Finian Cunningham
The longer this horror goes on, the worse it will get for Washington and its Israeli client state.
The United States and Israel have only one reasonable option left, and that is to end the genocide in Gaza by calling an immediate ceasefire, according to Iranian Professor Mohammad Marandi.
The longer this horror goes on, the worse it will get for Washington and its Israeli client state.
But here's their self-defeating dilemma. The U.S. and Israel seem incapable of making that rational decision because they are desperate to conceal the utter defeat that the U.S. and Western-backed Israeli regime have already incurred in Gaza.
The mounting military losses for Israeli troops in Gaza are correlated with the increasing missile strikes on Yemen by the United States (and Britain).
This deranged dynamic is leading to a wider all-out war in the Middle East region, one where the U.S. and Iran become direct antagonists.
If the United States and Israel go down that path, and it looks increasingly inevitable, then they are facing a definitive defeat, contends Prof Marandi.
Iran and its formidable allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere have the military capability to deliver a crushing blow.
The "Axis of Resistance" cannot be defeated militarily. Marandi points out that Israel has failed to eliminate the Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza after more than three months of non-stop bombardment with unlimited military and political support from the United States.
The horrendous slaughter of civilians - women and children torn apart day after day - is only exposing the abysmal criminality of the Israeli state and its Western patrons. It is an irredeemable loss of political and moral credibility in the eyes of the world, including among the majority of Western citizens.
The exposure of rank hypocrisy, duplicity, and barbarous criminality is fatal for the Western powers and their Israeli client.
If the U.S. and Israel escalate to a wider war in the coming weeks they will be up against much stronger opponents who will undoubtedly destroy them. Marandi implies that the firepower seen so far from various resistance groups is only a fraction of what lies in store by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel.
In addition to military firepower, there is the catastrophic consequence of global economic ruination for the United States and its Western allies, who are already riven with political and economic crises.
An important distinction, Marandi argues, is that the U.S. is not haplessly being manipulated by Israel and its Machiavellian leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
He contends that the U.S. ultimately holds "the leash on its Israeli attack dog". The bombing of Yemen and assassinations by the United States across the region all indicate a deliberate policy of war escalation by Washington.
There are contradictions, of course, such as the Biden administration reportedly expressing concern about the risk of a wider war with Iran if U.S. troops get killed in Iraq or Syria.
But the U.S. as an imperial power is irrational. It is trying to assert imperial power by ramping up war, even though war is leading to its historic collapse.
Nevertheless, Professor Marandi confidently asserts that Iranians are not afraid of a nuclear-armed U.S. or Israel. "In my lifetime, apartheid South Africa collapsed and nuclear weapons didn't save it," he notes. The same fate is awaiting Israel, he adds.
He predicts the Israeli state is facing terminal collapse from its own internal corruption and incorrigible lawlessness perpetrated over eight decades with full-on Western complicity. Israel is not a viable independent state, he points out. It would fall apart without continuous U.S. and European support.
The United States and Western powers who have tied themselves to the criminality of the Zionist regime are also doomed by the latest phase of genocide in Gaza.
The world has watched this genocide live on TV. Israel, the United States, and its Western partners are pariahs in the eyes of the world. That is the basis for their ultimate and irreparable defeat.