WASHINGTON (AP) — Israeli military strikes are targeting Iran's armed allies across nearly 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) of the Middle East, threatening Iran itself. The efforts raise the possibility of an end to two decades of Iranian rule in the region, which the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq inadvertently sparked.
In Washington, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and in Arab capitals, opponents and supporters of the Israeli offensive are offering clashing ideas about what the US should do next, while its ally is enjoying tactical successes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen and puts pressure on its long-standing policy. campaign to crush Hamas in Gaza.
Israel should get all the support it needs from the United States until the Iranian government “follows other past dictatorships into the dustbin of history,” said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the conservative-leaning Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington. by some Israeli political figures.
Going further, Yoel Guzansky, a former senior staffer at Israel's National Security Council, called on the Biden administration to join Israel in direct attacks in Iran. That would “send the right message to the Iranians: 'Don't mess with us,'” Guzansky said.
Critics, however, emphasize the lessons of the US military campaign in Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, when President George W. Bush ignored Arab warnings that the Iraqi dictator was the region's indispensable counterbalance to Iranian influence. They warn against achieving military victories without due regard to the risks, end goals, or plans for what comes next, and warn of unintended consequences.
Ultimately, Israel “will be in a situation where it can only protect itself through continued war,” said Vali Nasr, an adviser to the Obama administration. Now a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, or SAIS, he is one of the leading documenters of the rise of Iranian regional influence since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving limited weight to the Biden administration's calls for restraint, the United States and its partners in the Middle East are “at the mercy of how far Bibi Netanyahu will push it,” Nasr said, referring to the Israeli leader by his nickname.
“It's as if we haven't learned the lessons, or the folly, of that experiment … in Iraq in 2003 about reshaping the order in the Middle East,” said Randa Slim, a fellow at SAIS and researcher at the Washington-based established Middle East. East Institute.
Supporters of Israel's campaign hope to weaken Iran and its armed allies who are attacking the US, Israel and their partners, suppressing civil society and increasingly collaborating with Russia and other Western adversaries.
Opponents warn that military action without resolving the grievances of Palestinians and others risks endless and destabilizing cycles of war, insurgency and extremist violence, and that Middle Eastern governments are becoming increasingly repressive in their attempts to control the situation. to get.
And there is the threat of Iran developing nuclear weapons to try to ensure its survival. Before the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, Iranian leaders concerned about Israel's offensives had made clear that they were interested in returning to negotiations with the US over its nuclear program and claimed an interest in better relations in general.
In just a few weeks, Israeli airstrikes and intelligence operations have destroyed the leadership, ranks and arsenals of Lebanon-based Hezbollah – one of the Middle East's most powerful armed forces and Iran's overseas bulwark against attacks on Iranian territory – and the Iran's oil infrastructure hit. Yemen's Iran-allied Houthis.
A year of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza appears to have reduced the leadership of Iran-allied Hamas to a few survivors hiding in underground tunnels. However, Israeli forces are again engaged in heavy fighting there this week and Hamas was able to fire rockets at Tel Aviv in a surprising show of staying power on the 7th anniversary of the militant group's attack on Israel, ending the war started.
Expected Israeli counterattacks on Iran could accelerate regional power shifts. The response would follow Iran's firing of ballistic missiles into Israel last week in retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders.
It could also escalate the risk of an all-out regional war that U.S. President Joe Biden — and decades of previous administrations — tried to prevent.
The expansion of Israeli attacks since late last month has sidelined mediation by the US, Egypt and Qatar for an agreement on a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza. US leaders say Israel did not warn them before attacking Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, but have defended the wave of attacks while still pushing for peace.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, said in an interview with CBS' “60 Minutes” broadcast Monday that the US was committed to providing the military assistance needed to protect Israel, but that they would continue to press for ending the conflict.
“We will not stop putting pressure on Israel and in the region, including Arab leaders,” she said.
Israel's expanded attacks raise for many the tantalizing prospect of weakening Iran's anti-Western, anti-Israel alliance with like-minded armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen and governments in Russia and North Korea.
Iran's military alliances, known as the “Axis of Resistance,” grew – regionally and then globally – after the US invasion of Iraq removed Saddam, who had waged an eight-year war against Iran's ambitious clerical regime.
Supporters of the American invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam rightly said that an Iraqi democracy would endure.
But the unintended effects of the US intervention were even greater, including the rise of the Iranian Resistance Axis and new extremist groups, including the Islamic State.
“An emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor” of the 2003 Iraq war, according to a review of the US military's lessons learned.
“Who could have seen a day twenty years ago when Iran supported Russia with weapons? The reason for this is its increased influence” after the US overthrow of Saddam, said Ihsan Alshimary, a professor of political science at the University of Baghdad.
Even more than in 2003, world leaders offer little clear sense of how the power shifts the Israeli military is setting in motion will end—for Iran, Israel, the Middle East at large, and the United States.
Iran and its allies are being weakened, said Goldberg, at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. That also applies to American influence, which appears to be being dragged along by Israel, Nasr said.
The conflict could ultimately hurt Israel if the country gets bogged down in a ground war in Lebanon, for example, said Mehran Kamrava, a professor and Middle East expert at Georgetown University in Qatar.
After four decades of deep hostility between Israeli and Iranian leaders, “the cold war between them has turned into a hot war. And this is significantly changing – and will certainly change – the strategic landscape in the Middle East,” he said.
“We are certainly on the cusp of change,” Kamrava said. But “the direction and nature of that change are very difficult to predict at this stage.”
___
AP reporters Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed.
