Podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/user-280580802/223-can-regional-wars-become-global-wars
Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, which Israel and the air forces of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, UK and US intercepted. The Iranian regime had clandestinely been attacking Israel through the support of its proxies of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip since an election victory in 2006 after which the moderate Fatah was pushed out of Gaza. Hamas has carried out a major terrorist attack against Israel in the fall of last year. This culminated in a war between Israel and Hamas, where Hamas hides in the civilian buildings, so the Israelis wipe out the buildings killing also many of the civilians there. Iran had held back during the Israel-Hamas War, relying instead on Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen to fire the occasional rocket on Israel. But that posed no major threat to Israel.
Israel then stepped up its response by killing several high-level Iranian generals in Syria in December 2023 and January 2024. On the 1st of April, Israel assassinated more Iranian officers in the Iranian embassy in Damascus, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the leader of the Quds Force. The Iranian officers were aiding Hamas in military planning. Iran responded with these ballistic missile and drone attacks on Israel. Israel is now vowing revenge, but they are still held back by the US government that helped intercept the attacks on Israel but is unwilling to support Israel in fighting a full-blown regional war with Iran.
The Israel-Iran conflict has been a continuous proxy war that was initiated by the regime change in Iran in 1979. Before 1979, the Shah had ruled in Iran and was very friendly to Israel. But he was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamist clerics, who were devoutly pro-Palestinian and wanted the elimination of Israel as a state. Ironically, in the early periods of mullah rule, Israel had supported the Iranian regime in fighting back against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, who had initiated the Iran-Iraq War that had no decisive outcome, though the Iranians were kept in the battle with Israeli weapons. Bilateral relations cooled significantly in the 1990s.
By the 2000s, Iran was working aggressively to enrich enough uranium to build their own nuclear weapons and become a counterweight to Israel, the only Middle East nuclear power. Israel has opposed Iran’s nuclear program and has brought the west on their side to get them to also oppose that program. Israel has been opposed to the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement in 2015, which was designed to limit the enrichment of uranium to levels below building a nuclear weapons program. The incoming Trump administration agreed with Israel and the other right-wing hawks and promptly resumed anti-Iran sanctions by quitting JCPOA. This gave Iran the policy freedom to continue secretly enriching more uranium. Israel reacted by frequently deploying the Mossad to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists and sending computer malware against Iranian computers. The Iranians, in turn, deploy Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel and they kill Israelis all over the world. It should be noted that Israel itself is supporting the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, who are working to overthrow the Iranian regime (clearly unsuccessfully).
The shifting nature of Iran-Israel relations from friendliness to hostility works in favor of improving Israel-Arab ties. Normally, Israel has had a hostile relationship with Arab countries, who are unhappy about the Israeli mistreatment of their fellow Arab Palestinians. But countries like Saudi, Jordan or UAE regard Iran as a geopolitical adversary as well. The Saudis see their influence threatened by Iran that has been supporting their Houthi proxies to topple the pro-Saudi regime of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. The Yemeni civil war has been going on since 2014. The Saudis are militarily incapable to remove the Houthis, and the US is not interested in fighting that war on Saudi behalf. The Arab Gulf states have a good reason to back Israel and oppose Iran. But what to make of their Palestinian brothers who are getting slaughtered in Gaza? Their plight is not of the highest priority to the Arab states, which suggests that pity (for Palestinians) is a less important motivator than fear and hate (toward Iran).
What are the prospects of a broader regional war? The Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and the destructive Israeli military response in Gaza have increased the possibility of such a conflict. The Israelis feel so besieged by Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran that they perceive American intervention to be a relief valve. If the US were to throw their weight behind Israel, they would have significantly more freedom to focus on eliminating Hamas by razing Gaza to the ground, while the Americans are engaging in a direct conflict with Iran. But that prospect would only be likely if a real neocon like John Bolton was in charge. Bolton has been in favor of all US-led regime change wars, including the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even while the US military and finances were stretched thin by both wars, he still wanted to topple the Iranian mullahs while serving in the Bush administration. In the Trump administration he was a lead advocate for dismantling JCPOA. The Biden administration is significantly more cautious in foreign interventions and has openly counseled Israel to consider not escalating further with Iran. Even as vice president Biden had opposed the Libya and the Syria regime change operation, though he failed to make the case on the former, because the French and the British were urging the Obama administration to topple Muammar Gaddafi.
The main fire test for the Biden administration has been the Ukraine War, where the self-imposed redline (no NATO troops fighting in Ukraine) has emboldened Putin in his own attempt at regime change in Kyiv. His rhetorical commitment to stand by Ukraine and support them financially and militarily rings hollow due to Congressional opposition to pass Ukraine aid. House speaker Mike Johnson serves at the mercy of the MAGA faction and the presidential poll leader Donald Trump, who opposes any more Ukraine aid. MAGA mixes political isolationism (“Ukraine is not an American problem”) with pro-Russian sentiments (“let Putin take Ukraine”).
Even the Biden administration’s attempt to hold back Ukraine in attacking the Russian oil facilities and refineries to protect American voters from higher gas prices is unrealistic to succeed given that Ukraine is no longer receiving any US aid. Israel is another US proxy that could provoke a broader regional war by fighting Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. US hegemonic power is inexorably weakening as their so-called allies do what they like. US impotence is revealed in their uncomfortable position of supplying Israel with military aid to raze Gaza to the ground and shooting down Iranian missiles against Israel, while at the same time tossing some humanitarian aid to desperate Palestinians who have not yet been killed by the Israeli bombs. That’s like paying for both shattering the window and repairing some of them. An incredibly wealthy country has the luxury to do so. The US had also supported both sides in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
The Ukrainians are looking at the western response to the Iranian rockets on Israel and wonder why NATO is not willing to provide the same missile defense to a non-NATO member like Ukraine as they do with Israel. The answer is evidently found in the nature of the adversary at hand. The British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, used the excuse that the west was not interested in escalating the risk of a larger war in Europe, while that wider war is not a concern in the Middle East. The main difference between Russia and Iran is that Russia is a major nuclear power and Iran is not, though it is trying to acquire these capabilities. You can be aggressive against non-nuclear powers, but not against nuclear powers. Israel does have nuclear weapons, so the west does its best to shield Israel so they are not provoked to use it (Applebaum 2024). John Bolton now claims that western-induced Iranian regime change is more important than ever, because the window to do so closes once the mullahs control nukes. But that is precisely the reason that Iran cannot renounce the desire to acquire nukes.
China has indicated its support for the Iranian retaliation against the Israeli attacks on the Iranian embassy in Damascus (McCartney 2024). Russia is also repaying its receipt of Iranian Shaheed drones that are attacking Ukraine by promising to send Su-35 fighter jets to Iran that will be useful in an air force duel with Israeli fighter jets if a big war were to break out. Iran already received S-300 air defense systems to protect their nuclear plants from Israeli strikes (Warrick 2024). It is questionable how much aid the Russians can pump into Iran in a prolonged conflict, so only China would be capable of backstopping both Iran and Russia. China has been willing to do so with Russia, exporting critical technology components and dual-use goods to support the Russian war effort. Perhaps, if the war- and inflation-weary westerners have had enough of the conflicts on their periphery (Eastern Europe and Middle East), China could have a free run at taking over Taiwan.
The only relevant question for the global citizenry is whether any of the regional wars, either in Eastern Europe or in the Middle East, can escalate into an uncontrollable war culminating in a world war. Despite all this technology that is at our disposal, we are still monkey brains operating according to the tribal logic and the fight-or-flight logic. The stakes are now infinitely higher. When the two neighboring tribes were fighting each other with fists, sticks and stones, very few people could get hurt and even fewer died. But now hand these same tribes large nation states and nuclear weapons, and we could all be in big trouble. A peaceful sunny day could be interrupted all of a sudden by thundering missiles flying above our heads, and into the buildings and cities we took for granted. People could be called up to fight in a real major war. On the other hand, the nuclear deterrent is quite real, and as long as all the major powers (US, China, Russia) hold back, the regional wars can be contained.
Defense spending is rising everywhere in the world. According to David Graeber, the military meets the definition of a bullshit, useless job: if there was no nation or if everyone was peace-loving, there would be no need for a military, but once one country has it and is rapacious for resources of his neighbor, every nation now needs a military. As every country continues to spend more and more on the military, we are sacrificing other areas of spending like education, health or well-being. But we cannot counsel individual countries to cut their military budget as long as their neighbors spend more. The collective action problem could only be broken by a global Leviathan, a world government. Global institutions tend to be built after major wars, e.g. League of Nations and United Nations. Do we need another major war and the last human survivors making it out of the nuclear armageddon can form a peaceful world government that also happens to solve climate change, eliminate chronic disease and limit social/ economic inequality?
Further readings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_relations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iran%E2%80%93Israel_conflict
Mr Liu's Opinions 