The aftershock of the Al-Aqsa Flood: the Iran-Israel war

When Trump named the war between Iran and Israel the "12-Day War," he was on the one hand alluding to the earlier "Six-Day War," and on the other issuing a command to the parties, saying "this much is enough," that the war should not continue to a 13th day. But for Shiite Iran, which holds the Twelver Imami belief, the number 12 will also have another mystical-symbolic connotation.

This side of the matter is perhaps one of the simplest reflections of the war. But the truth is that, even though it lost important figures in the war and even though its important facilities suffered great damage, the party closest to producing a victory story was Iran.

NOW THE REGIME IN IRAN IS STRONGER THAN BEFORE

In an environment where everyone was questioning the authenticity of a cold-war hostility that has lasted 47 years, the war that came made it possible, for the first time, to truly test Iran's hostility. Iran was trying to postpone this war as far as possible, sometimes at the price of falling into humiliating situations to which it was exposed. But when push came to shove, the responses it gave in this war made it possible for even its passivity until now to be understood as patience and a kind of miraculous grace. There is no doubt that for the Israel of Netanyahu, who kept talking of overthrowing the regime in Iran, this situation is a real rout. Netanyahu, who in the utterly asymmetric war he has waged against Hamas for 620 days has not achieved a single stated goal, has repeated this failure against Iran with a new record. In an environment where there is great accumulated discontent and opposition against the regime, this failure, far from toppling the regime in Iran, turned into a complete kiss of life for it. Now the regime in Iran has thereby gained the strongest popular support of the last 20 years.

It would be simplistic to think Israel did this as a favor to Iran. Iran and Israel are two important balancing elements that hold up the US order in the Middle East. But they must not destroy each other. This does not mean, of course, that these parties have no desire to destroy one another. On the contrary, Israel is sensitive to every kind of hostile rhetoric, even if only at the level of discourse, and sees such rhetoric as an opportunity for its own Zionist expansionism.

NOW THE COUNTRIES OF THE REGION NEED US PROTECTION MORE AGAINST THE IRANIAN DANGER

Even an actual conflict between the balancing elements that the US cannot do without for its own order can be tolerated. Indeed, some benefit can be drawn from that conflict too. Indeed, the 12-day war gave Iran the opportunity to show the other elements of the balance, through a real exercise, that its war and missile capacity is no joke. By showing that it can defeat even Israel, regarded as invincible, untouchable, its dome impenetrable, that it can touch it, that it can turn its dome into a sieve, Iran's functionality has increased all the more. Now the countries of the region need US protection more against the Iranian danger. This is precisely a situation that lets us understand exactly the role of the US in this war. That both Israel's and the US's own Pentagon's reports objected to Trump's statement that Iran's nuclear capacity had been destroyed shows that everyone's calculation about the war is different.

In fact, an Iran that has ceased to be a nuclear power or whose regime has changed does not fit the US's calculations about the region in any way. For the US, Iran's controllable hostility and nuclear power are an indispensable element of the game. This does not require a conspiracy theory in which there is a direct agreement between Iran and the US. Agreements also come about when parties pursue policies in which they memorize each other's behavior and benefit from one another. For the US, Iran's hostility and power are still at a controllable level, and benefit can still be drawn from this power and this hostility.

THE AL-AQSA FLOOD FORCED IRAN FOR THE FIRST TIME TO LEAVE MUSLIMS ALONE AND FIGHT THE ZIONISTS

The truth is that had the Al-Aqsa Flood of October 7 not occurred, the cold war between Iran and the US, even between Iran and Israel, would never have turned into a real war and would have continued in this vein ad infinitum. Here the Al-Aqsa Flood forced all parties to review their positions. It shifted all the stones from their places. By deeply shaking Israel's position in the whole world, it took from its hands the exploitation of the Holocaust and razed the perception of an untouchable and invincible power. At the same time, it confronted Western modernity with all its claims about human rights, democracy, humanism and secularism, and declared its bankruptcy.

All the political developments on the world stage since October 7, 2023 are related to the Al-Aqsa Flood. The most important effect on Iran of the Al-Aqsa Flood, which began with the brave initiative of a handful of valiant people, has been that it dragged it from a bigoted sectarian circle that had always fought Muslims and shed Muslim blood into a war in which it confronts Zionism or the Crusaders. Hezbollah, which had grown more eager to abandon the fight against Zionism and fight the Sunni Muslims in Syria and Lebanon, could show no presence at all in its first real encounter with the Zionism it had declared its reason for existence.

Iran, which until now was hostile to Israel at the level of discourse while in practice fighting only Sunni Muslims and shedding their blood, has with October 7 come face to face with Israel step by step. The position it lost in Syria in fact never gave it an advantage against Israel, as had been supposed. Assad, as the cold-war ally between Iran and Israel, would show his loyalty in the first hot test to Israel rather than to Iran, and he did. That the intelligence for the assassinations of Hezbollah and Iranian officials was in large part given to Israel by Assad is now doubted by no one. Because the only victims and targets of this cold war, which lasted nearly half a century, were Sunni Muslims, Iran did not even feel the need to test Assad's loyalty in the Israeli context.

By drawing Iran into a real war with Zionism, in keeping with its claims until now and its reason for existence, October 7 also gave it a chance to re-establish its ties with the Islamic ummah. How it will use this opportunity is of course up to it. But the great success and prestige it has gained from this first war must have given it a strong enough message.