During Arbaeen, Iraqis traditionally dress in black. This Shiite religious ritual marks the end of 40 days of mourning for Imam Hussain, the grandson of Islamic Prophet Muhammad, who died in the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD.
A key event of Arbaeen is the 80km pilgrimage from the city of Najaf to the holy city of Karbala, where the mausoleum of Imam Hussain is located. Along the way, over 20 million pilgrims from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Palestine, Pakistan, India, Africa and many other countries may receive free food, medical care, and accommodation.
However, in recent years, Arbaeen has also become a political platform – it allows millions of Muslims to speak out about pressing issues. And of course, this primarily concerns Palestine.
On the way to Karbala, we pass a small Palestinian town, where this year there is a photo exhibition dedicated to the massacre in Gaza. There, we find Sunni scholars and Palestinians who describe the horrors which they and their families have experienced. Journalists from over a dozen Middle Eastern media outlets cover the story.
Along the way, the faithful mourn the victims of the war in Palestine. However, many Palestinians insist that this is not a war but a real genocide, since on the Palestinian side most of the victims are civilians, not soldiers.
On the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, Palestinian flags and portraits of the recently assassinated chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, are displayed alongside images of Iranian Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani and the deputy head of the coalition of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The latter two men died on January 3, 2020, in the course of a US airstrike on Baghdad International Airport.
After the assassination of another Hamas leader, Saleh al-Arouri, I talked with a friend, a poet from Beirut, who said, “The constantly-spilling blood of the national heroes of Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Yemen does not merely go into the ground. It fills the veins of the Axis of Resistance, giving this organism more strength and energy.”
The Iraqis await retribution
Few in the Arab world are as eager to wage war with Israel as the Iraqi resistance forces. And their response is not limited to waiting. The Iraqis, like Yemen’s Houthis, often demonstrate their belligerent attitude towards the US and Israel. For a while, they halted their military operations out of solidarity with official Baghdad, but after the Israeli strikes on Lebanon and Iran, Iraqi resistance fighters again attacked US military facilities on their territory. For example, in early August, they attacked the Al-Asad Airbase base, reportedly wounding several US soldiers.
As a high-ranking source in the Resistance told me on condition of anonymity, “forcing the enemy to wait for the response is also part of the response. Psychological warfare is just the beginning. The response will follow and will correspond to the scale of the crime.”
- Recently, there’s been some information on the internet indicating that Saudi Arabia plans to normalize relations with Israel if a Palestinian state is created. What do you think about this?
- Saudi Arabia has already formed an alliance with Israel, even if it has not yet officially announced it, so the only logical option for the liberation and resistance forces is to consider the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia an enemy.
- Do you think that the US elections will somehow influence the situation in the region?
- America is America. Nothing will change, no matter who is the president – whether it’s Trump, Biden, or Satan himself.
The Lebanese attack
A few days ago, Hezbollah carried out the biggest attack on Israel since the start of the current conflict. It fired about 230 missiles at northern Israel, overloading the Iron Dome missile defense system, and launched dozens of drones which hit specific targets – namely, Israel’s Miron, Zaatun, and Sahel military bases, as well as bases in the Golan Heights and several barracks.
According to the secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, the movement has not yet decided to use strategic missiles, but will definitely do so in the near future. The Hezbollah leadership added that this was only the first stage of the response by the Axis of Resistance. This means that Israel should expect new strikes.
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv said that it had taken countermeasures in advance and sent 100 aircraft to bomb Hezbollah’s military facilities in Lebanon.
Despite the fact that both sides deny that any damage has been inflicted on them by the enemy, we may draw several important conclusions.
Firstly, Hezbollah has raised the stakes and intensified its attacks on Israel. Secondly, we can expect a response to the recent attacks on Beirut and Tehran, but it will be different from what most experts imagined. Most likely, this response will be phased and stretched out in time. And finally, the threat of a major war is still relevant since the Israeli leadership is unwilling to make concessions and the Resistance forces intend to follow the path of escalation to the end if there are no other options.
In an exclusive comment to RT, Iranian political analyst Mohammad Marandi explained why Hezbollah’s strike may be called a success.
“It was obviously very successful. The Israeli disinformation turned out to be clearly a disaster [and] untrue as we saw in the speech of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah and there was no response from the Israeli regime which shows that it is fearful of an escalation or at least its Western backers and Americans are fearful of an escalation. I think after this we’re going to see strikes from Iran and Yemen. The Israeli regime carried out a war crime in Yemen by bombing a port and killing innocent people so they will be punished and of course the Iranian retaliation to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh will be coming soon so the Israelis should continue to be worried about their safety and security.”
Commenting on a possible regional war, Marandi said a lot will depend on the US.
“Everything is in the hands of the Americans. If they yank hard on the leash of Netanyahu, then of course there won’t be escalation because the Israeli regime is completely dependent on the West and Washington in particular for weapons, ammunition, for financial assistance and political cover. It is completely vulnerable and weak and if the Americans withdrew their support, they would have to halt the genocide immediately and of course they would have no way of escalating. So everything depends on the Americans. But the Israeli regime has already escalated and it will be punished. There’s no way out of it.
“Iran has to create deterrence. Otherwise the Netanyahu regime will commit further atrocities. The same is true with Lebanon, the same is true with Yemen, and of course the same is true with the Palestinian people,” Marandi concluded.