Countdown in Iran to Israel’s counterstrike: ‘Spotlight’ on Press TV

The Friday prayer sermon delivered yesterday by Iran’s Supreme Leader Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khameneh in a central square of Teheran which drew an audience of hundreds of thousands chanting ‘death to Israel’ was the first of its kind in more than four years. Later in the day, the country’s English language global broadcaster Press TV reached out to foreign talking heads for comment on what he said. I and Yves Engler, a political activist in Montreal were brought on air for a 25-minute round of questions and answers.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/131140

Put in brief, the Supreme Leader directed his attention exclusively at the crimes Israel is perpetrating in the neighborhood, for which it will be properly punished by Iran and its allies.  He called upon the entire Muslim world to unite in support of this just fight.

What I found most striking in the report on the Ayatollah’s speech and in the formulation of all questions for our discussion by presenter Bardia Honardar is that all attention is directed solely against Israel; hardly a word is said about the United States’ role in the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza and Lebanon.

What I make of this is the following: Israel as the clearly visible perpetrator of the ongoing genocide and atrocities in the region is a country generally reviled at the popular as well as state level throughout the Muslim world. The enabler of Israel’s crimes, or, as I suggest, the power guiding Israel’s rampage for its own purposes, the United States, presents a more divisive issue for Muslim countries worldwide, since so many of them are embedded with U.S. joint defense agreements and are host to American military bases. 

Support for Iran’s defense against Israel by these latter states and peoples who are embedded with Washington is being ‘requested’ by Teheran in an entirely separate way from the Ayatollah’s outreach to co-religionists. This took place at a meeting with the Gulf States in which Iran threatened to attack their oil rigs and refineries in case Israel attacks Iran’s hydrocarbon industry, which would be done with the approval and likely the military support of Washington.  So much for ‘Muslim unity’ as an abstract concept.

Of course, none of the latter was put on air by our host.

I call attention to the mini-debate I had with Mr. Engler over whether Washington is just ‘complicit’ in Israel’s atrocities, as he believes, or is guiding the rampage, as I believe, following my concept of a US proxy war in which Israel is the proxy, carrying out the U.S. mission of kicking ass in the region and reinforcing American global hegemony within its assigned territory of West Asia.

I also call attention to the time lag in consciousness of what is going on by our Press TV interlocutor. His question at the conclusion of the program about U.S. ‘hypocrisy’ with respect Israel’s conduct sounds today like it comes from another planet.  Hypocrisy is, as I say, the small change of diplomacy everywhere.  Of far greater concern to us all should be Israeli practice of genocide that is enabled by Washington’s delivery of weapons and intelligence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Postscript: The Ayatollah delivered his sermon in both Farsi and Arabic, and I am told that the Arabic version was very good indeed. Note that my information on the sermon and on the meeting that Iranian officials had with leaders of the Gulf States was a Russian Orientalist who spoke in Part One of yesterday's 'Great Game' hosted by Vyacheslav Nikonov.

Transcript below by a reader

PressTV - Bardia Honardar: 0:21
Welcome to Spotlight. Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyd Ali Khamenei has called for Muslim unity in the face of Israel's crimes in Gaza and Lebanon. In his words, any blow to the regime is a service to all of humanity. These remarks come as Israel is continuing with its full-scale aggression attacking Gaza and Lebanon from ground and air. The regime also continues spilling blood in the occupied West Bank, Syria and Yemen, and has shown zero will to entertain avenues that could lead to an end of hostilities and a restoration to some calm in the region.

0:56
Meanwhile, resistance groups are continuing their retaliatory attacks on the Israeli regime. Those topics and more will be discussed on tonight's edition of Spotlight. Here are our guests. Author and political activist Yves Engler joining us from Montreal. And we also have independent international affairs analyst Gilbert Doctorow who is joining us from Brussels.

1:28
Gentlemen welcome to the program. Let's start off with Mr. Engler in Montreal. The leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei made an address today urging Muslim unity against Israel. How pivotal can that unity be when unity among many regional countries is the missing component in confronting and shutting down the Israeli crimes in the region?

Yves Engler: 1:54
Well it could be, it could be. I don't know that it will be. It certainly hasn't been. I mean, if you look at even the bordering countries, they've basically been complicit with Israel's crimes, or a number of them have, the different regimes in the region. But it obviously could be.

I mean, it's a large part of the world's population, and there obviously is an affinity. But if you look at how the US and Israel have been able to divide the region, weaken countries, destroy efforts at development, subordinate different governments, it's difficult. But it certainly could be. And I think that one of the things that could change the dynamics is if some of these governments that have been complicit in the normalization process have, you know, diplomatic relations and trade relations with Israel, if they fall, whether that's in Jordan, whether that's in Egypt or elsewhere.

PressTV: 3:09
Gilbert Doctorow, staying with Ayatollah Khamenei's address today, the leader hailed the retaliatory missile strikes by the Iranian armed forces, and he said that Tuesday's response to Israel was legitimate and lawful. Now under Article 51 of the UN Charter Tehran exercised self-defense. That's a notion stressed by many Iranian officials. Do you agree that this was a proper and justified response?

Doctorow: 3:37
Yes, unequivocally, that's exactly what it was. It was also very moderate. It was sending a clear message about Iran's capabilities, about its hypersonic missiles, their accuracy. It was not intended to do vast damage, and it was definitely to avoid causing civilian or even military casualties. It was to show in an unmistakable way that Israel's air defenses are incapable of countering the offensive weapons that Iran possesses. In that sense, it was success.

But for the general public, for the readers of the "New York Times", this is too subtle a message. In the Pentagon, I think there may be a few acute minds who understand it. And they were the ones who were the audience of this attack by Iran.

PressTV: 4:34
Right, and Mr. Engler, share with us your opinion on Iran's operation True Promise 2, that was carried out against the Israeli regime on October 1st. It's being considered as a failure for the Israelis, which can no longer boast their military superiority. And that goes for the U.S. As well, which could not fully protect Israel. Have the Iranian operations, True Promise 1 and True Promise 2, have they changed some of the military equations in West Asia in your opinion?

Engler: 5:05
Well they certainly changed the couple weeks of one-sided Israeli successes in terms of obviously killing Nasrallah, the communications devices, blowing that up, you know, clearly a whole bunch of Israeli successes in Lebanon.

And so I think that there's no doubt about it that this showed that Israel is exposed. Israel can cause a lot of damage, but if it gets into a full-on war with Iran, Iran can cause a whole lot of damage to Israel. The leader of the Canadian opposition party, who is going to probably be the next prime minister in Canada, Pierre Poilievre, he said in response to these Iranian missiles, he said, "All of these attacks were targeted at civilians. None of them were pinpointing military targets."

So as for my colleague the xxxxxxx Canadian politician with the absolute lie, the lie upon lies and absolute complete reversal of reality, where they targeted military targets, very clearly did everything they could to avoid civilian casualties, and were very successful in those two objectives. But Canadian public is so ignorant of what's going on that this politician can lie so flagrantly, and there's no kind of response to it, there's no political pushback, There's no media pushback. So this is the-- and it's the same dynamic that goes on in the U.S., of course.

6:52
There's a small number of people who are following this properly, who are seeking out alternative information, but the dominant media is just totally one-sided. And if you listen to the dominant media, it's as if there was, you know, they, the Israelis shot everything down. It was a big failure. And then simultaneously, they were trying to target civilians, though no civilians were killed. But it speaks to it.

And then, if you look at Canadian and U.S. Politicians, like I just listened to Joe Biden, he's basically giving Israel a green light to a major attack against Iran. And Canadian politicians are doing the same. This is hopefully the more sober-minded military strategists in the Israeli government realize that that's a big mistake and it's going to lead to all kinds of damage in Israel. But clearly there's a lot of support among the political elite in these G7 countries for even more escalation by Israel in the region.

PressTV: 7:56
Right. Gilbert Doctorow, let's turn our attention to the attacks that are taking place in Lebanon. Israel is bombing hospitals, clinics, medical personnel, just like it did in Gaza. Many are seeing the aggression against the Lebanese as basically a continuation of the Gaza genocide. The world watched Israel flatten and demolish Gaza and murder over 41,000 Palestinians. The international community basically did nothing. Will it do something this time around?

Doctorow: 8:28
Let's leave the international community out of it. Even coming back to your first question regarding the Muslim nations and what they can do to alleviate the pain that xxxxxx their brethren are experiencing in Palestine, in Lebanon and so forth. To understand the situation, we have to take a step back from what we've been talking about in the last few minutes and ask who is driving this? The assumption, I assume, from the question and from the answer of my fellow panelist is that Israel is driving this and the United States is supporting it.

9:04
I beg to differ with that. The United States is driving it. Israel is the proxy of the United States. And the United States is practicing in the Middle East through Israel exactly the same proxy war that it's carrying on through, by means of Ukraine against Russia. That has to be clear to understand how the countries around will react and what are the limits on Iran's possibility of meeting the challenge.

Iran is facing the United States, not just Israel. And I think your leadership knows that perfectly well. The general public does not know that, because they think that Mr. Netanyahu is drawing Mr. Biden around by the nose. That isn't the case.

PressTV:
All right. And what about the issue of Lebanon? Could you address that, too? That was part of our question.

Doctorow:
Lebanon is a further provocation directed against Iran. Israel by itself at this point cannot take on Iran. It has to bring the United States in. Israel's waiting for Iran to be so provoked that it will take a dramatic action which will be used by the United States as a casus belli to enter the war. The way out of this will be the conclusion on October 24th of the general strategic cooperation between Russia and Iran, because then it will be perfectly clear that the United States is facing not Iran, but Russia.

PressTV: 10:36
Yves Engler, let's focus more on the US's position regarding not just the Gaza genocide, but Israel's regional crimes. How can Washington at the same time claim that it's pushing for a ceasefire and say that it doesn't want a broader regional escalation, but at the same time it's providing Israel with the tools, with the arsenal and the all-out support to continue killing innocent women and children, and it's not just in Gaza any more?

Engler:
Well, they can say it because they lie. That's, they, of course, have provided all kinds of, you know, materiel support, intelligence support, diplomatic support for all the crimes, obviously in Gaza, which keep going on. And the killing still is a remarkable level of killing.

11:28
And there's just a new couple different reports out showing that this sort of a minimum of 100,000 people that have been killed in Gaza is the correct number, contrary to the numbers we hear. And almost everything's destroyed. The buildings of UN satellite, more than two thirds of buildings, 68% of the land, multiple land is condemned. So the crimes are really remarkable. And then as we're seeing, it's picking up in Lebanon, and they can claim that they just blow up roads between Lebanon and Syria because there was a Hezbollah truck that used the road.

12:16
I mean, if you use that basis of justifying destroying infrastructure, I mean basically you could destroy all the infrastructure in Lebanon. And that's certainly where Israel is going. And so when you talk about US complicity, I mean it's endless. I mean, you know, the fact that it was just on Thursday there was a new shipment of-- agreed to of 8.7 billion dollars I think it was on about a week ago-- of new weapons right after Israel's, you know, all the walkie-talkie and other killings and in Lebanon.

12:54
So the US is totally complicit, and we're seeing that, you know, just the rhetoric that I just listened to with Biden, he's not even putting any kind of brakes, I mean, even at the rhetorical level, right, like beyond the arms and all the other forms of support. But he's putting very minimal kind of brakes rhetorically on what he's going to support in terms of Israel hitting Iran. And there's almost no threshold. He's not saying anything about the threshold of blowing stuff up in Lebanon.

13:31
It's all always defending, they have the right to defend themselves and on and on. So it is remarkable to see it. It's kind of surprising to me at some level, because I do think, and that was the first question asked of Biden, was basically, is Israel intervening in the U.S. election? Is Netanyahu doing what he's doing right now because he prefers Donald Trump?

And I am of the opinion. I agree that the US is totally complicit in all of this. But I do think that from Kamala Harris's perspective, a huge war in the region is not going to be good for her electoral chances. And I do think that Netanyahu is using this timeframe in part to basically help Donald Trump win. And so that's a variable in this whole mix.

But clearly the US has enabled, has supplied, has in some cases encouraged. I mean, there's a political reporter, they're encouraging Israel to attack Lebanon. So US complicity goes to every different level in these crimes.

PressTV: 14:46
Mr. Doctorow, do you agree with what Mr. [Engler] said?

Doctorow:
No, I don't agree. The very exhibits that he produced, that the United States encouraged the attack, well let's take it to the logical conclusion. The United States is not complicit in this. The United States is directing all of this. And therefore, it is very understandable that Iran is moving very cautiously. Iran is not going to take on the United States by itself. That's clear as can be.

15:23
However, the Russians have already put their cards on the table, some of them, and those cards are favoring the implementation of a defense alliance with Iran. Now that is where things are headed. And it is only when the situation in the Middle East comes a little bit closer to the situation in Ukraine-Russia that there will be an end result that we can look upon with some favor. Russia is winning that war. Iran will win its war.

And to come back to your first question about the Muslim world, all states, Muslim or not Muslim, tend to like winners and tend to abandon losers. If Iran wins clearly its contest with Israel and behind Israel, the United States, the whole Muslim world will unite with Iran. Shiite, Sunni will make no difference.

PressTV: 16:20
Okay, Yves Engler, Israel has a history of assassinations, but it's been evident that eliminating individuals, even high-ranking figures, has not defeated the resistance. And the core concept of the resistance, will not just go away. It's not worked in the past, and it hasn't worked now. Give us your perspective on that.

I mean, of course. So long as the injustices of Zionism are so flagrant, there's always going to be resistance. There's no doubt about that. And you kill so many people in Gaza, and you're going to have more people that join Hamas' forces and similar dynamic in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. It was just reported that the Iraqi resistance was able to kill two Israeli soldiers in the Golan, I guess probably a few hours ago, which is apparently with drone, a couple drones.

17:18
And obviously the Israelis, they have such superiority in the sky, and they've been able to-- and they also have clearly very good infiltration of Hezbollah's communications-- and they've been able to succeed on that front, those fronts very clearly. But they've had, you know, the first few days of trying to kind of prod Hezbollah's ability on the ground has, a whole bunch of Israeli soldiers have been killed, and a whole bunch of tanks have been blown up, and things aren't looking very good, at least in the initial phase, on that front.

17:52
And I think that the Hezbollah fighters know the train, they know how to fight, and I think that the Israelis don't have the same kind of will to fight. And then, of course, with what we've seen with Iran's missiles, there's, you know, on that front, that level also, Israel is vulnerable. But I think that, you know, I don't think Israel's going to be defeated militarily at all. I think that the best-case scenario from the resistance forces is some degree of a bit of a stalemate with, of course, Israel unleashing mahem and obviously already in Gaza, to a certain extent in Lebanon. But yeah, the issue is-- and this is a long-term issue with, you know, a whole region of over a billion muslims, hundreds and hundreds of millions of arabs in the region-- is that so long as Israel chooses expansionism over security, it's eventually going to collapse. It has to collapse. It can't go on forever. This level of land theft and apartheid and racial superiority, it can't go on forever.

And so eventually, what the form of it being defeated, and I think there's one of the things that Israel is just so drunk on Jewish supremacism and expansionism that a lot of people who are running Israel are not actually kind of shrewd thinkers. They're more messianic than they are shrewd thinkers in terms of being more sensible. And so I think they may very well have bitten off more than they can eat.

PressTV: 19:48
Gilbert Doctorow, your thoughts on the persistence of the resistance, even when we see high-ranking leaders and officials being assassinated by the Israelis, which is a common practice by the Israelis. And we've seen that in the past. But yet, even with the situation right now in Lebanon, following the assassination of Sayed Hassan Nasser, we see Hezbollah resistance forces still putting up stiff resistance against the Israelis.

Doctorow: 20:19
I think you have to look at the audience for these assassinations, and you have to consider that perhaps the Israeli leadership is not very different from the American leadership, in which pragmatism has disappeared several decades ago, in which government policy is led by ideologues, and they are in the game of public relations.

The Israeli public was ecstatic over the assassination of the Hezbollah top leadership. Ecstatic. Mr. Netanyahu's government received additional members in the war cabinet, which assure Mr. Netanyahu of continued rule for at least another year.

21:07
So this was not, the assassinations are not intended, or they were wished for, but they will not have a pragmatic consequence of weakening Hezbollah, of weakening Hamas. And I think some people in Israel understand that. However, that's not what they're interested in. They're interested in keeping their own power within Israel. And for that purpose, the assassinations were fantastically successful.

PressTV: 21:37
Mr. Engler, would you like to add anything to that?

Engler:
Yeah, I mean, I agree to a large extent. I mean, I do think that the assassinations and the specifically disrupting the communications of Hezbollah, I think that that does have damaging impact on the organization. I wouldn't go completely in that far.

But no, the infrastructure is basically intact. It's a much more robust organization and just even assassinating dozens of top leaders and so you can and the people who are you know on the ground, they know what to do. When Israeli troops come in, they've fought, and they know their objective. Their objective is to drive the Israeli troops out of Lebanese territory. So they don't need some command from on high to do that.

22:32
But yeah, I think that there is-- an important part of this is politicking for Netanyahu. And they believe themselves, too. I mean, I think that the US officials and some Israeli officials saying that this is the opportunity to change the map of the Middle East and all this kind of stuff. They do believe their own kind of rhetoric, and they believe that they can just wipe out Hezbollah, wipe out Hamas, wipe out Iran, and it's just going to be some new Middle East of everyone's going to love the US and everyone's going to love Israel and everyone's going to be happy ever after.

23:11
I think they believe that at some-- you know, there's lots of people who understand that's ludicrous, but there's a lot of the people who have a lot of power who actually believe those kind of crazy ideas.

PressTV: 23:24
And Mr. Doctorow, let's end it on this note about the double standard in hypocrisy that we're seeing from the United States and from international institutions, even like the United Nations as well, when the Security Council fails to condemn the ongoing Israeli crimes and aggressions. If an Arab or Muslim-majority country had done what Israel has done over the past few weeks, not even the whole year of the Gaza genocide, just the past few weeks, how do you think the West would have responded to it?

Doctorow: 24:01
Well your question assumes a just world. Sadly, we don't live in a just world. The hypocrisy is the small currency of diplomacy everywhere. That is not the objectionable issue here. The objectionable issue is the genocide, is the mass murder that's going on, and that is shocking beyond description. I don't worry about hypocrisy; I worry about genocide.

PressTV: 24:28
All right, gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it there. Author and political activist, Yves Engler, joining us from Montreal. Independent international affairs analyst Gilbert Doctorow, joining us from Brussels. Thank you, gentlemen, for contributing to tonight's show.

24:42
And a special thanks to our viewers for staying with us on tonight's Spotlight. It's good night for now. See you next time.