TEHRAN- Referring to the events that occurred after Operation al-Aqsa Storm on October 7 inside occupied territories, the Hill website ran its November 13 story to pin the responsibility of the Hamas operation on Iran and call Tehran the “victorious” side of the Gaza war. 

The opinion, written by Ahmad Hashemi, is titled “Iran is the main beneficiary of the Gaza crisis, but Israel can turn the tables.”

Hashemi suggested that Israeli officials and Westerners “hold Iran accountable” for Tel Aviv's successive defeats.

The Hill, through shifting the blame on Iran, has made bids to cover up the Israeli military and intelligence failures, which were further called into question by the Hamas operation on October 7.

The author also suggested the Israeli army, with full U.S. military, intelligence, and technological support, carry out its "strikes" once and for all.

Storm Operation a response to Tel Aviv’s relentless violence against Palestinians

Attributing the Hamas operation to Tehran, the report has tried to deviate public opinion from the reason behind the operation and to cover up the colossal defeat of the Tel Aviv regime at the hands of resistance fighters.

From the early hours after the start of the operation, Mohammed Deif, the chief of Hamas's Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (IQB), revealed the reason behind the Storm Operation.

He said that the operation was a “response” to the desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque and relentless violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. 
 
“We’ve decided to say enough is enough,” Deif said, calling October 7 “the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on Earth.”

The Gaza Strip has been under siege for 17 years. The Gazans have been the subject of inhumane behaviors with their dignity humiliated by the Zionists.

"Israel’s sweeping restrictions on leaving Gaza has deprived its more than two million residents of opportunities to better their lives," Human Rights Watch said on June 14, 2022, on the fifteenth anniversary of the 2007 closure.  

The closure has devastated the economy in Gaza, contributed to the fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and facilitated Israel’s apartheid practices against Gazans. 

“Israel, with Egypt’s help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison,” the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch Omar Shakir said in June 2022.

White House initiatives, fallacies to marginalize Palestinian cause

The U.S. should be held accountable for its miscalculations and interferences in the region.

The United States has been working hard to normalize the Zionist regime’s relations with some other Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia. However, efforts ended up with further insecurity in West Asia.  

The American proposal for normalization known as the "Abraham Accords" is aimed to diminish the importance of the Palestinian cause. Yet the Palestine issue has always been of top priority for the Muslim world.

Persuading Riyadh to join the Abraham Accords was Washington’s latest effort.
 
Israel signed normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on September 15, 2020, within the framework of the Abraham Accords.  

Mediated by the United States, the initial announcement of August 13, 2020, concerned only Israel and the United Arab Emirates before announcing a follow-up agreement between Israel and Bahrain on September 11, 2020. 

On September 15, 2020, the official signing ceremony for the first iteration of the Abraham Accords was hosted by the Trump administration at the White House. As part of the dual agreements, both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recognized Israel's sovereignty, enabling the establishment of full diplomatic relations. 

On January 28, 2020, the Trump Administration announced the details of the political portion of its plan to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a plan Trump called the Deal of the Century. 

The announcement came almost eight months after Washington’s publication of the economic portion of the plan, titled “Peace to Prosperity,” at a workshop in the Bahraini capital Manama in June 2019.

Attack on Iran will be a deadly miscalculation

Pointing to Israel’s threats, which says to cut “the head of the snake,” the Hill writer, in a naïve suggestion, advises “striking targets in Iran” to push back the country.
 
First, the Hamas operation crushed the myth of Israel’s invincibility on October 7, when the Israeli officials reluctantly admitted that they were “caught” off guard. Still after more than a month of airstrikes and the recent ground invasion, the Israeli army is left desperate. How on Earth did the so-called Israeli army dare to attack the Islamic Republic?
 
Attack on Iran, though circulated in the minds of Israeli officials, would be the termination date of the occupying regime. 

Second, the outcome of the Israeli war room held on July 16-18 in Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv poured cold water on Tel Aviv’s enthusiasm for war against Tehran where Tel Aviv found itself in the middle of nowhere. 

In short, Iran's military preparedness has been a deterrent to Israeli threats. 

In an address to an intensification of the Israeli military threats against Iran, on December 14, 2021, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of General Staff of Armed Forces, noted that the Iranian military is in “maximum vigilance commensurate with the enemy’s situation.” 

“At the strategic level, we do not intend to strike anyone, but at the operational and tactical level we are ready for a decisive response and a quick and tough offensive against the enemy,” the military chief asserted. 

Bagheri said the missile strike on the U.S. air base in western Iraq and the downing of the U.S. strategic drone with indigenous systems have been noticed by everyone, and these moves are especially instructive for “the adventurous enemies.”

Also, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei responded to all Israeli threats in 2013, saying, “Sometimes the leaders of the Zionist regime even threaten us; they are threatening to strike militarily, but I think they know it, and if they do not know it, they must know that if they make a mistake, the Islamic Republic will destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa.” 

The Tehran Times once again underlines the message it issued in 2021 regarding Iran’s defense capabilities.