At last, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has crossed the Rubicon and unleashed the war on Iran it has relentlessly sought for thirty years. The onslaught on Iran’s leadership and nuclear programme is the latest act in a strategy to redraw the regional balance of power from the Levant to the Persian Gulf following Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023. Although Israel’s offensive has been in the offing for quite some time, the manner and timing of it was dictated by the uncertainty and confusion of the US Administration under President Donald Trump.
Last act of a tragedy
Israel’s response to the 7 October shock has sprung out from a resolve to make full use of its technological and military superiority, as well as the political capital of Western governments’ solidarity, to change the rules of the game, in Palestine and beyond. Its actions, entirely based on military strength, have been unfolding in ever-widening circles.
While decimating Hamas – and pulverising and starving Gaza in the process – as well as turning the screw on Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel has proceeded to strike all its enemies in the region. In Lebanon, it did away with the leadership and severely downgraded the fighting capacity of Hezbollah, the pro-Iran armed group that used to control the south of the country. After Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Damascus, it bombed what was left of Syria’s military assets and occupied a larger area of that country. In Yemen, it has repeatedly pounded the Iran-backed Houthis with heavy bombings. And now it has struck at the head of the ‘axis of resistance’, the Islamic Republic of Iran itself.
The blow has been massive. Israel has mauled the high command of Iran’s regular forces as well as of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the paramilitary organisation that controls the Islamic Republic’s regional and security policy.[1] The list of the top brass killed is jaw-dropping: among the dead are armed forces chief Mohammed Baqeri, IRCG commander-in-chief Hossein Salami, and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC Aerospace Force, in charge of Iran’s ballistic arsenal. Prominent nuclear scientists have also been targeted, as has Ali Shamkhani, the top diplomatic advisor of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, though he seems to have survived the attack.[2] Israel has hit dozens of targets across Iran,
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