By now it is proved beyond doubt, terror-patron Iran was the main architect behind October 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel that resulted in barbaric murder of over 1,400 innocent people and abduction of 222 Israelis, American and foreign nationals. Now Tehran has a much wider and dangerous plan. While Israel is continuing its counterterrorism offensives in Gaza targeting Hamas and Palestinian terrorists, Iran-backed militias in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are already taking preparations of joining Hamas to cause extensive damage to Israel and gradually push the war into other Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of thousands of radicalized transnational Islamist terrorists are goading themselves into a conflict – apparently with Israel, with the ultimate goal of dragging the United States and its Western allies and the region into this conflict.
According to analysts, while Israel currently is focusing on its ongoing actions in Gaza, an eruption on its northern border would bring an exponentially greater conflict, with Lebanese Hezbollah boasting of having 100,000 fighters and 150,000 rockets, Iraq’s Al-Hasd Al-Shaabi showing willingness of joining the war with its 240,000 fighters with large affiliated forces in Syria and Yemen. And of course, at one point, Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would join the war with its 190,000 combatants, while many of IRGC men are already deployed throughout the region. In that case, America’s direct involvement in the war would become inevitable.
Commenting on this scenario, Arab-American journalist Baria Alamuddin in a column wrote: “American nervousness about all-out conflict is manifested in the timid manner in which it passively observed 18 militant strikes against US targets in Iraq and Syria, before responding with two bashfully symbolic attacks against militant facilities on the Syria-Iraq border. White House spokesman John Kirby said: “Nobody’s looking for a conflict with Iran”. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the US had “no intention or desire to engage in further hostilities”. But as militia strikes inexorably continue, the US may be reluctantly sucked into an escalatory tit-for-tat”.
She further said: Tehran has struggled to control the transnational hordes it cultivated. Capricious militia commanders such as Qais Khazali view perpetual provocation as an endlessly productive strategy, in careers built upon engineering anarchy and mayhem. Kata’ib Hezbollah has threatened attacks on the GCC, the Houthis are firing drones over Egyptian and Saudi airspace, and Iraqi militants are blocking oil supplies along the Jordan border, all fueling perfect storms of conflict regionalization.
Statements from Tehran urge de-escalation, while dealing in provocation. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gloated that paramilitaries such as Hezbollah had their “fingers on the trigger,” and boasted that their next moves would be “much more powerful and deeper than what you’ve witnessed.” Iran sank decades of investment into Hezbollah, which played a leading role in training and mobilizing other regional militias. The methodology of mass-casualty suicide attacks, exploited ad infinitum by Daesh [Islamic State] and Al-Qaeda, was pioneered by Hezbollah in the 1980s.
Tehran doesn’t want to witness Israel dismembering and eliminating its biggest asset. Hezbollah has likewise warned that it won’t stand idly by and witness the destruction of Hamas. As with other powers that manipulated Middle Eastern conflicts for their own amusement, Vladimir Putin is gleefully pouring fuel on the fire, hoping that if the West is drawn into a widened conflict, Ukraine will be entirely forgotten.
In 2014, the US allowed the creation of the Iraqi paramilitary Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi as a hands-off means of combating Daesh, in parallel with US-backed proxies in Syria. But Western powers did nothing to prevent the Hashd behemoth doubling in size, even after Daesh’s defeat, despite repeated warnings about the perils such forces posed to regional stability. Like the nastiest slasher movies fevered imaginations can conjure up, this cowardly failure to slay undead demons of past conflicts is returning to haunt us for Halloween 2023.
In fact, what Arab-American journalist Baria Alamuddin is predicting is just a segment of the actual size of threats, that may cause severe harm to the United States and other Western countries. While people are focusing on Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza, thinking this is a war between Israel and Hamas as well as Palestinian terrorists, they are failing to realize, this is no more a war between Israel and the Palestinian terrorists. This is a possible war between the Western nations and Iranian proxies, including Hamas and Palestinian terrorists. As we are witnessing increase of so-called Palestinian protests in the United States, United Kingdom and other EU nations (including college and university campuses), media reports are already indicating the pro-Hamas protestors taking preparations of beginning armed terror, suicide attacks and lone-wolf attacks targeting Jews, Christians and “non-Muslims”.
It is essential to mention, while in the United States, millions of weapons are already in American households – meaning, a huge number of weapons have already gone into the grips of Palestinian immigrants. What will happen when these weapons are used against Americans in mass-shootings of target shootings? It may be mentioned here that with more than 450 million guns possessed by Americans with an additional unknown number of assault rifles, the country is gradually becoming a land of terror – where incidents of shooting at educational institutions in particular have become almost a regular issue. The US ratio of 120.5 firearms per 100 residents, up from 88 per 100 in 2011, far surpasses that of other countries around the world.
Some of the analysts reject the ‘450 million’ figure stating it is hard to estimate the number of privately owned guns in America since there is no countrywide database where people register whether they own guns, and there is a thriving black market for them in the absence of strong federal gun trafficking laws. In their opinion, the actual number of guns possessed by private individuals in the United States would be much higher.
One estimate from the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based research project, found that there were approximately 390 million guns in circulation in the US in 2018, or about 120.5 firearms per 100 residents. That number has likely climbed in the years since, given that one in five households purchased a gun during the pandemic. But even without accounting for that increase, US gun ownership is still well above any other country: Yemen, which has the world’s second-highest level of gun ownership, has only 52.8 guns per 100 residents; in Iceland, it’s 31.7.
According to a 2016 Harvard University and Northeastern University study, American guns are concentrated in a tiny minority of households: just 3 percent own about half the nation’s guns. They’re called “super owners” who have an average of 17 guns each. Gallup, using a different methodology, found that 42 percent of American households overall owned guns in 2021.
A 2013 Boston University-led study found that for each percentage point increase in gun ownership at the household level, the state firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent. And states with weaker gun laws have higher rates of gun-related homicides and suicides, according to a study conducted by gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
There is still a pervasive idea – pushed by gun manufacturers and gun rights organizations like the National Rifle Association stating that further arming the United States is the answer to preventing gun violence – the ‘good guy with a gun’ theory. But a 2021 study from Hamline University and Metropolitan State University found that the rate of deaths in 133 mass school shootings between 1980 and 2019 was 2.83 times greater in cases where there was an armed guard present.
Just imagine the consequences once those pro-Hamas immigrants in the United States get hold of even a fraction of the 450 million weapons, that include automatic assault rifles. And of course, for buying weapons, they won’t face any financial burden as countries like Iran would be readily invest millions towards terrorizing America with pro-Hamas and anti-Semite forces holding weapons, assault rifles and powerful explosives.
The only way to prevent such catastrophe is total destruction of Hamas and evacuation of Gaza from the evil grips of these monsters.
