As teams of Western diplomats try to convince Iran to limit its planned attack on Israel, two Arab countries have done more than all of them combined.
The Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi informed Tehran that if it responds to Israel's assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Jordan will not allow it to enter its airspace, Sky News Arabia reported.Riyadh has declared it will not allow Iranian missiles or drones to pass through its airspace en route to Israel, a senior member of the Saudi royal family told Kan News on Monday evening. The official emphasized, "Riyadh will not allow any foreign object to pass through."
This has been barely reported elsewhere, but it is very important.
All you have to do is look at a map:
Iran wants good relations with all Islamic countries. Its new president has said that this is one of his top priorities. Violating the airspace of two of the most important such countries is not a way to achieve that goal.
It is even possible that this message has delayed Iran's response.
Iran wants to "punish" Israel, and if it cannot do it directly, it appears weak to the region. But if it is forced to route all its missiles through Syria that blunts the effects of their "crushing blow."
In fact, Iran is already trying to message the world that using proxies does not indicate weakness. The "Holy Defense News Agency" of the Iranian military is already setting the stage, in English, for the bull of the attack to come from its proxies, positioning this as a surprise: "Quadrilateral operation for the revenge of Resistance martyrs."
Israel doesn't know that this time, it will face a different operation than the True Promise [April] operation. In the True Promise Operation, Iranians themselves bombed the depth of the occupied territories. But this time Lebanon's Hezbollah will also be present because terrorist Israelis have assassinated the top commander of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut.The third side of this harsh punishment is the zealous Yemenis, who yesterday emphasized in their million march that revenge for the blood of Haniyeh and other martyrs of the Resistance should be taken from the Israelis.Islamic resistance groups of Iraq are the fourth side of revenge for the Resistance martyrs.Iran and the rest of the resistance axis countries have raised the flag of revenge for martyrs. It seems that this time the punishment of the Zionists will be different compared to their punishment in the True Promise operation, but now how much and how, need time to understand.
This is just conjecture, of course, like all the other analysis of Iran. But it is possible that Iran had to change its attack plans to avoid upsetting Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and as such they have done more to make Iran think twice than anyone else. Their statements comes with an implicit warning that there would be diplomatic consequences for Iran violating their airspace.
That would shame Iran.
On the other hand, no Western nation has directly threatened Iran with consequences - military, economic, diplomatic, anything - if they violate international law by attacking Israel for reasons of "revenge." And that is why nothing they say will have the slightest effect. On the contrary, their efforts makes Iran feel more important and it feeds Iran's sense of "honor," which only gets enhanced with its public refusal to listen to them. Placing warships in the area does not dissuade Iran one bit, unless there is a threat to use those ships against Iranian targets themselves and not just missiles and drones.
As always, it is all about honor. And the West simply doesn't get it.
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