Editorial: Selective sanity

Al-Ahram Weekly Editorial
Tuesday 29 Oct 2024

There is a key lesson to be learned from Israel’s measured attack against Iran on Saturday.

 

It is that the United States is indeed able to use its leverage to influence its closest Middle East partner not to go far enough with its madness to set the entire region ablaze, harming the interests of the US and its allies.

Iran carried out an unprecedented attack against Israel on 1 October, using nearly 180 ballistic missiles to strike air bases and other military targets. This was in retaliation for Israel’s daring assassination of late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh inside a tightly secured presidential compound in Tehran in late July. After the missile attack, Israeli officials, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, vowed a harsh response.

On 9 October, Gallant said: “The Iranian attack was aggressive but inaccurate. In contrast, our attack will be deadly, pinpoint accurate and, most importantly, surprising — they will not know what happened or how it happened. They will just see the results.”

Despite the very limited information on the exact damage the Israeli strike caused, with Israel claiming it achieved its targets and Iran downplaying the attack, one certain fact is that there has been no surprise whatsoever in the Israeli action.

The US deployment of an advanced THAAD air-defence battery to be operated by American troops in Israel along with squads of F-16 fighter jets a few days ahead of the Israeli attack, left no doubt as to what was about to take place. As of early Friday, there were numerous reports quoting senior US and Israeli officials saying that an attack against Iranian military installations was imminent.

Further stripping the Israeli attack of any surprise element were repeated statements by US officials, topped by President Joe Biden, that Israel should avoid striking both Iranian nuclear facilities as well as oil installations. Aware that Israel is no superpower, and that it won’t be able to launch a war against Iran similar to what the United States did in Iraq and Afghanistan, Netanyahu had no option but to submit to Biden’s restrictions on how far the Israeli strike could go.

Relations between Biden and Netanyahu have already been tense after the Israeli premier repeatedly humiliated the US president by ignoring his appeals to end the war in Gaza over the past 13 months, taking unilateral actions that could have endangered US troops and interests without first informing his key arms supplier. Yet, only days before an upcoming dead-heat US presidential election in which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is competing against Republican former US president Donald Trump, the last thing Biden wanted was to be dragged into an all-out war involving Iran and all its allies in the Middle East.

A large-scale Israeli strike targeting Iranian nuclear or oil facilities would have certainly pushed Iran into a similar response, wreaking havoc on oil markets and pausing a direct threat to the interests of close US allies in the oil-rich Gulf region. Netanyahu would definitely wish for direct US involvement in a war against Iran, seeing the 7 October attack by Hamas an opportunity to deal a deadly blow to the main sponsor of proxies Israel has been fighting on several fronts, namely in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.

Yet the whole world, and not just Middle East countries, will not tolerate the doomsday scenario supported by Netanyahu and extremist members of his government, after more than a year of horrific, brutal, and barbaric war on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, in which more than 43,000 people have lost their lives.

It was therefore no surprise that the first countries to condemn Israel’s latest attack on Iran were its own neighbours, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the very countries that feel threatened by Iranian ambitions. Egypt also strongly condemned the Israeli attack, and played a key role in pushing all concerned parties to renew diplomatic efforts to restore calm in the region.

In this framework, on Sunday, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi unveiled an Egyptian initiative for a ceasefire in Gaza for two days in which four Israeli captives would be exchanged for a number of Palestinian prisoners. The president said the initiative was a preliminary step for a longer ceasefire considering the current stalemate. The negotiations would then proceed within 10 days in the hope of achieving a complete ceasefire and ensuring the entry of aid into Gaza, particularly the northern parts that have been under a criminal Israeli siege for nearly a month.

“Our brothers in Gaza are enduring an extremely harsh siege, nearing the point of starvation, and it is crucial for aid to reach them as swiftly as possible,” Al-Sisi said.

However, the sad side of the US’s direct involvement, and success, in containing the Israeli attack against Iran is that the Biden administration has had no similar determination to end the wars in either Gaza or Lebanon, and has actually provided cover if not taken part in Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians and Lebanese people through an endless flow of weapons and diplomatic cover at the United Nations. After all, this time the slogan seems to be, “It’s the oil, stupid,” especially ahead one of the most divisive US elections in recent history.

While US officials have been promoting the idea that they were hopeful they would see an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon before Biden leaves the White House in late January, this will definitely be a tough challenge. The experience of the past 13 months has proved that it was always Netanyahu who dragged the United States into his adventurous wars, knowing that Washington would provide Israel with support even if it disagreed with his actions.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 31 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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