Shadow war no more: How will the new Iran-Israel power dynamic affect the region?https://en.majalla.com/node/315381/politics/shadow-war-no-more-how-will-new-iran-israel-power-dynamic-affect-region
Shadow war no more: How will the new Iran-Israel power dynamic affect the region?
Many worry about the very real threat of wider regional conflagration if events spin out of control
Al Majalla
Iran and Israel are making careful calculations—at least for now—but the conflict is changing, as are the political dynamics at work in dangerous times
Shadow war no more: How will the new Iran-Israel power dynamic affect the region?
The Middle East edged perilously close to a major conflict on the night of 13 April, when Iran launched an unprecedented direct assault on Israel with drones, cruise missiles and other ballistic weapons.
The attack was in response to an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus two weeks prior. It was aimed at resetting the power balance and establishing new red lines for the shadow war that has been raging between the two countries for decades.
For now, the battlefront between Iran and Israel appears to be calm, but many worry about the very real threat of wider regional conflagration if events spin out of control.
History of relations
Under the Shah, Iran and Israel enjoyed warm ties, but since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, that relationship has significantly deteriorated.
Since then, the relationship has teetered between fierce animosity and strategic agreements that come at the expense of other Arab states in the region.
Iran's pursuit of a nuclear programme has unsettled Israel, which wants to maintain its position as the sole nuclear power in the region—a policy known as the Begin Doctrine, named after the Israeli prime minister who formulated it in the early 1980s.
That policy was put into immediate practice when, in 1981, Israel bombed a nuclear facility in Iraq. But in more recent times, Israel has adopted a different strategy to preserve its interests and prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
For now, the battlefront between Iran and Israel appears to be calm, but many worry about the very real threat of wider regional conflagration if events spin out of control.
'Battles between the war'
Since 2009, it has been engaged in a shadow war against Iran, with the help of the US, to target its armaments programmes.
For its part, Iran leveraged the 2003 Iraq war to build up its so-called "Axis of Resistance" to strengthen its position in the region under the guise of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Israeli attacks against Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and even Iraq have been described as "battles between the war", but they have not exactly been effective in curbing these groups' capabilities and influence.
When Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government was quick to accuse Iran of orchestrating the attack. But not keen on a wider regional war involving Iran, Israel's closest ally, the US, quickly dismissed Iran's role in the attack.
In the first months of Israel's war on Gaza, Iran mobilised the "axis" to inflict pressure on Israel without provoking a full-blown conflict. It was keenly aware that a wider war that dragged the US in to defend Israel was exactly what Netanyahu was trying to provoke.
In response, Hezbollah showed its backing for Gaza by targeting Israel from Lebanon in what could be termed a "supportive war." Concurrently, the Houthis launched operations against shipping lanes in the Red Sea and US bases in Iraq were also targeted.
For its part, Israel has ramped up its attacks on Iran and its "Axis of Resistance" by directly targeting senior IRGC leaders. In December 2023, Brigadier General Reza Mousavi was killed in Syria.
This was followed by an attack on a leadership meeting that included IRGC members holding the Syria and Lebanon files in the Iranian consulate in Damascus, resulting in the death of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his team.
The ruins of Iran's consulate in Damascus, which was destroyed in an Israeli bombing on 1 April 2024.
Two weeks later, Iran launched its "night of drones" attack on Israel, which shocked the world but inflicted no human casualties. It was intended to be a message more than a real military action. The message was: We can reach you if provoked.
Pivotal moment
April 2024 may go down in history as a pivotal moment in reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East and the end of the period of shadow wars or proxy conflicts.
But the US doesn't want this and is trying to offset this possibility. Washington has actively engaged in efforts to prevent a full-scale war since the beginning of the conflict in Gaza.
This could explain why the Israeli "response" a few days to Iran's direct attack was described by the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as "weak". The US was working hard behind the scenes to restrain Israel's response to ensure the conflict didn't reach the point of no return.
Any major escalation between Israel and Iran would unlikely be tolerated and supported by the US—especially in a year that Joe Biden is up for re-election. Any shutdown of the Hormuz or Bab-el-Mandeb Strait that could accompany a regional war would be fatal to global trade.
Washington is also trying to pressure Israel to wind down its war in Gaza. It has repeatedly expressed its opposition to an Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians, displaced from the north and central areas, are currently crammed. But this hasn't stopped it from sending Israel a seemingly endless supply of weapons.
The latest direct confrontation between Iran and Israel has intensified the fragility of the Middle East and exacerbated its myriad conflicts. Once again, the region has become a theatre to settle international and regional scores.
