John Ogunlela
The social media age puts misinformation on supercruise and unless you take your time, you will be misinformed and you won’t know it. On the Iranian matter, you can easily see a big difference between the position of those who have been reading paper literature on the matter since the late 1980s and those who started reading about it online maybe a year ago.
It has been known for long that Iran was trying to build a bomb and Israel has been making several plans to destroy it. They even bombed it with a computer virus at a time which destroyed the spinners (centrifuges). The virus was inserted through a compromised USB flash drive. Another attack was mounted that maxed out the volume of the computers on the complexes. Israel and the United States have been circling that programme for at least 20 or 25 years.
Israel outfitted their F-16s with external tanks for the long flight over Syria and Jordan/Iraq for the exceptional mission.
Two things later happened to make things easier for Israel.
Number 1, the American F-35 project made stealth aircraft available. The US had been clamouring to get the F-22 but the US refused. The F -22 is so advanced it is operated only by the United States. The F-35 is the single engine, export quality and similar capabilities.
Number 2, the fall of Assad of Syria and the relative ostracism of Jordanian king by hardliners. This opened the opportunity for mid air refuelling over Syria.
As soon as Hamas and Hezbollah were done away with, everybody who had been paying attention knew that the inner core of the onion was now exposed and the opportunity will not be missed. It was something the American-Israeli alliance had spent decades working on. That is why it was a bit amusing to see President Bill Clinton yesterday denouncing Bibi Netanyahu’s moves as a plot by Bibi to remain in power. It was the height of hypocrisy and Clinton knew he was lying flat out. In fact, he knew he used exactly this plot when he was president by bombing Iraq (Operation Desert Fox) to distract the public during the investigation of his sexual scandal with Monica Lewinsky in 1998. He was falsely projecting this upon Bibi even though he knew the fact that the US has a long one on Iran and its nuke programme. Too many lies!
Another factor most of the late arrivals on this issue don’t know is the fact that the Arabs are generally in favour of Israel bombing out the Iranian nuclear programme. In fact, Saudi Arabia had made it clear to the Americans that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, they will do the same through the Pakistan route. The Arab nations quietly believe Iran (Iranians are not Arabs) will one day strike them with nuclear weapons if it builds one or at best, it will use it to keep their heads down and advance upon them in political-religious-ideological territories.
I want you to understand what is on ground here is the ethics of the thing. If Saudi Arabia decides to build nukes today, will the US attack it? Most probably they won’t because the problems created will just be too much. The Saudis also know that going for nukes is not worth the trouble as such because the problems it will create will probably be too much. This is how ethics work. But when the Iranian regime screams Death to Israel and Death to America everyday and murmurs death to Saudi Arabia secretly, they step into the territory of sheer force and they’d better have what it takes. If you want to cuss at the baddest bully on the street, of course you may, but you’d better have what it takes the day he blocks you in the backstreet. Nobody says you cannot challenge America or throw sand into its eyes but you better have what it takes because you have stepped into the territory of brute force.
Then Iran has no allies. Who wants to ally with them! Russia could not help Assad and could not help Azebaijan because its hands were full already. China hates wars because it knows that the hidden dangers are another unseen war. To what end propping up a religious dictatorship, an ideology it fundamentally hates? China is a pragmatic dictatorship and its primary focus is on order, prosperity and independence, which it hopes to grow into a global dictatorship if possible. It is not an ideological nation like the West. It looks at things strictly through the lens of pragmatism. It will not get engaged in a pointless fight.
Above all, from the viewpoint of diplomacy, the most significant things in this war were the pieces of deceptions pulled off by Donald Trump and by Pakistan. Trump had of course earned for himself a reputation for vacillation, prevarication, half truths and outright lies. It was not much for him to wink at Israel to gun down a man he was ‘negotiating’ with! Such was the height of the deception and it brought back the real barbaric days. Definitely this was wrong and it is a blight on the United States. It was totally unethical but Trump did it anyway and later added a layer of “two weeks” grace period. Some people still believed that.
Then Pakistan. It boasted to the heavens it will join the war on Iran’s side. The next thing its Air force chief was in the Whitehouse having lunch with Trump. It is suggested that this was a thank you invite from Trump. The Pakistani man is rumoured to have done Israel a favour that enabled them to target one of the Iranian too brass.
Iran went to war without friends – except you count the bloggers and Op-Ed writers!
But Benjamin Netanyahu started it by fixing his son’s wedding for June 12. Or was it 13? This convinced the Iranians that no attacks will happen within 72 hours of that. The Israelis will be having a royal wedding. All the top commanders lowered their guard and then the Spiderweb operation tore into them with its suicide drones.
Overall, the Americans and the Israeli were on full war footing while the Iranians and the bloggers were on an emotional and ethical setting. Somehow, too many people don’t understand wars. They think it is like war games and it has cushions and it’s soft and woke. Oh, it is a gristly business overflowing with deception. All friendship and courtesy have ended and the intention is to kill, steal and destroy. The western powers set themselves into that mode to consummate a job they have worked at for 20 years or more. If you want to understand it, you should start from the deeper background issues that shaped up June 12/12 and the Summer Solstice of the year.
Yet it is not the end. It is the end and the beginning. This could make Iran double down and Russia too will want to redeem its image after failing to back up its allies and could only watch helplessly as tragedy engulfed them. These events are extreme and will most likely set the world up for a global war which in my own opinion can come within the next 20 years.