A dog chasing its tail may never catch it, but snakes that mistake
their tails for an edible snake, have been observed to consume themselves
beginning at the tail.
Whereas it can be said there is some truth in the above statement,
it remains to be seen if there is truth in any of the assertions that Scott
Lingamfelter makes in the article he wrote under the title: “Keeping a python's
grip on Iran,” published on June 30, 2019 in The Washington Times.
It is not a far-fetched proposition to equate the saber-rattling
United States of America to a snake, be that a rattle snake or a python. But we
must question whether Scott Lingamfelter's description of the scene that's
playing out in the Persian Gulf is accurate. He said this:
“Like a python gripping prey, Mr. Trump has applied pressure [on
Iran] in the form of sanctions … Like the prey in the clutches of a python, the
more the victim struggles, the tighter the python grips it. The United States
is squeezing the life out of the Iranian economy, and by extension, the
viability of the mullah dictator”.
He went on to say that Iran lashed out by downing a US unmanned
drone. He said so without repeating the claim, put out earlier by the Pentagon,
that the drone was in international space. It is that Iranian fishermen found
and collected debris of the drone from well within Iran's territorial waters.
If anything, this proves that Iran was not lashing out. It was
simply exercising its right to defend itself under international law. In
addition, the incident proves that either the Americans don't know what they
are doing in the Persian Gulf, or they deliberately provoked the Iranians in
the Strait of Hormuz to see how far they can bluff them by rattling sabers,
without the Iranians responding militarily.
But if America wanted to test Iran's military preparedness, why do
it now? The answer to this question may lie more than a thousand miles
northwest of the Strait of Hormuz. It is that a scenario similar to the one
described by Scott Lingamfelter, is unfolding not in the Persian Gulf but in
Syria. It is there that the Assad forces and their allies are tightening the
grip on Israel with the assistance of the Iranian military.
In response, Israel is lashing out, trying to engage the Iranians
into a fight that will force the Americans to intervene and save Israel from
defeat. But the Americans must have calculated that the Iranians might want to
spare themselves, letting Syria and its regional allies tackle Israel while
they take care of the Americans in the Persian Gulf. And so, the question that
the Americans are facing now is this: Can they fight on two fronts simultaneously,
away from home, without being so overstretched they'll do poorly in both
places?
There is no doubt that every time Israel conducts a raid in Syria,
the Assad forces and Iran gain valuable information about Israel's
capabilities, which is why they welcome rather than condemn the Israeli raids,
and why they refrain from responding. They must have figured by now that they
can absorb all of Israel's hits till it has depleted its ammunition, without
them suffering serious damage. In short, Syria and its allies are ready for war
with Israel should it be foolish enough to start one.
Thus, the accepted view at this time, is that unless America
rescues Israel, the latter will be defeated in a flash. It also means that the
Syrian grip, which is tightening around Israel, is making America dread the
choice it will be forced to make in case of an all-out war. The choice is this:
Should America abandon the Persian Gulf to go rescue Israel, or should it
remain in the Gulf to protect the shipping lanes, and see Israel become
Palestine again … the way it has been since the beginning of time?
Yes, all of that is conjecture. But if we assume that the analysis
is correct, can it explain why President Trump ordered a military strike on
Iran in retaliation for the downing of the drone, but then rescinded the order
minutes before it was carried out? To answer that question, we need to unveil
one more piece of information. We can extract it from the incidents that took
place over Syria on previous occasions.
It happened that the Assad forces needed the assistance of the
Russian air force to defeat the Islamic State. But those forces were accused to
using poison gas at a time when Donald Trump had said he would bomb Syria if it
did just that. When Assad was said to have done it, Trump wanted to keep his
word to appease the warmongering savages at home without damaging his
relationship with Russia's Putin.
To accomplish the two goals, Trump called Putin and told him to
tell Assad to designate three already demolished buildings against which
America will lob a hundred or so Tomahawk missiles and call the operation
mission accomplished. When this was done, it looked like a piece of theater
that cost America a hundred million dollars in ammunition plus related
expenses, while costing Russia and Syria nothing.
Trump tried to duplicate that performance with the Iranians, but
the response he got was the middle finger of the Ayatollah. This left Trump
with the choice of bombing three Iranian sites, doing little damage but
starting a tit-for-tat cycle that will escalate to become a full-scale war at
the end of which there will be a humiliated America and a Palestinian state.
The alternative to that choice was to abort the retaliatory strike and call the
operation a victory of sort. Trump chose the alternative.