The Iranian missile attack on Israel has escalated the crisis in the Middle East close to an all-out regional war, much depending on how Israel responds to the assault. Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday morning that its confrontation with Iran “was not over yet”.
The US, Britain and other foreign powers helped Israel’s air defence shoot down nearly all the 300 missiles launched by Tehran, but they are desperately seeking to prevent another escalatory round. They may succeed in doing so in the short term, but the seven-month long war in Gaza is showing no signs of ending, making an all-out military confrontation between Israel and Iran look more and more likely.
Iran may be disappointed that its volleys of missiles very largely failed to reach their targets because they were either intercepted by the US and its allies, or they failed to penetrate Israel’s “Iron Dome” air defence system. But they were, in any case, a largely symbolic act of revenge by Iran in retaliation for the assassination of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) generals by Israel in the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April.
This crossed an Iranian red line as a direct strike on their territory, to which they have now responded, and, whatever the genuine success of the strike, it is being presented as a success as the chief of the general staff, General Mohammad Bagheri – declaring that missiles had damaged an intelligence centre near the Syrian border and an air base near Beersheba in the south of Israel.
It is not yet clear how far the political and military balance in the Middle East has been changed by the latest escalation. The consequences might have been more serious if Hezbollah in Lebanon had been the instrument by which Iran sought revenge, particularly if there were mass casualties in Israel to which Benjamin Netanyahu would feel compelled to respond with maximum force.
Israel’s Prime Minister, for his part, will be pleased that the US, UK and France supported his country militarily. Yet their intervention is also a sign that Israel needs foreign military and political assistance.
Joe Biden had pledged “iron-clad” US backing for Israel against Iran, but he is paying a high price at home and abroad for his support. The White House’s original justification for “hugging Israel close” in the aftermath of the 7 October Hamas attack was that it would give the US influence over Netanyahu and the course of the war. However, Biden’s critics point out that there has been little sign of this. For instance, the US says it was not informed in advance of the Israeli air strike that killed the Iranian generals in Damascus.
Iran has made clear that it does not want a wider war with Israel, but, at the same time, it cannot allow the Axis of Resistance against that country and the US, which it leads, to be exposed as big on words but nothing else.
From Netanyahu’s point of view, the confrontation with Iran is useful as it diverts attention away from the war in Gaza and helps restore fraying bonds with the US. Yet it also brings closer the day when Israel may be at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is a far more serious and well-equipped enemy than Hamas.
While the Israel Defence Forces are militarily dominant in Gaza, their success is not turning into political gains, still less victory. On the contrary, the inevitable momentum of war is deepening the conflict, as happened with the killing in an Israeli air strike on 10 April of three sons as well as grandchildren of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. The decision to make the strike was taken by an IDF colonel, according to the Israeli press.
Tehran is conscious that the balance of military power is at all times against it and it prefers long, complicated, indirect conflicts which enable it to pressure Israel and the US at many different levels, from Iraq – where it has substantial measure of control over the government – to the Houthis in Yemen, who have been firing missiles at commercial vessels linked to Israel.
Helicopter-borne Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized an Israeli-linked container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the vital choke point for the world oil trade, on 13 April. This will add to the nervousness of Sunni oil states who see the confrontation between a Western-backed Israel and Iran spreading in their direction. They recall that in 2019, drone and missile strikes orchestrated by Iran hit Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, briefly cutting Saudi oil production by half.
Neither Netanyahu nor the Hamas military leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has any compelling reason to bring the war to an end. Netanyahu has not achieved his declared objective of destroying Hamas, with whom Israel is indirectly negotiating in Cairo.
His entire political career was based since the 90s on assuring Israelis that they could have security without a peace settlement with the Palestinians. This calculation has proved catastrophically false, but Netanyahu has no new policy to put in its place. Moreover, the end of the war probably means the end of his government.
Hamas can claim that it has succeeded in putting the future of the Palestinians at the top of the international agenda to a degree never seen before. But for this advantage they have paid a terrible price. Gaza is physically destroyed and, as reported by the Gaza health ministry, 100,000 Palestinians are dead or injured. Israel has the most right-wing government in its history, several members of which say openly that they want to inflict a new Nakba as severe as in 1948.
President Biden is the one leader who might have prevented this march over the cliff edge in the Middle East which is now under way. But he has repeatedly failed to do so over the past seven months and may now find that he has left it too late.
Iran's attack on Israel shows Gaza will inevitably become a wider war
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15.04.2024
The Iranian missile attack on Israel has escalated the crisis in the Middle East close to an all-out regional war, much depending on how Israel responds to the assault. Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday morning that its confrontation with Iran “was not over yet”.
The US, Britain and other foreign powers helped Israel’s air defence shoot down nearly all the 300 missiles launched by Tehran, but they are desperately seeking to prevent another escalatory round. They may succeed in doing so in the short term, but the seven-month long war in Gaza is showing no signs of ending, making an all-out military confrontation between Israel and Iran look more and more likely.
Iran may be disappointed that its volleys of missiles very largely failed to reach their targets because they were either intercepted by the US and its allies, or they failed to penetrate Israel’s “Iron Dome” air defence system. But they were, in any case, a largely symbolic act of revenge by Iran in retaliation for the assassination of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) generals by Israel in the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April.
This crossed an Iranian red line as a direct strike on their territory, to which they have now responded, and, whatever the genuine success of the strike, it is being presented as a success as the chief of the general staff, General Mohammad Bagheri – declaring that missiles had damaged........
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