Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Iran Attack on Israel is Half-Hearted
The theocrats in Tehran launched 300 or so drones and missiles at Israel Saturday night. This was in retaliation for the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria two weeks earlier. That attack killed a few bigwigs in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and embarrassed the mullahs. Had they not responded, there would have been some trouble domestically. At the same time, a serious attack may have created a situation in which Israel felt it had to escalate. So, Iran did the only sensible thing. It attacked Israel, let the world know the drones were coming hours later and they let almost every vehicle get shot down. Israel has decided to let this go now.
The trouble between Israel and Iran is best described as a Tepid War. It is not exactly a cold war because shots get fired and people do get killed. At the same time, Iran does not border Israel. To reach Israel, Iranian forces must cross Iraq, Jordan and Syria. Actually fighting between the two armies is difficult. Air strikes are about the limit of what each can do to the other, along with targeted assassinations. Yet both have sufficient air power to cause loads of problems.
Furthermore, Iran is behind the funding and training of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Those are the forces that could engage the Israelis in ground combat. That is something that the Israelis certainly do not want, and it is doubtful that Iran wants that either on the grounds of expense and loss of military assets.
That said, this is not the end of the trouble between the two countries. Iran, like all anti-democratic regimes, needs an external enemy to justify its domestic failures. The US and UK have been the "big and little satans," but nothing gets the Muslim world worked up quite the way fighting Israelis does. Iran has zero interest in improving relations with Tel Aviv.
By the same token, the Israelis are not really interested in better relations either, at least not under the current Netanyahu government. Mr. Netanyahu has opted for a vicious attack on Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. He is safely in power so long as he can pose as a critically important war-time leader. He will need to have an enemy after he dispatches Hamas, if that is possible, and Iran fills the bill.
What has been instructive for those willing to look, has been the response of the Sunni states in the region: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. As the drones and missiles approached, the US used bases in Saudi Arabia to help shoot them down. The US would likely have at least informed Mohammed bin Salman, who could have objected. Apparently, he did not. Meanwhile, the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt have said next to nothing.
That can best be understood by the bigger picture in the region. In simplest terms, the Saudis and the Iranians are fighting over who is going to be the big dog in the Islamic world. The Sunni-Shi\'ite divide is alive and well and causing trouble in the Middle East. And the Israelis are in the Sunni camp. The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan will someday soon be joined by a treaty with Saudi Arabia and a normalization of relations among the Sunnis and the Israelis. This, of course, bothers Tehran.
At the same time, this strike is winning hearts and minds for the mullahs among the Gazans. The Washington Post wrote, "Whoever decides to attack Israel -- dares to attack Israel at a time when the whole world acts in its service -- is a hero in the eyes of Palestinians regardless of whether we share their (Iran\'s) ideology or not," said Majed Abu Hamza, 52, a father of seven, from Gaza City.
History teaches that Mr. Hamza is going to be disappointed in the end.
© Copyright 2024 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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