Mick Hartley

Edward Luttwak at UnHerd – Israel is still winning the political war:

The US, UK and European Union did not try to stop the Israeli counter-offensive against Hamas. The US found itself unimpeded in sending military supplies, while the Italian government came out in full support of Israel.

On the other side, in UN venues highly suited for empty words, Russia and China both ceremonially declared their support for the Palestinians. Yet Moscow has continued to co-operate smoothly with Israel’s air force as it operates over Syria to attack Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, while not one Chinese partner has withdrawn from any joint venture in Israel. Nor did the rising calls to reduce the bombardment of Gaza, led by Belgium of all countries and eventually backed by the White House, have any actual consequence — Israel’s bombing was reduced in any case by the diminishing supply of worthwhile targets.

Likewise, not one of the Arab countries with whom Israel has diplomatic relations has interrupted them in any way, while relations with Egypt have blossomed into a veritable security partnership over Gaza and Sinai. Even more important are the statements of Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, who has made it clear that normalising ties with Israel will not long be delayed once the fighting ends. Even though intelligence exchanges and multiple technology joint-venture negotiations have been underway for some years without any need for official relations, such assurances cannot be overestimated: they are, after all, definitive evidence that Hamas’s assault on October 7 has failed.

The purpose of that deliberately horrific attack was precisely to stop any alliance between the Saudis and Israelis. That was certainly the goal of Iran, which has every reason to dread the fusion of Israel’s technology with Saudi Arabia’s financial resources: Tehran rightly fears this would entail some form of military co-operation, which in turn might bring Israeli air power within a short distance of its Iranian targets.

Take Iran out of the equation and everything changes. The Tehran mullahs – backing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis – are behind every threat to Israel. They're the obstacle in the way of peace in the Middle East.

But, as Roger Boyes argues in the Times today, the regime is tottering:

The unwritten rules of engagement in the tight, hostile terrain of the Middle East are coming apart. One reason: Iran’s “red line” has been that any direct intrusion on Iranian soil must be met by a counter-punch. Earlier this month bombs ripped apart some 84 mourners near the tomb of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qasem Soleimani. They had gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the US drone strike in Baghdad that killed the general. Iran was shocked and immediately blamed Israel but it quickly emerged that the real culprit was Islamic State. So Tehran struck at the Pakistani hideout of the Jaish al-Adl terror group. And Pakistan replied in kind against separatists sheltering in Iran.

The implications were big and are still being digested by the strategic community. A near-nuclear Shia state had struck a relatively friendly nuclear-armed Sunni neighbour — and had been hit back. It was a sign of how the unchecked progression from the Hamas atrocities of October 7 to the Gaza war and on to the Houthi attempt to blockade maritime shipping routes could end up: under a mushroom cloud.

There was another important lesson, though. The Pakistani counter-strike showed it was possible to hit Iran without the world falling apart. And it demonstrated that Iran is no longer a coherent actor.

The ambition of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, may have originally been to control the immediate neighbourhood but as he has weakened (he’s 84 and ailing) so he has ceased to be an effective arbiter between competing interest groups. Iran was already on the way to becoming a garrison state rather than a theocracy. Now he rules essentially with the Revolutionary Guard.

The IRGC was originally set up to shield the theocratic revolution of 1979 from a coup d’état. But you cannot have a coup if there’s no état to topple. The state institutions are paralysed, the pillars of theocratic order are crumbling, and a middle class (squeezed by sanctions) increasingly sees the monopolistic hand of the IRGC and its corrupt cronies as being an obstacle to modernisation and prosperity. Urban women feel stifled, workers feel cheated, students repressed.

A power vacuum is opening up and Iran’s many international conflicts merely mask the domestic frictions. The IRGC draws its authority from the supreme leader but it resembles more and more the cynical remnants of the communist party in the dying days of the Soviet Union.

Wishful thinking? Possibly. Like all of these totalitarian regimes, it looks secure from the outside until, suddenly, it's gone. Then all the pundits who were saying how it'll last for years and years start saying, oh yes, the signs were all there….

Interesting times.