Foreign governments in US politics

(Link on Daily Trust site)

As the United States presidential election draws closer, the atmosphere in the country is already pulsating with campaign activities. The first presidential debate last Tuesday between the two leading contenders, the incumbent President Donald Trump of the Republicans and Joe Biden of the Democrats has added momentum to the activities. Also, analyses and predictions continue to flow right, left, and centre.  

Meanwhile, many foreign governments are hugely interested in the election. By the way, though foreign involvement in the US elections is illegal, it's an open secret that many foreign governments have always been involved anyway. 

With the facilitation of literally all relevant US individual, institutional and corporate stakeholders, foreign involvement in American elections thrives thanks to the country’s ultra-capitalist system. 

Being the world’s biggest economy with the strongest military that, among other things, explain its dominant influence on global affairs, the matter of who occupies the Oval Office in the White House isn’t exclusively an American affair after all; it matters to many foreign governments, which have always invested hugely on various disguises through various US private sector establishments.

Depending on the prevailing circumstances at a given time, a foreign government may invest in support of one or both the candidates, for all what actually matters to it is the emergence of a friendlier, friendly or, at least, less hostile US president who wouldn’t undermine its (foreign government’s) legitimate and illegitimate interests. 

Equally, many foreign governments maintain lobby groups of influential individuals with strong and extensive connections in the corridors of the Congress, the White House, and other relevant US federal institutions, to lobby and push for legislation and policies on their behalf. 

Also, many otherwise reputable non-partisan think tanks in the US are often induced by lobbyists on behalf of foreign governments to prepare favourable or unfavourable analyses on a particular candidate(s) to subtly influence the US electorate in favour or against him. 

While some foreign governments only invest in US politics to pursue specific interests at specific times, foreign governments like those of Israel, Canada, China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Iran, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Qatar etc. remain some of the regular clients of lobby groups in Washington. 

However, foreign governments that aren’t officially allies of the United States e.g. Russia, China, Iran, etc. maintain much more discreet approaches in this regard to avoid appearing vulnerable and at the mercy of the US policymakers.  

Anyway, now that the campaign for the 2020 US presidential election has peaked out, foreign governments interested in who wins between President Trump and Biden are already equally divided.

On the one hand, those who rightly or wrongly feel undermined or bullied by the Trump administration and have, therefore, invested for his defeat are eager to see him defeated. For instance, China, is, of course, looking forward to seeing President Trump defeated for being particularly tough on it in its lingering trade war with the United States. President Trump has over the past four years literally unleashed US economic might against China forcing it into making costly concessions and compromises. Earlier this year, he tweeted that the Chinese “are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race so they can continue to rip-off the United States, as they have done for decades, until I came along!”

Iran equally wishes President Trump lost the election. After riding the wave of an Iran-friendly and equally Arab-hating American president, Barack Obama for eight years within which the US turned a blind eye to Iran's expansionist adventures in the Middle East with the tacit support of his administration, the Trump presidency turned tough on it. 

He withdrew the United States from the UN Security Council-sanctioned nuclear deal with Iran, which rendered the deal practically ineffective despite the commitment of the remaining parties to the deal (i.e. Russia, UK, France, China, and Germany) to maintaining it. The deal would have enabled Iran to be a recognized nuclear power by 2030. He also restored the US sanctions on Iran reversing the economic recovery it had started to record following the ratification of the nuclear deal thereby triggering the persistently worsening economic conditions in the country. 

Interestingly, during the campaign for the 2016 US presidential election, and going by the then presidential candidate Donald Trump’s islamophobic/Arabophobic rhetoric, Iranians and indeed almost everybody for that matter assumed that if he won he would be extremely tough on Arabs. Iran, therefore, had thought that it would simply ride the wave to achieve its expansionist agenda in the region 

Now, other countries like Germany, Japan and South Korea, which President Trump extorts on the pretext of defending them probably equally wish he lost. Also, even the traditional US European allies, with the exception of Boris Johnson’s Britain, probably wish the same. 

On the other hand, foreign governments that have invested in Trump cannot wait to see Biden defeated. This is even though with regard to Israel, in particular, it doesn’t matter who is the American president anyway, because US commitment to protecting Israel's interests is simply too "sacred" to be neglected let alone undermined by any US president. Yet, Trump’s particularly enthusiastic support for Israel explains its preference for him.     

President Trump also remains Russia’s favourite; after all, Russia had all along supported him and hugely undermined Hillary Clinton’s chances through elaborate cyber-based espionage in 2016 and has since then got its way at the expense of the US interests as Trump watches helplessly knowing that it (Russia) maintains his election-related intelligence more damaging than what has been released, and which could cost him his position should it be fully released.  

Equally, Arab countries particularly the Gulf States e.g. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which have invested in Trump prefer him as a lesser evil compared to Biden who they suspect would be literally a reincarnation of Obama who vigorously supported the political turmoil that swept across the Arab world in 2011 on the pretext of bringing democracy to the region. 

Politicking with Palestinian cause (II)

(Link on Daily Trust site)

With the latest normalization of relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Israel following that of the UAE and Israel a few weeks earlier both of which were ratified in Washington a couple of days ago, it seems more Arab governments may soon follow suit. 

By the way, though Israel owes its creation and continued existence to the conspiracy of the global military powers to keep it perpetually superior militarily and technologically in the Middle East, it has always pursued normalization of relations with governments in the region to achieve, at least, diplomatic recognition. In this regard, it has always relied on, particularly, the United States, which has always deployed all persuasive tactics and blackmailing tools at its disposal to push for the normalization of relations with Israel in the region.  

Recent developments, therefore, couldn’t have come at a better time for both the US President Donald Trump and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are facing politically existential threats in their respective countries, hence are exploiting the developments in their efforts to cling to power. 

Struggling for reelection in less than two months, President Trump of the US is already bragging about it in his campaign to further impress the super influential Jewish lobby groups in Washington, evangelicals, and his broader conservative and largely pro-Israel voter base. 

Likewise, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel who has been desperately struggling to cling to power to avoid serious corruption charges that are most likely to land him in jail once out of power is already manipulating the developments politically to mobilize enough support in hopes of achieving a comfortable win in the next parliamentary election that would enable him to form a government without having to go into a coalition, or, at worst, that would enable him to form a government in a coalition with friendlier partners. 

Meanwhile, given the particular religious significance of Palestine where Al Quds, the third of the three holy cities in Islam is located in addition to its original Arabic identity, the struggle against its occupation by the Zionists has always attracted both real activists and self-serving opportunists from among the Palestinians, rest of the Arabs, and other countries in the region and beyond. 

With the self-serving opportunists dominating the scene, all that a typical charlatan seeking cheap political popularity among Arabs and Muslims has to do in order to achieve his agenda is to feign and maintain an uncompromising stance against the Zionists and their occupation of Palestine. For a typical Palestinian political opportunist, and depending on his rhetorical skills, hypocritical moves and connections, he may be able to manoeuvre himself into the limelight and become part of the Palestinian elite many, if not most, of whom only exploit the Palestinian cause in pursuit of their respective selfish interests.   

Equally, some Arab and even non-Arab regimes have exploited the Palestinian cause in pursuit of their geopolitical agendas at the expense of the cause. 

Iran is particularly notorious in this regard. Driven by its Shiism-coated neo-Persian geopolitical expansionist agenda in the Middle East, it has, since 1979, ridden the wave of the deep-rooted anti-Zionist feelings among Arabs to promote its false anti-Zionist rhetoric laden with the empty threat of eliminating Israel. 

Of course, the rhetoric has resonated with the unsuspecting across the region, which enabled Iran to infiltrate many countries where it created armed militias loyal it through which it seeks to dominate the countries; it has already succeeded in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria through such militias, which have grown stronger than the constituted security establishments including the military. It has also infiltrated the Palestinians where it manipulates some supposed resistance groups e.g Hamas militia in pursuit of its agenda.  

Now, I have to skip the issue of Iran-Israel mutually beneficial “enmity”, which, I am supposed to address today as promised last week; this is due to space constraint and the fact that it may entail digressing too far from the main topic. So, I will, God willing, address it in a separate piece in due course.

Meanwhile, seeing Iran’s hugely successful exploitation of the Palestinian cause in the promotion of its geopolitical agenda, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan conceived his own version of the neo-Ottoman geopolitical ambition riding the wave of the Muslim Brotherhood group to achieve it. This is, though, unlike Iranians, his strategy doesn’t involve changing people’s religious beliefs. 

However, his inconsistency with regard to the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation is particularly interesting; because while he passionately criticizes Israel over its acts of brutality or policies against the Palestinians, he remains officially the closest Israeli ally among Muslim leaders anyway. Figures of trade volume and value between the two countries, the extent of diplomatic relations, military cooperation, tourism, air travel, etc., say it all in this regard. 

Now, pragmatically speaking, whether normalization of relations between an Arab or Muslim country and Israel is justified or not, it depends on what each country gets in return, and, of course, the implications of the normalization on the efforts to end the Zionist occupation of the Palestinian land.  

Accordingly, while Egypt, which retrieved its Sinai peninsula under its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Jordan, which equally retrieved its territories and water resources under its 1994 peace treaty with Israel, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which became a quasi-autonomous Palestinian authority in West Bank and Gaza following the Israeli withdraw under the Oslo Accords (I&II) in 1993/95, while they can be vindicated, the UAE, Bahrain and any other Arab country that may follow suit without appropriate value in return cannot. 

The worth or otherwise of these recent treaties and their respective implications on the Palestinian cause can only be assessed when the exact terms of the treaties are released; and even then, their merits can only be assessed based on what Israel actually implements on the ground accordingly.

Politicking with Palestinian cause (l)

 (Link on Daily Trust site)

Since the announcement of the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, a few weeks ago, I have received requests from some media outlets and individuals to comment on the development and its implications on the Palestinian cause. 

Interestingly, the average observer who follows Middle East politics on only or largely the various international media that allot limited periods for Hausa news programs misses too much information, which explains his simplistic understanding of the underlying dynamics of the region's geopolitics. 

Anyway, though the protracted Arab-Jews struggle predates 1948 when global powers conspired to create the Zionist State of Israel on Palestinian territories, the 1979 controversial Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty introduced a whole new dimension to the politics of the struggle.   

After four of the five major wars between Arabs and Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, Egypt, the most populous and arguably strongest Arab country, began to come to terms with the fact that a war with Israel was/is effectively a war with the global military powers combined, given the Euro-American countries' resolve to keep Israel militarily and technologically superior to the entire Arab countries.  

So, in 1979 and following years of pressure and blackmail in the name of US-brokered Egypt-Israel negotiations, Egypt recognized the State of Israel and normalized relations with it, while it, in return, retrieved its Sinai Peninsula from the Israeli occupation.  

Though Egypt’s decision provoked its fellow Arab countries, which consequently expelled it from their Arab League organization, it (i.e Egypt's decision) prompted individual countries in the region to begin looking at the struggle from, primarily, the perspectives of their respective national interests.  

In less than a decade afterwards, Arab countries restored diplomatic relations with Egypt while its membership in the Arab League was formally restored in 1989.  

And by the mid-90s, the Palestinians themselves had recognized the State of Israel under the Oslo Accords l&ll based on the United Nation's two-state solution to the conflict. Consequently, a quasi-autonomous Palestinian “state” in West Bank and Gaza Strip was created as a step supposedly designed to culminate in the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.  

Soon afterwards, Palestinian political elites including those of the supposed armed resistance groups e.g. Hamas began struggling for the leadership of their quasi-autonomous Palestinian “state” based on either formal recognition of the State of Israel, as in the case of, say, Fatah, or tacit recognition, as in the case of, say, Hamas, as provided under the Oslo Accords that established the whole political process. And since then those of them in "power" have always enjoyed power-associated privileges including diplomatic treatment around the world, while their political opponents are always determined to take over their positions as in any typical democratic state.  

In fact, since 2007, the two major components of the quasi-autonomous Palestinian “state”, West Bank and Gaza, have been politically separate following a desperate power struggle between Fatah and Hamas that led to the violent overthrow of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza by the Hamas fighters; and since then the city has been under Hamas control. 

Meanwhile, while Fatah openly interacts with Israel based on formal recognition, Hamas, which "insists" on not recognizing Israel, does the same albeit largely through Qatar and Turkey. 

On the social level also, when Israel was created in 1948 many Palestinians opted for recognizing it by willingly taking its citizenship; they now constitute more than 20% of the Israeli population. 

Besides, on a daily basis, thousands of Palestinian labourers cross into Israel through its border crossings to work, which equally suggests their, at least, tacit recognition of the State of Israel; and given the chance, they wouldn’t hesitate to take Israeli citizenship. Interesting, many of them work on construction sites including the settlements that successive Israeli governments have been building on the very territories of the proposed State of Palestine in blatant defiance of the relevant UN resolutions.   

Anyway, in 1994, Jordan also signed a US-brokered peace treaty recognizing the State of Israel and normalizing relations with it. And in 1996, a year following the overthrow of the then Emir of Qatar by his son, the former Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani who is the father of the current Emir, Shiekh Tamim, Qatar and Oman openly established relations with Israel when they respectively invited the then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to Doha and Muscat where agreements were signed between the two countries respectively and Israel.  

Also, whether it was a mere coincidence or not, the same year witnessed the establishment of the Doha-based Aljazeera satellite Channel, which was the first Arabian television channel to host Zionist leaders, politicians, and even military spokesmen who promote propaganda that undermines the established narrative of the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which was the illegal occupation of the former's land by the latter. And since then the sight of Zionist officials on Arab TV channels has become normal. 

Now, Mauritania equally recognized Israel in 1999 and established diplomatic ties with it. And though the UAE is the latest Arab country to follow suit, it's an open secret that there have always been secretive direct or indirect contacts between Israel and literally all Middle Eastern countries. 

Meanwhile, Turkey, which, along with Iran and Israel are the only non-Arab countries in the region, and which recognized Israel since 1949, a year after its (Israeli) creation that made it the first Muslim country to do so, has maintained diplomatic, economic, military, and other strategic ties with Israel. 

Whereas, since 1979 following the Khomeini revolution in Iran, Israeli and Iran have manipulated their mutually beneficial "enmity" at the expense of the Palestinian cause and indeed the entire Arab countries in the region. 

In the conclusion this Friday, I will, God willing, highlight how Iran and Israel exploit the Palestinian cause in their mutually beneficial “enmity” to achieve their respective goals without actually undermining each another; and, of course, look at the underlying interests and dynamics behind the tendency of normalizing relations with Israel among Arab countries.

Who are Alhaji Sa’idu, Alhaji Ashiru?

(Link on DailyTrust site)

Around 2017 I learnt of a dramatic arrest of a Dubai-based Nigerian unlicensed currency exchange operator. Though I initially assumed that it was just a typical incident involving some Nigerians engaged in currency exchange without appropriate licenses, eyewitnesses’ accounts of the dramatic way the arrest was made left me suspecting other possible more serious reasons behind it; yet I never suspected anything close to what I recently learnt. 

Not long after the arrest, a “big man” elder friend of mine from Kano who had been approached by the suspect’s relatives in hopes he might be of some assistance to the suspect on account of his perceived experience with relevant procedures in the UAE contacted me in turn and introduced a brother to the suspect to me who had come to Dubai to follow up on the case.

And even after I met with him in Dubai, I was still under an assumption that the case was, at worse, a money-laundering case, which such unlicensed currency exchange operators perpetrate knowingly or unknowingly on behalf of some Nigerian home and foreign-based Internet fraudsters who capitalize on the naivety of such unlicensed currency exchange operators to implicate them in money-laundering crimes while they (fraudsters) get away with it.

Interestingly, a typical case in this regard plays out when an Internet fraudster in, say, Lagos manages to scam his victim in, say, London, however, due to the scrutiny that a Nigeria-bound money transfer particularly attracts from money transfer operators and authorities across the world on account of Nigeria’s particular notoriety in Internet fraud, the fraudster contacts a typical greed-driven but naïve Dubai-based mostly Hausa unlicensed currency exchange operator offering him a share from the money if he agrees to collect it in Dubai on his behalf.

He, (i.e. fraudster), then advises the victim to transfer the money to the Dubai-based fellow citing bogus reasons why he cannot receive it directly. The Dubai guy then receives the money, takes his share as agreed, and transfers the balance to the fraudster in Nigeria who ends up collecting the money without leaving any trace behind while the poor guy remains the actual receiver of the money according to the official records and therefore ends up being eventually traced and arrested in Dubai whenever a victim reports being scammed. 

Anyway, recently a friend of mine familiar with the arrested Dubai-based Nigerian unlicensed currency exchange operator’s case sent me a 24-page Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal’s conviction and sentence against the fellow and asked me for a favour to translate it from Arabic to English as, according to him, it would be presented to a top government official who had been approached by the convict’s relatives to facilitate the Nigerian government’s intervention in hopes of securing his release by the UAE authorities.

After going through it, I discovered, among other things, that the fellow in question was actually one of a 6-man network of accomplices convicted and sentenced respectively. What, however, shocked me was the discovery that the case is entirely different from what I had assumed all along. I discovered that the convicts were, in fact, tried and convicted for funding the Boko Haram terror group in Nigeria.

However, due to the amount of workload and having concluded that there is hardly anything that the Nigerian government can do for them, I only made a one-page summarized English version of the original 24-page court file, which is full of details of many Boko-Haram funding transactions that the convicts had perpetrated at least since 2015.

I also observed that almost all the transactions were initiated by one Alhaji Sa’idu based in Nigeria who, according to the file, is a senior undercover Boko-Haram member responsible for facilitating the group’s access to funds from its sponsors. His name appears many times throughout the file.

Equally, one Alhaji Ashiru was mentioned in some of the transitions; and he is, according to the file, a Nigerian government official and yet a senior undercover Boko-Haram member who facilitates the transfer of misappropriated public funds to the group. 

The pattern of a typical transaction is that Alhaji Sa’idu would arrange an unidentified or vaguely identified Arab person on a visit to Dubai from Turkey to hand over an amount of money in US Dollars to one of the convicts who would, in turn, advise his Nigerian-based business partners to hand over the Naira equivalent of the amount to Alhaji Sa’idu. 

Though the convicts, or at least some of them, could be victims of manipulation by Alhaji Sa’idu and Alhaji Ashiru who had capitalized on their gullibility, the court file maintains their involvement anyway and, accordingly, two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment while the remaining four got a 10-year jail sentence respectively. 

Now, shocked by those discoveries, and wondering whether Nigerian authorities are aware of this case, I checked with a Nigerian diplomat friend of mine here in the UAE who promised to check in turn and get back to me.

Meanwhile, in case the Nigerian government isn’t aware, which is quite probable, it means that the duo of Alhaji Sa’idu, Alhaji Ashiru and perhaps others are probably carrying on their Boko Haram-funding facilitation activities through other accomplices and/or by manipulating other home or foreign-based Nigerian hustlers oblivious of the actual purpose of the informal financial transaction services they are providing. 

In any case, considering the sheer implications of this case on Nigeria’s security and stability, the Nigerian government doesn’t have any reasonable excuse whatsoever to justify its unawareness of it. After all, it maintains a diplomatic mission in the UAE, which is manned by supposedly trained diplomats as well as the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) operatives who are particularly responsible for preventing foreign-linked threat against Nigeria and its interests.    

Besides, regardless of whatever military measures Nigeria takes against Boko-Haram terrorists, its ability to defeat the group for good depends on its ability to identify and eliminate all its sources of funds, which can only be achieved through painstaking intelligence-gathering, accurate intelligence analyses, and proactive measures accordingly.  

The dynamics behind Beirut blast

 (Link on Daily Trust site)

The Lebanese capital, Beirut was last Tuesday rocked by the most devastating blast in the history of the country. It was so massive that the associated shockwaves were felt in Cyprus 240 kilometres away. It left more than 130 dead, more 5000 wounded and extensive destruction particularly in and around the seaport facilities where it occurred.

According to the Governor of Beirut, Marwan Abboud, the blast could be compared to the United States nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 during World War ll, which were the first and so far the only incidents of nuclear attacks in the world. He also estimated the cost of the resultant damage to be between three to five billion US Dollars, which is too much to bear for a desperately struggling economy like the Lebanese economy.

The country’s President, Michel Aoun was quick to attribute the incident to an accidental explosion of “2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate (which) had been stored unsafely in a warehouse for six years.” However, it’s widely believed among informed observers and analysts on Middle East affairs, and, of course, within intelligence communities in the region and beyond that the blast was never accidental, and, instead, it was just one of the similar “mysterious” incidents that characterize the Israel-Iran tensions over the past several years.

Of course, as far as those with little or no understanding of the intricacies of the underlying politics of the Israel-Iran tensions are concerned, the incident remains as officially explained by the Lebanese authorities, or it’s simply mysterious in the absence of any definitive contrary official narrative about the alleged party responsible for it or the targeted party. 

Whereas, the incident was never accidental or even isolated for that matter. It was actually one of the series of surgical clandestine missile or aerial strikes that Israel has been conducting over the past few years on Iranian military facilities and factories within Iran and its military bases and sponsored militia units and their logistics facilities across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This is though Israel has never officially admitted nor denied responsibility for any of such attacks, while the Iranian authorities, which even though know deep down that Israel has always been responsible, have never held it responsible either.

That further explains the confusion of casual observers who are not familiar enough with the relevant politics involved especially considering the aggressive rhetoric that the two countries always trade against each other.  

Over the past two months, in particular, Israel has intensified its attacks on various military targets and facilities within Iran including its Natanz nuclear project complex, gas pipelines, military factories and other sensitive facilities. Also, for several years, Israel has been attacking Iranian military sites and its sponsored militia units across Syria, of course with the covert approval if not overt connivance of the Russian military in the country, which is supposed to protect the Bashar Al-Assad’s regime and its Iranian allies. (I may address the dynamics of Russian “betrayal” of President Assad in this regard in another piece).

Likewise, across Iraq, various Iranian military units, bases of the Iranian-backed militias and armouries have been the targets of Israeli attacks. Also, in addition to Israel's intermittent attacks on the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, it has equally conducted covert and sometimes more devastating attacks on some secretive or disguised facilities of the militia within the country.

Even the recent attack in Beirut wasn’t targeted at the state of Lebanon per se, after all; it was instead believed to have been targeted at a massive alleged Hezbollah armoury disguised as a seaport facility.

By the way, by manipulating the false pretext of resisting the Israel occupation of Palestine, Hezbollah militia, which is believed to be stronger than the Lebanese military itself, is the only armed political player in Lebanon, which enables it to hold the country to ransom and dictate state policies according to the dictates of the militia’s Iranian sponsors in faraway Tehran.

Now, understanding the logic behind Israel’s reluctance to admit responsibility for such attacks and Iran’s pretended obliviousness of Israeli’s responsibility requires looking at the underlying tactical and strategic considerations of both parties.

On the part of Israel, in order to keep the support of the global powers that it has always enjoyed and manipulated at the expense of Palestinians on whose confiscated territories it was created in 1948, and even though it’s the strongest military power in the region, it feigns vulnerability in the face of the persistent, albeit actually empty, existential threats from Iran since its transformation into a theocracy following the Khomeini-led revolution in 1979.

While on its part, Iran’s bogus commitment to eliminating the state of Israel, which its leaders have always chanted has been its most effective political capital among the gullible across the Muslim world; it, in fact, partly owes its survival to it. To maintain it, therefore, it has to keep making threatening but empty rhetoric against Israel and to also keep sponsoring purported anti-Israeli militias e.g. Hezbollah and Hamas and manipulating them to conduct reckless adventures in the name of attacking Israel, which in turn retaliates with disproportionate force to kill as many vulnerable Palestinians or Lebanese as possible and destroy their properties and infrastructure. This is even though it (i.e. Iran) has a supposedly strong military, yet it has never targeted Israel and won't' dare to; obviously, its military is actually only intended for the pursuit of its expansionist agenda at the expense of Muslim nations.

Israel, therefore, capitalizes on these dynamics to undermine Iran and its sponsored militias through such “mysterious” attacks knowing that Iran would rather continue to feign obliviousness of Israel's responsibility for the attacks and continue to suffer in silence than to hold it responsible, for it realizes that, by so doing, its largely gullible fans would rightly expect it to retaliate while, in reality, it's never and indeed has never been serious in its threats against Israel in the first place.