LAST week, we promised to examine the choices available to Iran and the United States, as well as how military confrontation might unfold. We also noted that Israel reportedly considered using nuclear weapons in its last war with Iran, an approach known as the Samson Option. We stated that if this had happened, or if it happens in the future, Israel would become only the second nation to use nuclear weapons in warfare, after the United States used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The Samson Option refers to the final act of the biblical judge Samson, who, blind and bound by the Philistines, found the strength to bring down the pillars of the temple of Dagon, killing his enemies — and himself — “in one final, apocalyptic gesture”. It implies Israel’s readiness to resort to nuclear weapons if it were ever facing the prospect of annihilation.
But in this war, it is not only Israel that can lay claim to a Samson Option. Iran and its current leadership have spoken of no retreat, no surrender and no softness if attacked. Some people were wishfully speaking, knowing it was false, that AyatolLah Ali Khamenei had planned to escape to Moscow with $92 billion. They do not know the thinking of the Shiite Muslim whose whole being is to die a martyr. And they do not know that material things have no place in the hearts of people like Khamenei.
They mistake him for the likes of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, who plan for survival and arrange backups and options to ensure it. Trump recently reactivated the plane, Doomsday, after a 51-year hiatus, and Netanyahu landed in Crete, Greece, with his plane, the Wing of Zion, all in a bid to escape Iranian retaliation. Khamenei and the Iranian leadership do not have options A, B, or C regarding their survival in the current standoff. It is going to be an all-or-nothing war for them. And to this end, they have all appointed up to ten successors for each so that there would be no leadership vacuum.
While Iran could be hurt by an American attack, its ideology, structure, resistance framework, and global influence won’t collapse. The nation’s revolutionary ideals have shaped successive generations, with leadership passed down from the founders. The system is so deeply rooted and has such strong foundations that the presence or absence of individuals would hardly make any difference.
Israel is applying a lot of pressure on America to attack Iran – to do the “dirty job” for it as it did for Europe, according to Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who said Israel was doing a “dirty work for all of us” while defending Israel’s unprovoked attacks on Iran in June last year.
The strategy therein for the Israelites is to come in “when America has weakened Iran” and depleted its ability to fight back. They do not care even if America gets bruised in the process because they will maintain their fake myth of “God’s chosen people of a strong nation that cannot be defeated.”
That would effectively transform it from a regional power and bully into a global power, supplanting America, which Iran might have degraded. And that is also one of Israel’s game plans. It would get an open field to play by its own terms, setting the rules while others are forced to comply. No country in the region would dare speak against or stand up to it again.
Of course, many bogey Jews who love them more than their religion and its founder will clap for them. Yes, they love them more than they love the founder of their religion and his mother. If not, why venerate a people who spit on you, call you an idolator, say your God is burning in human excrement in hell, and his mother is a whore?
While Israel has captured the American state, pushing it, using its military as a hammer against cultivated enemies, America previously had international approval, even if flawed, for its actions in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan on Israel’s behalf. Now, without UN or global support, America is acting alone, especially since Gulf states have refused it the use of the bases in their territories.
This refusal, even by the UAE, which is literally in bed with Israel, may be a result of the fear of attacks by Iran and its allies. But, by and large, it is because their eyes have opened to Israel’s plans of “Greater Israel”. Once Iran, God forbid, is no more, all the Gulf states would collapse like a pack of cards, Pakistan and Turkiye would be brought down on their knees, and “Greater Israel” would be born. They all realise that they are being used to get at Iran, the lone sentinel at the gate, and after that, they would all be enslaved and become minions of Israel and the Western hegemons.
Thirdly, they have realised how America never allows fights in their country but takes them elsewhere, visiting destruction on infrastructure and causing mayhem and death abroad. A Saudi official complained that when Saudi Arabian oil installations were targeted a few years back, they complained to the US and requested assistance, but the US did nothing. Therefore, self-preservation is also a factor.
On a global scale, if Iran falls, the world will change. China will receive a strategic blow and will have to seek a compromise with the US; otherwise, its economy will collapse because almost 100 per cent of its oil imports come from Iran. Russia will lose an ally in the Middle East and find itself in strategic isolation. The dollar will strengthen, and all talk of BRICS and de-dollarisation will turn into wishful thinking. China and Russia must have known this.
The US and Israel, a Siamese twins combo, may have some options. They may want to keep Iran under constant threat of attack, hoping to strain its military and economy. But this requires a major, long-term US military presence in the region and at a cost to them, too. The US may also consider a naval blockade, as it did with Venezuela.
But Iran is not Venezuela, and so could counter by blocking the Strait of Hormuz for US-allied shipping, which would likely force America to attack targets inside Iran directly because the global economy would dive as over 20 per cent of oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. And then the war! And this time around, Iran has promised to consider any attack, no matter how limited, as a full-scale war. Rather than hesitating or trying to match the scale of the attack, Iran would retaliate immediately against all reachable US interests.
They claim Iran is at its weakest, yet they are amassing an armada after an armada, gathering a force in one place, never before seen in the history of warfare, yet they are afraid to attack! They thought they could intimidate Iran. What a humiliation to America!
Iran has reportedly rejected requests from the US that would allow it withdraw without losing face. The other came from Israel. Washington’s message to Tehran was that the US would carry out a limited attack against it and that Tehran should accept it or respond only symbolically. Tehran, while rejecting this request, announced that it has redefined its war rules and red lines and considers any attack as a full-scale war.
Israel’s message to one of the intermediaries was that it…
To be continued.
- Dr Gimba, anipr, is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime. His syndicated column, The Arbiter, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.