What to Make of an Apparently Puny Israeli Retaliation Against Iran?

In the early hours of Saturday October 26, Israel has launched its ‘official’ retaliatory ‘precision strikes’ on the Iranian capital. The explosions heard across different areas of Tehran were far more impressive than the actual damage the strikes had left behind. The average Middle-Eastern layperson mocked Israel’s retaliation against Iran, and called it puny. In other words, weakness rather than resolve was the message communicated to the masses of the Axis of Resistance.

But, is that really the case?

Is it truly that Netanyahu, who has over the course of more than a year leveled Gaza to the ground and continues to do so; while simultaneously bringing unprecedented havoc on Lebanon with the aim of completely neutralizing the military capability of Hezbollah [emphasis added], Iran’s crowned-proxy in the region, discarding the Biden administration’s bidding for restraint [emphasis added]; has had a sudden change of heart to tone down the confrontation with his regional archenemy? I believe not!

So, what to make of this inconsequential—so to speak—retaliation?

My wager is that it has nothing to do with the prevention of further escalation. Clearly, however, its primary objective is to preserve face, notwithstanding its apparent limitations.

For let us consider the matter thus:

Israel, in collaboration with the United States of course, has already set the contingency plan of ‘The Returning Shah’ afoot. At the latest IAC summit, the former Iranian Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi, who gave the keynote address, was introduced as “His Majesty Reza Shah II”. Such introduction bears within its folds deep connotations, and ushers the beginning of a new hardcore Western approach vis-á-vis the Middle-Eastern power.

In simple terms, the West has come to the conviction that it can no longer do business with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Iran [emphasis added].

There is a consensus amongst Western powers with respect to the need to oust Iran’s supreme leader. Nevertheless, the United States has remorsefully learned from bitter experience—not so distant, one may add—that there can be wiser and more cost efficient ways for the disposal of a reigning authority in a country of such geopolitical significance than via reducing its infrastructure and governmental institutions to rubble. The least one can say in this regard, is that both the United States and Israel will rather have the restoring of the Iranian monarch take longer time than happen sooner and cast the oil markets on a fear frenzy.

Some may interpose: But Israel has targeted Iranian oil facilities and other infrastructures before!

True. Notwithstanding, the main objective back then was not the restoration of the ancien régime. Yet, now it is. Reinstalling “His Majesty Reza Shah II” is the great and chief end here—for so many geopolitical and strategic reasons beyond the scope of this article. But why give a friend a country in a shambles? To reign over rubbles, and make it rather more difficult for him to garner public support and consolidate power faster [emphasis added]?

Mind you, there are at least two generations of Iranians born into a systematic and highly concentrated indoctrination of the United States’ and Israel’s ties of kindred to Satan. With some of its more fundamental tenets preaching that the United States and Satan are one.

Imagine, therefore, how they would feel if their country is set ablaze by these same powers?

Bringing them to fold under the banner of “The Returning Shah” would be a mission doomed to failure from its inception. It is an edition of Mission Impossible that not even Tom Cruise can pull off.

Food for thought… 💭