Mick Hartley

A grim analysis from David Patrikarakos at UnHerd: 

Israel had not just a right but a duty to respond to the October 7 atrocities. No state could stand by and do nothing. No nation could suffer such a loss and not respond. But the events set in motion by October 7 were always going to be about more than just Israel and Gaza. A localised war has now become perhaps the primary front in a much broader conflict between the American-led order on the one hand and, on the other, a loose axis of states with little in common except a common desire to oppose that order. In the Middle East, the primary player is Iran — and it is exploiting events with sadistic ruthlessness and efficacy.

The West led by the US, Israel's prime backers, are hedging their bets, urging Israel to back off – in effect allowing Hamas to regroup and reassert its control over Gaza – as its cultural elites explode in anti-Israel and frankly antisemitic agitation. The current cultural moment, and leftist idiocy, has allowed the butchery of Hamas to be seen as some kind of anti-colonial struggle, rather than what it really is: a brutal Islamist and Iran-inspired power-play. Any chances of reconciliation with the Sunni states, traditionally Iran's enemies, are on hold as the Abraham Accords disappear into seemingly irrelevant history. The "Global South", led by South Africa, is stridently anti-Israel. It's looking increasingly desperate.

And it just keeps getting worse.

Iran is matching this rhetoric with moves on the ground. On Monday, Hussein Moanes, a spokesman for the Iranian-aligned militia group, Kata’ib Hezbollah, announced that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq is preparing to “equip” 12,000 “Islamic Resistance in Jordan” fighters with a significant supply of weapons so that Iraq and Jordan can jointly attack Israel to defend the Palestinian cause. It is instructive that the Iranians feel that they can openly announce the presence of a proxy in a Sunni Arab state. The Sunni Arabs have far more ideological and historical enmity with Iran than Israel does (under the Shah of Iran, Tehran and Jerusalem were allies). But these are not normal times, and Iran is exploiting this fact relentlessly. Jordan, which is in essence a Palestinian state, has witnessed tremendous unrest over the war. Since 24 March there have been near-constant protests outside the Israeli embassy in Amann. Protestors routinely chant pro-Hamas slogans and call for Jordan’s withdrawal from its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Once more, the Iranians step gratefully in.

A presence in Jordan is of serious strategic value to Iran. It affords greater opportunity for direct strikes into Israel, which it now also surrounds with its proxies. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has already used Jordanian airspace for drone strikes into Israel — one shot down over Irbid in northern Jordan on 12 March was believed to be targeting Ben Gurion Airport. But more than this, it will allow Iran to stir political and social unrest in the West Bank, and to move equipment and materiel more easily over the border. Compared to Hamas, terrorists in the West Bank have limited resources or capacity to attack Israel. If Iran can make a success of its Jordanian proxy, that will change.

In the meantime, new threats emerge each day. On Friday, the CIA reportedly warned Israel that Iran is planning to launch an attack with a “rain” of drones, in revenge for its strike on Zahedi. If that happens, Israel will have to respond to an attack on its territory. Iran knows this, and likely calculates that any response, no matter how justified, will be seen as yet another example of belligerence from Jerusalem.

Yet much of this has been lost beneath the noise created by the focal point of the Gaza war. This week, Britain has been in understandable uproar over the death of seven aid workers, three of whom were British nationals. Condemnation piles upon Israel at the UN. Talk of sanctions grows. Washington, once the guarantor of international security, appears unable to stop the violence on both sides. And all the while, Tehran, the Middle East’s most murderous regime, continues to exploit events to its own advantage, and our cost.