EDITORIAL: Israelis – all the way up to cabinet ministers – celebrating Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination will be vindicated only and only if the United States sides with them at a point when the Gaza genocide is sure to spiral out of control into a much wider regional war. Because, despite the optics, Benjamin Netanyahu’s gambit proves two closely connected points.

One, it betrays Israel’s frustration at its inability to wind up the Gaza operation despite 10 months of brutal genocide, especially its failure to target Hamas’s leadership inside the Strip.

And two, killing such a high value target in the heart of Tehran is clearly meant to provoke Iran into an open fight; a last desperate attempt by the dying Netanyahu government to drag the United States into the conflict on its own side as well.

This is as double-edged as this situation can get, because if Washington decides to stay out of it, as it did when Iran retaliated a couple of months ago after Israel attempted something similar by killing Iranian generals in Damascus, then it’s the Jewish state whose days might be numbered.

Hezbollah’s steady escalation over the last few months has shown that the IDF’s (Israeli Defence Forces’) myth of invincibility only holds when the US security machinery backs it one hundred percent. The Lebanese militia’s drone-and-rocket assault into northern Israel has forced near complete evacuation of the Galilee region, the buffer between the volatile border area and the capital Tel Aviv.

And there has been much debate, including inside the US government, that another aerial blitzkrieg over Beirut and the Beka Valley like 2006, minus US backing, will trigger a ground war in which the fighting will take place inside Israel this time.

And with its conscript army badly exposed and bogged down in Gaza, it does not have enough reservists for a long ground battle on multiple fronts, especially since Turkey – a Nato member, no less – has also threatened to “enter Israel” if Netanyahu does not come to his senses very soon.

Yet Bibi has upped the ante, so a much uglier war is now inevitable. Just how ugly it will get depends on how far the US is willing to back Israel even when the whole world has turned against it as it openly runs riot through the entire region and wants a bigger, wider war just because its own plans are not working out.

It’s also becoming increasingly clear, inside Israel as well, that Netanyahu is looking to expand the war only to extend his own time in office. After all, this war is the only thing keeping him in power. He has completely lost public support, with the country jammed every weekend with protesters calling for his head.

Most Middle East observers are sure that the minute there is a permanent ceasefire, Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet ministers will quit, there will be another election, and then Netanyahu will be arrested and made to face long pending cases for corruption.

That explains why he went for Haniyeh. He was in Tehran to attend the new president’s inauguration and talk ceasefire points with the ayatollahs. He had very little say in Hamas’s military operations or the fate of hostages. He was more a diplomat than a rebel fighter.

And removing him from the scene also silences the most moderate Hamas voice in the talks and guts all chances of a ceasefire; a scenario that only Israel (read Netanyahu) is itching for.

Now ordinary people in the whole region are holding their breath to see where more people start dying first to quench Israel’s thirst for more blood as markets brace for increased turbulence just when the global economy faces the spectre of another possible recession sometime next year.

As Bibi and his cabinet celebrated the murders in Tehran and Beirut, oil traders loaded up on most options since April as Middle East market risk returned with a vengeance. Bloomberg reported that more than 300,000 Brent call options were traded on Wednesday, “the largest one-day amount since the last round of elevated regional tensions in April”.

It may be too late to prevent more fighting this late in the day, because Iran and its proxies are sure to respond. But there might still be time to keep this madness from drenching the whole Middle East in blood.

And that is for the US to finally put its foot down and force Israel to agree to a permanent ceasefire. But would the US ever do something like this, regardless of the scale of disaster and loss of life, is the million-dollar question.

Let’s not forget that this is a very crucial election year there too, and that’s when American politicians play the poodle to the Zionist lobby’s outreach, so not too many people are very optimistic right now; with good reason.

This is just the scenario that Haniyeh was desperately trying to avoid in the talks.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024