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/444/ Opportunism & Revenge in the Middle East ft. Karl Sharro & Arash Azizi (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-15 20:51:49
Imported:
2024-10
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  • 444-Middleeast-Sharro-Azizi.mp3

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Content

On Israel's invasion of Lebanon and beyond.

Karl Sharro (Lebanese-Iraqi architect and satirist @KarlreMarks) and Iranian writer and historian Arash Azizi join us to discuss war in the Middle East. We ask:

Is Israel finally waging the great war that will rid it of all enemies? 

Does Israel have any real plan? What motivates its actions in Gaza and Lebanon?

What is the impact on Hezbollah of losing its leadership layers?

How will Iran respond and what is the balance between moderates and hardliners there?

If Hezbollah is severely weakened, what happens to the Lebanese state?

What should we make of the global culture war around Israel, Palestine and the rest

Links

Lebanon in the heart of the storm, Akram Belkaïd, Monde Diplo

Israel is not ‘saving western civilisation’. Nor is Hamas leading ‘the resistance’, Kenan Malik, The Guardian

Iran Is Not Ready for War With Israel, Arash Azizi, The Atlantic

/225/ Wokeistan & Lebanonworld ft. Karl Sharro

/141/ Oh Lebanon, What Now? ft. Rima Majed

Files

Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

Very solid episode, enjoyed the choice of guests. I think one political actor missed out on its appropriate share of critique here, though: the UN. Is it not the mandate of an agency like UNIFIL, for instance, to ensure that the Israelis never get to walk into Lebanon declaring the IDF the enforcement of UNSC 1701? That's not to even talk about other UN bodies like the UNHRC or UNRWA, which if anything are even more blatantly partisan actors who have eroded the ability of the UN specifically and the "international community" broadly to restrain or prevent the kind of nihilistic outbursts by which Sharro and Azizi have characterized the current war.

Tymon

It's been over a year, and I still don't understand what's so complex about the conflict. The only 'complexity' I hear about is "Islamism bad", "Israel wasn't always fascist" and that "there's no left alternative". Other than that, genocide/ethnic cleansing is happening and the supposed voices on the ground to advocate this complexity are either being killed, are already in Israeli prisons or contained within their ghettos. I think Bunga would do well to actually do a deep dive of this 'complexity' with the supposed true Scotsman that should be platformed since every Palestinian I'm listening to apparently is just some oversimplifying proxy.

Ran Heilbrunn

This episode raised many valuable points, but one key factor seemed missing—and I wonder if it was left unaddressed because it is too obvious to discuss directly or not easily graspable to outside observers: the fact that October 7 reawakened Israel’s deep-seated existential dread. Without recognizing the weight of this element, analyses of Israel's behavior risk missing the mark. Thus, downplaying the centrality of its security concerns and reducing its motivations to vengeance and opportunism amounts to a serious misunderstanding of the Israeli experience. While vengeful and opportunistic impulses do exist, they are underpinned by a consciously held belief that Israel’s survival in the Middle East depends on never being perceived as weak. In this context, whether or not Hamas and Hezbollah pose an objective existential threat, they have succeeded—likely to their own detriment—in triggering the dangerously violent existential logic at the heart of the Israeli state. Israel’s brutal response reflects an urgent need to suppress the image of vulnerability that reemerged in the regional imagination on October 7. Its aggressive military actions, pace the guests' suggestions, do not stem from delusional invincibility but from the collapse of that very sense of invincibility. Moreover, many Israeli moderates justify this prioritization of existentially-infused military actions over long-term geopolitics by pointing to history. They argue that Israel’s enemies have only agreed to peace deals after being militarily forced to abandon their aspirations of destroying it. In other words, they contend that Arab nations' hostility toward Zionism has only diminished after battlefield defeats. However, unlike the Arab nations, including Palestinian nationalists, Islamist forces have never experienced this kind of unequivocal military defeat (partly due to their rise coinciding with an era of low-intensity and asymmetric warfare). This helps explain why Israel is not eager to pursue a long-term settlement with its adversaries at this time: it is determined to avoid a scenario in which October 7 is seen as the start of a sequence that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state, thereby setting a precedent where attacks against Israel yield rewards or achievements. Such an outcome would empower the Islamist half of the Arab equation, undermining the historical pattern of defeat followed by settlement. There is a calculated logic here, not mere short-sightedness.

Christoph Iselin

Punish the perpetrator of the 7/10, degrade the military potential of Hamas and Hezbollah, degrade Iran's "Axis of resistance" (something the UAE and SA failed themselves in Yemen), demonstrate absolute military dominance, call the bluff on Iran. I agree, Israel's behaviour is highly opportunistic, but is that really such a bad strategy, or is it just humble and realistic? Isn't the middle east still in the shadow of failed "grand strategy" and long term plans from the 90s and 00s?