“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall,” says the Book of Proverbs in the Bible.
For some, it might offer an insight into the US decision to launch an ill-timed war against Iran, and that too at the advice of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
A recent article in the US media outlet, the Wall Street Journal, has once again exposed the sheer lack of understanding about Iran in particular among the American leadership and intelligentsia.
The article by WSJ’s long-term columnist James Freeman, titled Does Iran Have Enough Experts to Analyse Trump?, runs contrary to the ground situation, as exemplified by Iran’s defence against a far bigger military power.
“After more than a month of war against the US and countries around the Middle East, the Iranian regime now enters peace negotiations with fewer ships, missiles and austere religious scholars than it had in February,” Freeman wrote.
“This last category of depleted supplies could be most significant as whoever is now running the murderous regime in Tehran tries to assess the man who was elected to run the American government. Right now, he still seems to be keeping everyone guessing,” he added.
Freeman’s assessment that Tehran initiated the war – halted for the time being – is a classic example of the Western media obfuscating the truth.
In the face of constantly changing dynamics in the Middle East, Freeman’s assumption that Iranians might not have “enough experts to analyse Trump” is not only an insult to the intelligence of Iranians but also reeks of American media arrogance.
He “insults the intelligence of not only Iranians but also his readers,” Gregory Simons, an academic specialising in communication sciences, tells TRT World. “It sounds like an unsupported assertion.”
Who needs to analyse whom?
Despite Freeman’s confidence in the superiority of American political judgement, the current war situation does not reflect the writer’s portrayal of the Iranian political and intellectual capabilities.
An analyst says that what is true is actually the opposite of the WSJ’s analysis.
“Actually, it is the United States and Israel which did not have enough experts to analyse Iran, and that’s why they attacked and failed,” says Mohammed Eslami, a political scientist at the European University Institute, referring to the current battlefield deadlock.
Eslami was referring to Israeli and some pro-Israeli US assessments that Iran’s post-1979 revolutionary state would collapse under American military pressure, helped by an internal rebellion that would topple the current government in Tehran.
A recent New York Times article suggested that during a secret Situation Room meeting, Netanyahu promised Trump a quick victory against Iran.
“Even though they might have enough experts, they did not listen to them,” adds the Iranian professor, referring to recent American media revelations indicating that some top American officials disagreed with Netanyahu’s assertions of a quick victory.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe called Netanyahu’s assertion “farcical”, while Secretary of State Mike Rubio used a slang word to dismiss it. Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Israelis always “oversell” their war plans’ possible results.
“I argued that Iran actually studied and analysed Trump perfectly…that they could resist 40 days against the largest army in the world,” Eslami adds, referring to Tehran’s resistance in the face of military pressure and the country’s blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz against oil vessels aligned with American and Israeli interests.
‘Farcical’ argument
Beyond the obvious, WSJ’s Freeman’s assessment is flawed on multiple fronts.
First of all, not Iran but the US and Israel launched a war against Tehran in the first place. There is also emerging evidence that the US pushed for a ceasefire with Iran, setting up Pakistan to arrange negotiations, not the other way around.