The Anglo-American Proxy War Rages in South-West Asia

The mad drive to regional war is being ruthlessly pursued by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, with the full backing of Washington and other Western capitals. It could spin quickly out of control, perhaps just as dramatically as the proxy war waged by NATO against Russia in Ukraine threatens to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. Although the Biden Administration has not yet formally authorized Kyiv to deploy U.S. deep-strike weapons into Russia, that option is not off the table, despite the renewed warnings from Moscow (cf. below).

In South-West Asia, the Israeli Defense Forces are bringing the death and destruction wreaked in Gaza into Lebanon, demolishing at the same time international law and human rights law. On Sept. 27, several 1,000 kilo bombs, apparently U.S. made, were dropped on southern Beirut, followed by other explosions, collapsing a number of apartment buildings and leaving behind a huge pile of rubble. All that in order to kill the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and other leaders of the movement (which the deranged President Biden, by the way, called “a measure of justice”).

Since then, the IDF has launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon, which Israeli authorities euphemistically term a “limited” incursion, aimed at forcing the population to flee the region. More than 1.4 million Lebanese have been displaced in the past two weeks. This would seem to conform to Eretz Israel — establishing Greater Israel — in a way reported by the Jerusalem Post recently: 1) ethnic cleansing in Gaza; 2) ethnic cleansing in the West Bank; 3) land appropriation in Lebanon.

Benjamin Netanyahu left no doubt as to the intentions of the “crazies” in his government, in his address to the UN General Assembly. Besides denouncing the UN as “a swamp of anti-Semitic bile”, he vowed to “eradicate” Hamas in Gaza and to eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon. Presumably, no matter how many civilians, including children, have to die. As we reported last week, a “new normal” for warfare is being established by Israel and the United States, that ignores the basic rules of combat established over centuries.

The big question remains how far Iran will go now.Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is aware of the danger, as he told reporters on Sept. 23 in New York. Israel, he said, is “dragging us to a point where we do not wish to go. There is no winner in warfare. We are only fooling ourselves if we believe that.”

The response from Washington, on the contrary, has been to promise more military equipment and money to Netanyahu, while sending additional U.S. military forces to the region.