Missile strikes, oil shock & threat of war

THE Iran-Israel standoff entered a dangerous phase when Iran fired 200-odd ballistic missiles at Israel. The price of oil surged and international trade faced new worries. The question universally posed is: what next?

Ironically, in October 539 BC, the Persian founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, which ruled for two centuries over today's West Asia and Iran, conquered Babylonia. Amongst his other liberal moves, he released the imprisoned Jews, letting them return to Jerusalem. Two and a half millennia later, their descendants are foes.

The Six-Day War in 1967 ended with Israel occupying the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The UN Security Council's Resolutions 243 and 338 have been the basis of peacemaking for half a century now.

Former US President Jimmy Carter, just turning 100, enabled the Camp David Accords in 1978, when Israel and Egypt normalised relations. Three years later, Sadat was assassinated. That track was resumed with the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, which led to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1993. The Oslo Accords followed.

Although the Palestinian National Authority was thus created, it had limited autonomy. The assassination of PM Rabin in 1995 was a setback. A five-year period of self-rule was imposed to enable a settlement of outstanding issues, like the illegal Israeli settlements and holding of elections.

But Benjamin Netanyahu becoming Prime Minister in 1996 and the rise of Hamas as a counterforce to Arafat's Fatah hardened the positions.

Netanyahu has been Prime Minister in three phases: 1996-99, 2009-21 and since December 2022. He scoffed at the Oslo Accords and rejected a Palestinian state. In 2005, he resigned from the government of PM Ariel Sharon over Israeli pullback from the Gaza Strip and the relocation of 8,000 Israeli settlers.

The vacation of Gaza, though appearing positive, was followed by its encirclement and restriction of free access, even via its coast. Once Hamas won elections there, Israel used it to counter the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu fine-tuned this policy after PM Sharon had a stroke in 2006 and his successor faced corruption charges.

Israeli rightwing governments benefited from the US getting distracted by 9/11 and Al Qaeda in 2001, Iraq's occupation from 2003, the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War from 2011 and the declaration of the Islamic Caliphate by the ISIS in 2014.

The US President, Barack Obama, tried to break the Iran-Israel logjam by engaging Iran and, ultimately, overseeing a nuclear deal to contain its uranium enrichment programme.

However, President Donald Trump reversed this and pandered to Israel by shifting the US embassy to Jerusalem without any precondition about Israel resuming the peace process and Oslo Accords. Netanyahu lost power, facing serious corruption charges and public ire over defying the control of the judiciary. He returned to power in 2022, having cut a deal with extreme right wing parties, suffused with bigotry and anti-Arab politics.

Illegal settlements multiplied in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority was compromised and weakened. Gaza was believed to be permanently enslaved and subdued.

A serious intelligence failure resulted in Hamas jumping the security fence and killing, raping and abducting Israeli civilians and defence personnel on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli defence forces have killed civilians, repetitively displaced Gaza's population and failed to eliminate Hamas or get all hostages released.

Netanyahu's unpopularity rose. His address to both Houses of the US Congress on July 24, 2024 had half the Democrats and Vice-President Kamala Harris missing. At that stage, two-thirds of the Israelis wanted Netanyahu to quit. The ongoing hostilities against Hamas and Hezbollah kept him in power.

One week later, Israel managed to kill the top Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Teheran. Then followed the exploding pagers in Lebanon, injuring thousands and killing some Hezbollah cadres. Finally, Hezbollah's top leader Hassan Nasarallah was killed in a massive air attack on September 27.

Israel, reportedly, wants to use the confusion amongst Hezbollah and the international sympathy due to the Iranian missile attack on it, to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities and inflict heavy infrastructural damage. The aim being to trigger public uprising against the Islamic government. Israeli forces are already in Southern Lebanon to push the Hezbollah fighters north of the Litani river, as required by the UNSC.

The twin assassinations of top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah would have elevated Netanyahu's popularity and mended Israeli intelligence's reputation. However, it has landed the region in a crisis that can transition quickly to widespread hostilities.

If attacked, Iranian people will rally behind the government and not challenge it. Shias have a history of martyrdom, relating back to Prophet Mohammad's grandsons. Pricking that instinct in a nation of 88 million, with a strong sense of their past glories, is dangerous. The Shia crescent today, running from Iran to the Mediterranean, merely replicates the Achaemenid empire.

Iran has apparently warned that an attack on its oil infrastructure would invite retaliation against similar facilities of the US allies in the Gulf. Iran has, in any case, the military capability of blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Oil supply disruption can be lethal for the global economy.

There are three possible scenarios. One, a notional Israeli aerial attack on some Iranian military bases. Two, an attack to damage Iranian nuclear facilities. Three, an all-out onslaught to damage Iranian oil, nuclear and port infrastructure.

The US would be working to limit Israel to the first one. Even the UAE and Saudi Arabia, though happy to see Iran suffer, would not want it provoked into total retaliation against Israel and its supporters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to PM Netanyahu and condemned terrorism, while advising peace. The ones dubbed "terrorists" by the US and Israel were the assassinated leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

This seemed like India taking sides against Iran. Indian foreign policy gained from remaining neutral in past conflicts in West Asia, ie the Iran-Iraq war. China, if anything, has been neutral with a pro-Iran tilt. Even if the governments of oil-rich Arab states empathise with Israel, their people may not.

Thus, the region and the world face a tricky standoff, with a lame duck US President and four weeks to a critical presidential election.