The skies over Israel were streaked with the fiery trails of Iranian missiles. Rockets were fired to shoot them down, while Israel continued to pound Lebanon and send invading troops against Hezbollah.
Then as quickly as Iran had attacked, it seemed to go quiet. For how long is now down to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was reported to be considering his next move from a bunker where he gathered his security cabinet.
Hawks in the room, which include Netanyahu himself, have been held back for years from bombarding Iran’s nuclear facilities and missile launching bases by American allies, and their own intelligence bosses.
“Iran made a big mistake tonight – and it will pay for it,” Netanyahu said in a statement that hinted at which way he is inclined to go.
The Israeli Prime Minister may now decide that, as there has been widespread condemnation of Iran for its attempts to break through Israel’s defences with 180 Fattah-2 hypersonic rockets, the diplomatic landscape allows for an escalation and direct action against Iran.
Not least because, so far, the Biden administration has been firmly behind him – even though he ignored Washington’s pleas to agree a ceasefire in Lebanon. No matter that Iran has declared that its assault on Israel is, for now, over.
“Our action is concluded unless the Israeli regime decides to invite further retaliation. In that scenario, our response will be stronger and more powerful,” said Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on Tuesday night. The second sentence in that statement may be all the Israeli cabinet hawks need to justify sending the Israeli air force, and its own missiles, against Iran’s military bases – even its leadership.
Iran’s claim to have a potent threat on standby means that Israel may decide it needs to destroy it. Such a move would open a third front for Israel which is already fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. Netanyahu may calculate that the time has come for a dramatic gamble.
This week Israel’s Prime Minister tried to appeal to the Iranian people, perhaps as both a warning and a call to arms against the regime that rules over them.
“The vast majority of Iranians know their regime doesn’t care a whit about them. If it did care, if it cared about you, it would stop wasting billions of dollars in futile wars across the Middle East,” Netanyahu said in a broadcast.
Iran has few friends in the Middle East. The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia have been trying to improve their relations with Tehran, but still fear and loathe its destabilising support for the Houthis in Yemen and the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Its fostering of Hezbollah, which it has armed to create the world’s biggest and most powerful non-state military force, has worried Middle Eastern leaders for years. They’ve seen that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ “al-Quds brigade” heavily influences fellow Shia groups like Hezbollah but also back Sunni Islamist extremists like Hamas.
None are likely to say so publicly, but many Middle Eastern leaders would love to see Iran militarily weakened.
The US would also like to see Hezbollah destroyed and Iran caged. But this assumes Israel would succeed.
It fails to consider the Arab street, where sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians runs deeper than it does in the Arab palaces. Only Hezbollah has offered military support for the Palestinian cause as Israel has systematically smashed Gaza to rubble and killed over 40,000 people there, many of whom are women and children.
If Israel occupied a chunk of Lebanon, failed to blast away Iran’s missile threat, and carried on killing in Gaza, another round of Israeli strikes against Tehran could inflame the Arab street, unsettling Arab states yet further and igniting violence beyond the region’s borders.
It’s frighteningly difficult to see if Netanyahu thinks that would be a good or bad thing.
Sam Kiley has been covering the Middle East for 25 years
