The unprecedented Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on 7 October set a fuse burning under the entire Middle East. Now the fearsome, figurative mega-bomb to which that fuse is ultimately attached – direct conflict between the US and Iran – may be about to explode, with devastating consequences.
With every day that Israel’s illegal bombardment of Gaza continues, with every new estimate of the tens of thousands of Palestinian dead, a huge detonation edges closer. From the Red Sea to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, an escalating, four-month spiral of violence, principally involving pro-Palestinian, Iran-backed militias, has been inexorably building.
Now, following Sunday’s latest militia attack – on a US base in Jordan that killed three American soldiers and injured many others and which the president, Joe Biden, has specifically blamed on Iran – has the point of no return been reached? Is this it? Is the bomb about to go off?
Iran insists it was not responsible. But few in Washington believe such protestations, given a long history of Iranian support, training and arming of militia proxies – a policy pioneered by Gen Qassem Suleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Force, until the US assassinated him in January 2020.
Iran’s long-held strategic aim is to drive American troops out of their bases in Iraq, Syria and the Gulf, and ultimately end the US presence in a region Tehran seeks to dominate. The appalling 7 October horror and Israel’s repulsive US-backed response have afforded an unmissable opportunity to advance that objective.
But it’s unclear as yet whether the assault in Jordan was a deliberate escalation by Iran and its local ally, Iraq’s Islamic Resistance militia. It may merely have been another random, opportunistic drone attack that, unlike numerous similar operations, was unexpectedly “successful”.
In other words, it’s possible that Iran and/or its allies miscalculated – that, inadvertently, they have taken that fateful, long-feared step too far. This is crucial, for it will determine the scale and reach of the response that Biden has vowed to deliver at any moment.
If the Americans conclude the militants simply got lucky, aided by the reported failure of the base’s defensive anti-missile shield, they may limit revenge attacks to militia bases from which the attack was launched.
But if they decide (assuming they have sufficiently reliable intelligence, which is a big assumption) that the incident was intentionally escalatory, payback may be more broadly punitive, potentially targeting Iranian assets and territory.
As the conduct of the Gaza war by the hard-right Israeli coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated, political calculations will play at least as big a part in this decision as military imperatives. Biden is under huge pressure to hit back directly at Tehran.
Understandable anger fuels this pressure. But so, too, do longstanding Republican claims, echoed by the president’s likely November election opponent, Donald Trump, that Biden has been weak in responding to previous attacks and, through nuclear-related talks and a recent prisoner swap, has tried to appease Iran.
“He left our troops as sitting ducks,” said the Republican senator Tom Cotton, speaking for many on the right. “The only answer … must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East.”
In the runup to a reelection battle he is presently tipped to lose, Biden may not be able to resist such pressure, unfair though much of it undoubtedly is.
Biden’s advisers have argued until now that Iran, despite its bellicose rhetoric, does not seek war with the US – a war it knows would cost it dearly. This makes sense. In some respects, Netanyahu and his extremist cronies are doing Tehran’s work for it, turning more moderate Arab governments and public opinion against the US while embarrassing European allies such as Britain.
Biden miscalculated in the immediate 7 October aftermath in offering unconditional US support. He appeared, in public at least, to give Netanyahu carte blanche. Now he may miscalculate again, with even more terrible ramifications.
Direct American military retaliation against Iran itself would be a disaster. It would prolong the Gaza conflict. It would almost certainly trigger an all-out Hezbollah attack on Israel. It could turn local firefights into raging infernos in Iraq and Syria, and destabilise friendly regimes in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf.
An open-ended US-Iran confrontation would divide, perhaps permanently, the western democracies between those, such as the UK, that would back Washington, and those, such as France, Germany and Italy, that might sensibly prioritise renewed diplomatic outreach to Tehran. It would assist China in furthering its anti-democratic geopolitical ambitions and Russia in justifying its aggression in Ukraine.
More than that, it would be a gift to Netanyahu, who has long urged punitive military action against Iran and whose post-October policy is one of perpetual war.
If that’s not enough, here’s another, even more basic reason why Biden must exercise all possible restraint. Attacking Iran would not achieve the fundamental twin objectives of protecting western security and changing the mullahs’ behaviour. It just wouldn’t work. In truth, it would backfire by accelerating the escalatory spiral.
The safer, wiser course of action, for which the world and many American voters would thank him, is for Biden to address root causes without further delay. He should demand a halt to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, enforce a ceasefire that frees the Israeli hostages, and lead a credible, international drive to finally – finally – create a two-state solution in Palestine.
For one thing is certain: it is in nobody’s interest for that Middle East mega-bomb to explode.
Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator. He has been a foreign leader writer, foreign editor and US editor for the Guardian
