01.08.2024
Trying to provoke a wider conflict
Assassinating a Hezbollah, then a Hamas leader, is yet another dangerous escalation. Meanwhile, notes Yassamine Mather, general Sir Roly Walker talks about an ‘axis of upheaval’ and being three years from war
After the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, one has to ask two questions: why kill him now? And why in Iran, while he was attending the inauguration ceremonies of a ‘reformist’ president? After all, it would have been much easier to kill Haniyeh in Qatar or any Arab capital he visited.
The answer to both questions is simple: Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightwing coalition government are desperate to start a regional war. While in the US the Israeli prime minister came under some pressure from the current US administration and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, over a ceasefire.
We do not know what was said in his meeting with Donald Trump, but let us not forget that the relationship between the two is not as warm as it once was - Trump having remarked on the fact that he cannot forgive Netanyahu for being one of the first heads of government to congratulate Biden in what he considered “rigged elections in 2020”.
Public opinion in the US and its allies is weary of the rising death toll in Gaza. The 39,000 figure is just the tip of the iceberg. We know that polio, diarrhoea and other diseases are spreading fast in high temperatures, as contaminated streams are the only source of water for many. After months of appeasing the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv, western governments are finally putting some pressure on it and calling for a ceasefire.
It is also clear that the Israeli regime is also concerned by political changes in Tehran. This week, as Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, took office, he appointed veteran ‘reformist’ Mohammad Reza Aref, who was vice-president under Muhammad Khatami, to that post again. More significantly he named Abbas Araqchi - the architect of the Iran nuclear deal and diplomat who had detailed negotiations with the 5+1 powers regarding that deal in 2015, as Iran’s foreign minister. All this could potentially pave the way for new nuclear talks and negotiations with whoever is in power in Washington. Again terrible news for the Zionist state, with its obsession about ‘nuclear Iran’.
Of course, the country considered by imperialists to be the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East has so far assassinated a number of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, in clear acts of ‘terror’.
Since Hamas’s establishment in 1987, Israel has killed a whole number of its leaders. The most important include:
- Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed ‘the engineer’, who was killed when his mobile phone exploded in his hand in Gaza in 1996.
- Khaled Mashaal - killed in 1997 after Israeli agents injected him with poison outside his office in Amman, the capital of Jordan. The operation was ordered by Benjamin Netanyahu and angered King Hussein of Jordan to such an extent that he said he would hang the perpetrators and tear up the agreement with Israel unless an antidote was provided to him. Israel provided the antidote and freed the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin.
- Seven years later, Yassin himself was targeted and killed by a missile fired from a helicopter after leaving a mosque.
- bdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who took the place of Ahmed Yassin, was killed by a missile fired from a helicopter in April 2004. After that, the leaders of Hamas started a secret life and refused to announce who had replaced al-Rentisi.
- Adnan al-Ghoul, who was known as the ‘mastermind’ of Qassam bombs and rockets, was killed in an airstrike in 2004.
- Nizar Rayan, one of the most radical leaders of Hamas, was killed along with his two wives and seven children in the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in 2009.
- Saleh al-Arouri, deputy to Palestinian premier Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in a drone attack in Beirut seven months ago.
Iran’s failure
The assassination of Haniyeh cannot be considered good news for the Islamic Republic. He was killed in a ‘special secure zone’ of Tehran, right under the eyes of the Revolutionary Guards. The organisation claiming to be the ‘leading force’ of the axis of resistance could not even protect an ally in Iran’s capital city.
There are also repercussions for the Islamic Republic’s security forces. Who gave the information about the logistics of Haniyeh’s whereabouts? Once more there will be legitimate accusations that the regime’s elite ‘intelligence’ services have been infiltrated by Mossad. While the security forces boast about CCTV cameras capable of detecting the location of women who have failed to adhere to the strict rules on wearing the hijab, they managed to miss a drone/missile targeting a ‘distinguished guest’.
Last week it was clear that Netanyahu was also keen to start a new conflict with Hezbollah, with the clear aim of dragging Iran into a regional war. There is nothing new about low-level skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah. However, it is quite clear that in the last few weeks Israel has escalated such attacks, prompting Hezbollah’s retaliation. It is in this context that we should evaluate the current changes in Iran.
Although the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric continues to be anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, uninterrupted secret talks with the US have so far maintained a dangerous, but controlled, situation in the region and both sides are very keen to maintain what has been called Iran’s “calibrated” response to regional conflicts, with rumours that the clerical state is ready to compromise.
The worst incident happened on July 28, when the Druze community in the Golan Heights became a target and 12 young people were killed in a missile strike. Despite the months of daily rocket fire and air strikes between Israel and southern Lebanon, the carnage came as a shock. Although Hezbollah strongly denies it, it is possible that an attack aimed at a nearby Israeli military barracks hit the wrong target. The Druze population have little sympathy for Hezbollah, but they are no ally of the Zionist state either. Angry crowds confronted the Israeli minister who tried to join mourners on July 28.
However the incident has given Israel the best opportunity for aggravating the situation. On July 30 we had the bombing of Beirut’s southern neighbourhood, with the declared aim of killing Hezbollah’s senior advisor on military affairs, Fuad Shukr. He was killed hours before Haniyeh. The attack on Dahiya, the densely populated Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, was a provocation that could drag Hezbollah and in the long term Iran into a bloody war with Israel.
In the Middle East the stakes are high. Every day there are signs of imminent war and occasional hopes for peace. But a minor skirmish can lead to full-scale war. In all this the main victims are the Palestinians, the Arab peoples of the region, Iranians, Kurds, Turks … with authoritarian regimes and unpopular elected governments, such as Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, clinging to power, and playing with peoples lives.
Keynote speech
Last week General Sir Roly Walker, the head of the British army, gave the keynote closing speech at Royal United Services Institute’s land warfare conference. He warned that war might come sooner than anyone thinks. According to him, 2027-28 could be the moment when Russian rearmament, China’s threat to Taiwan and Iran’s nuclear ambitions come together in a “singularity”. He went on to describe China, Iran, North Korea and Russia as the “axis of upheaval”.
Although the term, “axis of upheaval”, made the headlines in the UK, it was hardly an original idea. In April 2024, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine, writing for the website of the Center for a New American Security, used the title, ‘The axis of upheaval: how America’s adversaries are uniting to overturn the global order’.
Of course, Iran’s Islamic Republic has been associated with many axes. In January 2002, at a time when a ‘reformist’ president in Iran, Mohammad Khatami, was showing willingness and indeed enthusiasm in supporting US’s war efforts in Afghanistan and promising further assistance to the world hegemon regarding the proposed war in Iraq, George W Bush used his state of the union address to declare: “Iran aggressively pursues these weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom ... States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
We all know that was dishonest, as the Islamic Republic had done its utmost during the war in Afghanistan to help the US as the enemy of its enemy (the Taliban). At the time the Islamic Republic’s opposition to the Taliban and its al-Qa’eda ally was such that Tehran cooperated with Washington in the preparation of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ and during the attack by providing vital intelligence support to the US invasion.
Bush’s speech and the subsequent animosity shown by the US made a lasting impression on the country’s supreme leader, who one can presume had authorised support for the US military actions. But since then we have seen dramatic and regular increases in sanctions imposed on Iran, along with direct threats of war by the US and Israel.
So what do China, Iran, North Korea and Russia have in common? They are authoritarian regimes, but by no means the only such countries, particularly when it comes to the Middle East. How would one describe Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt …?
The difference here is alignment with the world hegemon power. North Korea, Iran and Russia have to be punished for dissing the United States, while China is trying to replace the US as the world hegemon. So far their efforts have led nowhere, of course.
The coordination between these countries is no accident. Faced with complete economic isolation as a result of punitive sanctions imposed by the US and supported by many European countries, the ‘rogue’ states can only increase trade with each other. It is estimated that in 2023 China saved $10 billion by purchasing crude oil from two major sanctioned, oil-producing countries, Iran and Russia. In January, the Nikkei Asia website claimed: “Iran’s exports of crude oil grew by roughly 50% last year to a five-year high of about 1.29 million barrels per day, with the vast majority going to China, helping to prevent a sharp increase in prices triggered by conflict in the Middle East.”1 Of course, Russia remains China’s largest oil supplier. However, since 2022, China has increased its purchase of cheaper Russian oil - all the direct result of unprecedented sanctions.
Irrespective of whether they are evil or just opportunist, the political, economic and military alliance of these countries is based on necessity. Apart from being authoritarian (and in this they are not unique) they have very little in common. Russia is led by a rightwing, nationalist president backed by mafia-style security forces, China is an emerging global power pursuing an ambitious programme of ruthless competition with the current world hegemon, North Korea seems to exist in a previous century, and Iran’s Islamic Republic is a complex Shia theocracy - full of contradictions, but determined to survive.
What unites them is the fact that the US and its allies want to isolate them, so no-one should be surprised that they have come together. An opportunist alliance that the west can easily break, should it try and approach one component of the ‘axis of upheaval’ with an offer to come in out of the cold.