Geopolitical tensions have been high since Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month, with world leaders fearing an expected Iranian response that could lead to further escalation and an expansion of the war across the region.
There has been intense diplomatic activity in the shape of governments – including Russia, Jordan and some Gulf States – urging Iran to limit its response. But with the assassination seen as a direct attack on Iran’s sovereignty, the country’s religious leadership is under heavy pressure internally to respond with substantial force.
The US has also made a much-publicised move to increase its already substantial military forces in the region. A new US Navy aircraft carrier battle group will now take the place of one currently due to leave the Gulf of Oman and an additional squadron of strike aircraft will be moved to the region, as will more air-defence destroyers, cruisers and land-based air defence systems. The Pentagon has also ordered the despatch of a cruise missile-armed nuclear submarine to the region, it was announced yesterday.
Meanwhile, Israel continues its war on Gaza. Yet Hamas remains active despite Israel having laid many urban areas to waste and killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. On Saturday morning, 80 Palestinians were killed in three Israeli air strikes on Tabeen school in Gaza City, where 6,000 displaced people were sheltering, according to the Palestinian Health Authority.
Tensions also persist in southern Lebanon as Israel’s low-level conflict with Hezbollah repeatedly tips over into missile and air attacks. This has been developing ever since the Hamas assault in southern Israel last October and has led to large-scale evacuations from land on either side of the border.
Over 400 people have so far been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah paramilitaries, with a further 94,000 people on the Lebanese side of the border having been displaced. Israel has moved 65,000 people away from its side of the border.
The cost of damage in Lebanon had already reached $15bn by the end of May, according to Charbel Cordahi, an economist and financial adviser to the president. The damage in Israel is not known, but in any case Israel appears intent on escalating its actions, starting with the killing of a senior Hamas military leader, Saleh al-Arouri, in Beirut earlier in the year.
Much more recently came the assassination by the Israelis of one of Hezbollah’s senior military leaders, Fuad Shukra. Yet comments in Israel’s media from retired military officers and some politicians indicate that neither Binyamin Netanyahu’s government nor the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) want a full-scale war with Hezbollah, whose paramilitary wing is far stronger than that of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war, and which has increased the size of its arsenal tenfold since its last war with Israel back in 2006. The Israeli government knows full well that even the most concentrated system of air defences can be overwhelmed by hundreds of missiles fired close together.
The most Israel would want would be to carry out intensive airstrikes on civil infrastructure in Lebanon, especially in those areas of Hezbollah influence. That is what it did in 2006, but this time it would be on an even more intensive scale, essentially to deter Hezbollah in the future. In the process, it would likely wreck the Lebanese economy, a very dangerous action fraught with risks of miscalculation and escalation.
Where this links in with the Israel/Iran dynamic is that Hezbollah is the leading example of a paramilitary movement strongly supported by Iran and already in conflict with Israel. It is not in direct conflict with US forces, although one of its earliest actions is imprinted in Pentagon military history: the killing of 241 US Marines in a double suicide bomb attack against a US stabilisation operation in Lebanon back in 1983.
The US military, though, is involved in direct conflict with other paramilitary and military proxies of Iran, in Yemen and Iraq. These are rarely reported in the Western media outside of security publications but amount to an ongoing lower-level war.
In the past couple of months, there have been US-led air strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq, including a series of attacks following a militia assault originating in Iraq but targeting a military location just across the border in Jordan. Then, just last Monday came a rocket attack against US military units at al-Asad air base in Iraq. Reportedly launched from within Iraq, the attack injured seven US troops and civilians.
Then there is the separate conflict with the Houthi regime in Yemen, also supported by Iran. Earlier this week, a Liberian-flagged container ship – Liberia being a US ally – was hit by a missile launched from Yemen, the latest in a sequence that has involved persistent offensive and defensive Western military actions. The great majority are by US forces, but the UK, Israel and other states are also involved.
The level of US activity is remarkable whether directed at drones and missiles already airborne or others on the ground, as well as radar sites and other military targets. There were 20 incidents in July and a similar number in June, yet the Houthis continue to stage the attacks, saying they will continue until Israel ceases its war on Hamas.
Overall, there may be serious concern about a potential enlarged war in the Middle East stemming from the existing Israeli wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, but there already is a wider war ongoing. The United States is heavily involved in this – through its strong military support for Israel – as are several of its other Western allies, most obviously the UK.
There is little sign of this war diminishing. Rather, with the US’s current military reinforcements and the tensions with Iran, it is more likely to expand further unless wise counsel can prevail.
Source: OpenDemocracy