Middle East: How might an Iran-Israel war break out? The fear of misjudgment

The world is watching with bated breath the unfolding events in the Middle East, as Israel has announced that it will respond to the attack launched by Tehran last weekend in retaliation for the deadly bombing of its embassy in Syria earlier this month, which was resulting in the deaths of high-ranking officials of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

After the events of the past weekend, the possibility of the situation spiraling into a regional conflict in the Middle East, involving Iran and its allies, as well as Western countries such as the United States, seems closer than ever.

The situation has been chaotic since the war in Gaza began in October, with the region resembling a powder keg that can explode at any moment and even one miscalculation is enough to escalate the conflict with unpredictable consequences.

Six months after the conflict began, violence in the wider Middle East is a daily occurrence with attacks on both sides between Israel and Iranian-backed forces, mainly the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

So far these attacks have followed a pattern where each violent incident escalates. Rockets and drones are being launched deeper and deeper into Lebanon and Israel, but each side is careful to increase these distances gradually and select targets carefully.

Risk of expansion into Lebanon

Israel is bolder and, as Al Jazeera’s Abubakr Al-Shamahi points out, is pushing the limits of the “red lines,” possibly wanting to force Hezbollah to attack in a way that would give it the pretext for a more comprehensive bombardment of Lebanon.

So far, despite killing several senior Hezbollah commanders, the Lebanese group has refrained from using its long-range missiles.

But when Iran saw one of its generals killed in an Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, widely seen as an unprecedented military attack on a diplomatic mission and on territory considered Iranian, Tehran upped the ante with a direct attack on Israel.

Iran’s attack has undoubtedly raised the bar as it is the first attack by a foreign state against Israel since 1991. But the Iranians were careful to stress that their attack was “limited”, the majority of the missiles being drones that took hours to to travel from Iran and everything was shot down.

Iranian officials have also repeatedly made it clear that regional states were warned 72 hours before the attack.

Danger of war

But the big question is what will come next? There is a strong possibility that Israel will respond militarily in some way, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unlikely to let a direct attack by Iran go unanswered, something he made clear to the British and German foreign ministers with their with whom he had talks in Jerusalem.

Israel prides itself on the perception that it is the preeminent military power in the Middle East, and deterrence is crucial to maintaining that image, especially after the damage inflicted by Hamas in the October 7 attacks that significantly dented its prestige.

And yet, while the United States and other allies were initially determined to support Israel in its war on Gaza, they are desperately trying to persuade Netanyahu not to respond to Iran and risk starting a war in which many, particularly Washington, would they felt compelled to participate.

What does Biden expect?

Joe Biden is eager to avoid what would be another damaging US war in the Middle East in an election year when his popularity has already been hurt by his support for Israel, whose forces have killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians in Gauze.

However, he probably knows that Israel will attack and pressure Netanyahu for limited retaliation and then hope that Iran doesn’t retaliate and everyone goes back to the “proxy cold war” that Israel and Iran are engaged in here and years.

Although it seems that almost everyone, except perhaps some far-right voices in the Israeli government, wants to avoid an all-out war, which would be disastrous for everyone, that does not mean that each side does not have its own expectations and demands that could potentially leading to conflict.

Israel wants to restore its deterrent capability and wants to have the last word, while as Al-Samahi reports, Iran does not want to appear weak or not respond to escalating Israeli attacks.

The possibility of miscalculation

Even if each side wants just that and not an all-out conflict, miscalculations happen and the best laid plans can often go awry.

In fact, Al-Samahi brings some examples from history to show how this happened.

He initially drew a parallel to how WWI began. As he explains how a murder in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that plunged countries into war and left millions dead is a lesson from history that should not be forgotten.

But war is not inevitable and countries can de-escalate the situation in time, a useful example being the Cold War.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in particular brought the US and the former Soviet Union dangerously close to what could have been a catastrophic nuclear war, and ultimately led to the averting of the danger at the last minute, even though the two countries remained enemies. for decades.

This could happen today. But any solution to averting the current crisis cannot simply be between Iran and Israel. He must get to the root of the problem that has brought the region to the brink of war: Israel’s devastating war on Gaza.

As long as the conflict lasts and as long as Israel continues to kill civilians, there will always be potential causes that could drag the entire region into a debilitating war.

Moreover, the inability of world powers to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the most intractable of the region’s problems, will continue to be a source of instability.

As long as no solution is found and the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories continues, the possibility of the region plunging into war will remain, always waiting for a spark.