Price of keeping Netanyahu in power too high
It does not bode well when extremist members of the Israeli or Iranian governments recommend “going crazy” as a policy gambit toward the other. The result would be a major war in the Middle East, the immediate effect of which would be to send the price of oil through the roof were the Straits of Hormuz to be blocked in addition to ongoing problems in the Red Sea — problems that Western intervention has made worse.
By Michael Burleigh
Senior fellow
at LSE Ideas
Iran conjured up that prospect last week by landing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commandos on an Israeli-owned container ship which was taken back to Iran after “maritime infractions”.
Each discreet event contributes to the final jigsaw. After Israel assassinated two IRGC generals in Iran’s Damascus consulate on April 1, Iran’s Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly and repeatedly committed his country to an armed response. He did this at filmed mass rallies. No resiling there then.
But the eventual Iranian response on Saturday was carefully announced in advance (even to the US via their Swiss diplomatic surrogates), with about 300 projectiles crossing the region towards targets in Israel. Flying at about 100mph, the primitive drones took six hours to arrive on targets, which did not include major cities like Haifa or Tel Aviv. Ninety-nine percent of all Iranian projectiles were downed either by allies (US, Jordanian, and UK ships and planes) or by Israel’s own multi-layered anti-missile defences. The only (non-fatal) casualty was a seven-year-old Bedouin child, though a couple of military bases received trivial damage.
Both sides can claim a win. Israel showed the resilience of its pan-regional Middle East Air Defence, and would have been pleased with the alacrity with which countries that have been critical of its Gaza campaign of late stepped up to militarily support her. The allies seemed to overlook the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not given them any advance warning of the Damascus strike, which touched off this latest cycle of violence in the first place.
Even better, from Netanyahu’s point of view, the allies swiftly exchanged their moralising crocodile tears about war crimes in Gaza for collective ingestion of the crudest Israeli propaganda about Iran and all its works. Just listen to how an allegedly stern critic of Israeli war-making like Lord Cameron sounded like any old Iran hawk on Radio 4’s Today programme.
But just because very few of Iran’s projectiles got through does not mean that Iran can’t book some profits too. Technically, it may now have a better understanding of where Israel’s anti-missile defences are deployed, and how to overwhelm them in a bigger swarming attack. Iran’s spokesmen keep stressing that Israel had to expend $1bn in expensive American munitions to stop drones, which are like flying lawnmowers and are as cheap as chips. It has also altered the rules in the shadow war that has been waged for decades. Any further Israeli assassinations of IRGC personnel — or engineers and scientists — will trigger a direct response from Iran against Israel itself.
There was also a clear warning that any nation that aids and abets such activities will also be struck — a clear signal to the US, which has a lot of military bases around the Middle East. No wonder that Joe Biden has explicitly warned Israel not to escalate this current bout further, up to and including stating that if Israel achieves a larger war with Iran, the US won’t be facilitating it. That is crucial since without US aerial refuelling tankers, Israeli pilots won’t be returning home after bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
Reaching Fordow or Natanz is not like hitting such a target in Syria or Iraq. Israel should also be careful especially if planes have to overfly Turkey, which bristles with anti-aircraft defences. The Russians might also have something to say if they fly over Syria to bomb Iran.
Then, there is Jordan, which enabled the IDF to fly into its airspace and downed a few drones itself. There are huge regular Muslim Brotherhood protests about Gaza outside the Israeli embassy in Amman, together with calls to break off trade with Israel and indeed the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty. What if Iran managed to extend its Axis of Resistance to the Israel-Jordan border, as some including the Saudis fear?
While Netanyahu’s war cabinet ponders if and how to retaliate against Iran, without deranging the allied support it has just received, the campaign in Gaza grinds on at lesser intensity. But Netanyahu has not achieved his objectives there. As long as Yahya Sinwar and his fellow Hamas leaders and some thousands of their fighters remain alive, Netanyahu cannot declare victory. As long as that remains the case, Sinwar can maintain that, despite losses, Hamas has survived.
While Netanyahu probably realises that his long-time goal of America finishing a war with Iran that he starts will elude him, he also has people like his Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir urging him to go for the kill against Hamas (and Hezbollah, too). That makes it all too likely that Netanyahu will launch a final assault on remnant Hamas in Rafah, since a full-blown invasion of southern Lebanon would revive too many old ghosts, including the costly draw that ensued in 2006. In that sense, the threat from Tehran is useful since Israel’s Western allies will swallow their crocodile tears and let him get away with it.
Anyone serious about restoring peace in this region may have to undergo a fundamental rethink.
Until the West has the guts to tell Israelis to move beyond Netanyahu — whose only policy is perpetual war — up to and including restricting arms sales, there is little prospect of a meaningful cease-fire in Gaza, or indeed avoidance of war with Iran. The war in Gaza is the key to why Iran and its confederates are fighting on multiple fronts. To pretend otherwise is frankly delusory.
The US and Britain have very live memories of rushing into costly wars in places they do not understand, wars that became massively unpopular at home, too. Getting involved in a bigger Israeli war with Iran would be a disaster for Biden and Rishi Sunak — a real case of the tail wagging the dog — not least because of the economic ill-effects but also because it would expose their blatant double standards in apparently giving a “democratic” rogue state carte blanche to do what it likes.
No war is going to rescue Sunak from his fate, but in Biden’s case, another war in the Middle East would probably guarantee the election of Trump in his isolationist peace-maker mode. That would be some price to pay to keep Netanyahu in power.
The article first appeared on iNews.