U.S./Israel-Iran War: The Issue is Palestine; the Issue is Zionism
On the one hand, I feel the need to say something about the US/Israel-Iran war; On the other hand, I saw it coming and said it right after October 7th, 2023, in “Israel’s Solution to Gaza: War on Iran.” And I’m really tired and depressed to see it happening as was inevitable.
The most important thing here is for everyone to understand what this conflict is, and is not, about.
In a short clip I urge everyone to watch, Seyed Mohammad Marandi says it quite well: “The real issue is not Iran’s nuclear program. The real issue for the United States is Iran’s support for the Palestinian people. That is it…The issue for the United States is Palestine.”
The issue is not nuclear weapons, and we have to stop giving credence to any attempt to fix the public focus on that. The issue is Palestine—or, in other words, Zionism.
It is about Zionism. It is about forcing Iran—the remaining powerful nation-state in the region that has not—to once and for all accept the Zionist colonizing project of expelling and exterminating the Palestinian people, which is underway in Gaza and the West Bank.
Per Marandi:
[The United States] wants Iran to end its support for Palestine. It wants Iran to be something like Turkey …or the Emirates, or Egypt, or Jordan, or Morocco, or it doesn’t matter, [to], say, criticize the Israeli regime, but at the end of the day do nothing in reality to oppose its hegemony and domination.
It is indeed a regime-change operation against Iran, and its entire point—the only thing about the regime that has to change—Is for Iran to accept the Zionist project, which means, abandoning support for Palestinian liberation, accepting Israel as the unchallenged regional hegemon, and ridding itself of any military capacity that would allow effective resistance to any aggression, including against the Palestinians, that Israel might wish to undertake.
Understand: the only thing. If Ayatollah Khamenei announces tomorrow that Iran is capitulating to acceptance of the Zionist project and changes nothing else, sanctions will be lifted and relations with Iran will be normalized. The United States will not care if Iran is Islamist or secular, theocratic or democratic, if women have to wear hijabs or burqas or miniskirts. All the blather about democracy, women’s rights, and secular liberalism will disappear. Even civilian nuclear power would be permitted.
Understand also: If Iran were to capitulate on the nuclear issue and announce that it will forgo all nuclear enrichment, it will still be attacked. If and only if Iran capitulates on accepting the Zionist project and abandoning the Palestinians to whatever fate Israel wants to inflict on them (extermination and expulsion, as we all see), will the attack on Iran stop.
It’s convenient for the U. S. and Israel to present the nuclear issue to the public as the main problem, but it is only relevant to them as a lesser included aspect of the principal issue of capitulation to the Zionist project—“lesser” because, as they know, as the DNI has declared (“I don’t care what she says”), Iran has no nuclear weapons, but has other weapons and assets that presently do threaten the Zionist project.
Sure, Israel—which is not so much targeting Iran’s nuclear sites, please note—wants the U.S., the only country with the means to possibly damage it, to attack the Fordo site. Zionist hawks, knowing how opposed the American people are to war on Iran, are pushing the idea that it can be a one-and-done action that will solve the problem and won’t get the US totally involved in the war. But, as everybody knows, if the U.S. directly attacks Fordo (or anywhere else in Iran), the Iranians will of course strike back at U.S. military assets—which is exactly what Israel wants. Israeli and American........
© CounterPunch
