can't just attack Hezbollah. Iraq is already attacking the ports of Ashdod and Haifa. Eilat is already closed. It won't be much longer, perhaps, before we'll find that Ben Gurion is closed. The squeeze is continuing. This is asymmetric warfare.
This is happening. It's happening now, but Israel is compelled not by literal politics--it's compelled by the eschatological, the biblical narrative that Israel has to go in and do these things because it is the will of God. Every day we hear rabbis coming on and saying to the troops--I mean, senior rabbis--saying, 'This means that you have to kill the children in Gaza because they will grow up and they will turn into terrorists who will attack us, and you have to kill the women because these are the vessels that give birth to these future terrorists, and you have to kill all and this is a halakhic command which is not voluntary, which is mandatory on you. You are commanded under halakhic law to do this. Halakhic law is Jewish law to do these things and the Talmud requires us to do these things.' So there's this compulsion.
The West [both America and Europe] keeps conceptualizing this as a sort of typical secular process of management--you know, offer a new state, manage, move people here or there, but actually you're dealing with forces that are very different. These are the forces of biblical myth and story and they compel people to act and follow things that may not make a lot of sense in the literal world but nonetheless are very compelling to those who believe in them.
[30:47]
Here’s another stimulating discussion on the big picture:
"Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.
He knew. How can a large group of people justify mass murder and torture purely through a self-righteousness they accredit to themselves via a common ideology? Not all that long ago we asked this about Nazi Germany and their treatment of the Jews and other minorities: "Oh, if we had been there, we never would have fallen prey to such evil!" How horribly ironic and tragic that we now are again asking this of the Israelis and their treatment of a minority - even after so many of their ancestors experienced this very thing as the victims! This should be instructive and a warning to us all that this is an under recognized facet of human nature that all are prone to and which must be guarded against.
Good stuff. What is Iran's position on non-Islams living in a single Palestinian state? Would non-Islams face pressure to convert to Islam? Would they be treated as second-class citizens? How has this played out in Iran over the past 50 years, as an example of what Jews could expect if there was a single Palestinian state without special (superior) preference for Jews?