The past month may prove to be the most critical moment of geo-strategic transformation in the Middle East since the end of the Second World War—if not its most dangerous since the regional Arab state order was born around the First World War. The following are eight dynamics, both old forces and dangerous new ones, that converge and might explain this moment.
Willingness to Support Genocide by Israel: The first year of Israel’s war on Gaza clarified the willingness of the United States and other western powers (especially the United Kingdom and Germany) to fully support Israel’s plausible genocide that could erase the Palestinians from Gaza and other places. This support includes arming and funding Israel’s military assault, starvation sieges, and other brutal measures to destroy human life. It also includes protecting Israel from meaningful international diplomatic or legal measures and silencing, criminalizing, and erasing Palestinians and other advocates in the West. Such advocates have sought to realize Palestinians’ rights in a context of equal justice for them, for Israelis, and for all other concerned states in the region.
No Surety of Israel’s Full Defense: One critical reality that has been clarified over the last year is that American-Israeli military power alone cannot eradicate Hamas, Hezbollah, or other regional resistance to Israel’s barbaric attacks against mostly civilians in Palestine and Lebanon. A related reality is that Israel cannot defend itself alone and requires ever larger amounts of US aid and direct military action.
Possibility of Using More Sophisticated Weaponry: Arguably, the most dramatic new reality is that some rockets and drones fired by Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, and Ansar Allah in Yemen have evaded Israeli and US air defenses and hit cities and military bases in northern and southern Israel, killing and injuring Israelis. Even more troubling for Israel is that these four groups probably have not yet used their most sophisticated, powerful, and accurate missiles. If they do, this will surely pull the United States more deeply into the regional battle.
Difficulty of Defending US Troops: Today, Washington is sending a sophisticated anti-missile air defense unit manned by US troops to help protect Israel, which cannot on its own defend itself against multiple adversaries in the region. The presence of American troops in Israel to fight Iran and other foes is unprecedented, going beyond the long legacy of American arms supplies, training Israelis, and holding joint exercises with them. An Israeli-Iranian war could portend direct US military action against Arab resistance groups and the Islamic Republic. That would surely drag the United States into further military action across the region where some of the American military facilities would be attacked and need to be defended, a scenario that is unlikely to end well, judging by previous American war action in the region.
Americans Do Not Want to Fight in the Middle East: Most Americans tell pollsters they want the United States to assist Israel but do not want US troops fighting on the ground in the Middle East, and a majority of Americans also want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. If popular opposition to US policies expands, the Palestine issue (especially the Israeli genocide in Gaza) and its ramifications in Lebanon and Iran could influence the US presidential election. This would be historic, given that pro-Israel sentiments have always dominated American electoral politics. But that was before the United States directly and consistently enabled Israel’s genocide against Gaza and its current assault across Lebanon.
Assured Weakening of American Standing in the World: Unusually for the United States, modern history and national memory could play a role in potential American direct military involvement in widening Israeli-Arab-Iranian confrontations. Americans will not easily welcome their armed forces fighting yet another land and air war in West Asia, after unsuccessful wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq (and calamitous interventions in Somalia and Libya). Another such adventure would further weaken the United States’ standing in the world, where Washington is seen as fully committed to fighting wars and imposing sanctions across the global South, but not working seriously for human rights and equal justice for all people. It would also affirm what people across the global South have experienced for millennia: imperial foreign armies can kill, disrupt, occupy, and destroy, but they only have a positive effect on local societies when they advance universal human and national rights.
Arab States Have Stayed Out of the Fight: Significant and historic is the new reality that Israel now fights against Arab armed groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Ansar Allah and against a state (Iran), which has greater capabilities. The Arab states that exited the conflict with Israel after 1973, such as Egypt, have largely stayed out of this round—and are likely to remain dormant if the United States and Israel wage war directly with Iran and Hezbollah (but with intense salvoes of press releases and weekly appeals to implement international law). Iran recently cautioned the Gulf Cooperation Council states to stay out of the current frictions and not to allow the United States and Israel to use their facilities or air space to attack it—or else risk retaliation against Arab oil and gas facilities.
Israel’s Frontal Assault on International Law: Israel’s extreme actions in Gaza and Lebanon also assault the United Nations and international law system, shredding it with the same insensitivity to human life beyond its own citizens as its US-supplied bombs have shred Palestinian babies and refugee tents. Its attacks on United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon peacekeepers in Lebanon, refusal to allow UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to visit it, and ongoing campaign to dismantle UNRWA spearhead its broader contempt for international law. Israel targets the entire international rule of law system that the world established after the Second World War to prevent a genocide after the Nazis tried to eliminate the Jews in Europe. It is ironic, cruel, and criminal that Israel does this to support its own genocide against Palestinians and its carnage in Lebanon.
These eight realities suggest that the Middle East, and global powers’ relations with the region, have entered a new and dangerous moment that is now clearly defined by two forces confronting each other. On one side is the century-old Zionist-Israeli aggression against Palestine that has always been actively supported by leading western imperial powers, and on the other are assertive forces in the Middle East (states and non-state armed groups) that were spawned by the consequences of the assault on Palestine and that now enjoy global solidarity to actively resist the uncontrollable US-Israeli war machinery. Israel’s nuclear weapons and regional significant energy resources should prompt the entire world to push for an alternative path—by stepping in to restore calm and negotiate a mutually fair resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict that defines and contains Zionist ambitions and the state of Israel, and that respects the national and sovereign rights of Palestinians and all other concerned parties in the region. If this is not done, we will look back on this month as a dangerous escalation of violence by all concerned, but with much greater destruction that will surely follow.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Anas Mohammed
