Tag Archives: Benyamin Netanyahu

Britain, Europe, Government, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Society, United States

The stakes are high for any target Israel chooses

MIDDLE EAST

THE idiom that “revenge is best served cold” doesn’t apply in the Middle East, because retribution is delivered swift and white-hot.

For in this febrile part of the world, failure to respond to military aggression can be fatal. Enemies smell weaknesses and will readily strike again.

And so, following Iran’s unprecedented missile strike against Israel earlier this week in this rapidly unfolding conflict, it is no surprise that Israel is already planning revenge.

The fact that a seemingly large proportion of the 200 or so Iranian rockets fired were neutered by Israel’s famed “Iron Dome” is irrelevant. Israel will strike back. The question now is just what form that military response will take.  

There are three likely options for retaliation. First, and perhaps most dangerously, Israel may well seize this as an opportunity to strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear bomb project. Although Iran does not yet have the Bomb, its nuclear programme is alarmingly well advanced. Israel has long believed Iran’s nuclear ambitions poses an existential threat to its security and existence.

Writing on social media, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett called this “the greatest opportunity in 50 years” to “destroy Iran’s nuclear programme”.

The most likely target for such an attack is the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre in the centre of Iran, 300km from the capital Tehran. Earlier this year, Israel bombed a nearby military site, a symbolic warning to its Islamist foe that it has the Isfahan centre in its sights.

It houses research reactors, a uranium conversion plant, and a fuel production base. It’s essential to Iran’s nuclear programme. A knock-out blow against this, or a similar facility, would certainly appease the hardliners in Benyamin Netanyahu’s government whose support the leader relies.

However, this strategy would mark a grave escalation in the conflict and poses the ugly risk of significant collateral damage and unintended consequences.

Such a strike could blast radioactive material into the air, unleashing a Chernobyl-style cloud of atomic pollution across the region. In the worst case, a strike on a reactor could even trigger a nuclear “chain reaction” – leading to widespread destruction reminiscent of the 1945 atomic strike on Hiroshima.

Israel must also consider that Iran’s mullahs may retaliate by spiking its future warheads with radioactive waste, creating “dirty bombs” that could have ramifications far wider than a regular missile – because even shot down by the Iron Dome the radioactivity would still disperse.

Another of Netanyahu’s options is that he could try to disrupt Iran’s military arsenals with smaller, localised strikes using its fleet of American F35 and F16 fighter jets. However, considering Iran boasts thousands of missiles and drones across the country this would not nullify the threat of a further strike by the mullahs similar to that seen this week.

Realistically, the most effective method of reprisal would be to attack command-and-control centres, the only places from which Iran can fire its long-range weaponry. Although these are buried deep underground and are incredibly well fortified, they will now be vulnerable to Isreal’s so-called “bunker-buster” bombs such as those used to assassinate the Hezbollah leader last week in Beirut.

There is, however, one further option, though fraught with danger – not just for the cauldron of the Middle East but for the world. If Israel really does intend to shake the foundations of the Iranian regime, rather than just give it a bloodied nose, it could choose to attack Kharg Island, Iran’s only oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf and the foundation of the Iranian economy and the mullahs’ riches.

If Israel does this, the price of oil will sky-rocket far beyond anything we saw during the early days of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. Shia Iran will then likely retaliate – as it has vowed – by attacking oil infrastructure in Sunni Saudi Arabia, its enemy, with the goal of further disrupting the global oil supply. This would lead to a severe world shortage with inevitable energy rationing in Europe and the UK.

So far, Israel’s political allies – notably the US and the UK – have stood strong with Netanyahu. But if Israel upsets global energy supplies, international support could rapidly dissipate.

There’s a cruel irony to all this. Because if Israel does strike Iran’s oil industry, Europe could even face the ignominy of going cap in hand to purchase Russian oil – albeit through proxies and intermediaries.

Netanyahu and his war cabinet must choose their next move very carefully indeed.

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Government, History, Intelligence, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Technology

Hezbollah’s indignant fury

MIDDLE EAST

THE terrifying attacks this week on thousands of pagers operated by Hezbollah across Lebanon is being perceived as the Pearl Harbour of the 21st century.

When the Japanese Navy Air Service bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, their aim was to knock out America’s air power in the Pacific and prevent the US from joining the Second World War.

But, as history shows, they achieved precisely the opposite. Roused to indignant anger, the American public were instantly committed to the Allied cause – and Japan found itself facing a new and mighty enemy.

The operation carried out against Hezbollah and the Lebanese was spectacular on its own merits (despite the wickedness of the attacks) – with at least nine fatalities and more than 3,000 seriously injured.

Yet its wider significance is certain to resonate in the months and years to come.

If Israel, like Imperial Japan before it, thought this massive attack would serve to dissuade Hezbollah’s fighters from entering a full-scale war with the Jewish state, many should fear they will be disappointed.

Already the Islamists will be plotting their revenge – and Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu has been locked in talks at his defence ministry’s HQ in Tel Aviv over how to respond to a potential escalation.

Critically, however, many will be asking how did Israel actually achieve this?

There are several competing theories. The Israelis could have planted old-fashioned booby traps in the thousands of pagers – which are said to have been delivered to Hezbollah fighters only in recent days.

More likely, is that the pagers were pre-loaded with a sophisticated computer virus that caused them to deliberately overheat, resulting in their lithium batteries catching fire.

This is a known risk of the batteries used in many electronic devices – and is part of the reason why airlines refuse to let passengers carry laptops in their checked luggage.

In whatever way Israel carried out the operation, it’s ironic that Hezbollah’s militants only recently swapped mobile phones for pagers in the belief that they were more secure.

Famously, mobiles carry GPS software that allows the devices – and therefore their users – to be tracked anywhere in the world.

A few weeks ago, Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh was hunted to a guesthouse in the Iranian capital of Tehran – and eliminated. Experts believe his assassination was possible only because his phone was being tracked.

The truth is that Israel excels at precisely this kind of warfare. Decades of facing down hostile neighbours that vastly outnumber its own citizens has led to the embattled Middle East developing a fearsome array of sophisticated military tools, from nuclear missiles and tanks to cyber-weapons.

Combined with this is the ruthlessness of its famed secret intelligence agency, Mossad, in tracking down and eliminating its enemies, from the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre onwards. As we have seen, Mossad always gets its man – or men – in the end.

So, what comes next? If reports are right, and one in 30 of Hezbollah’s fighters have indeed been put out of action due to the pager attack, that will present a severe impediment to the group’s operational capability. The leadership will also be asking questions about how to communicate securely with its fighters in future.

With Hezbollah’s military organisation disrupted, the Israelis might decide to invade a portion of southern Lebanon to create a “buffer zone” that could protect civilians in northern Israel from rocket attacks.

Some experts will have concerns about this “contained” approach. For all the brutal ingeniousness of the pager attack, the consequences for regional security could be dire.

Instead, the pager operation is far more likely to be the prelude to another all-out Israel-Lebanon War – with grim consequences for world peace and stability.

Hezbollah’s allies, Iran and Syria, will inevitably be anxious and worried that Israeli intelligence could do the same to them. But even those Arab countries with diplomatic relations with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, must now be asking themselves how safe they really are – and whether or not their communication networks are secure. This will weaken Israel’s ability to build friendships in the region.

And there could be consequences for us, too. Western democracies will already be assessing what this novel form of warfare means for them – and how they might be able to copy Israel’s methods.

History teaches us that no new military technique remains a monopoly of its inventor for long. How long before Putin or Xi Jinping works out how to make millions of iPhones around the world burst into flames in the pockets of their foes?

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Britain, Government, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Society, United States

Escalating tensions could induce a wider war

MIDDLE EAST

SOME are wondering whether the blizzard of missiles, rockets, and drones blasted from Lebanon into Israel in the early hours of yesterday may have been no more than a preliminary.

The shelling could have been much worse but for a series of earlier Israeli air strikes designed to pre-empt plans by Hezbollah to launch an even bigger wave of rockets.

The Israeli air force struck at thousands of rocket launchers and bunkers housing everything from antiquated Soviet Katyusha systems to modern Iranian missiles.

Many of the missiles fired from Lebanon can do serious damage if they hit a target, but as it happens they are mostly easy for the Israeli air defences to detect and destroy.

Nonetheless, this latest fusillade serves to further deplete Israel’s defensive capability – notably, the Iron Dome system – thereby improving Hezbollah’s chances of hitting major targets with more powerful missiles in the future.

The Islamist leadership is claiming to have damaged buildings deep inside Israel, as far south as the outskirts of Tel Aviv – hitting a military base, and a patrol boat further north.

We cannot be sure of this – Israel has prohibited the publishing of photographs of bomb damage, both on TV and via social media. This prevents Hezbollah making a damage assessment.

A state of emergency has also been declared.

Whatever the case, Hezbollah’s attack has been expected for weeks, as payback for Israel’s double assassination of one of its commanders and the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed in the Iranian capital Tehran in July. The revenge strike was delayed because of the Shi’ite holy festival of Arbaeen, when up to two million pilgrims travelled overland from Lebanon and Iran to Karbala in Iraq.

Now their journey is over, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard – Hezbollah’s real masters – has warned the war will commence in earnest.

Israel says it is well prepared, but it’s pre-emptive strikes yesterday may not have been enough to deflect the onslaught. It’s estimated that Hezbollah has around 150,000 rockets in its secret cache of hidden arsenals. This escalation also seems certain to have put paid to American efforts at brokering a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Central to this is the release of the surviving hostages seized on October 7.

Both sides say they don’t want all-out war. But neither is willing to be the first to turn the other cheek and stop retaliation – so war is looming. If that does happen, it will be on a scale that dwarfs the unfathomable civilian cost of Israel’s heavy assault in Gaza over the past ten months.

Many observers to this conflict believe that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is relying on a constant state of conflict to keep him in power.

As long as there’s no ceasefire in Gaza, an uneasy truce will continue within Israeli politics. If the fighting stops, Netanyahu will be ousted by his rivals, and will face prosecution and perhaps prison on corruption charges.

America is pledged to support Israel in any war against Iran. The U.S. has already deployed vast naval forces, including three nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, to seas around the Middle East.

With our military bases in Cyprus, a little over 100 miles from the nearest missile launchers in Lebanon, the UK would be drawn into the war, too. Expats and holidaymakers in Cyprus would also be in danger.

And within the last few days, Hamas announced that Israelis in Europe and elsewhere were now regarded as targets for attacks abroad.

Meanwhile, schools in northern Israel are closed and up to 100,000 Israelis have been evacuated from the border with Lebanon.

The threats to peace continue to loom beyond the Middle East. Fears are growing that the vortex of escalating violence could drag us and many others into the conflict.

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