Escalation Between Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas Raises Global Stakes
Clearly, separate, audacious attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran are going to launch an angry counterstrike against Israel, likely one that is coordinated among the growing number of state and militia groups aligned to encircle a nation already at war.
It’s going to get worse and quickly; the only question seems to be how much worse.
The issue, of course, is how contained or not the response, and the inevitable retribution for a response in a never-ending spiral that threatens not only Israel, but the fate of the United States and allies on both sides.
Just as clearly, then, what is coming is exactly the kind of complicated foreign affairs test for American officials that sets the outlines for a role in seeking diplomatic temperance or using it as a blind towards engaging what could be full-fledged war with Iran. Compared with the silliness of campaign name-calling and useless televised debate “performances,” this is a test of what would-be U.S. presidents do in a crisis not of their making, a crisis in which sloganeering plays little use.
Israel claims credit for the Beirut attack, which boldly eliminated a Hezbollah military commander overseeing missile strikes from inside southern Lebanon onto a soccer field in northern Israel, killing 12 children. By contrast, Israeli officials were mum on the operation into Iran, either because of the stakes or because they simply don’t want to give away how a drone missile could be launched undetected inside Iran’s capital. Nevertheless, it stretches the imagination to believe that Israelis were not involved.
It is a mark of our times how quickly the world sank measurably towards destructive war and not just more of the trade of artillery or missile damage.
Quick Strikes, Quicker Vows of Retaliation
In just minutes of learning about the strike that killed Ismail Haniyeh, the top political, exiled face of the terrorist Hamas group, any number of simultaneous, bad consequences were clear — unless you adhere to the idea that what happens in the Middle East will have no effect on the wider world, or like Donald Trump, you think that your opinion matters to other countries at war.
Chances For Peace: Killing Haniyeh, the negotiator for Hamas with whom Israel and interested nations are supposedly trying to close a hostage-for-ceasefire deal, could not prove more clearly that there is no trust among the parties and that notions of long-term peace are illusionary. Just to underscore the obvious, Lebanon and Iran are nation states choosing to house terror groups; there is no issue of long-term, persecution, occupation by Israel in either country. What we’re seeing is hate personified for Islamic states that want Israel wiped from the map. And if the Israelis are not inviting a widening war rather than pressing for a ceasefire, they have a strange way of showing it.
Safety From Assassination: Together, the two strikes show that no targeted Hamas or Hezbollah leader — or for that matter no Iranian leader — is beyond reach. Just as a 20-year-old with an available rifle found he could infiltrate a Secret Service-protected rally for Donald Trump three weeks ago, sophisticated intelligence efforts and precision weapons can enable assassination. Any supposed unspoken rules of law that separate “political” leaders from those with military assignment are useless.
Targeting Iran: Immediate belligerent talk from the Iranian Ayatollah authorizing, no demanding, retaliation against Israel belies the obvious. Israel or its agent apparently was able to get a drone missile launched without detection or defense, something that ought to worry Tehran. Lurking in the background is the certainty that Iran is producing enough enriched uranium now to create its first nuclear weapons whose deployment is in the hands of religious fanatics who see Israel, Jews, and the Western nations as Satanic.
The U.S. Question: Despite talk from the Biden administration about trying to keep the lid on the spreading war Amid a four-month election campaign that pits American isolationism against maintaining international alliances and that demands unquestioned support for all Israeli actions even in the face of humanitarian concerns, we’re hearing easy, campaign solutions for tough, international questions of security and human rights. Our own NATO allies are torn, and international referees are insisting that we care about how wars are fought as well as who is on what side.
We need less braggadocio and more work at diplomacy.
