One of my steadfast rules in Middle East media coverage is that sometimes you need to repost a story to see things more clearly than you did before. I experienced this with the war between Iran, Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah, which could soon drag the United States into this war. And it has certainly become clearer now, as while the sudden attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7th was partly due to reckless Israeli settlement expansion, brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and encroachments on Islamic religious sites in Jerusalem, the terrorist attack was also part of a broader Iranian campaign to expel America from the Middle East and corner its Arab and Israeli allies before they could corner Iran.
For this reason, if the current conflict between Israel and Iran and Iran’s proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis) escalates into a full-scale war – a war that Israel cannot fight alone for long – President Biden may face the most fateful decision of his presidency: whether to go to war with Iran, alongside Israel, and eliminate Tehran’s nuclear program, which is the cornerstone of Iran’s strategic network in the region. Iran has been building this network to replace America as the most powerful force in the Middle East and to bleed Israel to death with a thousand cuts inflicted by its proxies.
But America must always be cautious about what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning. As former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas noted in Haaretz on Thursday, we have to wonder why Netanyahu chose now to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran – in the midst of sensitive hostage talks. But was it just because it could (and God knows Haniyeh’s hands are stained with much Israeli blood), or was Israel “deliberately provoking escalation in hopes that a war with Iran would drag the United States into the conflict, further distancing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the October 7th disaster – a disaster he has not been held accountable for to this day”?
During nearly 17 years of Netanyahu’s rule, Bibi has both aided and undermined American interests in the region. I wouldn’t trust Netanyahu for a moment to put U.S. interests before his political needs for survival – because he won’t put Israel’s interests before them. But honesty also requires me to acknowledge that some things are true even if Netanyahu believes them. And one of those things is that Iran is the biggest local imperial power in the Middle East, and through its proxies, it has dominated the politics of millions of Arabs living in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, and Yemen – dragging their citizens into wars with Israel that few of them care about. No leader in any of these Arab countries today can make decisions against Iran’s interests without fear of assassination.
Lebanon has been unable to appoint a president since October 30, 2022, largely because Tehran won’t allow an independent Lebanese patriot to take charge there. Lebanon and Syria had to observe three days of mourning after the Iranian president died in a helicopter crash. Yes, three days of mourning for the president of another country. There’s a name for that: Iranian imperialism.
Some things are also true even if Iran believes them too. And one of those things is that Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have been quietly and effectively building a network of wide-ranging alliances over the past few years to contain China and isolate Iran. One of these is the new economic gathering called I2-U2, which includes India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. The other – more important – is the economic corridor between India, the Middle East, and Europe, known as IMEC. IMEC is designed to enhance trade links and energy supplies between the European Union and India – through America’s allies in the Persian Gulf. The goal: to help India escape China’s efforts to encircle New Delhi through the Belt and Road Initiative and to create a large pro-America geoeconomic alliance extending from the EU through Saudi Arabia and the UAE to India, which would also isolate Iran. The founding partners of IMEC are the United States, the EU, Saudi Arabia, India, the UAE, France, Germany, and Italy. America’s plan was to give military weight to these interlocking alliances by drafting a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia that also included normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, provided Israel agreed to make progress toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Once this treaty was drafted, it would mean all of America’s allies in the Middle East would work as a team against Iran – Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain in particular.
Iran knew it had to prevent this Saudi-American-Israeli deal or isolate itself strategically. Hamas knew it had to prevent this deal because it could enable Israel to integrate into the Islamic world – in partnership with Hamas’s main Palestinian rival, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and with Saudi Arabia. How do we know Iran believes this? Because the Iranian Supreme Leader told us so four days before Hamas invaded Israel. It’s scary to read today this story in The Times of Israel from October 3, 2023: “Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Islamic nations normalizing ties with Israel were ‘betting on a losing horse,’ state media reported Tuesday, as regional rival Saudi Arabia moved closer to establishing relations with Jerusalem. Khamenei also predicted Israel’s imminent demise, in a speech to government officials and ambassadors from Islamic nations. … ‘The ultimate position of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that prioritize gambling on normalization with the Zionist regime will incur losses.’ … ‘Today, the situation of the Zionist regime should not be the reason for rapprochement with it; they should not make this mistake.’” Whether Iran knew the exact timing in advance or not, Iran certainly saw Hamas’s invasion as a way to isolate Israel and its American patron by forcing Israel to inflict thousands of civilian casualties to defeat Hamas’s secret network and undermine any Saudi-Palestinian-Israeli normalization. That’s the bigger story here. But how will it end? Last month Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut; Hamas political leader Haniyeh; and Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif in Gaza. They were all obsessed with dragging their people into endless wars to destroy the Jewish state. But Israel has killed the first and second leaders of Hamas before. The problem is that Hamas and Hezbollah are networks, and as network strategist John Arquilla, author of “Bitskrieg: The New Challenge of Cyberwarfare,” once taught me, “in a network, everyone is number 2.” Successors always appear, often worse than their predecessors.
The only way to marginalize Hamas politically and isolate Iran regionally is to help Israel empower the obvious and more moderate alternative: the Palestinian Authority, which adopted the Oslo Accords and cooperates with Israel daily to control violence in the West Bank – which Netanyahu knows but won’t admit because he wants to delegitimize any credible Palestinian alternative to Hamas so he can tell the world and Israelis that Israel has no partner for a two-state solution. With this chess move – adopting the Palestinian Authority – Netanyahu could solidify the American-Israeli-Arab alliance, establish a Palestinian governing structure in Gaza that doesn’t threaten Israel, and isolate Iran and its proxies militarily and politically, making their bet on Hamas’s war a complete waste of lives and money. But Netanyahu must risk his ruling coalition to achieve this, as his far-right ultra-Orthodox partners oppose any agreement with credible Palestinians.
Bottom line: I have thought from the beginning during the Gaza war that these are the real stakes, but now these stakes are as clear as day. But what is not clear at all is what Netanyahu will do. Whose interests will he serve? His own, Israel’s, America’s, or Iran’s? The right move for Netanyahu now would leave Iran politically exposed. Iran would no longer be able to hide its goal of controlling the entire Arab world by concealing itself and its proxies behind the Palestinian cause. Iran has always been happy to let Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iraqis, and Syrians die “for Palestine,” but it has never risked Iranian lives if it could avoid it. The crocodile tears shed by Iran’s religious leaders for the Palestinians are just a ruse – all just a cover for Tehran’s regional imperial adventure.
