The resistance is a paper tiger

There is no longer any credible resistance in the Middle East. Both Iran and Hezbollah have been decimated by Israeli covert operations and are reeling. If you imagine from behind the comfort of your own keyboard that somehow the resistance is now even more galvanized, you truly need to stop staring at screens and do some real resisting of your own.

Why would anyone on the ground fight on for an organization that cannot even protect its own leader? Both Hezbollah and Iran now face serious crises of legitimacy. Justice is not the issue; it matters not whether you think (or do not think) that Hezbollah or Iran have justice on their side. What matters is force. If you cannot wield force in any competent manner, then your efforts at resistance are futile.

Put another way: the revolutionary moment cannot galvanize if, after successive crises, you respond not with escalation but blunder after blunder.

Do you remember what Iran did after the assassination of General Soleimani in January 2020? Five days after the IRGC’s top military general was assassinated by drone (in civilian dress in the supposedly sovereign country of Iraq), Iran “accidentally” shot down a commercial airliner in retaliation (Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752) and killed 176 civilians, including 146 Iranians!

Some revenge.

General Soleimani was considered the second most powerful person in Iran. In the aftermath of his assassination (which followed numerous extra-judicial killings of top Iranian nuclear scientists) and the civilian airline blunder, you would think that the IRGC’s ears would be primed and ready to prevent any further humiliation of its top brass especially. Cut to 2024. What happened?

The second most powerful person in Iran (aside from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) is once again taken down in a helicopter crash. The IRGC blames a technical malfunction but one need not reach very far in the world of common sense to know that a technical malfunction is simply cover for incompetence.

Meaning that Israel once again succeeded in taking down one of the most powerful leaders allied against it without even beginning any sort of ground war or overt military operation in the region. In retrospect, we can assume with full confidence that President Raisi was holding an exploding pager in his hand which led to his demise.

We can further suppose that the resistance has no more chess moves; neither Putin, nor Nasrallah, nor Raisi have the ability to play 2D chess let alone 5D chess. It is not at all beyond the pale to suppose that the elimination of Raisi paved the way for Pezeshkian, likely a neo-liberal colonized Western/Israeli comprador puppet who promised Nasrallah to the Jews in exchange for power. Netanyahu, that is, is a master of 5D chess and can see at least a dozen or more moves in advance of any enemy. Netanyahu has more options because he is willing to do what the rest of the world finds unthinkable. When the world cowers and you alone have temerity to “rise and kill first,” it’s very easy to beat back the collective global community and inflict upon the weak humiliating defeat upon humiliating defeat.

Does that look like the inevitable victory of the resistance to you? Imagine a similar graphic of Iran with Raisi at the top.

What do you suppose at the moment is the morale of even the most diehard resistance fighters inside both Iran and Hezbollah? After the killings of Soleimani, Raisi, and Nasrallah, morale has all but evaporated. This is simply natural. Again, you may sit at your desk and assert that resolve is now necessarily fiercer, but this is an illusion that does not mesh with material reality. These blunders and humiliations are real and detrimental. Israel is winning, and a greater Israel is coming into existence right before our very eyes. Palestinians are fast going extinct and no one is willing to use force to correct any of this. On the contrary, the axis of resistance is proving to be a paper tiger.

Very likely in my estimation that Israel also took down Flight 752 as a capstone muscle-flex warning to Iran against any retaliation. It worked. Iran did nothing, just as they did nothing after the murder of Raisi. In fact, what Iran did was fall all over themselves trying to convince everyone that both Raisi’s death and the take-down of Flight 752 were their own mistakes. If it were otherwise, they would have to fight. That is, better to whip oneself in penance (muharram) than face up to one’s own cowardice and incompetence.