A major war awaits the "Great Satan"

“This is the most dangerous war in the region. A major and extremely dangerous war. A war whose results will determine the boundaries of roles and locations and the fate of maps and capitals. Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of Yahya Sinwar’s flood to launch a complete coup against the results of the Iranian coup that took place in the past decades. Netanyahu enjoys American support and Western understanding to contain Iran’s arms and axis. A war that only America can stop at the time it deems appropriate and after the combatants have become tired.” The journalist feels anxious when he hears such talk from a man concerned with the course of events and their consequences.

It is clear that the Middle East is holding its breath. It is promised more dangerous days. The interconnectedness of the firestorms threatens to turn into a hurricane. It has never experienced a war with multiple maps like this. A war that spills over the borders of its theaters and in the absence of any international policeman. The people of the region await the date of the scheduled Israeli strike against Iran. Tehran says that it will have no choice but to respond. The exchange of strikes across maps threatens to expand the fires.

The scene is new and extremely dangerous. Today’s Israel is not the same as it was before the “flood” erupted on October 7 of last year. Netanyahu has succeeded in making the war an “existential war” for which Israel does not mind paying the human and economic price.

Iran today is not the Iran that existed before the “flood.” Netanyahu lured it out of the “armed war” and into direct engagement in the confrontation in the Middle East. It is a war that the United States cannot stay out of. This is what Iran has long sought to avoid. Tehran was keen to continue weaving the carpet of its great coup in the region without slipping into the danger of a direct clash with America.

Before the “flood,” Yahya Sinwar sent someone to inform Hezbollah and Iran that “something big might happen.” He asked for the operation to be accompanied with the broadest support. He dreamed that the spark of the “flood” would be the beginning of the “major strike” that he had been whispering about for years, which would involve drowning Israel in a rain of missiles and drones launched from multiple maps, including Iran.

Sinwar received “a promise of the greatest possible support, but no commitment to launch the major strike.” He feared that “Israel would sense that something was about to happen and rush to launch a preemptive strike.” He launched “Operation Flood,” perhaps believing that his allies would get involved, even if they hesitated. Iran did not participate directly, and Hezbollah chose the next day to go to the “support front.”

In the first hours of the "flood", Israel appeared weak, fragile and its prestige was damaged. The military establishment decided to take revenge for the negligence. Netanyahu decided to inflict a complete catastrophe on the Gaza Strip. He did not stop at punishing Hamas, but he inflicted the most severe punishment on the environment that embraced it, i.e. the civilians. In the first period, he pretended to accept a reduced confrontation with Hezbollah under the umbrella of the "rules of engagement."

While waiting for the weight of the war to be transferred to the Lebanese front and the timing of the US elections, he made a dangerous change by opening the chapter of direct clashes with Iran. It is no exaggeration to say that Netanyahu acted in Gaza and Lebanon as if he was trying to keep Iran away from his borders after it had succeeded in establishing itself near them. Israel dealt a severe blow to Hamas. It dealt a similar blow to Hezbollah. It assassinated Hassan Nasrallah and then, by chance, assassinated Yahya Sinwar.

Netanyahu spoke about returning the hostages held by Hamas. He also spoke about returning the residents of the north who were displaced by Hezbollah’s missiles and drones. His sense of the superiority of the Israeli military machine led him to exaggerate the goals. He said that he wanted to make fundamental changes in the security situation surrounding Israel, leaving its effects for generations. He went so far as to talk about a new Middle East. This simply means that he is looking to eliminate the Iranian presence on Israel’s borders. To achieve this, he requires the “resistance” fronts in Gaza and Lebanon to withdraw from the conflict by establishing security belts and imposing strict restrictions for the post-ceasefire period.

Amidst the scenes of brutality practiced by the Israeli military machine in terms of bombing and displacement, the features of a violent coup against the results of the coup carried out by Iran emerge, making it the one with the first word in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana’a.

A battle of breaking bones and changing features and balances. It is not easy for Iranian leader Ali Khamenei to accept that the end of his era coincides with the acceptance of the decline of the regional role he built over decades. Unintentionally, Sinwar pushed the axis to a difficult test. Lebanon is drowning in fire and displaced people, Syria is trying to distance itself, and Iraq is trying to avoid the cup of Israeli or American responses to the factions’ drones.

The talk of the battle of roles reminded me of something I heard in Vienna years ago. In 2008, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, visited Tehran and met with Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. I asked ElBaradei to summarize the Iranian position he had heard in a short sentence. He replied: “We want to be recognized as a major regional power.”

ElBaradei explained that the Iranians see their “fundamental disagreement with America. Ahmadinejad wants to resolve these disagreements and his goal and dream is to be the owner of this great deal, as he sees that he will be a national hero if he achieves that, especially since about 80 or 90 percent of the Iranian people want normal relations with America. Ahmadinejad literally told me in the last year before I left the Atomic Energy Agency: I want to negotiate directly with America only, and I do not want Russia and China.”

A war of roles, borders and sizes. Only the “Great Satan” is capable of intervening “to stop the Israeli coup after curbing the arms of the Iranian coup.” But what do the trembling maps do while waiting for the hour of decisive American intervention to crystallize? And what if Iran turns to the White House and finds a man named Donald Trump reminding it of many pains?

*Quoted from Asharq Al-Awsat