TEHRAN – The leaders and supporters of the Resistance Axis have now made it clear that the United States is the main enemy that should be taken on in order to reduce the suffering of the defenseless Palestinian people. 

The U.S. has never been on the side of the Palestinian people, or even the broader Arab world. But the current Gaza-Israel war showed how far the U.S. could go to support the occupying regime of Israel, which has a long history of behaving as if it is above international law.

In the early hours of the October 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance groups against Israeli sites, the U.S. and other key Western leaders rushed to offer support, first emotional and then military and logistic, to the incompetent Israeli regime.

The Western support came at a time when Israel has adopted the inhumane strategy of collectively punishing the whole 2.3 million population of the already besieged Gaza Strip. They cut off water, electricity, food, and medicine all while relentlessly bombing hospitals, churches, refugee camps, mosques, schools and other civilian infrastructure. Their goal is crystal clear: now that Egypt has thwarted the displacement plan, Israel should inflict massive humanitarian suffering on the Gazans so that they would pressure the resistance groups not to target Israel again. 

This inhumane and cowardly policy was evident from the hallucinations of the Israeli leadership in the wake of the October 7 operation. Israeli President Isaac Herzog has said that “the entire nation” in Gaza are responsible for the operation because they could have risen up against the resistance groups there! This is akin to saying that ordinary Israelis are to blame because they could have toppled the occupying regime of Israel.  

Israeli hubris has prompted many in the West Asia region to wonder why the U.S. is actively supporting Israeli policies that are based on overconfidence and a racist perception of inherent supremacy over all humanity, not to mention the Palestinian nation. 

However, the U.S. enabling of the apartheid Israeli regime is now in the crosshairs of the resistance axis in the region. 

Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, has said in his recent speech that the U.S. is now the main responsible for the unbridled Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.

Nasrallah said the U.S. is directly responsible for all the ongoing killings, massacres, and barbarism that are taking place in Gaza. 

Underlining that “American hypocrisy” is quite evident, he said American statements that they have advised Israel to adhere to international law in its campaign against Gaza is “empty words and hypocrisy.”

Earlier, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, had also highlighted the American responsibility for Israel’s genocidal campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip. 

“In the absence of the US’s comprehensive support, the Zionist regime will be crippled in a matter of days,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a recent speech. 

Referring to the reliance of the Zionists on US support, the Leader pointed out that, “If it were not for the support of the United States and its arms support, the corrupt, fake, and fictitious Zionist government would have collapsed that very first week. Thus, the atrocities in Gaza today by the Zionists have in fact been created with the support of and at the hands of the U.S.”

The blind U.S. support for the murderous regime of Israel has put U.S. interests in West Asia in grave danger. The public opinion in the region, particularly among the Arab masses, is inflammatory, with the majority of Arabs seeing the U.S. enabling Israeli atrocities against their fellow Arabs in the Gaza Strip. The mood among Muslims around the world is similar. Even Arab leaders, who have historically been accused by their people as being pro-America, are now deeply resentful that they thought that the U.S. could take a more balanced position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ironically, Arab leaders are now working to keep America committed to the two-state solution, which they think America is trying to bury in a subtle way by liquidating the whole Palestinian question by displacing the Palestinian population into neighboring countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

And then there is the resistance axis which has already begun its retaliatory strikes against American interests in Iraq and Syria. Nasrallah said the U.S. has sent warning messages to Hezbollah, saying that the U.S. may target the Lebanese movement. The secretary-general responding to these warnings that they are not afraid of U.S. intervention and they even have prepared themselves for a confrontation with the American aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Lebanon. 

The resistance axis has so far acted in a restrained way to avoid a regional conflagration. But the ball is now in the U.S. court. Its blind support for Israeli carnage in Gaza could well ignite the whole region and deliver a fatal blow to American interests. On the other hand, putting an immediate end to the Israeli massacre of the Palestinian people could de-escalate tensions. At the end of the day, Arab and Islamic countries can’t sit idly by while Israel is collectively punishing the Gazans.