Middle East Wars: Peace looks elusive in the near term

West Asia is on edge. The state of war in the region is on the verge of a dangerous escalation, with Israeli tanks rolling into Lebanon in its battle against the Iran-backed militant outfit Hezbollah and Iran in turn unleashing a missile attack on Israel.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran will pay for its action. Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian warned Tel Aviv: “Do not enter into a conflict with Iran.”

The United States and to some extent Britain, using their warships in the Mediterranean Sea, aided Israel in an aerial interception of the Iranian missiles. The Israeli government and US president Joe Biden claimed most of these missiles were headed off before they could hit a target. However, video evidence suggests that some did land, and the hits include Israeli military bases.

The bigger peril lies in the possibility of the US, UK and other West European and North American countries ganging up with Israel in the name of its ‘right to self-defence’. And Russia and China, though unlikely to get involved militarily, sympathising with Iran.

Biden supports Israel’s right to exact revenge, without elaborating on whether the US will be party to such a response. China is capable of opening a supply line of armaments, expertise and technology to Iran.

Saner elements in the international community are gravely concerned about Tehran openly teaming up with Hezbollah and Hamas in the war against Israel. The conflict zone is uncomfortably close to India, and that cannot be a reassuring thought for Indians.

Bronwen Maddox, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House, wonders why Israel has chosen to open another front with Hezbollah, when the war with Hamas in Palestinian Authority-administered Gaza is still unresolved and violence in the West Bank, also under the Authority’s jurisdiction, is rising.

It may be to weaken its foes, she speculates, thereby nipping in the bud greater future threats. It cannot be a strategy for peace, as battering Hezbollah will not make it surrender. It is much too steeped in its antagonism towards Israel, which was carved out of Palestine on Anglo-American insistence.

Commentators in Israel point out, though, that he remains under pressure from court cases for alleged corruption. In such circumstances, creating a wartime emergency works to his advantage. It temporarily removes the sword of Damocles hanging over him.

Maddox observed, ‘For countries working to avoid a regional war, the concern is that Israel’s government may be using the Lebanon attacks as a way to create the option of a future attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.’

It could have its sights on Iran’s precious oil refineries as well. All in all, that’s a recipe for a fearful conflagration.

Israel has been nurtured by Washington, which has bankrolled it, backed it with cutting-edge technology, and armed it to the teeth with the most devastating and sophisticated military hardware. It is practically the United States’ 51st state.

When India tested a nuclear device in 1974 — to match China’s threatening experiment a decade earlier — the US came down heavily on New Delhi. But it has conveniently glossed over Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity. Indeed, the subject is never raised by Western governments.

On 1 October, Israel began its ground operation in the sovereign territory of Lebanon to its north. The Israeli military described it as a “limited, localised and targeted” ground operation against Hezbollah, which is headquartered in Lebanon.

A fortnight earlier, pagers and walkie-talkies, allegedly tampered by Israel, exploded in Lebanon, killing dozens. Thereafter, Israel bombed thousands of locations in Lebanon, including its crowded capital Beirut. Up to 1,000 have died in the bombardment, including leaders and commanders of Hezbollah. The outfit’s long-serving spearhead Hassan Nasrallah perished in the blitz.

After its year-long pummelling of Gaza, a strip of land to Israel’s west — and still failing its stated objective of liquidating Hamas — Israel has turned its attention on Hezbollah. The offensive against Hezbollah indicates it possesses a remarkable cache of intelligence gathered over years, as espionage experts in London put it. Clearly, Israel’s spy agency Mossad has infiltrated Hezbollah with a network of human assets.

As Israel pounded Gaza, Hezbollah, said to possess an arsenal of not less than 150,000 short and medium range missiles, targeted northern Israel. More than 70,000 Israelis have been evacuated from this area to safer places. But Hezbollah’s onslaught—and this continues—is less lethal compared to Israel’s virulent assault.

So, why has Hezbollah absorbed such a beating and not produced a credible reply? Has its capability been grossly overrated? It’s a key proxy in Iran’s forward defence, and a constituent of its ‘axis of resistance’ (which also consists of Hamas and Houthis in Sudan) against Israel’s Zionism, which is intolerant of Muslims, especially Shias. Its stockpile of weapons mostly originate from Iranian factories.

According to the Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati, one million people in his country have been forced to flee their homes to escape Israel’s air raids. The United Nations estimates that over 100,000 have crossed over to Syria, Lebanon’s eastern neighbour.

The UN, though, has been toothless in tackling the burgeoning alarm. At the same time, Israel has declared the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres ‘persona non grata’ for not condemning Iran’s missile attack on Israel.

Charitable views of the White House’s ineffective interventions to douse the fires raging in the Middle East might suggest that lame-duck US president Joe Biden’s hands are tied until the US presidential election on 5 November. Overwhelmingly, though, more Americans support Israel than its pro-Palestine opponents and are certainly highly inimical to Iran. Any punitive action by Biden against Israel—even if only to head off criticism by Democratic voters of its covert and overt support of Israel—would adversely affect his vice-president and nominee Kamala Harris’s prospects in the presidential contest versus a nakedly pro-Israel opponent, Donald Trump.

If Hezbollah takes the humiliation inflicted on it lying down, this could mean it is not the deadly force it’s made out to be. Iran has, however, now signalled its solidarity, with the barrage of missiles aimed at Israel. One of Tehran’s alternatives is its Quds Force, one of the divisions of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps known for unconventional intelligence-led operations.

Significantly, the Islamic world is divided on the flare-up. Sunni Arab states, partners of the US, covertly back Israel, other than Jordan, which is explicit in its opposition to Iran. On the other hand, Shia-aligned Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and the Palestine Authority line up with Tehran.

In such a situation, peace looks elusive in the short term.