Mick Hartley

From Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator:

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has announced that the country’s temporary leadership council has approved the suspension of attacks against neighbouring countries unless those countries launch attacks on Iran themselves. He said that the council decided the day before that Iran will stop attacking surrounding states unless attacks on Iran originate from those territories. The statement was delivered publicly as the war in the region continues to intensify, and while Iran continues to launch attacks in the region in response to the US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic.

That may be making a virtue out a necessity: they simply don’t have the missiles any more. Or it may be that they’ve realised what a disastrous decision that was. Instead of scaring off the Arab states, they’ve pushed them into the US/Israeli camp.

The Iranian attacks on Gulf and Arab countries have reinforced the alignment between those states, Israel and the United States. Israeli planes and other defence mechanisms have actively been protecting Arab countries – something once unimaginable.

This dynamic represents a real-world demonstration of a strategic idea pursued for years by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump through the Abraham Accords. The central concept was that shared security threats from the Iranian regime would gradually produce deeper cooperation between Israel and Arab states. The events of the past week show that this logic works in practice. These Arab states did not distance themselves from Israel. The Islamic Republic attacks strengthened their alignment with Israel and the United States.

Meanwhile Israel is continuing its attacks on Hezbollah, potentially liberating Lebanon from the malign influence of its Iranian proxy.

This could be huge…