Middle East War
Iran has resisted attempts by the collective West to persuade Iran to exercise “restraint” in its retaliation against Israel for the assassination last week (I suspect with US foreknowledge) of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran on the day of the investiture of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian. and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukr in Beirut.
Haniyeh, who was not on the military side of Hamas and was a ceasefire negotiator, was killed - according to local sources cited by Alastair Crooke - by a projectile and not, as Mossad claims, by a bomb previously placed in the building by Mossad with the assistance of Iranian assets. In killing a negotiator, I would judge that with this assassination Israel wasalso firing a bullet in the head of any hope for a ceasefire agreement.
Why did Western countries not try harder to persuade Israel to exercise “restraint” against Palestinians - perhaps to murder “only” 100,000 as opposed to near 200,000 that the British medical journal, The Lancet, recently calculated. Instead, Israel has continued its genocide (killing thirty Palestinian children at UN schools this past weekend), it has been provoking a war with Iran in the expectation that it will entice the US into the war on Israel’s behalf, and Israeli leaders are hunkering down in their bunker complex designed for a long war).
Before moving to the question as to who, in addition to Iran and Israel, will be party to this conflict, we should take note of comments from Alastair Crooke today in an interview with Judge Napolitano. Crooke makes four very important points. The first is that the enmity between Israel and Iran was created by Israel, under Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by a settler, as the new Middle Eastern enemy that would justify continuing US aid following the domestication of Palestinian resistance by what came to be the Oslo Accords, under Arafat. (For what its worth, I would say that it runs deeper than that - going back to the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, which put an end to Iran’s role as the US deputy-sheriff for the world’s major oil producing area at that time. Israel, something of a cypher in the US radar up to that point, moved quicky to become a replacement for the Shah’s Iran).
Secondly, Crooke fingers what he calls the “settler Arabs” behind much of the extremism of some members of Israel’s current leadership and explains their motivation in terms of a belief system that advises that Israel should welcome and hasten the wider war because then the Messiah will appear more quickly and that in a war the Jews of Israel will become more emboldened. We can expect that the US, Britain, and France, who helped Israel shoot down Iranian drones in the last, recent, Iranian retaliation to Israeli aggression (the assassination of Hamas leaders in Damascus) will maintain their support for a genocidal and war-hungary Israeli regime. We can expect that some other European countries, notably Germany, will also continue to line up behind Israel, although some European and NATO members will wonder what will be the consequence for their conflict in Ukraine if they start pouring very precious and dwindling military resources into Israel’s battle with Iran rather than NATO’s war with Russia. There is always a powerful and cluster of bought-out Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and the EU who will also sell out to the West, again, in return for their continued elite comination of Arab populations that are very angrym indeed with Israel.
Crooke makes a third important, perhaps his most important, when he observes that what is currently unfolding in Israel may be a prelude to a civil war between the settler population, “The Judea State,” against the State of Israel. In a final observation of which I made a note this morning of August 5th, Crooke expresses skepticism about the speed with which the US assembled a fleet of warships headed now for the Mediterranean or for other points in the region. He believes this must have been assembled in advance, implying, in my view, not just foreknowledge of some kind, but the existence of a script for this conflict that has already been written by Israel and the US.
If, as seems likely, the war will be a missile war, then current calculations suggest that, Israel’s nuclear capability to one side, the missile stocks of Iran and Hezbollah may already outmatch those of Israel or of its air defense resources. Certainly, Israel’s missile stocks can and are already being augmented by the collective West, but these stocks are badly stretched because of the NATO war against Russia over Ukraine. While Israel may be able to shoot down most of the Iranian and other missiles fired at it in the short term, it may lack the capability to keep this up before the stocks of Iran and its allies also run dry. That Iran and its allies actually will run out seems unlikely to me, given the likelihood that Russia is already providing missiles, jet fighters, electronic warfare, radar and surveillance technologies to Iran and might yet be joined in that endeavor by China.
As for Israel’s nuclear arsenal, we should indeed be very worried that in the event of Israel and its US and Western sponsors losing the war, or even in an effort to preempt any such possibility, Israel will reach to its nuclear options. Against this we may consider the possibility of Iran being provided with nuclear warheads from Russia along with hypersonic missiles to carry them; or the possibility that Pakistan may, as it has previously threatened, also declare a nuclear position in Iran’s favor; or that Russia may decide on direct nuclear intervention.
A top Kremlin figure is currently visiting Tehran. Reuters reports today that Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia's security council (whom western media like to claim, falsely, was “fired” from his previous position as top commander) was shown by Russia's Zvezda television station meeting Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who serves as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
So on Iran’s side we can expect support from Lebanon, of course. But Lebanon, a very poor country, will likely be suffering an Israeli invasion even as Iran’s retaliation against Israel commences, creating a two-front scenario for Israel that the IDF - many of whose personnel do not, by the way, support the extremism of the “settler rabis” behind some of the most recent atoricities against Palestinian prisoners - has been telling Netanyahu it cannot possible afford or win.
Then there is Syria, which is partly and illegally occupied by US forces (so much for US crocodile tears over Russian “violation” of Ukrainian sovereignty) but which has sought protection from Iran’s revolutionary guards during its existential war with Western-supported Jihadist militia almost as much as it has enjoyed the protection of Russia. And there is Iraq (which even now, after almost twenty years, must “host” an unwanted US army of military and contractors) many of whose militia are regularly targeted by the US.
Of far greater significance is Russia (which still has an army, airforce and naval presence in neighboring Syria) which is within days of completing a mutual security agreement with Iran.
The Shia Houthis of Yemen are already deeply entrenched in this war, passionately on the side of the Palestinians and on the side of Shia Iran. The Houthis benefitted from Shia Iranian support against Sunni Saudi Arabia in their long struggle for supremacy in Yemen. They have taken very effective action in the Red Sea against Israel and all of its supporters. They are very likely in receipt of weapons from Russia. This is in partial retaliation against Western encouragement to Ukraine to use Western missiles on targets in Russia, although some Western countries have since retracted or pretend to have done. Or, if such weapons have not already arrived, they will do so in the future. These may include hypersonic missiles - which some sources say Yemen already has.
Turkey, with a very large army, has for a long time been a blow-hard in Palestinian support yet rarely undertaking significant military action that would make a difference - although it is well-equipped to do so, judging by its continuing occupation of jihadist territories in northwestern Syria. Erdogran is a slippery politician, one well accustomed to playing both or several sides at once, buying fighter jets from Russia, for example, as it builds warships for Ukraine, mediating peace talks between Russia and Ukraine (as it did in 2022 and today still attempts something similar), yet continuing to occupy part of Syria, an ally of Russia.
Nonetheless, Erdogan represents a resuscitated Islamic face to Turkey from the ashes of Ataturk’s ideological secularism. The army has for long been more Ataturk, I would say, than Erdogan and it may exercise a restraining influence on some of Erdogan’s instincts. But we should not overlook the potential power of Turkey’s hand in this regional war. Turkey has been abused by the collective West for Erdogan’s destruction of a pro-Western opposition. It is currently struggling to determine whether to continue looking West (it is a NATO member that has tried, but failed, to win membership of the European Union) and is greatly interested in the possibility of membership of the BRICS (as are - adding to the list of possible suitors from the Global South - Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Indonesia’s president elect is visiting Moscow. Prabowo Subianto remembers the warm relations between Indonesia’s founding father, President Sukarno and the Soviet Union that existed before the pro-Western Suharto coup d’etat in 1967. Russia is current chair of the BRICS.
Needless to say, Hamas is also a likely collaborator of Iran, and has received a modest level of funding from Iran (although I totally reject Netanyahu’s claims that Iran had anything to do with the events of October 7 2023). Hamas’ energies must surely be taken up in its continuing, some would say desperate and hopeless struggle, for the protection of Gaza, with many of its military leaders relatively secure in tunnel networks beneath Gaza. But we should not underestimate the extent to which Hamas has been able to boost recruitment in the light of Israeli’s genocide - one recent report suggests that only three out of a pre-war total of 24 Hamas brigades have been taken out - nor the potential for international influence exercised by its political leadership in Qatar. The Institute for the Study of War reports that eight Hamas brigades are effective; another 13 are partly degraded; and that Hamas continues to operate in central and northern Gaza.
This is in a context in which the Wall Street Journal today is saying that the IDF is exhausted and its soldiers want to return home to resume their lives, occupations and businesses. The WSJ considers that the IDF is not in a position to take on Hezbollah. Netanyahu, of course, has responded to this crisis by staging a situation into which the US must intervene to make up for Israeli weakness.
Saudi Arabia was, until recently, on the path to normalization of relations with Israel. But the Kingdom’s path is now made far more complicated, first, by its membership of the BRICS which is essentially in opposition to the collective West; secondly, by its disgust with Israel over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians; and, thirdly, by its concerns for the Straits of Hormuz. Iran, in the coming conflict, may be disposed to close the straits, which are the conduit for a third of global oil trade. A threat of closure may only be a last resort, given that it would likely incite Saudi Arabia against Iran, something that Iran surely does not want. (Note that an important ally of Iran, Russia, will also likely counsel against a closure of the straits). On the other hand, in a situation of careful planning the two (even the three) countries might consider that a short-term closure of the straits could help the Iranian axis and the entiret of the BRICS in their longer-term struggle against Western hegemony.