CRUCIBLE: Israel and Iran march to doom

QUEZON CITY (MindaNews / 18 Sept)—It may be quite alarming to state but certainly not an understatement to say that Israel and Iran are on the march to doom and, if unhindered, the rest of the Middle East after almost a year of continuing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and other atrocities in Palestine and the rest of the Arab world.

The alarm bell rang loud when Israel expanded its aggression forcing Iran to respond against Israel’s attack on the Iran Consulate in Syria on 01 April 2024 leading UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to state: “Regional – and indeed global – peace and security are being undermined by the hour. Neither the region nor the world can afford more war. Now is the time to diffuse and de-escalate (SC/15660, 14 April 2024).”

Unfortunately, the UN Secretary-General’s call, like in many instances, failed to stop the escalation. De-escalation has been effaced in Israel’s vocabulary since the genocide in Gaza began. And five months after that response from Iran, Israel Defense Force’s circle of aggressive war against Hamas and the rest of Palestinians widened beyond Gaza and Rafah. To the chagrin of Egypt, the IDF sealed off the Philadelphi Corridor while moving with similar aggressiveness and destruction in the West Bank. Furthermore, IDF’s grip of the Golan Heights tightened with western borders of Syria and Lebanon continuously softened with more military strikes.

The second line of IDF’s circle of aggressive war turned more confrontational primarily against Iran with recourse to more aerial assassination like Israel’s killing of Hamas’s leader, Ismael Haniyeh, on 31 July 2024 and, an air strike a day before, on Hezbollah leader, Fouad Shakur. Both killings were reminiscent of the US aerial assassination of Iran military leader Qasim Solimani more than three years earlier.

This is not to mention the mysterious killing in a helicopter crash of Iran President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdulahian on 19 May this year. Although ISIS claimed responsibility, the same question is raised in the bombing in Kerman Province, Iran that killed 84 people and more than 280 injured during General Solimani’s death anniversary on January 2 also this year.

Part of Israel’s broadening circle of aggressive war is IDF’s increasing military engagement with the remaining three Hs (after Hamas – the Hezbollah and the Houthi) the Islamic Resistance Group in Iraq known as Axis of Resistance. Israel is backed with aerial support by US and British air forces in Iraq and Yemen and, if war widens, could engage in direct confrontation with other Arab and Iranian armies.

With Israel continuously receiving high powered arms and ammunition from the US and other European powers, the Axis of Resistance’s capabilities has increased, too, allowing the Houthis in particular to launch missile and drone attacks on Israel, foreign ships perceived to be supporting Israel, including the use of hyper-supersonic ballistic missiles as shown in latter’s attack on central Israel showing long range capability, precision and lethality. If Netanyahu’s recent threat against the Houthi is realized, Yemen would be the additional country that Israel is directly engaged in airstrike war like Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

Even more alarming is the much anticipated vengeance of Iran in the killing of Haniyeh and, secondarily, against Shakur, that could potentially be more dangerous than Iran’s response in IDF’s killing of seven high Iranian military officials in the Iran Consulate in Syria on 01 April 2024. Angered by Israel’s killing of Haniyeh “in our house and made us bereaved,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised a “harsh punishment” against “the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime (Aljazeera, 31 July 2024).”

While that response in April was more of a face saving attempt by Iran against Israel’s direct aggression on Iran’s sovereign interest in Syria, Iran’s vengeance on Haniyeh’s killing would have to be an upgraded one, at least, psychologically and tactically speaking; lest, Israel and US military hawkish would make a hard laugh while increasing and taunting for more attacks against Iran the next time around.

As the Middle East gasps for air amid such a cycle of increasingly upgrading war between Israel and Iran, the truth is, the line that insulates their strategic and military tit for tat from their use of more potent ballistic missiles and sophisticated drones including a recourse to nuclear weapons is getting thinner – an unimaginable scenario where real danger looms.
For sure, after many years of surveillance and intelligence gathering, Israel must have known pretty well Iran’s nuclear sites in Arak, Arkadan, Isfahan and few others as their potential targets just as Iran must have known, too, the location of Israel’s nuclear weapons and their nuclear facilities in Dimona in Negev and other parts of Israel.

In their spats last April, both countries avoided hitting each other’s nuclear sites and nuclear weapon stockpiles knowing fully well the danger that it would lead to – a reason, we said, that such vengeance was simply a face saving response by Iran and a supposed realization of Israel that its security blanket is not as ironclad contrary to IDF’s much vaunted claim on the umbrella of invincibility provided by Israel’s iron dome. Knowing Israel’s vulnerability while serving as deterrence against Iran’s full scale military response, the US deployed additional warships and fighter jets into the Mediterranean in support of Israel. With sustained supply of sophisticated weapons and ammunition supplied by America and other European powers, those US warships mooring steadily add into Israel’s psychology of ultra-violence and intransigence in the Middle East.

Following media and intelligence reports, there has been a centrifuge upgrade of Iran nuclear technology that could potentially be transformed into nuclear weapons apart from increasing presence of mostly Russian-made missiles and other China-made armaments around and outside Iran. This is what alarms Bibi Netanyahu and his lieutenants. For them, prolonging attrition through mere tit for tat engagement without reaching a point of culmination or relatively manageable climatic point either via big military strike or full blown war would only strengthen Iran’s nuclear capability over the long haul.

For Netanyahu, the earlier Iran is engaged militarily, the easier the task would be for the IDF to remove Iran’s existential threat. As Netanyahu is not getting the nod from the White House however, the IDF continues to taunt Iran on practically all fronts, including threatening a ground attack into Lebanon. Despite unwavering support of the US on Israel, the White House refused to be tugged by the nose by Netanyahu with his desperate war plan against Iran for reasons that are markedly obvious. Risk of full blown war between Israel and Iran outweighs the outcome. It would not only lead to mutual destruction of both countries but could easily spread to other parts of the Middle East with the Axis of Resistance possibly stoking fire with less calculation on Israel and her allies. Given the ongoing war in Ukraine and the tension in Taiwan and South China Sea, it is not far-fetched for these three fuselages of global war to be ignited simultaneously by forces with pernicious intent to world peace.

The dilemma of Iran is that it could not launch another face-saving response against Israel with lesser intensity like what it did in April. This time the response should be so lethal enough to let the IDF realize that Iran could not be bullied just like that, but should not also be too destructive and catastrophic that Israel would be left with no recourse but to go all out, including the unleashing of its nuclear weapons against Iran. This difficulty must be the reason why Iran has to be exceedingly calculating even while she is buying time for more military, technological and nuclear capacity building.

Alexander Palmer underscored, too, this dilemma in his CSIS’s article “Why Iran will escalate.” He wrote:

“Iran will feel the need to respond to Israel’s attack for both international and domestic political reasons. Its response will have to be more impactful than its April 13 missile and drone attack to satisfy domestic hardliners and Iran’s strategic need to deter further Israeli attacks in its territory. But Iran also wants to avoid a wider war, which leaves it with a nearly impossible task: to respond without kicking off an escalatory spiral (August 8, 2024).”

For sure, Netanyahu could not wait to strike Iran. The October 7 attack of Hamas has provided the most needed pretext not only for Israel’s destruction of Gaza, but also to bring Iran to its knees. This is a false calculation.

Unlike Arab countries, Iran has long stood against Israel coupled with strengthening its military capability and forged strong alliances with both Russia and China. It is this tie with both her allied members of the Security Council (i.e., Russia, China) and their consistent support of Iran that hinders both Israel and US to pursue that “false calculation.” In this regard, as Iran’s card remains Israel’s war in Gaza even if it has become genocidal has to be prolonged with no end in sight for any Israel’s exit plan let alone a post-Gaza Marshall plan.

With this scenario, both Israel and Iran and the rest of the Middle East are continuously on the march to doom. Humanity, more than ever, must raise their voice even louder and call in unison to stop it.

[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. A lecture on “Why Peace in Palestine is Important in the Middle East” during the forum on Calling for Peace amid Rising Global Militarism, organized by Stop the War Coalition Philippines, held on 16 September 2024. Julkipli Wadi is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines.]