The attack launched by Israel on Iran in the early hours of Friday has brought the world to a dangerous turning point. The Middle East has been on fire since October 2023, and while tensions have flared, the fire has remained restricted to Gaza and Israel.
The initial conflict began when Hamas launched a desperate attack on Israel from Gaza after years of the small strip of land being nothing short of an open air prison. The retaliation to the attack has lasted for more than 20 months and have made Israel, and in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, a deeply unpopular figure both in Israel and the rest of the world.
Even as Netanyahu’s forces indiscriminately killed and maimed Gazans with no distinction between infants and combatants, Iran remained a looming threat to Israel. The Iranian regime has long supported the anti-Israel Hezbollah in Lebanon and has been the only country in the region to directly threaten Israel. While missiles have been exchanged between the two countries, yesterday’s strikes are new because of the involvement, or lack thereof, of the United States.
The US has been engaged in talks with Iran over their nuclear programme, and President Trump admitted yesterday that he had discouraged Israel from carrying out a strike against Iran while the talks were ongoing. Israel’s actions show that despite President Trump being a Washington outsider, the Jewish State feels it has the backing of enough of America’s political elite to get away with this unilateral action.
Iran has already launched retaliatory strikes against Israel, but the narrative spun by Israel that they are under threat began immediately after their strikes. With the world only recently having witnessed two nuclear armed states almost come to war when India and Pakistan were engaged in a heated exchange of missiles and jet fire, the recent conflict might plummet the entire region into war.
In such a scenario, Iran will find it has very few allies. The Arab states have their own sectarian conflicts with Iran, Pakistan is focused on its own borders, and normalisation with Israel has been encouraged in the new Syrian regime as well. In such a case, however, the world might take a lesson from Pakistan. When pushed to Death Ground, a country will fight back.
With that in mind, the international community has a solemn responsibility to keep the same standards for Iran which has been attacked without evidence or investigation much like Pakistan was earlier, as they do for conflicts such as the one in Ukraine.
