If Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was hoping for a honeymoon period after his inauguration last week, he must be sadly disappointed. Less than 12 hours after Pezeshkian was sworn in, an explosion, reportedly caused by a remotely controlled bomb, shook an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound in central Tehran. The target: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, an honoured guest at the inauguration, and one of the Middle East’s most wanted. The bomb under the bed killed Haniyeh instantly. Honeymoon over.
Pezeshkian was the surprise winner of last month’s presidential election. Edging out a conservative hardliner favoured by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, he promised to repair tattered ties with the US and Europe. Many hoped his victory would herald a more open, more progressive era and defuse social tensions, especially over the enforced wearing of the hijab, which triggered huge unrest under his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi.
The Haniyeh assassination, attributed to Israel and not denied in Jerusalem, has scrambled all those hopes. Pezeshkian finds himself in the eye of an international storm that analysts warn could lead to all-out war, engulfing the Middle East.
Infuriated by an audacious attack that humiliated him, his country and its elite armed forces, Khamenei – Iran’s ultimate authority – is said to have ordered preparations for direct military retaliation against Israel. Avenging Haniyeh’s death was “our duty”, Khamenei said. Pezeshkian had no choice but to meekly go along. Now the world waits to see what Iran will do. So much for a fresh start.
The Middle East has frequently tottered on the brink of catastrophe in the fraught months since Hamas’s 7 October attacks, launched on Israel from Gaza, that killed about 1,200 people. In April, after Israel assassinated top IRGC commanders at Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones in its first head-on attack on Israel since the 1979 revolution. An ad hoc international coalition comprising the US, UK, French, Saudi and Jordanian airforces helped Israel intercept and destroy most of the projectiles, but it was a close-run thing.
Reports in US media suggest the Pentagon is now rushing to mount a similar multinational operation, but some countries may not agree to participate again. This apparent reluctance reflects deep anger at Israel’s government and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose unacknowledged killing of Haniyeh, coupled with last week’s assassination of a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, is widely viewed as recklessly provocative and escalatory. The killings have again dashed hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza – which seems to suit Netanyahu’s nefarious purposes.
Iran’s next step may be decisive in determining whether the Middle East plunges into chaos. Its pivotal position should come as no surprise. Its gradual emergence as the region’s pre-eminent power has accelerated in the wake of 7 October. Iran’s anti-Israeli, anti-American “axis of resistance”, embracing militant Islamist groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and ever more openly backed by China and Russia, is now a big force challenging the established western-led order.
Two other linked developments are driving the Middle East towards the precipice. One is the unprecedented, self-destructive antics of Israel’s aggressively hard-right governing coalition, which includes fanatical ultra-religious Jews and nationalist extremists. Long before the war began, Israeli society was in tumult, split by Netanyahu’s high-handed attempts to curb the independence of the judiciary and other self-serving, anti-democratic actions.
Maximalist policies pursued by far-right ministers to advance West Bank settlement expansion, de facto territorial annexation, and unchecked anti-Arab settler violence in the Occupied Territories have proceeded in parallel with the merciless conflict in Gaza. The killing of more than 39,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, has alienated traditional supporters in the west and outraged the Muslim world. In international courts, Israel stands accused of genocide and its leaders of war crimes. Yet this woeful descent into global pariah-dom seems only to goad Netanyahu and his allies to ever greater displays of defiance.
That defiance was on show in Washington last month, where Netanyahu delivered an unrepentantly bellicose address to Congress. He also made a point of meeting the presidential hopeful Donald Trump, the like-minded rightwing Republican retread. His recalcitrant behaviour underscored the third development now undermining Middle East stability: the decline of US power and influence in a region it once dominated.
Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021 hoping to resurrect a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme but otherwise determined to freeze the Palestinian question and bypass Middle East troublespots. China and Russia were his top overseas priorities. Yet the exact opposite happened. Khamenei and Raisi blocked meaningful nuclear dialogue. Then the Hamas atrocities forced Biden to engage personally on Israel-Palestine. In effect, he gave Netanyahu a free hand in Gaza – a terrible mistake, still uncorrected. As a result, US regional standing, already damaged by the Iraq, Afghan, Syria, Somalia and Libya debacles, has plummeted further.
Now, traumatised and inflamed by Gaza, transfixed and entrapped by the Iran-Israel confrontation and lacking effective American leadership, the Middle East and its many heavily armed protagonists are moving inexorably closer to the full-scale war they all claim not to want.
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Hezbollah in Lebanon, a militant Shia political and military organisation sponsored by Iran, is reputedly the most powerful non-state actor in the world. Israel estimates it has about 45,000 trained fighters and up to 150,000 missiles, plus numerous unmanned aerial vehicles. Experts say Hezbollah could fire between 2,500 and 4,000 missiles a day anywhere in Israel for three weeks – and potentially overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system.
Iran has hitherto been reluctant to commit Hezbollah to a full-scale offensive, regarding it primarily as forward defence against Israel. Although there have been regular cross-border exchanges of fire since 7 October, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief who answers to Khamenei, has not offered Hamas full, active support. That calculation could change after Israel’s confirmed assassination last week in Beirut of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander.
Iraq
Iraq has taken an uncompromising stance on the Gaza conflict from the start, condemning Israel’s invasion and refusing to criticise Hamas. This reflects the country’s historical support for the Palestinian cause, rather than the political influence of Iran, which is nevertheless considerable.
Iraq is home to Iran-allied Islamist militias that have repeatedly targeted US forces there and in Syria. After at least 165 post-7 October militia attacks, Biden ordered airstrikes in February to avenge three US soldiers killed in Jordan.
Fears that a region-wide war could draw in these Iraqi militants, plus similar groups in Syria, have been heightened by three attacks on US forces in recent days, marking a renewed intensification of hostilities. In response, the US launched airstrikes south of Baghdad last Tuesday.
About 2,500 US troops remain in Iraq and around 900 in Syria, assigned to counterterrorism. The government in Baghdad wants them to leave. Today, they look like sitting ducks.
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Houthis in Yemen
The Houthis in Yemen are a fundamentalist Shia militia allied to and armed by Iran that fervently opposes the existence of the state of Israel and whose motto includes the phrase “Curses to the Jews”.
Following Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the Houthis began firing missiles at Red Sea commercial shipping with links to Israel and close allies such as the US and Britain.
That, in turn prompted a western military response, including the bombing of Houthi launch sites. The Houthi threat dramatically escalated last month when it succeeded in hitting an apartment building in Tel Aviv with an armed drone, killing one man and wounding others. Israel launched punitive retaliatory airstrikes on the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.
Houthi forces have also clashed with the US ally Saudi Arabia in the course of Yemen’s long-running civil war, and recently targeted UN workers. They would definitely be up for a showdown with Israel.
The US and Europe
The US and Europe could quickly be drawn into a full-scale Middle East war. The US maintains large air and naval bases in the Gulf, and is now expected to make new “defensive deployments” in the region. American officials reportedly anticipate a bigger Iranian attack than in April, including the activation of proxy forces in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But America’s leverage is diminished. Netanyahu did not give Washington warning of the Haniyeh operation. Biden complained, correctly but feebly, that it was “unhelpful” to Gaza ceasefire talks.
Biden has not abandoned his plan for a grand bargain linking a Gaza ceasefire and Israeli discussions with the Palestinian Authority on a two-state solution to additional US regional security guarantees. Such a deal would aim to finally defuse the ticking time-bomb that is Palestine and defang Iran. Right now, it looks like an impossible dream.
Qatar and Egypt
Qatar and Egypt have played central roles in efforts to mediate a halt to the Gaza slaughter. Both expressed dismay and foreboding over last week’s developments.
Referring to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, wrote on X: “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Warning that “peace needs serious partners”, he sounded close to giving up.
Egypt bluntly accused the Israeli government of sabotaging peace. “The coincidence of this regional escalation with the lack of progress in the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza increases the complexity of the situation and indicates the absence of Israeli political will to calm it down,” a Cairo foreign ministry statement said. Like neighbouring Jordan, Egypt has particular concerns about possible spillover from Gaza and consequent radicalisation and domestic unrest.
Turkey
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stunned Israel last week with an explicit threat to invade the country in support of the Palestinians. “Just like we entered Karabakh [in Azerbaijan], just like we entered Libya, we will do [something] similar exactly to them [Israel],” Erdoğan said, referring to past Turkish military interventions. Furious, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, compared Erdoğan to Saddam Hussein. Turkey replied that “genocidal Netanyahu” was a second Adolf Hitler who would meet the same fate as the Nazi Führer.
These less than mature diplomatic exchanges aside, war between Turkey, a Nato member, and Israel appears unlikely at this point. But the row added to a sense of regional unravelling. Maverick Erdoğan is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and styles himself a leader of the Muslim world. He is also currently mending fences with Syria’s Iran-aligned president, Bashar al-Assad. Syria has mostly kept out of the Gaza crisis so far. Israel must hope it stays that way.