Israel’s Game

A few days ago, a very interesting article appeared in the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post. It was written by AJ Jaff, whose profile describes him as “a recognised expert in international security, crisis management, and geopolitical risk”. The “expert” began the article by acknowledging that the 6-month-long air war on Iran has failed to defeat Iran. Then, he provided some “out-of-the-box” ideas for the US to consider if it wants to “achieve its objectives” and win the war. According to him, the war will only be won when Iran’s institutional coherence is broken, resulting in its Balkanization.

I will discuss Mr Jaff’s “out of the box” ideas in a bit, but first, I want to analyse the “expert” himself a little. Two things quickly popped up. First is how he began his article. The first sentence is: “The Pentagon reportedly asked outside analysts this month for creative ideas on Iran.” The hyperlink in this sentence redirects the reader to another article in The Jerusalem Post that cites a CNN report saying that the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, has been privately looking for an off-ramp in the Iran War. How quaint! While the Pentagon is asking for ideas to wrap up the war, Mr Jaff, the expert, stepped up with ideas to escalate the war! It appears that Mr Jaff (and the Zionists) have very different ideas and even objectives than US Generals about the same war. No wonder Pete Hegseth (a committed Zionist) has been firing so many of them!

Secondly, one is amused to see that in March, 10 days after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, the same Mr Jaff was declaring a resounding victory and claiming that “the data tells a decisive and irreversible story” and “Iran’s missile fire rate has collapsed by 92 percent”! After reading that article now, most readers might laugh heartily and dismiss Mr Jaff, the “expert,” as an idiot. However, that would be an incorrect assessment. On the same day as Mr Jaff’s gaffe’s appearance in The Jerusalem Post, an article of mine elucidated the Israeli strategy as one giant bluff whose aim was to lure the USA into a destructive war in the Middle East by plunging it into a sunk cost fallacy. The Israeli plan was to lure the USA in with the dreams of an easy victory like the First Gulf War or the Maduro kidnapping, but it knew all along that those dreams would prove to be hollow, and their sole purpose was to bring the USA into the war. Then, in the next phase, with the dreams of victory proving illusory, the USA was to be baited with the sunk cost fallacy trap so that it would blunder into further escalation in pursuit of Israeli objectives. Mr Jaff’s seemingly absurd somersaults follow this pattern perfectly.

Now let’s turn our attention to Mr. Jaff’s “expert recommendations”. There are three of them:

• The USA should “recognize the sovereign independence of the Iranian Kurdistan, Ahwaz, and Baluchistan people”.
• To raise the one million troops required for a victorious ground invasion of Iran, the USA should launch an enlistment scheme based on debt forgiveness (estimated at 40,000 to 1,00,000 US Dollars per person) for 24-36 months of service per person.
• The US should strike a deal with China that would involve softening the US stance on Taiwan and ensuring China that even after Iran’s destruction, China would continue to receive an uninterrupted supply of Iranian oil in exchange for China’s abandonment of Iran.

Before analysing these ideas, one must first take a moment to marvel at the arrogance and ignorance of the Zionists.

The Zionists have played the victim and the superior/invincible race roles simultaneously in a way that lends itself to a diagnosis of severe dissociative disorder.

This pathological psyche has led them to the delusion that the foremost purpose of the world and everything in it is to accommodate their ambitions. As I have argued elsewhere, this psyche is leading them to their self-created and inevitable destruction as well.

Now, let’s take these ideas one by one. The first idea is simply advocating the balkanization of Iran (just the newest version of the Yinon Plan). The implications are very interesting, though. By supporting Kurdish and Baloch (not Baluchi as written by Mr. Jaff, a mistake that only lays bare how little he knows about Balochistan!) separatism, the US could kill three birds with one stone in the service of Israel. Kurdish and Baloch separatism are grave threats to the integrity of Turkiye and Pakistan, respectively. Very cleverly, the Zionist Mr Jaff is pointing the way for the next wars to be launched by the USA in Israel’s service. The Zionists know that Iran’s balkanization wouldn’t ensure Israel’s survival. They are aiming at the complete destruction of the whole region stretching from Morocco to Pakistan, an Israeli goal correctly identified by the Pakistani liberal thinker Eqbal Ahmed more than 40 years ago!

The second idea is about finding the meat for the meat grinder of forever wars envisioned by Israel. With antipathy toward Israel consistently on the rise in the USA, how can American youth be convinced to become cannon fodder in the Wars of Israeli Ambitions? The answer, according to Mr. Jaff, lies in luring them with the promise of debt forgiveness. Most young Americans are riddled with debt in the exploitative capitalistic financial system (run by whom?) of the USA. Mr Jaff wants their debts written off in return for their blood, sweat, and tears spilled on the battlefields of the Middle East. However, the question arises: who will pay the bill of “debt forgiveness” for this indentured slave army? Will the big capitalists pay? Of course not. The state will pay.

In other words, the US taxpayers will pay billions of dollars so that their sons and daughters can be killed or crippled far from home in wars that have nothing to do with the American people’s welfare.

The third idea is the most “brilliant” one. It’s also the one that should ring alarm bells for even the most obtuse section of people in the USA. Mr. Jaff proposes to bribe China with oil and concessions on Taiwan to abandon Iran. It hasn’t occurred to him that for men like General Dan Caine, China represents a much bigger threat to the USA than Iran! It also peddles the fallacy that Iran is another Venezuela! Such a bizarre, arrogantly ignorant notion can only come from Zionists! In his obsession with what the genocide-dependent state of Israel needs to survive, Mr Jaff has ignored the basic fact of geography that Iran lies closer to China than Venezuela is to the USA! He has also conveniently failed to specify what concessions the USA should make on Taiwan. Unfortunately for Mr Jaff and the Zionists, the Chinese leaders (unlike many in the USA) don’t prioritise Israeli interests over their own country’s.

As I am engaged in analyzing Israel’s “game plan”, one other important factor must be mentioned: Gaza. In the last few days, clear statements have come from Israeli ministers showing their intention to depopulate Gaza completely. Israel’s ultimate goal has always been to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that started with the Nakba in 1948. Since the start of the Gaza blockade in 2007, Israel had been following a policy of making Gaza uninhabitable while concurrently using it as a weapons testing laboratory through periodic aggressions/wars. This policy of slow genocide was abandoned after the 7 October attacks. The goal then became to “clear” Gaza through a “fast genocide” within a few months. However, unexpectedly stubborn Palestinian resistance coupled with the categorical refusal of regional countries (especially Egypt) to accept Palestinian refugees has so far prevented this. The recent pressure from Israel on the USA to give it a green light for forcible expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza shows that Israel hasn’t lost sight of its genocidal goals in Palestine for one minute, even during the Iran War. If Palestinian refugees are forced into Egypt, it will provide an added bonus for Israel by destabilising Egypt.

A summary of the comprehensive Israeli strategic plan is as follows: Israel wants a massive US ground invasion of Iran with more than a million soldiers to destroy the Iranian State and balkanize the country with the help of Kurdish and Baloch separatists. This will, in turn, bring the “Grand Israeli War” to its next phase: the destruction of Turkiye and Pakistan. The latter will be denuclearized after internal instability brought upon by economic, political, and military crises results in an implosion of the State, leaving Israel’s ally India as the sole power in the subcontinent. Simultaneously, Israel plans to depopulate Gaza and South Lebanon while destabilising both Syria and Egypt to an extent that new civil wars erupt there. To achieve these lofty aims, Israel wants the USA to put its strategic tussle with China on hold and offer significant concessions on vital issues like Taiwan to keep China neutral. This will free up the USA to deploy its full military might in fighting Israel’s wars and divert limited but critical military resources in bulk to the Middle East from the Pacific. With the whole of the Middle East in ashes, Israel can replace the USA as Saudi Arabia’s “security guarantor”, gain control over all 3 Muslim Holy Mosques (in Makkah, Medina, and Al-Quds) to be used as blackmail against any future attempt by Muslims to confront it, and create a Greater Israel that is not dependent on US aid. Afterwards, Israel can easily discard the USA in favor of a modus vivendi with the new global hegemon (China) as the former’s power wanes through wars and strategic overextension.

This Israeli “game plan” is clearly fantastic, unrealistic, and wildly overambitious. However, like the Nazis, Israelis see themselves as an embattled and desperate “superior race” that has to risk it all on a grand throw of the dice. In its post-7 October psychosis, Israel has lost whatever rationality or sense of proportion it previously possessed. Like Hitler, Israel’s leaders fail to see their predicament: they might win some victories in this war, but each victory will open up new threats, which will result in fatigue as the costs of war mount and geographic and demographic factors overstretch both Israel and the USA. In his seminal work, “Israeli Exceptionalism – The Destabilising Logic of Zionism”, Professor Shahid Alam explained this brilliantly: “The tragedy of Israel is not fortuitous. Driven by history, chance, and cunning, the Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnessing the strength of the first against the second, they have produced a conflict that can only grow deeper over time. In this conflict, Israel’s triumphs are temporary, are indeed illusory, since they evoke a deeper, wider response from the societies that suffer the devastation of its triumphs. In the long run, in the time scale of history, by relentlessly pressing its advantages, Israel only ensures that its adversaries will slowly build the defenses that will eventually rise to match Israel’s military might and its expansionist ambitions.”

Blinded by the imperatives of genocidal Zionist ideology, it would be foolish to expect the recognition of this reality from the Israelis.

However, the USA and the Muslim World urgently need to recognize “Israel’s Game” to minimize the damage to be suffered by them. Had Hitler been stopped at Munich, the Second World War might never have happened. Had Israel’s genocide in Gaza been stopped in November 2023, we wouldn’t be seeing the Iran War and the Hormuz crisis today. If Israel isn’t stopped now, we will see not just Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon, but Turkiye, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, and the Gulf countries engulfed in flames of war as well.

As Israel plans to fight this war to the last US soldier, it would behoove the USA to realize that playing Israel’s game will result in polarization and decimation of American society (just like the Vietnam War put an end to Lyndon Johnson’s vision of “Great Society), the loss of its military dominance in the Pacific, and the loss of its global economic primacy. Today, it is imperative that all of the Muslim World in general and Turkiye, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in particular start squarely backing Iran in thwarting external aggression. The recent Mecca Pact between Pakistan, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia can only be meaningful if it clearly declares Israel as the greatest threat to peace and operationalizes the military and economic power of these countries to combat Israeli aggression in Gaza, West Bank/East Jerusalem, Lebanon, and Iran. Only through the defeat of Israel’s genocidal state and the birth of an independent Palestinian State can peace and security be ensured for the Middle East. If these countries present a united front against Israeli aggression, not only will they be backed by the likes of China and Russia, but they will also compel the USA to recognize Israel for the dangerous strategic liability it is. “America Firsters” will do well to remember Nietzsche’s saying: “The most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what one is trying to do.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.