Will the Middle East be consumed by vengeance?
As Israel and Iran engage in sabre rattling, a major conflict threatens to break out in the Middle East, with the key players either actively stoking the flames or watching passively from the sidelines. Boštjan Videmšek reflects on the situation.
While politicians, analysts and journalists, in sportscaster style, count the hours, days or weeks until a possible major escalation or war in the Middle East, and as Israel, despite indications that it may soon find itself in the biggest (security) crisis in its entire history, continues mass killings and demolitions in the Gaza Strip, we have to ask whether there is an actor in the wider international community who is trying to stop this possibly fatal course of events. Or are the decisions made by leaders just a reflection of core human nature and a completely shameless, irreversibly dehumanised state of mind?
After the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened Israel with “harsh punishment”. An attack on a guest of Iran on Iranian territory, which many presume to have been carried out by Israel, was a step too far for the taste of the Iranian authorities.
Less than a day earlier, the Israeli army also killed a leading member of the Lebanese Shia movement Hizbullah, Fuad Shukr.
Combined, the two events led to speculation that a major regional war with global implications was practically inevitable.
All subsequent steps by the parties involved were potentially steps towards war. A few diplomatic attempts – led by the cognitive and moral dissonance of the United States, which has greatly increased its military presence in the region, and the completely impotent European Union, which is apparently unaware of the great threat of war in its backyard – failed pathetically. There is a sense that, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, another major war is already being accepted by key regional and international actors as an inevitable prospect.
The spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanani, made a statement that should go down in the annals of cognitive and moral dissonance: “Iran does not want an escalation in the region, but Israel needs to be punished for the murder of Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital and to prevent further instability in the region.”
Yes, it is understandable that Iran wants revenge. But why would Iran launch retaliatory attacks on Israel, either directly or through its regional proxies, when it knows, like Hamas surely knew on 7 October of last year, that this runs the risk of raining harm down on the Iranian civilian population?
Is the Iranian regime aware that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been trying to drag Iran into a major war for many years – and at a markedly increased pace in recent months – and is ready to do so, even if it poses an existential threat to his own country? The same applies to the spread of skirmishes with Hizbullah, the escalating brutality of apartheid in the occupied West Bank, the bombing of Yemen, serial war crimes in Gaza, attacks on Iranian targets in Syria and the ongoing internal conflict in Israel itself.
The drums of war are already sounding in Iran. Propaganda is blaring at full blast. But the country and the military are not ready for war. Why not, for once, resist the human impulse for vengeance and clarion call for revenge?
The fate of millions is being decided by the lowest human impulses. International conventions, international humanitarian law and key international institutions, led by the United Nations Security Council, are only echoes of illusions created a long time ago.
Another reason to worry that a major war is inevitable was the “unannounced” visit of the former Russian defence minister and now the top man of the National Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, to Tehran.
Would Russia be ready to step on the brakes?
Shoigu and his superior are almost the last to want peace.
The same applies to the unwavering American support for Israel and for Netanyahu, who two weeks ago in Congress very clearly predicted the development of events that he influences with his Machiavellianism and mass killings.
So far, this has only occurred in Gaza, where the direct death toll of Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians has passed the 40,000 mark. This number does not include the at least 10,000 missing, trapped people among the ruins of the Palestinian enclave’s burning grounds.
We are one wrong step, one horrible decision, away from the absolute devastation. One decision. Who will make the call or who will stop the freefall?
