Julia Kassem
As “Israel” and the US struggled and crumbled under their crisis in leadership, the Resistance and Iran held firm to their control over escalation, red lines, and decision-making.
By greenlighting “Israeli” attacks, the Trump administration, trying to mediate its inclination towards ‘America First’ with the demands of his empire’s minions, tries to toe the line between a more hands-off approach and grasping on to a slipping upper hand. For Trump and his administration to arrogantly assume “Israel’s” strikes will lead to Iran begging for more concessions is not just a miscalculation but a projection as the US administration itself is more desperate to ensure its upper hand, swiftly rebuffed and rejected by Iran.
“Israel’s” previous attempts to pressure the Resistance in Yemen with bombings or the Gazan resistance with terrorist attacks have come to no avail. It has failed in deterring the Ansarallah from operations, which have expanded beyond sea into the air, paralyzing the entity’s airports and economy, and was unable to infiltrate and crush the resistance in Gaza. During Trump’s 60-day ultimatum period, the US and “Israel” both failed to deter the resistance or pressure Iran into stopping their control over the pace of escalations, undertaken during the entity’s siege on humanitarian aid and acceleration of its starvation campaign against Gazan civilians.
“Israel’s” June 13 attack finally put a nail in the coffin of all illusions offered by the false promise of negotiations. Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the night of June 13 were not merely symbolic, but central in inflicting serious material, and physical damage on the enemy while showcasing new ranges of capabilities, such as the Kheybar Shakan ballistic missiles and Hajj Qassem missiles in the early days.
As the Resistance and Iran continue to accelerate the level of their escalation, “Israel’s” battlefield losses are quickly becoming exposed. Iran continues to use new weapons – most recently the Fattah-1, unveiled in 2023, and the longer-range Sejjil missile.
“Israel’s” main targets involved crippling Iran’s air defense capabilities not via battle but via sabotage while sending its organizational and institutional command into disarray. By targeting both IRGC leadership in the early stages, “Israel” sought to disrupt its intelligence and air force command – yet since then, Iran has been more masterful in uncovering Mossad-linked drone workshops, sabotage ops, and counterinsurgent cells and elements while escalating its missile attacks on “Israel.”
“Israel” is already running out of interceptors, with it incredibly apparent that Iranian missiles will outlast them in a protracted war that Iran is much more prepared for. In a shadow war of production unfolding against the backdrop of Iran’s war of good versus evil, with its moral, ethical, and existential dimensions, American deindustrialization.
Iran taking out four US F-35s is a huge blow to the entire Western world’s air power, dependent on the US’s indispensable air artillery and weapons. Iran demonstrated its ability to surpass all US-Israeli air shielding systems, such as the THAAD, and the Arrow defense systems (whose interceptors are being actively rationed). Iran, and likely resistant forces in Iraq, kept the Entity’s air defenses busy initially as they made way for ballistic missiles to cut through multiple layers of defense to drive, uninterrupted, right into their targets.
“Israel” is operating not out of strength, but out of desperation. The Zionist entity’s strike on Iran, 20 years in the making, is Netanyahu’s ‘last viable deterrent,’ as the Jerusalem Post wrote on the first day of the “Israeli” attacks on Iran. As Iran turns in on over a week of battle to “Israel’s” treacherous sabotage operations, it is hitting critical sites and infrastructure from Zionist entity war industry research centers – such as the Weizmann Institute, hit by Iran the night of June 15, energy infrastructure, and oil depots.
In this regard, Iran is bringing justice to not only attacks on it from the Zionist entity. It is retaliating in kind for all the attacks made on Iran’s research facilities, energy sites, and oil depots as well as that of Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and across the region.
Meanwhile, Iran has smartly employed the use of decoys in bluffing and redirecting “Israel’s” attacks, such as missile launchers that are likely fake, with military analysts pointing out the lack of secondary explosions upon impact. This mirrors a strategy used by Hezbollah to, like Iran, hide and move critical equipment to hidden points in the mountains while leaving decoys exposed. While some launchers have been attacked and destroyed, it is nowhere near the “⅔” figure originally claimed by Reuters, which the battlefield is clearly showing.
“Israel’s” longtime hesitation in attacking Iran comes from its understanding that it can’t invade or destroy Iran from the outside, and can only hope to incite regime change from within. With all “Israel” and the collective West’s failure in securing a credible and strong opposition before this point became even smaller as Iranians, from all different political dispositions, became unified amidst attacks.
What separates “Israel” from its opponents in the Axis is not just money or capabilities but rather ethics and morals. Covert tactics of sneaking bombs into vehicles – Operation Spiderweb style – are moves of treachery, weakness, and cowardice, not skill or prowess. The vast majority of “Israel’s” operations against Iran occurred via internal sabotage and treachery, which gave the leadership a chance to weed out agents, uncover Mossad-operated drone workshops, and identify spy networks. Since Iran’s operations to detain and eliminate Mossad-linked agents and makeshift drone-producing mini-labs have picked up, Iran’s air defenses have worked much more quickly and effectively, and interceptions have been much more successful.
Iran is not a besieged enclave, its borders – land sea, and air – are not controlled by the entity. Unlike Lebanon or Iraq, it retains full territorial and decision-making sovereignty. While it doesn’t have nuclear weapons, nor the whole Western world’s resources at its disposal, it is commanded by the Supreme Leader and his wise guidance of truth, institutional knowledge, deep insight, and ethics.
By inciting regime change and assassinating leaders, “Israel” has spent the last 20 months trying to force a situation of ‘crisis in leadership’ on the Resistance, yet is only exposing its illegitimacy and crisis in leadership.
The settlers, in stark contrast to the Iranian people, are plunged into anxiety, panic, and hopeless distress upon coming to the same realization as their government – that they no longer enjoy immunity, security, and prosperity, lounging on beaches or partying in night clubs, hedonistically living off the fruits of occupation, expropriation, and oppression. As an Iranian Commander disclosed to Iranian state media’s Tasnim News yesterday, official analyses even confirmed a 50% rise in ‘fear among the Zionists.’
The Iranian people, in contrast, are putting their differences and internal contradictions aside and – from all political backgrounds and dispositions – are coming together in support of their nation.
Julia Kassem is a writer published in Al-Akhbar, PressTV, Al-Mayadeen English & Arabic and various other outlets
