In the British newspapers on Wednesday, an eyewitness observed a contradiction between what Trump expects from the Iranian people and what the Iranian people themselves see, and Houthi’s threat of a war of attrition that threatens to defeat the West, and the former British Foreign Secretary says that Britain without the European Union is “like a piece of cork tossed by the waves.”
We begin our tour with The Guardian newspaper, and an article by Dr. Hussein Hamdieh, a social researcher based in Tehran, who monitors the vast gap between the vision of Trump and the Iranian people regarding opposition to the regime.
Hamdieh begins by commenting on what Trump recently put forward on his platform, Truth Social, when he asked: “When will the Iranian people rise up and fight?” in a statement that the article described as “characterized by a great deal of confusion and dispersion to the point that it is difficult to distinguish between what represents actual policies and what is merely media hype.”
The article adds, "If betting on the uprising and fighting of the Iranian people actually represents an American policy, then this policy - according to what I sense from inside Iran - is considered a failure; even a miserable failure, at least at the present time."
He gave the example of emerging Iranian companies whose employees did not show any support for Iranian policy before the outbreak of war due to frequent Internet outages that disrupted the infrastructure on which the digital economy mainly depends.
However, as the author of the article observed during his stay in Iran, “even in these circles, one can detect a growing feeling of hatred towards the United States and its war in Iran.”
This does not necessarily mean support for the country, according to the article, “but one can notice the emergence of an intense hatred for the United States, coinciding with a growing desire to rebuild Iran and make it better off. There is a general feeling that this war reveals certain facts and clarifies matters.”
This feeling is fed by what the lenses observed on the warfield. Such as the "horrific" tragedy that befell the Minab School, the sports complex in Lamerd, the destroyed homes in Tehran, and, most recently, the targeting of a wedding party in a small Iranian village that resulted in the killing and wounding of many attendees.
The article warns that these incidents have an adverse effect on the Iranian people, who realize “how those who wage war from afar can view their victims as mere piles of human bodies, without faces, names, or human stories. Their death is seen as a necessary price that should not be taken into account in a war waged by one man against Iran.”
Stories and images of ordinary citizens being “brutally murdered” often tend to unite a divided country in the face of foreign invasion; According to Dr. Hamdiyeh, adding that these events “bring to mind - rightly - memories of what happened in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.”
The image that was prevalent earlier, which depicted Iran as a people kidnapped by its political establishment, has also begun to fade, to be replaced by another perception, which is that Iranians are “a nation waging a war against a hostile and supportive regional opponent with an imperialist tendency.”
This is the fundamental difference that Washington seems to “naively overlook,” according to the article, which explained that “one can oppose the state without wanting to see his country bombed into submission, and demand political change while believing that this change must come from within.”
We turn to the Telegraph newspaper, and an article by Jake Wallis Simons, in which he expressed his feeling of how bad the situation was with regard to the Ansar Allah Houthi group in Yemen, after British Prime Minister Andy Burnham agreed to use the British Royal Air Force to help Saudi Arabia with air refueling during the fight against the Houthis.
Although it is not huge military assistance, Simons sees it as “a strong gesture aimed at urging the world to stop standing idly by, and to realize the danger of the Houthi advance along the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the most important strategic sea lanes in the world.”
The article warns of the consequences of the Houthi escalation, which could lead to paralysis of the global economy, dragging the region into another war zone, and igniting instability for years to come.
The article shows how dangerous it is for the Houthis to control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, through which nearly a tenth of global maritime trade and a fifth of container traffic passes, with trade flows now down by 60 percent compared to 2023.
Although the main driver of the Houthis lies in Tehran, the article believes that the Houthis are “the largest force in terms of geographical spread within this axis.” He explained that they are a force of about 350,000 fighters who are predominantly irregular militias.
He added that they are armed with Kalashnikov rifles and drive small Toyota pickup trucks, and are supported by ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, long-range drones, anti-ship weapons, and sea mines, “all of which are Iranian supplies.”
The article also pointed out the danger of Iraq's "militias" that "receive their orders from Tehran," especially after an unknown march from Iraq destroyed the Saudi "East-West" oil pipeline that Riyadh was using to overcome the Strait of Hormuz crisis.
In light of the Houthis continuing to bomb Saudi civilian infrastructure and launching missile attacks, and with Riyadh suffering from a shortage in the stock of interceptor missiles, the article believes that Saudi Arabia’s request to China and Oman to mediate a ceasefire is “a step that is only a hair’s breadth away from declaring the surrender of the richest and most influential country in the Arab world.”
The article described the scene as "bleak"; After "bands of obscure Yemeni fanatics were able to cause military embarrassment, spread terror among civilians, disrupt energy supplies, and attract the attention of the world." According to the article, the current paths indicate that the situation is heading towards further deterioration.
Hence, the “correct framework” for understanding this escalation lies in the broader picture of the conflict with Iran, which aims to “strike the West economically, and drag it into a quagmire whose cost will be high in terms of lives, resources, and political stability, which may ultimately lead to defeat [the West’s defeat] through a war of attrition.”
We conclude our tour with The Independent newspaper, and a report by “Simon Walters” summarizing the highlights of an exclusive interview conducted by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Judy Greig, with former British Foreign Secretary for the Labor Party, David Miliband.
In this meeting, Miliband joined the growing voices calling for a reversal of the Brexit decision, saying that Brexit was a “unilateral declaration of political impotence,” turning the United Kingdom, “lacking a compass for direction,” into a mere “cork tossing around.”
Miliband, who served as Foreign Secretary from 2007 to 2010, pointed to part of the daily suffering of the British citizen, saying: “Brexit has been a source of daily suffering that we feared, whether for cheese manufacturers trying to export, or for passengers stuck at Berlin airport in the wrong queue, or for fishermen who were promised promises that were never fulfilled.”
