India’s western flank is on fire

ON October 11, Iran launched its third missile strike on several targets in Israel, including on the capital city of Tel Aviv. According to an Israeli Defense Forces statement, nearly 300 ballistic missiles were involved in the attack but most were reportedly intercepted and neutralised by Israel and US forces based in Qatar, working together.

We will now increasingly see the US acting in tandem with Israel to carry out devastating aerial and missile attacks against Iran.

The first missile strike took place on April 13, in retaliation for the targeted killing of Iranian diplomats in an Israeli bombing attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria. However, Iran gave advance warning of the attack and avoided causing major damage. It also announced that it did not want to escalate the conflict beyond this retaliatory attack. Nevertheless, this missile attack was the very first direct attack from Iranian soil on Israel and therefore a significant departure from the past.

The proxy war against Israel conducted hitherto through Iranian proxies such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthis in Yemen, had now graduated to a direct clash of arms between the two major adversaries in West Asia and the Gulf.

Israel did not respond directly to the Iranian attack, but it chose to inflict damage on Iran by targeting both the Hamas and Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon. It carried out the brazen assassination of the Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Iranian capital, Tehran, just hours after he had attended the inauguration of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on July 31. This was a humiliating blow to Iran, demonstrating Israel's ability to strike at will at targets within Iran, leveraging its superior intelligence capabilities. More importantly, Iran's attempt at deterrence by launching its April missile attack on Israel had failed.

Israel then upped the ante with the bold assassination of the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, on September 27 in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Not just Nasrallah but several other senior leaders of this Shia militia were also killed in the targeted bombing of their headquarters. This was a prelude to the start of a major Israeli ground offensive into southern Lebanon with the objective of flushing out Hezbollah forces spread across southern Lebanon.

Iran's second missile barrage against Israel came soon thereafter on October 1. Like the April attack, this, too, reportedly caused little damage. Assisted by the US, Israel was able to intercept and shoot down most of the missiles. Unlike the April attack, however, Iran gave no advance warning about the attack. Nor did it declare its intent to avoid further escalation.

As anticipated, Israel declared its intention to retaliate against Iran and promised that it would be "painful."

While in April, US President Biden had urged restraint on Israel, this time there was no such advice from Washington. On the contrary, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, promised severe consequences for Iran and said the U.S. would "work with Israel to make that the case."

This change in US stand has not been fully appreciated. This is no longer just an Iran-Israel conflict. It is now a US-Iran conflict and that changes the nature of the confrontation unfolding in the region with serious consequences.

It is against this backdrop that Iran chose to launch yet another missile barrage against Israel on October 10, reportedly using hypersonic missiles which it may have developed itself or may have obtained from Russia. There may have been greater damage inflicted on Israel than in the earlier attacks but it is difficult to assess the scale of such damage. The US announced that it had worked together with Israel to shoot down most of the missiles. This time President Biden declared that the US was "fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel."

One should now jettison the view of the US acting as a restraint on Israel, in favour of avoiding escalation and a wider regional war. We will now increasingly see the US acting in tandem with Israel to carry out devastating aerial and missile attacks against Iran. Three categories of targets are being mentioned: Iran's nuclear facilities, its oil and gas facilities and terminals and military targets, including the command-and-control centres of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The longstanding effort of Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, to drag the US into a war against Iran, has finally succeeded.

It may be noted that a wider war in the region will have relatively less impact on the US since it is no longer dependent on energy supplies from the region. It would be less worried about an Iran lashing out by attacking oil and gas facilities of the Gulf countries or blockading the Hormuz Straits, through which most of oil and gas supplies are exported to markets both in Europe and Asia. It would be prudent to plan for another era of very high oil prices. India will be seriously impacted.

Iran may be seriously weakened and face a debilitating economic crisis. Its proxies may also be weakened even if they are not neutralised. They will respond as such groups always do — by engaging in asymmetrical warfare. There will likely be an uptick in international terrorism. Even a weakened Iran may finally cross the nuclear threshold and acquire a nuclear arsenal despite the immense sacrifices this may entail. It will be convinced that it is only as a nuclear weapon state that it could ensure its survival. This could have a cascading effect in the region, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt choosing to embrace the nuclear option.

None of the countries of the region can escape a negative fallout from a war against Iran. They have tried to shield themselves by pretending that they do not have skin in the game, but they always did. If they had intervened early in the day to impose some penalty on Israel to stop its brutal war against Gaza and now in Lebanon, the trajectory of events may have been different. But their silence meant that Israel saw no downside to its aggressive policies.

We may be on the threshold of another major war and one on our western flank where nine or more million Indians live and work. Our energy supplies may be significantly disrupted. That India has so few levers to influence events in its strategically critical neighbourhood is a sobering thought.