Israel threatens to ‘peel the skin off the Iranian snake’
The Israeli defence minister has issued new threats against Iran’s leadership and weapons arsenal.
The army “will strike the sites and continue to peel the skin off the Iranian snake in Tehran and everywhere, stripping it of nuclear capabilities and weapons systems”, Defence Minister Israel Katz was quoted as saying by local media.
“The Iranian dictator is turning Tehran into Beirut and Tehran’s residents into hostages for the survival of his regime,” Katz said, referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel continued its intensive air attacks on Iran for a third day as Tehran retaliated using drones and missiles. Iran’s media report dozens of people have been killed in Israeli attacks since early Friday.
Diplomacy ‘already failed’, negotiations ‘can’t be revived’
Tehran-based analyst Hamidreza Gholamzadeh says that following the Israeli attacks, Iran no longer sees diplomacy as a viable way forward.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said the recent talks with the US were supposed to prevent a conflict and help Iran benefit from the removal of sanctions. “But it did not go the way it was supposed to go,” said Gholamzadeh, director at the Diplo House think tank.
He added that the US-Israeli alignment has undermined diplomacy, which, he said, has “already failed”. “I don’t think the negotiations can be revived, at least any time soon,” Gholamzadeh argued.
“With the position the Americans have taken so far, it’s proved that negotiations were part of the strategy with the Israelis … they have been working together.”
Israeli attacks have ‘backfired’ while fostering Iranian ‘unity’
Hamid Gholamzadeh, director of Tehran’s Diplo House think tank, says Israeli attacks on Iranian energy and other sites have failed to create domestic unrest and instead united the population.
“[Netanyahu] has done a great favour for the Iranians … The outcome of the attacks has been significant unity among the Iranians,” Gholamzadeh told Al Jazeera, emphasising the mood inside the country remains defiant.
“Everyone is saying it’s not about the Islamic Republic, it’s not about the government, it’s not about the reformists … It’s merely about Iran as a whole.”
Iranians have experienced many challenges over the past five decades, Gholamzadeh noted.
“They experienced eight years of Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, and at that time, the welfare of the people. The situation of the country was totally different from now. It was much weaker at that time. Now, it is totally different.”
Saddam Hussein's war supported by the US...
https://yris.yira.org/column/u-s-involvement-in-the-1980s-iran-iraq-war-americas-haphazard-extension-of-gulf-insecurity/
History repeating.
