On the death of Haniyeh

Israel has killed the political leader of Hamas in Tehran, Ismail Haniyeh. The media reported that it was a bomb planted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's Mossad in the room where Haniyeh stayed after attending the proclamation of Iran's new president. The elimination of Haniyeh, and earlier that of Hezbollah's military chief Fuad Shukr, has been greeted by the US with undisguised discomfort.

Although Haniyeh participated with the rest of those present in the traditional chorus of "death to Israel and death to America" at the inauguration of Iran's new president, and despite Shukr's responsibility for the 1983 massacre in Lebanon of 241 US Marines, the White House has made it clear that it had no knowledge of the operations. President Biden has gone so far as to say that they will not help reach a hostage deal, and his Administration has again filled the press with the usual warnings against escalation in the region.

Foreign policy, against the enemy within

The warnings are always directed at Israel and not at Hezbollah or Iran, which the Democrats - and, of course, the European Union, which sent its foreign policy deputy, Enrique Mora, to the inauguration of the new president of the Islamic Republic - continue to see as a potential partner despite the open war it is waging against Washington's supposed ally (Israel) in the region. As Mike Doran of the Hudson Institute has written, the logic of this rhetoric, and the actions and omissions that accompany it, is that Iran and its parastatal terrorist satellites can strike wherever and whenever they want without Israel having the right to retaliate.

The message of Democratic policy on Iran, Israel and the Middle East should be clear to all who believe they have an ally in Washington. Neatly and decisively defeating their enemies is not among the priorities or interests of Obama's and Biden's America (which is the same), and I don't even want to think about Kamala's. Their war is against the enemy within, including the democratic governments of allied countries to which they profess ideological hostility, such as Bibi's in Israel and Orbán's in Hungary.

(On the opposite spectrum to this incorrigible tendency for appeasement and containment is Ukraine. Kiev has vowed to punish wherever it can find the Russian military who have turned Ukraine into an inferno. In recent months, the daily Kyiv Post has reported on Ukrainian military intelligence operations against Russian mercenaries and soldiers deployed in Syria and Sudan... 

Just this week the publication has told of Ukrainian forces attacking a Russian airfield located east of Aleppo, destroying military and radio-electronic equipment. Also this week, Tuareg rebels in northern Mali have posed with a Ukrainian flag after killing about fifty Russian Wagner mercenaries supporting the joint military coup in Bamako in an ambush. The flag and the presence of two white gunmen in the photo have sparked rumors of possible Ukrainian involvement in the operation... 

Kiev's military intelligence has fueled these rumors. Its spokesman Andri Yusov claimed that the Tuareg rebels received "the necessary information" to carry out the ambush, although when I asked him if it was given to them by Ukraine he told me that he had not said that. A retired colonel I have spoken to denied any direct contact by Kiev with these rebels who cooperate with Al Qaeda and told me how it could have come: someone in Mali or Mauritania forgets a folder somewhere with documents and photographs that is found by a member of the Tuareg movement. Ukraine is becoming, by audacity and determination to survive and punish its enemies, a new Israel.)

Venezuela, the United States, Haniyeh...

Let's move on from here to the Chavista electoral fraud in Venezuela. Led by Maria Corina, the opposition not only managed to reawaken the enthusiasm of a population that many of us considered too chastened and disappointed to overcome cynicism. Even under the relentless Chavista persecution, which led some of the key figures of the campaign to have to do it under diplomatic protection in the Argentine embassy in Caracas where they are still locked up, even under that relentless Chavista persecution, the opposition command had the practical intelligence to create an electoral supervision mechanism that would show the world in a definitive way the lying and criminal nature of the Chavista electoral process.

With the collaboration of decent regime officials, and thanks above all to a formidable network of volunteers who were physically in the polling stations exposing their safety and physical integrity, the opposition obtained more than eighty percent of the original tally sheets that show a result radically different from the one invented by the Chavista electoral commission to give the victory to the tyrant. The original available tally sheets show that the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, obtained 67% of the votes, with the remaining 30% obtained by Maduro.

"We know from experience that neither the express recognition of Edmundo as president nor sanctions will be enough to end the nightmare of a quarter of a century of Venezuelans."

The collosal work of the opposition has shown the world that Gonzalez - the retired diplomat who in an act of courageous generosity accepted to be the candidate of the vetoed Maria Corina - is the legitimate president of Venezuela. Some countries such as Peru, and that prodigy of moral clarity that is Milei's Argentina, have already recognized this. Others, such as the US, have refrained themselves for the moment from recognizing the opposition victory. And others, such as the leftist governments of Brazil, Chile, the EU ans Spain are limiting themselves for the time being to asking Maduro to show the electoral records, as if they had not already been presented by the opposition.

The countries of the last two groups are also calling for peace, as if in a situation of stability it would be possible for Venezuelan institutions to resolve the mess in favor of truth and justice. Calm and stability is precisely what the Chavista regime needs to once again quell the protests and continue in power as it has been doing so far.

We know from experience that neither the express recognition of Edmundo as president nor sanctions will be enough to end the quarter-century-long nightmare of Venezuelans. If direct military intervention is ruled out, it will be necessary, as was already done with Trump in Washington during Guaidó's interim presidency, to maneuver to get the security services to go over to the side of the people. It was almost achieved then - remember how Leopoldo López was released - and it can be achieved now.

And one last note about the newcomers to the US presidential race. The Democrats have started a campaign calling Trump's vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance "weird." It started being said somewhere and is already being repeated by the media like a single man with the efficiency of a factory production line. It is reminiscent of Moncloa's expressions such as "pseudo-media" or "the mud machine" in left-wing Spain because of its repitition and fervor for success.

The other newcomer to the race is Kamala Harris, whose nomination for the Democratic candidacy has been greeted by mainstream opinion makers with a wave of enthusiasm for the qualities that would make her a good president: her passion for cooking and a certain self-confidence she displays when it comes to dancing and speaking.

(Some readers will have seen that the media refer to Haniyeh as the "moderate" face of Hamas. Historian Edward Luttwak has explained the logic of the label: "He insisted that all Jews in Israel should be killed, but he said nothing about Jews in Australia. This makes him a moderate.")