The October 7 assaults on Israel by the Palestinian terror teams Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are being in comparison with 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. In truth, with greater than 600 Israelis lifeless on the time of this writing, the proportional loss of life toll is a number of instances increased than that of 9/11, and the issue of shock is arguably better than at Pearl Harbor.
However 9/11 and Pearl Harbor weren’t simply tragic assaults. They have been casus belli for seismic wars. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared his nation to be heading into “a protracted and grueling conflict.” The air assaults he ordered in Gaza have already resulted in lots of of Palestinian casualties. Will October 7 additionally result in a broader conflagration within the area? Most vital, can Israel rightly think about itself to be engaged in a shadow battle with Iran?
Many commentators scoff at bringing Iran into an evaluation of Israel’s battle with the Palestinians. The sentiment is comprehensible. Some Beltway pundits name-drop Iran primarily to drive their very own agendas. And the Israeli-Palestinian battle will not be primarily about Iran: It’s rooted in Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories, its brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, and its deprivation of dignity to tens of millions of Palestinians underneath its rule.
Nonetheless, Iran has meddled sufficient in inner Arab politics that no correct evaluation of October 7 can ignore its position. Hamas has often gotten some money and political help from international locations equivalent to Turkey and Qatar. However Turkey has in depth safety relations with Israel, and Qatar has beforehand acted as a mediator with Israel and formally stands for the two-state answer. Just one state on this planet doesn’t simply give Hamas cash but additionally lends vital navy and political help. It is usually the one state on this planet nonetheless promising to battle Israel to whole destruction: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Extra vital than materials help, Tehran provides Hamas membership in an anti-Israel membership with forces arrayed throughout the area. The Axis of Resistance counts the membership of Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon (proper on Israel’s northern borders), and numerous Iraqi and Syrian militias. As others have identified, Tehran’s arming of those forces with its superior missile know-how has modified the face of warfare within the area. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the militia that now holds a lot of the financial and political energy in Iran, coordinates all of those forces by way of its exterior operations wing, the Quds Power, whose footprint extends over the area and to locations as distant as Paraguay and the Central African Republic.
Does all of this imply that Iran had a direct hand in planning the October 7 assaults? A White Home official has concluded that it’s “too early” to make such claims. However senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah have instructed that IRGC officers gave the inexperienced gentle for the assault at a gathering in Beirut final Monday. The operation, no matter its particulars, should have taken months of preparation, and Hamas would nearly actually not merely shock Tehran with one thing on this scale. Some coordination appears the very minimal. Of the analysts saying so, not all are your typical D.C. Iran hawks. Ali Hashem, a Lebanese Al Jazeera correspondent who’s an professional on the IRGC’s regional alliances and used to work for the Hezbollah-friendly channel Al Mayadeen, has mentioned that the assaults have been “most likely an axis determination.”
The Iranian regime has proven resolute help for the assaults. It organized fireworks celebrations in Tehran’s Palestine Sq.. Members of parliament shouted “Loss of life to Israel” within the Majlis. Yahya Safavi, a former prime commander of the IRGC (1997–2007) and at the moment a prime adviser to Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei, spoke in no unsure phrases: “We help this operation, congratulate Palestinian fighters on it, and are certain that the Axis of Resistance will again it too.” Ali Akbar Velayati, one other prime adviser to Khamenei and a longtime former overseas minister, additionally lent his help, writing to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders: “This victorious operation will certainly facilitate and speed up the collapse of the Zionist regime.” The IRGC’s media retailers are in the meantime busy publishing posters, some in Hebrew, brandishing messages equivalent to we instructed you to promote your houses within the Zionist regime earlier than it’s too late and anti-Semitic cartoons portraying Israeli Jews fleeing the nation.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the jewel within the crown of Iran’s axis, has backed the Hamas assaults strongly and exchanged fireplace with Israel within the north. However, crucially, Hezbollah assaults have up to now been restricted to Shebaa Farms, a small strip of land that Lebanon considers its personal territory (most international locations depend the strip as a part of Syria’s Golan Heights, at the moment underneath Israeli occupation) and never Israel correct. Having come near whole destruction after its 2006 conflict with Israel, Hezbollah is aware of a full-on battle might be suicidal.
One cause the assaults are shocking to so many is that, for months, the development within the Center East has been towards diplomatic reconciliation and the smoothing-over of rifts. Regardless of its murderous file, the Syrian regime was readmitted to the Arab League; Turkey has had a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt; and Iran has restored diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. In his annual “Islamic unity” speech this week, on the event of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, Khamenei expressed help for this reconciliation development: “If Iran and international locations equivalent to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan undertake a typical place on elementary questions,” Khamenei mentioned, “oppressive powers received’t have the ability to intrude of their home affairs or overseas coverage.” The three international locations Khamenei named have been all U.S. allies not often on good phrases with Iran; Cairo doesn’t have diplomatic ties with Tehran, and people between Iran and Jordan are very restricted. Each have had relations with Israel for many years, as they have been the primary Arab international locations to acknowledge the Jewish state.
However in the identical speech, Khamenei left little question as to the place Tehran stands on Israel. The supreme chief claimed that the “Zionist regime” was stuffed with “hatred” towards all of its neighbors and pursuing a purpose of dominating the area “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” He went on to vow that “the Zionist regime is dying” and warned international locations in search of to normalize ties with Israel that they have been “making a mistake … betting on the shedding horse.” Israel, he mentioned, is “a most cancers that will probably be uprooted and destroyed by the folks of Palestine and forces of resistance within the area.” Shortly after the October 7 assault, Palestinian leaders, together with Hamas’s Ismail Haniya and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Ehsan Ataya, issued specific messages to Arab international locations in search of normalization with Israel, warning them in strikingly related tones.
Saudi Arabia would possibly look like receptive to this messaging. Its overseas ministry’s assertion following the assaults rigorously prevented condemning Hamas and as a substitute reminded Israelis of “repeated warnings of the risks of the explosion of the state of affairs because of the continued occupation, and deprivation of the Palestinian folks of their respectable rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations in opposition to its sanctities.” However Riyadh has hardly wanted Iran to find out this place, which has been Saudi Arabia’s historic stance, and which it has by no means mentioned it could change: No recognition of Israel as long as Palestinians stay stateless.
Therein lies the true dilemma for the Israeli authorities. The decades-long delusion that Israel may ignore, handle, shrink, or just neglect its battle with its Palestinian neighbors has been a expensive blunder. Netanyahu imagined that he may maintain the occupation of the West Financial institution with out hampering the nation’s continued diplomatic and financial success. However as different Israelis have lengthy warned, this was a bubble finally attributable to burst. The Iranian regime is arming Palestinians and driving them towards its personal murderous agenda vis-à-vis Israelis. However Israel’s continued subjugation of Palestinians is what permits such a festering wound to exist within the first place, giving Tehran a straightforward subject to take advantage of.
Allying with Tehran, doing its bidding, and bringing terror upon harmless Israeli civilians is not going to carry Palestinians any optimistic outcomes. Seven million Jewish Israelis and the State of Israel will not be going anyplace, and as long as Palestinians don’t search a technique predicated upon coexistence, they’ll discover no path ahead. Now we have been right here earlier than: In the course of the Second Intifada of 2000–05, the murders of Israeli civilians by Hamas and different Palestinian factions served solely to weaken Israel’s pro-peace camp and lay the bottom for the rise of the far proper. The same consequence right this moment is not going to be in both society’s curiosity. Nor will it assist the Iranian folks, lots of whom have lengthy proven their opposition to the regime’s anti-Israel obsession, and a few of whom are already protesting the regime’s help for the Palestinian assaults. They’ve little interest in a battle with Israel.
As he was hurrying to the northern entrance on Saturday, a reserve senior officer of the Israel Protection Forces instructed Haaretz: “We have been residing in an imaginary actuality for years.” He was speaking about Israeli intelligence failures, however an equally imaginary actuality is that Israelis can have regular lives as long as tens of millions of Palestinians don’t. We will solely hope that accountable actors within the area and past can carry a few cease-fire within the days forward, earlier than the conflagration will get any greater. However in the long run, countering Tehran’s murderous agenda would require a sturdy answer to the Israeli-Palestinian battle itself.
