One year later, it's clearly Iran versus Israel

By: Ricardo Israel - 08/10/2024

The Hamas attack marked the beginning of what is still happening in the Middle East. It seemed like just another episode of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but a year later, it is Iran versus Israel for everyone to see and in a very visible way. Perhaps, in a year, it will be obvious to everyone that it is more than this, since we are probably only experiencing the first open battle of the jihad against the West that the Ayatollahs have been promoting since 1979 with the Islamic Revolution and, although it is difficult for Washington to accept, the US is the “big” Satan and Israel is only the “little” one. For now, it is confronting it largely alone and with a lot of incomprehension.

What is unlikely to happen is a “remodelling” of the region, as was also promised after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

And to understand why this will not happen, it is useful to resort to the conceptual apparatus of the French historian Fernand Braudel and his distinction between “short” history and “long” history. In his view, history does not necessarily flow in a straight line, but rather there is a “shorter” history and a “longer” one, which can often accelerate. Thus, based on a classic study of the Mediterranean world (1), he distinguishes three levels of historical time: long duration (where stability is very great, obeying structures and cultures), the conjuncture (which is an intermediate stage) and the event (which is truly a kind of “foam” of history). In this sense, the Middle East obeys the long duration, everything has greater stability than it seems because it obeys the long history, unlike an event which is short history, in the sense that it does not always last, however striking and newsworthy it may seem. In this sense, spectacular events such as wars or transitory empires that follow one another do not essentially modify the roots.

Events such as the Second Gulf War and the fall of Saddam Hussein did not bring about Westernisation, but on the contrary handed Iraq over to the domination or influence of Iran. Nor did the so-called Arab Spring produce any widespread democratisation, but rather a return to such traditional forces as the fundamentalism of the Muslim Brotherhood, who won the presidency in the first subsequent election in Egypt, the country that was a symbol of that uprising.

Hence, my assertion that what we are witnessing will hardly lead to an optimistic “remodeling” of the Middle East, but rather sooner or later, the Western world will have to accept that there is a very strong offensive, which from Iran questions the entire historical construction called the West, and the triple heritage received from its long history: the Enlightenment, the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian.

Although it is not yet seen that way, for now, in its representation the conflict is faced by Israel, which has a track record of militarily winning the wars imposed on it, but failing to achieve peace. Today, two things are certain. The invasion of October 7 was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, precipitating all subsequent events, including an Israeli response that has resulted in the largest number of Palestinian victims in history.

It is also striking that the origin of this war is often forgotten by the mainstream Western press, just as it is rarely mentioned that there are still 104 hostages somewhere in Gaza, of whom nothing is known. The attitude of many feminist and LGBTQ+ organisations has also been striking, as they have sympathised with those who would not accept their existence in their countries. Meanwhile, anti-Semitism or Judeophobia has reappeared practically everywhere, showing the persistence of humanity's oldest phobia.

It has also shown us a US that is full of doubts about its role as a power, deeply divided internally, that has lost its deterrence and is now challenged at every level by the alliance between China and Russia. Internationally, we are also witnessing less than expected support for Hamas on Arab streets, and much, perhaps too much, in universities and cities in Europe and the US.

Israel appears to have resolved the military issue, but it still has nothing to do with the political issue of who will take over the government and administration of Gaza, which makes it far from achieving its long-term objectives. In any case, it is currently advancing militarily in Lebanon, with an intervention whose objective is to expel Hezbollah from the south of that country, so that the Israeli residents of the cities in the north of Israel who had to leave last year as a consequence of the daily attacks by Hezbollah from Lebanese territory can return to their homes. If this is achieved, in practice it would mean that United Nations resolution 1701 could be implemented, which after the 2006 confrontation, the Security Council established the demilitarization and the location of Hezbollah north of the Litani River.

As I write this column, there is a tense wait for the decision that Israel has surely already made, on how to respond to the attack it received from almost 200 missiles from Iran on Tuesday, October 2. The Jewish New Year must have served as a stimulus to Tehran, just as it may have served as a pretext for Israel to delay the response. Not only is it influenced by its possible impact on the disputed US presidential election, but also by its political consequences in the Middle East, especially in the Sunni Arab countries and by the economic consequences throughout the world, if Israel decided to attack, as it could do, paralyzing oil production, which would affect not only the West and even more the third world, but also China, which buys a significant percentage of its fuel from Tehran at a price below the market price.

In April, the first Iranian attack failed, with Israel having the support of the US and also of several Arab countries, confirming, in fact, the alliance that exists against Iran. Likewise, this second attack did not cause great damage, thanks to its world leadership in anti-missile defence, especially the Iron Dome and other technological advances that put it ahead of other countries, and, above all, allow for a very low number of victims in relation to the thousands of rockets and missiles that are received.

This would confirm the view of specialists that Israel now has military, intelligence and technological superiority over Iran. However, that is not the point, as it is equally important that Israel has demonstrated that it can reach Israeli territory with its rockets in a few minutes, and in the event that they contain a nuclear charge, it is not enough that they have not caused any damage so far or that almost all of them have been intercepted. Thus, the US request that Israel not attack its atomic program in its response cannot in any way guarantee that the next missile attack will not have a nuclear charge, as well as a chemical or biological one.

The underlying issue is that once knowledge enters a society, it never leaves it. And Iranian society has a millennia-old history as the successor to the ancient Persian Empire, and today has an educated population, resources and scientists. It is much more developed than a poor country that has had the bomb for years like North Korea.

In this respect, Israel was also poor when it got its own in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has never detonated it, it has only assured that it will not be the first country to do so. Iran has the scientific knowledge, and the question is whether it will have the technology to convert that power into a weapon of mass destruction.

So many things have happened in the past year that were not happening before. As far as the US is concerned, its willingness to appease the ayatollahs rather than confront them has not changed. Nor has the understanding of Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab countries in the region, that they share Israel's fear of Iran and its atomic bomb, and that in the face of the US attitude, only Israel is available to try to militarily end the Iranian program, changed. And the year of war has not altered this new reality of the Middle East, which was a crucial element in Tehran's decision to support the Hamas attack on October 7, since it was behind the idea of preventing the signing of a Peace Agreement with Saudi Arabia, which was achieved, for now. That was and remains its gain.

For their part, Yahya Sinwar and those who gave the order, expected and believed that it was time for the entire axis of resistance to join them against Israel: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria, and all with the coordination of the Revolutionary Guard, the same one that was in charge of sending the missiles from Iran on both occasions, in addition to being an organization that only receives direct instructions from the Supreme Leader, the highest authority.

They were seeking to create a new military and political reality in the Middle East, but a year later, with the destruction of Hamas as a fighting force, it is clear that Israel's performance said otherwise, although without a political plan for Gaza, but it is very unlikely that this will be a definitive victory, which in the case of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority requires a strategy that considers a significant contribution from the Arab countries close to Israel, which today does not seem realistic.

However, one thing has not changed, and that is that Iran is convinced that Israel will sooner or later attack its atomic weapons program. Therefore, its incentive is to speed up the bomb, because when will Jerusalem have an opportunity to attack like the current one?

There is also the possibility that without US support, Israel will not have the type of depth charge bomb that would allow it to reach deep buried places, and whether or not that is the reason, and whether or not Israel surprises it with another attack technology, the most likely thing is that a new and forced opportunity will come again when it no longer has an alternative, and Iran is on the verge of producing its weapon.

However, another phenomenon would arise there, since the fact that Iran already possesses its atomic bomb would precipitate a great proliferation in different countries of the region, since only in the Middle East, and by different means and motivations, would at least Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey seek it, which would further disrupt the international power scheme.

There is no doubt that we are experiencing a different scenario, and a very plastic one, reminiscent in a certain sense of the first Gulf War, where despite the military defeat in 1991, not only did Saddam remain in power, but also, in 1993, Israel and Yasser Arafat's PLO unexpectedly reached an agreement to create the Palestinian Authority, which did not produce the expected results for either party.

So many supposed red lines have now been crossed, and the destruction has been such that if the Sunni Arab countries commit themselves sufficiently, progress could be made, also unexpectedly for some or many, in a new attempt at negotiation, if the aforementioned umbrella exists.

Perhaps also with the leadership and participation (and money) of Saudi Arabia, who has always said that in order for there to be a public agreement with Israel, real negotiations with the Palestinians must advance in parallel, with a State as their goal. Some will say that this ship has already sailed and that the distrust today is absolute on both sides, lacking what has not been present since 1948: the willingness, first of the Arab League, and since Oslo, Palestine, to accept one State alongside another, and not one State in place of another, and the understanding that what the original resolution of the United Nations provides for is the creation of an Arab State, but also a Jewish one.

Moreover, today everything is possible, and everything can happen, if Hamas and Iran are left without the possibility of derailing anything. There will not be a Westernized or liberal “remodeling” of the Middle East. No, because that would have nothing to do with the long history of the Middle East, but it is necessary to understand that victory and defeat do not have the same meaning as in the West or in other places and cultures of different development.

For this reason, unlike other armed groups in other parts of the world, no matter how hard they are defeated, armed militants will continue to fight and believe in their own narratives and utopias. What can be hoped for is that they will cease to be a force that can cause a new war or prevent the progress of a peace process.

The content and titles of the columns published in Infobae have served as witnesses of the evolution of the conflict, from one limited to the Gaza Strip to the open confrontation between Iran and Israel. Thus, on July 10th, it was said that the lessons of Gaza “have served for the inevitable: Hezbollah and Iran” as well as on January 5th we asked ourselves “What if we were wrong about the nature of the Gaza war”, as if we were facing “the 21st century re-edition of the clash of civilizations that Samuel Huntington spoke of, first in an essay published in Foreign Affairs (1993) and then in a book (1996) (2) that was received with many critics, including some that have aged badly.

Will this clash with the West, now open to everyone's view, be the true future scenario? If so, it would far surpass any regional conflict, predicted from day 1 but still not materialized, so, in conclusion, the wars we have witnessed with Hamas and Hezbollah would be remembered for this rather than as isolated events.

(1) Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Time of Philip II, second volume, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 944 pages, 2014

(2) Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconfiguration of the World Order, Ediciones Paidós, 432 pp., 2015.

@israelzipper

PhD in Political Science (University of Essex), Bachelor of Laws (University of Barcelona), Lawyer (University of Chile), former president of the Armed Forces and Society Committee of the International Political Science Association, former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013).

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