The Battlefield Shapes the Endgame, Not Illusory Negotiating Tables

The story always begins when the compass of reality starts to spin. Here we have Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf making theatrical and boastful statements detached from the harsh realities of the battlefield, speaking of his experience dating back to 1985 and his direct contacts with the front lines, while boasting about an alleged memorandum of understanding and claiming that Trump signed an official recognition of the Resistance!

As though the blood of innocent civilians being spilled in southern Lebanon, entire villages being demolished and destroyed, and the occupation’s continuing threats to advance toward Ali al-Taher Mountain, a strategic position regarded as one of the most important strongholds in the south — amid the complete inability of the so-called “Islamabad Understanding” even to demand an end to the war — were merely passing details in the imagination of a political class living outside its own time.

But the real catastrophe lies not merely in the superficiality of these statements. It lies in the fact that Qalibaf has become the heir to the rhetoric — and the mistakes — of those who came before him in promoting what can only be described as “deception negotiations.”

This absurd approach has manifested itself catastrophically in bitter negotiating episodes. In Lebanon, for example, we witnessed Nabih Berri’s negotiations with Amos Hochstein, which were nothing more than “deception negotiations” and ultimately ended in the great tragedy of the assassination of the Resistance leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Likewise, the negotiations between Abbas Araghchi and Steve Witkoff allegedly led to the tragedy of the martyrdom of the Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

And today in Iraq, figures such as Hadi al-Amiri — despite having no direct historical precedent in managing major negotiating tables — are rushing to present the same faded version of diplomatic illusions as a means of securing the rights of the martyrs and wounded in the face of aggression.

Meanwhile, the American camp responds with blind arrogance, going so far as to order the Iraqi government to mobilize the armed forces against the Resistance, apparently unconcerned about the danger of civil war, internal fighting, and sectarian strife.

Here lies the real pain and the fundamental problem.

The problem is not merely these individuals themselves, but those who listen to them and place their hopes in them — such as factions that go to listen to and obey figures like Hadi al-Amiri and others, thereby losing their compass and allowing their ranks to become confused behind illusions that neither satisfy nor provide any real benefit.