Will the provocative initiatives of Israel, or more precisely of the Netanyahu government, lead to a regional war? To put this question from a different perspective, will Iran’s response to Haniyeh’s assassination lead to a regional war? Previously, in April, Tehran retaliated directly against Israel for the first time after the attack on its consulate in Damascus and the killing of its senior military officers, but that response did not lead to a regional war. Will their response this time lead to a regional war? If so, what kind of regional war would it be? On the other hand, let us try to analyse why it is very unlikely that the war will lead to a global conflagration.
Iran and the Axis of Resistance are playing for time, because…
Iran and the forces that call themselves the Axis of Resistance (mainly Hezbollah, groups very active in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis or Ansarullah movement, and Hamas, which rules Yemen) have grown stronger in the years since the American invasion of Iraq. Hezbollah, in particular, has been relentless in its confrontation with Israel in every conflict it has fought, and in the 2006 war, when Israel launched a heavy bombardment reminiscent of today’s attacks on Gaza, Hezbollah was extraordinarily successful in forcing Tel Aviv to retreat in silence. Israel, which has been able to deal with several major Arab states (1948, 1967), is trembling in the face of this Arab organisation, which is neither a guerrilla organisation nor a regular army, but can fight in both ways depending on the circumstances of the conflict.
Since the invasion of Iraq, the policy of the United States and the West has been to put the burden on Iran. The organisations in Washington that sell dreams (they call themselves think tanks). The organisations in Washington that sell dreams (they call themselves think tanks. In Turkish, they are also called think tanks) have been selling on the dream market that peace and stability would be achieved in Iraq in a short time, that society would fully support American democracy (!) by offering Iraqi oil for the benefit of the people, that this happiness (!) in Iraq would be reflected in Iran, that a popular movement would start there from within and that the regime would be overthrown by external intervention. As a result, America had completely encircled Iran in a wide geographical area from Afghanistan to Iraq and, on paper, from the Gulf to Turkey. These fantasies became part of the bloody history of the Gulf with the successive mistakes made by America, the world champion in destruction, plunder and mass murder, in Iraq and the outbreak of the Iraqi resistance as a result of the shameful images coming out of prisons such as Abu Ghraib and the ruthlessness in the methods used to suppress the resistance and the attempts to steal Iraq’s resources.
It was during this period that both Iran and the Axis of Resistance forces became extraordinarily strong. The success of Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 was probably a great motivation. On the other hand, the American scenario of bombing Iran on the grounds that it was trying to build nuclear weapons was pushed into the background because of the responses that Hezbollah and Iran could give. And for all these reasons they destabilised Syria. The US-Israeli war in Syria, which Turkey unfortunately supported, was also aimed at breaking the link between Iran and Hezbollah. All this was supposed to make Israel safer, but it did not. Iran and the Axis of Resistance forces not only strengthened themselves in the region, but also took control of Yemen and built up a serious stockpile of missiles, UAVs and UCAVs.
This axis, formed under the leadership of Iran, calculates that time will bring results in its favour. Through Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, especially in recent years, they have pursued a policy of attrition by keeping Israel extremely busy. In this struggle, they expect that not only the people of Gaza, but also the Palestinians in the West Bank will join this struggle in time due to Israel’s shameless settler policy, which seems to have been particularly ensured by the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is also worth mentioning that in recent weeks, China has reconciled the two main axes of the Palestinian resistance, the Fatah movement and Hamas, with a total of fourteen Palestinian resistance organisations in Beijing, and one of the reasons for the assassination of Haniyeh may have been to prevent the implementation of this reconciliation.
Another factor in favour of the Axis of Resistance is the population issue. In the middle of the British Mandate period (1919-1948), when organised Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Palestine began, the proportion of Jews in the total population was 19 per cent (1931), but this figure could only rise to 31 per cent despite the rapid immigration that began at the end of the Second World War. Despite wars and ethnic cleansing, Israel has not been able to balance its population with the Arab states it faces, let alone with the Palestinians. The fact that they are now on an equal footing (Israelis and Palestinians both number around seven to eight million) is due to the massive influx of Jews from the disintegrating Soviet Union into Israel since the early 1990s, which in part provided the human resources for the extremist groups in Israel to break the Oslo peace process and accelerate the settler policy. But such a source is no longer in sight.
If we take the total population of the Arabs in Israel’s own territory (more than two million, about 21 per cent) and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, without taking into account the millions of people who have been expelled from Palestine over the decades, we see that it is not less than the Jewish population. Since these people cannot be vaporised en masse, nor will all their land be annexed by Israel, the question of human resources, one of the most important factors in the long-term struggle here, will favour the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular.
The aim of the extremist Israeli politicians seemed to be to harass all these Palestinians and expel them from these lands through a kind of ethnic cleansing, sometimes at a fast pace, sometimes at a slow pace. But the Axis of Resistance seems to have thwarted this Israeli plan, because they too, especially Hezbollah from the north and Hamas from the south, are engaged in a war of attrition that is so costly to Israel that it is risky to keep their population in Israel. From Iran’s point of view, it also makes sense to play for time, because time will reveal Israel’s fundamental weaknesses, while in a multipolar world the stabilisation of the power of the United States and the collective West may mean that Israel will be relatively less protected and supported by these countries.
Will Iran have to respond?
What will Iran do? In April, Iran responded to the Israeli bombing of its consulate in Damascus, but it was able to avoid war because it coordinated its response specifically with the United States. In other words, not wanting a full-scale war with Israel and the United States does not mean that Iran will swallow these provocations whole. This time, too, it is likely to respond. Meanwhile, the US seems to have no carrot to offer Iran other than the fact that Iran does not want a war for its own reasons.
For example, even if they promise to return to the nuclear deal that Iran signed with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, Russia, China, the UK and France) and Germany, there is no guarantee for Tehran in the run-up to the elections. This is because Trump withdrew the US from the deal, and the Biden administration has not been able to do much for nearly four years despite promising to fix it. Moreover, in response to America’s withdrawal from the deal and the European countries’ failure to do much, Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment activities, which have the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. So American promises on this issue may not be very attractive to an Iran that is close to – or may already have – a nuclear weapon.
On the other hand, even in a scenario where Israel and Netanyahu are clearly guilty and responsible, the threat that if you go to war with Israel, we will have to fully support Israel is important for Tehran, but it may not be a complete deterrent. Instead of a full response, Iran could build on its April retaliation and leave it to the other parties, the US and Israel, to decide whether to go to war, but what such an action might be and how it might be carried out is a matter of debate.
How exactly can Iran and Israel go to war? How can these two states, which have no borders and are thousands of miles apart, fight with almost no use of their land and naval forces and limited use of their air force? If the US were to intervene, Iran could inflict serious damage on US forces in Iraq and the Gulf, but whether it would attack American forces stationed in Qatar and other Arab countries is another question mark. In short, the likelihood of a global war is close to zero, while the likelihood of a regional war seems limited. However, Iran’s response(s) would show that it is not afraid of it, which could be a great motivation for the Axis of Resistance forces that are pushing Israel hard in the war of attrition.
