The Logic in Iran's Right to Self-Defense
Efforts by the Israeli government to subdue the Islamic Republic of Iran and escalate the situation in the Middle-East, inflaming the Persian Gulf can be equated to attempting to swallow a porcupine. Iran is historically a defensive, not offensive, state. Before its legitimate and direct strategic retaliation against Israel over the past weekend, Israel had between 2011 and 2024 attacked Iran’s military installations, assassinated scientists, physicists and extrajudicial killings of high ranking military personnel for over 300 times on Iranian soil and abroad.
Gibson Nyikadzino-Herald Correspondent
Efforts by the Israeli government to subdue the Islamic Republic of Iran and escalate the situation in the Middle-East, inflaming the Persian Gulf can be equated to attempting to swallow a porcupine. Iran is historically a defensive, not offensive state.
Before its legitimate and direct strategic retaliation against Israel over the past weekend, Israel had between 2011 and 2024 attacked Iran’s military installations, assassinated scientists, physicists and extrajudicial killings of high ranking military personnel for over 300 times on Iranian soil and abroad.
The retaliation was based on simmering decades of hostility. Iran and other international law observing and abiding states, or even rational non-state actors, this was a deterrent win for the Persian country.
Why retaliate now?
Iran has been exercising strategic patience against Israel. Over the years, the country was focused on fighting the CIA-sponsored ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria and Iraq, hence could not change course until it had completed the tasks.
The recent attacks were launched against Israel because of violations of international law by Israel and attempts to change the narrative by the West of events in the Gaza Strip.
When Israel attacked the Iranian Consulate on April 1 in Damascus, Syria, the US, France and Britain in the UN Security Council refused not only to punish, but to condemn Israel. This changed the equation.
These military attacks by Iran were in sync with Article 51 of the United Nations (UN) Charter which underscores that “nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations”. Such was a legitimate response based on Iran’s strategic patience that is instructive and coming at a time Israel has failed to destroy the Hamas resistance, now want to take on Iran.
Interests of Israel lobby
What the Israelis are doing in the Middle East is not in the strategic national and foreign policy interests of the USA. What is happening in that region is within the interests of the Israel lobby, a powerful establishment whose network cannot be broken by President Joe Biden.
The Israel lobby is a powerful interest group in the USA that wield tremendous power and President Biden is in a situation where there is no way that he can get Israel to change its behaviour without paying a huge political price.
For someone who is up for re-election this November, the last thing he wants to do is take on the Israel lobby because if he gets tough with Israel using tough coercive language, the lobby would come after him.
The USA cannot stop what is happening in the Middle East because President Biden is not capable of stopping it.Thus, the intention to attack the Iranian Consulate was sanctioned to pursue the interests of the Israel lobby who are keen on drawing Iran in direct military conflict.
Informational Warfare
While Western and Israeli media reported that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) intercepted 99 percent of Iranian missiles drones, it refuted reports that significant damage was done on its two military bases. Acknowledging that only a “girl was hurt” near a military base.
New information indicates that Nevatim and Negev military bases were damaged and Israel has incurred some losses signifying that its Iron Dome defence system was strained.
Denying damages to military bases was a well calculated move to damage Iran’s military reputation in the region. Propaganda that 99 percent of Iran’s missiles were intercepted was meant to humiliate Iran as weak to build domestic consumption and building Israeli international opinion.
The astounding coincidence
Following Iran’s attack, there were reports that the IDF managed to shoot 99 percent of the sent missiles and drones. The same success rate by Israel is one replicated from Ukraine against Russia’s significant advances.
To downplay Iran, Western media spread propaganda that Iran used cheap missiles as decoys and outdated drones causing little damage on Israel. Similarly, for Russia it has been that it is using outdated weaponry, has neither strong forces nor modern military equipment to face the west.
What is dangerous is that many of those who follow events in the Middle East see them through the lens of Western media outlets. This creates biases that border on the incompetence of the Western establishment that fail to understand the historical, cultural, linguistic and geographical knowledge of that region.
Pleading for UN help
The UN has not been seen as a useful institution by the Israeli government. Recently, Israel accused the UN of being an anti-Semitic bloc after pointing that acts of genocide where being committed against Palestinians.
However, since its annexation of Palestinian territory in 1948 to date, the Israeli government has been violating the UN Charter without any deterrent mechanisms applied.
The US has vetoed 89 UN Security Council resolutions against Israel since 1945. Of the vetoed resolutions, 33 pertained to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the country’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Since the October 7 act of resistance by the Hamas resistance group, Israel has continued to entrench occupation, escalate its crimes against humanity and making the Middle-East volatile.
However, under the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, wars of national liberation are accepted as a protected and necessary right of occupied people everywhere, in conformity with international humanitarian law.
The annexation of the Palestinian territories therefore call for legitimate responses against colonialism and annexed territories where the UN Charter is violated.
An avalanche of evidence points that Israel has no regard for the UN. However, following attacks by Iran, it has pleaded for UN Security Council help to hear its case. This is the same country that condemns the UN, kill UN humanitarian workers, violate UN resolutions and label the same as anti-Semitic.
Iran is careful and respecting to international law and the law of armed conflict in that it did not attack civilian infrastructure, did not target innocent civilians, did not destroy either schools or hospitals, but targeted military establishments.
