From Moscow to Damascus: The art of provocation

Israel apparently bombed an Iranian "consular building" that was part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus.
Photo: Reuters

Of course we cannot present police – like proofs, still the attack on Moscow bears all the characteristics of the provocations with which the “Party of War”, a “Black International” within the “collective West”, is continuously trying to escalate the conflicts either with Russia or in the Middle East, sometimes with, sometimes without the consent of the mainstream western political establishment (Maidan, bombing of Syria twice under Trump, Soleimani’s assassination, sending a British destroyer near Crimea during the See Breeze exercises in 2021, attacks on Zaporizhzhya nuclear power station, blowing up of the NordStream pipeline, assassination of the Russian journalist Daria Dugina, among many others), writes Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, ex-advisor at the office of the Greek PM Andreas Papandreou on Arms Control and East-West relations.

It should be noted that not long before the terrorist attack in Moscow, Victoria Nuland “promised” President Putin some nasty surprises! And perhaps the Priestess of Darkness would have had even bigger ones if President Biden had not decided to fire her, possibly because she was conspiring with German government officials for actions that did not have the approval of President Biden and Chancellor Scholz.

The main objective of those who organised the terrorist operation in Moscow was, according to all existing indications, to provoke an escalation of the conflict in and around Ukraine. This escalation is sought by those who cannot in any way accept a now quite probable Western defeat or compromise in Ukraine and are prepared to risk even a nuclear war in order to avoid it. (Another minor, but not insignificant, aspect of the terrorist attack in Moscow was that it momentarily distracted attention from Gaza. A similar situation also arose in Israel’s previous operation in Gaza in 2021. While the world’s spotlight was on the massacre of Palestinians, a bizarre hijacking of a plane which landed in Belarus changed the international agenda).

Hardly a week has passed since the Moscow provocation and now we have a second provocation on what is the second front of the West’s conflict with the … rest of the world. This time the provocation was organised by Israel, a state which is, along with its lobbies, a prominent, central and particularly belligerent member of the western “Party of War”. I mean the attack on Iran’s diplomatic mission in Damascus and the assassination of a number of leading military officers of Iran’s ‘Revolutionary Guards’. This action is obviously intended to provoke retaliation by Iran and finally the involvement of the Americans in a war with Tehran. The attack came after a series of other Israeli attacks in Syria and Lebanon and in parallel with the killing of seven foreign associates of one of the last humanitarian aid distribution organisations operating in Gaza, an American one.

Normally, diplomatic missions have immunity and are not subject to military attacks. The only exception was when some decades ago NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. But of course no law of war or peace binds the totalitarian-inspired present leadership of Israel, the only state in the world that has broken all the laws of both war and peace and which, usually, does not even feel the need to justify what it does!

We recall that for months now, US diplomats have been warning with constant leaks to the media that President Biden’s policy of unconditional support for Israel may facilitate an escalation of the war towards Lebanon and its generalization throughout the Middle Eas. Those diplomats even consider that for Netanyahu such an escalation is a “political survival” option.

If it is very difficult for the West to accept a possible defeat in Ukraine. It is even more difficult, quasi impossible for Israel to accept a defeat in this battle between its overwhelming material power and the power of the human soul, this eternally repeated motive of human History since ancient times.

For the Israeli leadership to stop now the massacre in Gaza will be considered a defeat by its own criteria because it has failed so far to exterminate Hamas, which according to all indications we have has now more support that before October in both Gaza and the western Bank, as the Palestinian people seems to be now to be in a situation of “Freedom or Death”

Israel’s choice is clear, judging from the attack on an American organisation distributing aid to the starving population of Gaza, one of the last to remain in the area, but also from the fact that its forces abandoned the Al-Sifa hospital with piles of bodies inside.

It is evident that the aim is to wipe out the Palestinian population if they choose not to leave. British experts estimate that by the end of the year around half a million Palestinians will have died, not only from the bombing, but also from lack of food, water, medical care and unhealthy hygiene conditions, and it is possible that there could even be more than half a million victims in the end.

As the attack on Syria has shown, Israel has not given up the pursuit of a war and, as long as the conflict in Gaza does not stop, the chances of a wider conflict eventually breaking out in the Middle East are not negligible, just as the chances of a nuclear conflict are not negligible as long as the West refuses to accept that it can neither defeat Russia nor overthrow its regime.

It is extremely sad and extremely dangerous that Europe today is run by utterly pathetic leaderships, puppets of finance capital and NATO, with a few bright exceptions taking a stand against both the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, such as the new party of the German Left under Sarah Wageneht, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Untouchable, the main party of the French Left and some other rather minor forces.

Faced not only with the war that is being waged, but also with the danger of a much greater one that may be coming, we need more than ever before a major anti-war movement throughout the West. Its timely creation is of strategic importance for the outcome of the present extremely dangerous situation, Dimitris Konstantakopoulos concludes.

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