Israel and US are perilously ‘gaming’ over the fate of the entire Middle East

As the fighting intensifies between Israel and Iran, Foreign Editor David Pratt examines whether Trump’s talk of “diplomacy” was nothing more than a ruse to help Netanyahu Game on. Pray for Israel.” It speaks volumes about the hawkish mindset of many politicians in the United States these days that they would use the word “game” in such a way to describe the potentially catastrophic escalation of war in the Middle East right now. But those were precisely the words posted by US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on social media on Friday shortly after Israel launched its massive air strikes against Iran, targeting its nuclear programme, military facilities, and killing two of the Islamic Republic’s top military commanders. Graham, a Trump ally, was far from alone, with at least three other senior Republican politicians using the exact words – “Please join me in praying for Israel” – in their statements. Not to be outdone, US House Speaker Mike Johnson was also at pains to make clear that Israel’s actions were justified, declaring on social media: “Israel IS right – and has a right – to defend itself!” Many, of course, would choose to differ, arguing with some justification that Israel’s attack was unprovoked and in clear violation of the international law as enshrined in the United Nations Charter and of anything that can be labelled a rules-based international order. In making their case, the same people might also point to the fact that today this is now almost par for the course when it comes to Israel. They might argue, too, that by embarking on ethnic cleansing in Gaza and persistently using excessive force in serial attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the occupied West Bank, it’s Israel itself that currently constitutes the biggest danger to the region. It was at around 3.30am Iran time on Friday that Israel launched at least six waves of air strikes in what it is calling Operation Rising Lion. In the wake of the strikes, Iran’s state news agency confirmed that several senior military figures including Major General Hossein Salami, head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, were killed. Scientists killed Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, was also killed, state television reported. Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a prominent physics professor, and Fereydoon Abbasi, a former head of Iran’s atomic organisation, also died, the state news agency confirmed Israel’s wave of attacks also struck command-and-control centres, ballistic-missile bases and air-defence batteries. Some of the attacks are reported to have been carried out by operatives from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and the electronic surveillance and targeting commando, military Unit 8200, which reportedly located key Iranian commanders and two leading nuclear scientists with precise accuracy. Israel also claims the operatives installed swarms of explosive drones deep inside Iran to neutralise air defence systems near Tehran. But aside from decapitating Iran’s military leadership and missile production facilities, the prime target was the country’s nuclear facilities at sites like Natanz and Fordow. Shortly after the attacks, social media showed footage of smoke rising from the uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Natanz about 150 miles south of the capital Tehran. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog, later confirmed the plant was “among targets”, adding that it was in contact with Iranian authorities over radiation levels. For three decades, Netanyahu has spoken of the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons which he says poses an “existential” threat to Israel. Israel has announced that the operation to knock out Iran’s nuclear programme is likely to last four or five days. But the fear is that Israel has opened a new phase of war across the Middle East that has seen nearly two years of consistent conflict on a scale not witnessed in decades. Putting aside the fact that an escalation is now inevitable, predicting what will happen next is more tricky. But as Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent of the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has highlighted, three questions will determine the pace and trajectory of events to come. The first of these is just how much damage did Israel’s attack inflict? The second is what will be the nature and extent of Iran’s retaliation? And finally, and perhaps most significantly, how will America be involved? Regarding the first of these questions, then certainly the killing of Iran’s military chief of staff Maj Gen Bagheri and Maj Gen Salami, as well as several nuclear scientists and destroying swathes of Iran’s air defence systems, is unprecedented. Regime change Some reports also suggest that Ali Shamkhani, a national security adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who has oversight of the nuclear programme, was injured. This indicates Israel has struck parts of Iran’s political leadership too, signalling that among its objectives may, in fact, be regime change. Netanyahu suggested as much when on Friday, in a speech, he told Iranians that he hoped Israel’s ongoing military operation will “clear the path for you to achieve your freedom”. What is certain about the strikes, however, is that they pile pressure on an Iranian military infrastructure already degraded from previous Israeli strikes. Last year, Israel attacked Iran using air-launched ballistic missiles from far beyond the reach of Iran’s most advanced air defences – the Russian supplied S-300 surface-to-air missiles. These Israeli strikes severely degraded Iran’s most advanced air defences, particularly the S-300, and it is not clear what remains. But it’s the question of how much damage Israel has been able to inflict on Iran’s main nuclear sites that will be uppermost in the minds of the Israeli leadership right now. Israel on Friday said it had struck Natanz and “damaged” the underground area of the site, a multistorey enrichment area with centrifuges, electrical rooms and other infrastructure. But both of Iran’s nuclear facilities have been built to withstand the heaviest of strikes, buried as they are deep below mountains and under dozens of feet of reinforced concrete. Experts have previously estimated that even America’s largest 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bomb, the GBU-57, which cannot be carried by Israeli warplanes, would need to be used many times on the same point for any significant damage to be done. The US has thus far refused Israeli requests to provide the biggest bomb in its arsenal, but reports last month indicate that the US sent fresh supplies of smaller bunker-busting bombs such as the CBU-28 which the Israeli air force is capable of carrying. These may have enabled Israel so far to have targeted the entrances, tunnels and ventilation shafts of Natanz or Fordow in an attempt to put them out of action. Which brings us to the question of Iran’s capacity to retaliate. Overnight Friday into Saturday, Iran hit back at Israel with retaliatory missile strikes. Israeli paramedics said yesterday that at least three people had been killed and dozens injured by Iran’s overnight salvos, with missiles slipping through the country’s air defences and destroying buildings in Tel Aviv and Rishon LeZion. But as The Economist magazine has highlighted, Iran faces few good options in the scale and type of retaliation it can mount. “If its response is too weak, it will not deter Israel; too strong, and it might draw America into the war. “That would only compound the threat to the regime, which has not looked so vulnerable since the 1980s, when it fought a long war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” The Economist’s assessment concluded, a view shared by other analysts. As it stands, Iran’s most likely strategy will be to carry out further attacks using missiles and drones in the hope of depleting Israeli stocks of interceptor missiles and then send in its more advanced and harder-to-shoot-down ballistic missiles. ‘No secret’ Israel’s resupply of interceptors has become an issue of late. According to a report in the Financial Times (FT), Israel Aerospace Industries, the state-owned company which makes the Arrow interceptors used to shoot down ballistic missiles, said it was having to run triple shifts to keep its production lines running at full tilt, and that it was “no secret that we [Israel] need to replenish stocks”. In the past, any retaliation would have seen Iran turn also to its proxies in the region, the most formidable of which was Hezbollah, the Shia militia and political party in Lebanon that had an enormous arsenal on Israel’s northern border. But Hezbollah is not the force it once was, weakened by a year of war with Israel, in which its leaders were killed and many of its missile depots destroyed. Where Iran could turn tactically towards are its other proxies in places such as Iraq, mobilising them to attack American bases there, or it might be tempted to go after other US installations in the region including in Qatar and Bahrain. All of that, though, has enormous risks of pulling America fully into the conflict, even if, as many argue, Washington as ever is already committed when it comes to defending Israel. Other risky Iranian options – long discussed by regional strategists – might include blocking or disrupting oil exports from the region by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. Merchant shipping is still passing through the Strait, but with increased caution. Iran has previously threatened to close this critical trade route through which a quarter of global oil supplies and a third of liquefied natural gas production is transported. Even the suggestion of such a move has already sent shockwaves through global markets, and sent the price of oil soaring, something that doubtless worries the Trump administration that’s keen to keep the Gulf monarchs happy. Which brings us to the most significant question of all, as to what America knew about Israel’s attack and the likely extent of US involvement in the conflict? To begin with, some observers now believe the talks between Iran and the US that were scheduled for today in Oman were little more than a ruse, lulling Iran into a false sense of security before Israel struck. Or, to put this another way, while Trump was talking about “diplomacy”, Israel was preparing its onslaught. All the signs were there that Washington knew what was coming, say some diplomats and observers. Just over a week ago, the US moved some anti-missile defences from Europe to Israel. It then raised threat levels to US citizens, started withdrawing personnel and their families, putting major military bases on standby, and also recently supplying bunker-busting bombs such as the CBU-28 to Israel. All this, too, before Israel’s dependence on US intelligence and air defence support. It beggars belief, then, attest analysts, that team Trump wasn’t aware of Israel’s real plans. Washington “knew this was coming, and they helped maintain this fiction that there would be a meeting” today between Iran’s foreign affairs minister Abbas Araghchi and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, said Aaron David Miller, a former US state department negotiator in the Middle East now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So to that degree, they co-operated with the Israelis in the ruse, and it clearly worked,” Miller added in an interview with the Financial Times, echoing the views of other Middle East experts. Deception SEEN from an Iranian perspective, Trump’s talk of giving diplomacy a chance will doubtless now be considered as the deception many now believe it was. In other words, Tehran was lured into a diplomatic trap orchestrated between Israel and the US aimed at blindsiding Iran as to the military operation that Israel had clearly long been planning with Washington’s approval. If indeed that perception persists, then it’s unlikely the Iranians will return to the negotiating table any time soon. It signals too that despite so-called “differences” between Netanyahu and Trump, support for Israel in the US body politic remains – as most suspected – as strong as ever. It would also help explain the rush from some Republican politicians to send “prayers” for Israel, as the bombs fell on Tehran while other less hawkish elements expressed serious concern over the escalation. For Netanyahu, once regarded as a risk-averse leader, the strike on Tehran is a huge gamble. For Trump, meanwhile, a president who campaigned on ending wars, not starting them, it’s another arguably ignominious landmark in a shambolic foreign policy strategy. This weekend, as the exchange of missile attacks between Israel and Iran intensify, it’s hard to ignore the sense that both men are perilously “gaming” over the fate of the Middle East, and that the region’s future is being forged between them.

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