News Analysis: What is Israel's Goal in Humiliating Iran?
Political News Blog, Kodoom.com:
By timing of the assassination of HAMAS leader in Tehran to coincide with Iran's Presidential inauguration attended by foreign emissaries, Israel seems to be signaling to the world, and particularly to countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Armenia, and Turkey, that Iran is not a reliable ally strong enough even to defend its own allies and guests inside its own borders. By targeting top IRGC, Hezbollah and HAMAS leaders, Israel is also betting that Iranian Leaders, fearing their own fate and death, would scale down attacks in Northern Israel and support for Gaza.
Inside Iran, the calls for "tough" revenge are becoming louder. Tehran's Mayor and a former Presidential candidate, Alireza Zakani, has predicted that the assassination of HAMAS leader will soon lead to the destruction of Israel. Ghazizadeh Hashemi, the Head of Iran's Martyr Foundation and another former Presidential candidate, says only assassination of a top ranking Israeli official would be a meaningful and commensurate response.
Outside Iran, exiled Iranians have different views about the escalation. Menashe Amir, an Israeli journalist of Iranian ancestry says (in an interview with Shahram Homayoun) that Iranian leaders have shown their hot rhetoric is not backed by real military strength and their slogans not followed by meaningful follow ups because they lack real popular support among Iranians and are afraid of being overthrown after a confrontation with Israel.
Some journalists and analysts inside Iran, like Ata Bahrami, agree that the assassinations in Tehran were meant to humiliate Iran but were part of Israel's strategy to deflect from their own disastrous humiliation in GAZA by escalating the GAZA/Lebanon conflict and dragging the United States into a direct war with Iran:
Nothing is predictable in politics and in the Middle East, except constant conflict and more war spending. As the people of Iran, Israel, US, Lebanon and Palestine pay the price of these conflicts, others like Turkey and Russia seem to be strengthening their military/economic positions and ties, and countries like Saudi Arabia seem to be interested in reducing tensions with Iran, Israel and Russia.
In the European arena, Ukraine is the country ravaged by war and outraged about Iran's military support for Russia. The weapons manufacturers in the US seem to be benefiting from a prolonged war of attrition in Ukraine.
Iran's Domestic Situation
Although inflation is still rampant, the main blow to Iran's economy seems to be coming from the expatriation of foreign currency to abroad and the mass exodus of wealthy and educated Iranians. Although opinionated and highly educated, Iranians are usually not partisan or strongly in favor of particular political parties or systems. Iranians cherish education, business income, and simple social freedoms such as freedom of speech, dress and music. Iranians inside and outside the country are perplexed by the foolhardy insistence of the country's hardliners on mandatory head scarf for women and draconian laws on music, concerts and boy-girl's public relationships. After the death of Mahsa Amini and the ensuing riots against mandatory Hijab, nothing seems to be weakening the popular support for the Iranian government more than unpopular draconian laws, which are often ignored by people or not uniformly enforced anyway.
Morality and chastity laws have become a farce and the government's Achilles heel, while draining most of the country's precious resources. It has become a senseless game of cat and mouse, or in Persian "Roo kam koni" between hardliners and young rebellious Iranians, dividing a nation which needs unity and peace more than any other time in their history. Many of those who promote the mandatory head scarf cannot even enforce it in their own circles and families. Some of the promoters of mandatory Hijab are not even faithful believers themselves, and are sometimes caught drinking alcohol in private underground parties in Iran or in nightclubs and bars in Turkey or Dubai. By some estimates, one-fourth of Iran's foreign currency income from oil exports is repatriated to countries like Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Australia and the United States by wealthy immigrants who do not move for jobs or political reasons but to relax in restaurants and concert halls abroad, without a head scarf or to hold their husband's or boyfriend's hand in public without the risk of imprisonment by the Morality Police.
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