Tahir Mustafa
Lack of any significant political and security alliance in the Muslim world has always been one of its primary weaknesses in contemporary politics. No more. While many Muslims are disappointed that Muslim governments have not taken any practical or decisive action against Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, the glass is half-full, not half-empty.
Before analyzing the impact of the Resistance Axis on West Asia and beyond due to Israel’s genocidal war, let us first clarify the situation outside of the western propaganda narrative. Hitherto, the Resistance Axis led by Islamic Iran was considered a loose localized security arrangement with strong ideological bonds. Although seasoned analysts understood long ago that only Islamic Iran and its allies have put forward a cohesive strategic challenge to apartheid Israel and its western enablers, others have only recently caught up with it.
Today, the war on Palestine is no longer a local conflict or even a regional grievance. Currently, it is a low intensity regional war against the US and its genocidal military outpost in West Asia called Israel. This phase of the regional war regenerated the decades-old struggle against Israeli occupation. It will last for a long time and in a notably intense way even after the guns fall silent.
As missiles rain down on Israel from Yemen, the US occupation forces come under regular attacks in Iraq and Syria. In South Lebanon, Hizbullah keeps hammering zionist forces. Thus, Israel has entered a state of permanent instability whose tempo is set by its opponents.
This is only the visible part of the conflict. The invisible aspect has more to do with the political, intelligence and logistical side. It is yet to fully manifest itself.
On the political front, the war in Palestine has decimated the reputation of US-backed regimes in West Asia and propelled Islamic Iran as the only real force confronting zionism and western neo-colonialism. The Arab street can no longer be manipulated out of this reality. This forces the US proxy regimes in the region to act somewhat outside of the western script, to retain a veneer of political legitimacy.
This will create many long-term political problems for the US and apartheid Israel. Recent visit initiated by the Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to China to push for Beijing’s increased role on pressuring Israel is one of the products of this phenomenon.
Yemeni operations along with sporadic sparks in Syria, manifest intelligence and coordination capabilities among the Resistance Axis which is keeping Israel under constant multidimensional pressure.
On the logistical side, Israel’s frequent attacks on Syria show that Damascus continues to remain a solid base for anti-zionist forces, as it was prior to the events of 2011. These factors show that the Resistance Axis has worked out an interconnected political, military, logistical and even economic interconnectivity.
The best example of interconnectivity is Hizbullah’s adherence to the temporary truce agreed with the resistance factions in Gaza on November 24. Hizbullah was not a formal party to this arrangement. On the other hand, Israel’s adherence to maintain calm on the Lebanese front shows that the zionist regime is desperate for a pause and cannot take on one member of the Resistance Axis in a decisive manner without facing a collective and coordinated response by others in the Resistance Axis.
It should also be kept in mind that even small determined actions by the Resistance Axis render all American and Israeli regional politicking irrelevant. Washington and its apartheid outpost can sign as many “normalization” papers they want with unelected autocracies like in the UAE, Bahrain or Jordan, but it serves no purpose.
Abu Dhabi, Manama or Amman do not determine the region’s political direction, the Resistance Axis does. Even if Cairo, Riyadh or Amman tell Hamas, Hizbullah or Yemen to stop confronting Israel because they signed some papers with Tel Aviv, it carries no weight. Even among their own oppressed populations, let alone the wider region, they cannot enforce this policy. Events of October 7 demonstrated this reality quite clearly.
The impact of the Resistance Axis is slowly but steadily translating into a multidimensional challenge for Israel and the US and will affect issues far beyond West Asia.
Ansarallah’s detention of a commercial ship in the Red Sea, Hizbullah’s recent strike against Israel’s Rafael systems production plant, Iran’s growing cooperation with Russia and China’s economic plans in Syria show that the Resistance Axis has a multifaceted dimension to its alliance.
The US and its surrogates see this reality and will naturally pursue activities to weaken the Resistance Axis. While this may appear as a positive approach by proponents of the west-centric global order, this is exactly what is going to further undermine the west’s global influence.
As pointed out by Dr. Amal Abdo Saad-Ghorayeb in her recent analysis of Hizbullah-Hamas-Israel hard power aspect, she stated that “it’s very hard for Israel, which has a very high casualty aversion for its armed forces, to fathom that casualties among Hizbullah and Hamas and other fighters don’t translate into defeat for them. Conversely, Israel can’t hail these deaths as an ‘achievement’ on its part… Israel is essentially fighting an enemy it can never understand. It’s one which celebrates the deaths of its fighters as martyrs, and which is based on a doctrine which proclaims, ‘come and kill us, our people will be more aware’, as per Nasrallah’s reference to [Imam] Khomeini.”
On the grand scale of things, Dr. Amal’s framework applies to the Resistance Axis in all dimensions of its work and arenas. It means that the more the US confronts the Resistance Axis, through its determined political, military, intelligence, and economic pushback, the more the latter degrades Washington’s status as hegemon.
Through calculated multidimensional processes, the Resistance Axis is constantly forcing the US to prove itself on multiple levels and in several arenas. This exhausts the empire in decline in terms of its political stamina and soft power.
Every time the US and Israel are forced to act violently and receive a forceful response, their influence wanes. This was not the case in 2001, but the world of 2023 is multipolar, with very different economic and political variables unfavorable to the west-centric global order. Conflicts are no longer without cost to the US and its surrogates.
The Resistance Axis’ actions in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen essentially control the escalation ladder. It has a multilayered regulation of the evolution of the current situation and act in ways not understood by their opponents.
No one could have predicted the intensity of Yemen’s involvement against Israel, neither did many believe in the intensity through which Hizbullah altered the deterrence formula in place with Israel after the war of 2006.
While the specifics of the evolution of the current situation are open to debate, one thing is certain: the escalation of pressure against apartheid Israel and the US will increase. The only way the US can avoid a sustained erosion of its diminishing global influence is to restrain Israel and take a step back. This is unlikely to happen due to the influence of the zionist lobby in US domestic politics. Therefore, for now, it seems that a full-scale regional war is unavoidable.
It can be asked, what specific harm will a full-scale regional war cause to the US in West Asia? It will force China, Russia and the Resistance Axis into a higher-level of cooperation, a phenomenon which will be an even bigger geopolitical disaster than the western mishap in Ukraine.
Active pushback against the US-Israel nexus in West Asia will embolden other countries. The Resistance Axis is demonstrating that confronting the US and getting away with it is not only doable, but a desirable policy strategy for regions which experience western imperialism.
The region that is manifesting this phenomenon most clearly is South America. Several Latin American countries, by cutting or severing ties with the apartheid regime of Israel, have proved that they are highly principled. Further, the South American countries’ public snub of Israel and the US shows that a geographic region once considered to be the backyard of US imperialism is no longer the case. It also shows that challenging US strategic interests is not a political or security risk anymore.
Obviously, the US and Israel will attempt to inflict costs on Latin American governments that dare to undermine American interests in West Asia. The Resistance Axis, on the other hand, will reach out to them. They in turn will build relations with the Resistance Axis as a pushback strategy against Washington. This is already happening. Iran’s relations with Venezuela demonstrate this clearly. We can expect more “Venezuela” type relations between more South American countries and the Resistance Axis.
West Asia being one of the world’s most important regions now has an alliance system in place which no one can ignore. It is also the only indigenous alliance system which determines the region’s political direction. Western regimes are entering a geopolitical setup in the region with which they are quite unfamiliar. Expect major miscalculations which will have serious repercussions beyond the region at many levels.
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