Why the resistance won’t end, and why there won’t be a deal. Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. A former Marine and State Department official who resigned in protest over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Cross-posted from Matt’s Substack Quintus: People should know when they’re conquered.
Maximus: Would you Quintus? Would I? Gladiator , 2000
Two short clips, one from yesterday, one from last month, that are foundational to the war in the Middle East. If you don’t understand why the Palestinians endure, what Hezbollah is fighting for, or the role that self-determination and independence play in Iran’s purposes, then this war is nothing more than a one-dimensional tale composed of false and misshapen tropes and stereotypes. It will also lead you to believe, wrongly, that there is resolution available, i.e. victory, through more airstrikes, a tighter blockade or another village bulldozed. Finally, failing to acknowledge resistance to occupation and foreign domination as the basis for the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah and Iran’s foreign policy will make you think that it is possible to end the war with anything other than an end to occupation and guarantees of sovereignty.
First, from yesterday, with Azi Yazdi on the Mario Nawfal Show . Azi asked me to respond to those who say it is Hezbollah and Hamas that are the root causes of the wars in Lebanon and Palestine: [transcripts were auto generated and edited for clarity] …the fundamental aspect of this has to go back to what is Hamas? What is Hezbollah? They are resistance movements They are organizations that have resulted, that were born of, that exist because of resistance to Israeli occupation. Hamas comes about in the 1980s, Hezbollah comes about in 1982 following Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon. This understanding that an occupied people has a right to resistance, as understood both under international law and natural law, is something that is embodied then in Hezbollah and Hamas. We may not like how they have carried out their resistance, but certainly they have the right to armed resistance as an occupied people. And the idea that somehow they’re going to go away and the occupation is going to persist is just…I don’t know where people get that idea. I was an occupier in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I was a Marine Corps officer in Iraq carrying out occupation and I was a State Department officer in Afghanistan, serving as essentially a colonial administrator. A hundred years before I would have been walking around with a little safari hat and khaki shorts on, or something like that, like I was part of the British Empire. Certainly this idea that Hezbollah and Hamas are fundamentally anything other than the manifestation of armed resistance against occupation, if you don’t accept that, and again, you can disagree with them, you can dislike them, you can be opposed to them, but if you don’t accept that as a principle, you will never ever get to any position where there’s any chance of resolution. That’s what I saw firsthand in Iraq. For years in Iraq, we refused to acknowledge that the Iraqi resistance was based upon our occupation. We bent ourselves into contortions. We did mental gymnastics like you wouldn’t believe in order to claim the Iraqi resistance was anything other than resistance to our presence, [that it was something other than] resistance to foreign occupation. “It’s because they’re all criminals or they’re all dead-enders holding on to the hope that Saddam Hussein comes back or they’re all jihadists…they all believe in Al-Qaeda…” maybe for a handful of them they were, but for 96, 97% of the Iraqis who fought us, they fought us because we were occupying them. And it wasn’t until about 2006, 2007 that the United States started to accept that, and then, once it did, the United States was able to withdraw from, retreat essentially, from Iraq, under somewhat stable conditions. Conditions that, of course, only lasted for a few years, and that’s a whole other episode we can get into as to why. Essentially the same fundamentals are there [in Lebanon and in Palestine]. As long as Israel is occupying the Palestinian people, as long as Israel is occupying the Lebanese people, you will have armed resistance to the occupation. The second clip is from last month and comes from an interview with Al Mayadeen Network of Lebanon. I was asked whether we would see a deal to end the war between Iran, Israel and the US. My answer has been, and will continue to be, no, we will not:
https://www.instagram.com/arenas.tv/?utm_source=ig_embed …the Iranians have established principles, they have clear objectives, and the five week war that preceded this ceasefire established Iran’s strength. It positioned Iran as a world power. But it also showed that Iran was able to meet and achieve its short-term political objectives and strategies. Now, you contrast that with the Americans, who have no principles. The Americans are incoherent in what they are trying to achieve. And the American military performance was underwhelming, to be polite. And so what you have, then, is you have this realization that the Iranians have the leverage here. The Iranians have the upper hand. The Americans have no political ability, or space, or capacity to cede to the Iranians and be seen as doing anything that could resemble anything other than total victory. So, the idea then of how a negotiated settlement is achieved, particularly when you also bring in Israel, which would be a spoiler to any negotiated settlement, because for the Israelis, the purpose of this war has been regime change, or to cause civil war, or such fracture in Iran that Iran would essentially be taken out of the Middle East equation. If that’s not achieved, the Israelis would prefer endless war, for this war to go on forever, and this way the Israelis can continue to isolate the Palestinians and isolate the Lebanese and isolate the Syrians without support from the Iranians. So, I think it’s very unlikely we’ll see any form of negotiated settlement, certainly not something as formal as the 2015 deal between the United States and Iran. I don’t see a deal to come for months, if ever. I continue to believe a modus vivendi between the US and Iran is possible, although preventing Israel from spoiling such an agreement to unwind the conflict slowly and subtly will be an enormous challenge.
Here’s the full interview with Azi from yesterday: ---
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