It is a sobering fact that, as the leaders of most of the world’s leading industrial powers and leading democracies – the G7 – meet in Canada, there is little they can do, or wish to do, to end the Iran-Israel war.
This is partly because the war, though dramatic in its imagery and real in its civilian toll, has so far been confined to mutual aerial bombardments. They are a longer and more intense version of the strikes launched by the two nations in April and October, and may subside when Israel judges it is prudent to do so, though the IDF currently says it has full control of the skies over Tehran.
Israel says strikes overnight in Haifa and Tel Aviv killed eight, while Tehran says fatalities have been in the hundreds. Still, it is not yet all-out war. There is no question of the Israelis deploying their nuclear weapon, and not much chance of the Americans engaging directly against Iranian territory or its forces.
If Donald Trump wants vengeance for the reportedly minor damage to the US embassy in Tel Aviv following overnight strikes in a residential area, then he can leave that to Benjamin Netanyahu (BiBi) to take care of.
So, this may turn out to be the moment of maximum or peak danger, rather than a further escalation. It doesn’t yet feel like the beginning of World War Three.
If you take the view that the 7 October atrocities committed by Hamas were the equivalent destabilising, provocative moment as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in July 1914 – the spark that lit a global conflagration – then you would be tempted to view recent events as a long-running set of national revivals in a volatile region, which are about to draw in the great powers of our time.
Rather like the Serbian terrorists then, Hamas would certainly welcome the interventions of other powers they traditionally regarded as allies – Iran and Russia – on their side, pitted against Israel and the United States. Hamas could not win a war against Israel on its own, but with Iran and Russia, perhaps it has a chance of advancing its objectives and weakening Israel.
That was why BiBi’s disproportionate reaction to the 7 October 2023 attacks seemed so ill-conceived, because it played into Hamas’s hands. And, despite everything, the terrorist organisation has not been eliminated. Israeli war aims have not been achieved, but merely widened to embrace the humiliation of Iran, the end of its nuclear ambitions and possibly even the downfall of the Islamic Republic.
Conceivably, America and Russia could still be drawn in, and that might have happened under the Biden presidency. But under Donald Trump, and with the Iranians being revealed to be as weak as they are, the dynamics for such an escalation aren’t quite right.
Trump is so reluctant to do anything to get in the way of his strategic aim of partnership with Russia that he would only intervene if Israel were in immediate, mortal jeopardy. Similarly, Putin would only intervene if Iran – a source of diplomatic and military support for the Ukraine campaign – was to be placed at risk.
Neither Israel nor Iran is about to fall, and Israel is doing more than anyone else ever has to disrupt Iran’s journey to becoming a nuclear power. It’s an uncomfortable fact, and it would have been far better all around if the Iranian nuclear deal had achieved the same ends, but when Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in his first term, Iran merely accelerated its efforts.
Israel stopping the ayatollahs from acquiring weapons of mass destruction suits Trump well enough. And, in this context, it is no great surprise that he has suggested Vladimir Putin broker a peace deal or at least a ceasefire. For the time being, with a similar logic, there is also no obvious reason why Saudi Arabia or Turkey would seek to intervene in the conflict between Israel and Iran.
So, this week, the G7 will issue another bland communiqué calling for de-escalation, which will make little impact in Israel or Iran, and the bombings will continue. As will the futile destruction of Gaza, and the Houthis may resume their low-level terrorism around the Strait of Hormuz, tempered by periodic American punishment bombings.
This, however, is not stability, and things could still escalate – but it would need something dramatic to occur, such as the Russians and North Koreans gifting Iran a nuclear weapon and a missile delivery system to take it at least as far as Israel. Or America bombing Tehran or the holy sites.
At such a point, we could again contemplate how the great powers and their satellites might line up in a total war. Not yet, though.
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