by JOSEPH DAHER
Joseph Daher discusses regional and multipolar imperialism, the limits of Iranian resistance, and the international path toward Palestinian liberation.
The ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, which had conducted a genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza for over a year, poses strategic questions for the Palestinian liberation struggle and those in solidarity with it. Up till now, the dominant strategy has been to cultivate an alliance with Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” to back military assaults on Israel, but that network has suffered devastating setbacks from the combined might of Israel and the U.S.
Israel’s repeated assassination of Iranian leaders and direct attacks on Iran itself have exposed the weaknesses and challenges Iran faces in the region. Tel Aviv’s brutal war on Lebanon significantly damaged Hezbollah, the jewel in the crown of Iran’s Axis, and collectively punished the Lebanese people, particularly Hezbollah’s base in the country’s Shia population. The fall of Iran’s other close regional ally, Bashar al-Assad, has further undermined the Axis. Only the Houthis in Yemen have survived the onslaught relatively intact.
Of course, Israel did not accomplish its main goals in Gaza of destroying Hamas and ethnically cleansing the population, and it has been discredited and delegitimized globally as a genocidal, settler-colonial, apartheid state. Nevertheless, the strategy of military resistance to Israel based on support from the Axis has shown its limitations if not its inability to win liberation. So, what have we learned about the Axis? What is its future? What do the region’s masses think of the Axis? What is the alternative to the military strategy against Israel? How should the international Left position itself in these strategic debates?
Origins and development of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”
In the 2000s, the Iranian regime expanded its influence in the Middle East, primarily through The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)). It took advantage of the defeat suffered by the U.S. and its allies in their so-called War on Terror in the Middle East and Central Asia. George Bush’s ambition for regional regime change was blocked by resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran secured allies with Iraq’s various Shia Islamic fundamentalist parties and militias and their representatives in state institutions, becoming the most influential regional power in the country.
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