Tag Archives: Benyamin Netanyahu

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

Iran vows revenge on Israel

MIDDLE EAST

Intro: The temperature in the Middle East is rising by the day. Israeli air strikes in Lebanon and in Tehran claimed the lives of a senior military commander from Hezbollah and that of the political leader of Hamas. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader has vowed to inflict “severe punishment” on Israel. An all-out regional war looks ever likely, but the power vacuum in Washington DC is hardly helping matters

THE escalation has started. Today, the world stands on the brink of major war. Israel has retaliated following rocket attacks launched from Lebanon that killed twelve children in the Golan Heights. First, an Israeli rocket attack killed a senior military commander from Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut. Then, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas, in a precision air strike on a Tehran apartment building.

These two surgical killings mark a major upsurge of Israel’s twin conflicts with its neighbours – Lebanon to the north, and the Palestinians to the south. They effectively end any chance of a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza.

Now Iran, which backs both armed groups, is seeking retribution and revenge. Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, will regard Israel’s elimination of Haniyeh – on Iranian soil – as a deep humiliation that can be salved only with a confrontation that is bound to claim yet more Israeli lives.

Khamenei, who had met the Hamas leader only a few hours earlier, described Haniyeh as “a dear guest in our home” before adding: “We consider his revenge as our duty.”

The political leader of Hamas had flown to Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. In a region of the Middle East where “face” and reputation are valued so highly, the Iranian state knows it has little choice but to respond in kind.

The grim likelihood of war spreading across the Middle East and beyond has also increased thanks to the United States’ apparent lack of interest.

The White House seems disinclined to enforce the “pax Americana” that has protected the West and its interests for decades. As President Joe Biden prepares to leave office, it is widely viewed that Mr Biden has become a lame duck who will doze through the final months of his presidency.

The second air strike – presumably masterminded by Israel’s intelligence service Mossad from Jerusalem – took place at 2am in Tehran.

But it was still the middle of the evening in Washington DC and there should have been plenty of time for the White House to react.

The fact that neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris deigned to speak suggests that Washington is either asleep, on summer holiday, on autopilot, or unwilling to act in an election year, all of which are equally dangerous.  

What next? After the nine-month siege of Gaza, some will say that Hamas can no longer be capable of inflicting much more pain on Israel.

But, based in Lebanon to Israel’s north, Hezbollah was able to fight Israel to a stalemate as recently as 2006.

The group still has a large arsenal of Iranian supplied rockets and drones.

It appears likely that Iran, too, could launch cruise and ballistic missiles as well as kamikaze drones at Israel in a repeat of April’s Operation True Promise (a coordinated attack of more than 300 missiles: itself a retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus).

It is Iran’s proxy forces throughout the rest of the Middle East that make international conflict so terrifyingly plausible.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen are stretching the West’s military resources in the Red Sea by launching drone attacks on commercial shipping and directly attacking vessels from the U.S. and Royal Navies.

The Houthis have also sworn to launch air strikes against Israel itself, a response to Jerusalem’s attacks on Houthi-held territory in Yemen.

Then there are Iran’s Shi’ite allies in Iraq and Syria, who have recent history of attacking the few remaining American air bases in the region.

For Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, perhaps he has concluded that Israel can cope with any escalation of the conflicts now threatening to engulf his nation.

In attempting to decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is repeating the tactic that saw America successfully neutralise al-Qaeda as a global threat – by hunting down and destroying its leaders.

But Israel, of all countries, should know that wars of attrition are not won by assassinations alone.

Israel killed Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Yassin, as long ago as 2004, yet the Hamas threat grew ever stronger.

The danger for Netanyahu and Israel is that the country could be dragged into a bigger, wider conflagration on many fronts. And if that happens, the ramifications become very hard to predict.

In terms of military resources, Israel – with American backing – seems well placed to survive that conflict.

While U.S. Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, has previously said America wants to cool the temperature in the Middle East, Washington has been resolute in its insistence that the U.S. military would come to Israel’s aid if it was attacked by Iran – as it did when Tehran launched its huge drone and missile strike in April.

However, it remains to be seen how many civilian deaths, and how much economic damage, the Israel public is prepared to endure before ousting Netanyahu and suing for peace.

A widening conflict would leave Britain in an invidious position.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak ordered British jets based in Cyprus to shoot down Iranian drones heading for Israel in a show of support for America and Israel. Sir Keir Starmer is likely to do the same.

Yet would Britain put boots on the ground if America and Israel called for military help? Surely that would make Britain, and British interests overseas, a target for Iran’s allies?

Where would our involvement leave British relations with our European neighbours – some of whom have been vociferous in their support for Palestinian civilians caught up in the Gaza conflict?

And how would it affect our relationship with NATO ally Turkey, which has been increasingly strident in its support for Hamas, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even threatening to send troops to Palestine to support Hamas.

Russia’s involvement in the conflict should be considered, too.

Moscow is a long-term ally of Iran, which has provided drones and missiles for its war in Ukraine and it has a major military presence in Syria, providing Russia’s only military base on the Mediterranean.

The Kremlin also remains a master of destabilising tactics, using social media outlets to spread rumours and deploying “useful idiots” in rival states to foment social unrest and division.

The temperature in the Middle East is rising by the day. The usual mechanisms for de-escalation and negotiation seem dangerously absent.

How, or where, will it end?

The power vacuum in Washington isn’t helping matters.

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Iran, Israel, Middle East, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Israel, Iran and the tinderbox of the Middle East

ISRAEL-IRAN

Israel is prepared for a direct conflict with Iran if the threat of the regime’s terrorist proxies increases, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned.

TENSIONS between arch-enemies Israel and Iran have once again threatened to plunge the two countries into direct military conflict – one which could lead to a new and terrifying regional war.

Any escalation would drag in other regional major powers such as Saudi Arabia and the Lebanese-backed Shia militia Hezbollah. These proxies are aligned militarily with the Middle East’s two main opposing power brokers, the United States and Russia.

A ferocious Israeli missile strike on alleged Iranian military bases in Syria on Sunday reportedly killed dozens of soldiers. It is certainly true that Israel has launched more than 100 such strikes inside Syria since the bloody and brutal civil war broke out in that country seven years ago. Those strikes have targeted both Iranian and Hezbollah forces sent to the country to help prop up the regime of President Assad. The latest attacks are the most brazen and deadly yet.

Those attacks were then followed by a dramatic claim from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he has proof the mullahs in Tehran have secretly been developing nuclear weapons, in blatant contravention of an internationally brokered deal – secured by Barack Obama in 2015 – aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It saw the lifting of crippling economic sanctions on Iran, in return for strictly imposed limitations to the country’s controversial nuclear energy programme.

Mr Netanyahu accused Iran of having a secret plan called ‘Project Amad’, whose primary objective and aim is to produce five ten-kiloton nuclear weapons.

This unverified claim will have been music to the ears of Donald Trump and the anti-Iran hawks the President has surrounded himself with in the White House.

Even before this dramatically theatrical display from Israel, Mr Trump has appeared stubbornly determined to scrap the controversial nuclear deal, because he sees it as being fatally flawed. The deal is still strongly backed by Britain, the EU, Russia, China and the UN-sponsored watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). All remain adamant that inspections show Iran has and continues to abide by its principles.

During a visit to the White House last week, French president Emmanuel Macron similarly urged Mr Trump to stick to the agreement. This echoed earlier pleas by Theresa May and Angela Merkel.

But it is apt to ask whether Mr Trump is listening more closely to his old friend Mr Netanyahu?

What we do know is that, as the deadline nears for Mr Trump’s decision on whether to ratify the nuclear deal – due next month – unprecedented threats and counter-threats of death and destruction are being routinely hurled between Tehran and Tel Aviv.

In the past few weeks, each has promised to destroy the other’s major cities if threatened, raising fears that the proxy war they have been waging in Syria may soon explode into a direct military confrontation.

We should remember, too, that over the past few decades Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly, but erroneously, suggested that Iran is just months away from declaring it has developed a nuclear weapon. Still, it is easy to see why he is so paranoid. Since the revolution in 1979 brought the Shia Islam mullahs to power, the Tehran regime has proudly promoted the destruction of Israel as its top foreign policy objective.

Worse for Israel, the civil war in Syria has resulted in thousands of Iranian fighters joining thousands more militia men from Hezbollah, Iran’s main regional Shia ally, which has already fought numerous wars with Israel.

Their ostensible aim was to help Assad fight Islamic State and other Islamist rebel groups, but that brutal experience means they are now battle-hardened. They are armed to the hilt and firmly entrenched right on the Jewish state’s border.

 

UNTIL now, Russia – which is allied with Assad, Iran and Hezbollah, but which has warm relations with Israel – has played a delicate diplomatic balancing act, backing Israel’s enemies while turning a blind eye to the Jewish state attacks against them in Syria.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin recently signalled, however, that his patience with Mr Netanyahu had run out, and he has promised to deliver the advanced S-300 air defence missile system to Assad to help him defend against such aerial attacks. Israel responded by saying that any such system would be destroyed before it could become operational.

It is easy to see, then, why the price of oil is soaring on the back of Mr Netanyahu’s claims. It’s a sign that the international markets are concerned that supply will be disrupted by strife and conflict in the region.

The great fear for diplomats around the world is that, if Mr Trump does decide to withdraw from the nuclear deal and reimposes sanctions, Israel will launch unilateral air strikes against what it says are Iranian nuclear facilities. That would almost certainly provoke a devastating military response – not just from Tehran, but also its allies in Syria and Lebanon.

And if that does happen, it will take a massive effort of will to stop the US and Russia coming to the aid of their allies – at which point the risks of a global conflict will rise sharply. The tinderbox of the Middle East is once again threatening to drag two of the world’s great powers to the edge of the abyss.

How the UN sanctions were lifted in 2015

The 2015 nuclear deal was signed by Iran, Britain, the US, Russia, France, China and Germany.

It lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for limitations to the country’s nuclear energy programme.

Under the deal, Iran agreed to keep its uranium enrichment levels at no more than 3.67 per cent, down from almost 20 per cent. The country’s uranium stockpile was also to be kept at under 300kg (660lbs), which then US President Barack Obama said would see a reduction of 98 per cent.

Tehran also agreed to redesign a heavy-water nuclear facility it had been building that was capable of producing plutonium suitable for a nuclear bomb. In return, the lifting of UN sanctions meant Iran stood to gain access to more than $100billion in assets frozen overseas.

It was also able to resume selling oil on international markets.

But if the country violated any part of the deal, the sanctions would ‘snap back’ into place for ten years.

Appendage:

Iran Nuclear Deal

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