Israel at war: Iran isolated, insecure, imploding
It was one of the largest airstrikes on a city in history. On September 27, 60 tonne of bunker-busting bombs penetrated an underground bunker where Hezbollah’s powerful chief Hassan Nasrallah and his senior colleagues in terror, were gathered to discuss a fresh strategy to attack Israel.
All those present were immediately killed, including Nasrallah who was a personal friend of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The cleric announced five days of mourning for what he called the “martyrdom of the great Nasrallah”.
On July 31, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was blown up by a targeted Israeli strike in an apartment in Tehran, which showed the penetration of Mossad, sending the message that “You harm us, we can get you anywhere anytime.”
Israeli spies had reportedly infiltrated Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and recruited agents to identify Haniyeh’s room.
A week after, Nasrallah’s successor and cousin Hashem Safieddine was eliminated in another Israeli airstrike. Iran and especially its proxies have brought untold suffering in the region after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, and Israel responded with savage bombings.
The death toll in Gaza is horrifying: nearly 42,000 Palestinian men, women and children killed, though the number of casualties are reeled out by the Health Ministry run by Hamas, which is accused by Israel and many news agencies of fudging figures.
The exact number of people killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes is not known, but 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced after the bombings. Many Iranian senior officers, too, are being killed as the war rages on, both in Israeli bombings and by non-state actors.
“They have weakened Iranians because their proxies have been weakened,” notes a former Indian diplomat and Arab expert. Iran is with its back to the wall, but its isolation - even in the Middle East - goes back beyond the current war.
After Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a descendant of 2,500 years of monarchy in the Persian Gulf, was overthrown by leftist students loyal to the Islamic clergy, the Shia-Sunni divide with the Arab world led to the Iran-Iraq War. The hostility continues at varying degrees to this day.
This year, in response to Iran-backed Houthi missiles fired at Israel, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) massively bombed Yemen, which is more than 2,000 km away.
Major ports and power stations, arms and ammunition depots and missile sites operated by the Houthis were bombed. The Houthis are part of the so-called “axis of resistance” which Iran has put together in the region to attack Israel and become the dominant power in West Asia.
On October 7, the exiled Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran, who fled with his family to the US following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, came out in the open, promising an end to theocratic autocracy and positioning himself to be Iran’s saviour. He has announced that the current fighting is “not the Iranian people’s war”.
AN EYE FOR AN EYE: The Old Testament rule of “an eye for an eye” is Israel’s motto. Its tactic of neutralising the Hezbollah leadership, both at the top and the ground level, is wildly successful.
Israeli bombs took out Fuad Shukr, Nasrallah’s right-hand man; Nabil Kaouk, deputy head of Hezbollah’s Central Council; Ibrahim Akil Ibrahim, the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces and member of the Jihad Council; Ahmad Wehbe commander of the Radwan Forces; Mohammad Surour who headed Hezbollah’s drone unit; Ibrahim Kobeisi, leader of Hezbollah’s missile unit, etc.
Israel’s year-old war of vengeance has wiped out nearly all of Hamas top leadership, not just Haniyeh: IDF eliminated 18 top Hamas commanders including the elusive Mohammed Deif, head of the Qassam Brigades and a mastermind of the October 7 attack, and Deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri who was also a founder of the Qassam Brigades.
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the man ultimately responsible for the October 7 attack is cowering in an unknown tunnel in Gaza.
The IDF calls him a “dead man walking”. US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said on CBS TV’s 60 Minutes programme last week that she considered Iran to be America’s greatest enemy.
“Iran has American blood on their hands,” she said, adding, “And what we saw in terms of just this attack on Israel, 200 ballistic missiles, what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power - that is one of my highest priorities.”
Sinwar is one of the US-designated terrorists. Iran-US enmity goes back a long way when on November 4, 1979, Iranian students stormed the US embassy and held more than 50 Americans hostages for 444 days. Ayatollah Khomeini, who ruled Iran after the ouster of Shah Pehelvi called America the “Great Satan”.
LONELY AND ANGRY: Iran’s diplomatic and global solitude is a result of its own actions to revive the Persian Empire. Perhaps no other dictatorship stands as isolated as Iran, whose allies Russia and China can at best be described as fair-weather friends.
Western sanctions against Iran have crippled its economy, though they haven’t weakened the grip of the clergy.
Iran is the second-most sanctioned country in the world after Russia. After IRGC thugs quelled peaceful protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, and subsequent rape, torture and blinding of girls and women who would not wear a hijab, it brought the Islamic Republic international isolation.
For the second year in a row, Iran was not invited to the Munich Security Conference - one of the major annual initiatives where world leaders come together to uphold global peace.
Europe sees Iran as an aggressor because it militarily supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Iran’s relationship with the Saudis, despite normalising relations, has become chilly after attacks by Iranian proxies, the Houthis, on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Saudi officials have suspended Umrah pilgrimages from Iran and turned back on its promise for investments. Bahrain, Oman and Egypt remain hostile to resuming ties with Tehran.
Tehran was furious when in 2020, the historic Abraham Accords was signed between Bahrain and Israel: Iran claims Bahrain belongs to it. There are no Iranian ambassadors posted in its embassies in London and Paris.
In 2023, Iran launched a missile attack on Pakistan, which was met with retaliation. It was removed from the presidency of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women last year; which should not have happened in the first place.
Iran is on the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international task force that combats money laundering and terrorism. There has been no global condemnation for the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan in the same airstrike that eliminated Nasrallah.
In April, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the elite Quds Force and his deputy Gen. Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi died in an Israeli bombing that demolished the Iranian consulate in Damascus: Iran is a supporter of Syrian dictator President Assad along with Russia.
ABANDONED AND ABHORRED: The US remains Israel’s powerful ally with no doubts that it will continue to support Israel and help shore up its defences. The rest of the Western world is also largely backing Israel, though France’s Leftist president Emmanuel Macron, fighting for his political life, has called for an arms embargo on Israel.
Most Gulf countries, except Qatar, which has been hosting the Hamas top-terror leadership, have chosen to remain neutral. In this scenario who can Iran count on if an escalation does take place? While defending the decision to attack Israel, Khamenei has called for Muslim unity “from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Iran to Gaza and Lebanon” to unite against “enemy” Israel.
But Syria and Lebanon are both weakened by conflict. Most Arab countries do not want conflict or to be drawn into one. Dr Alvite Singh Ningthoujam, assistant professor at the Symbiosis School of International Studies at Symbiosis International university, notes “surprisingly” not many countries had come out in support of Iran, including the Chinese, and Russians.
Dr Ningthoujam points at the muted response from the Gulf countries and says that the Iranians are unlikely to have the support of Gulf countries against Israel. “Iranians and Israelis are the military powers in the region in terms of capabilities of long-range missile systems. They have strategic depth in the region.
The Iranians have not just military capabilities but also a wide number of proxies. We have seen a real display of the Shiite Crescent in the last couple of weeks,” says Ningthoujam.
Aware of the dangers of the country being isolated, Tehran, since the missile strike on Israel, has continued hectic diplomatic parleys, all indicating that it does not want a direct war with Israel.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in Qatar on October 2, a day after Iran launched its strikes on Israel. Reuters reported that at a meeting between foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Aragchi on October 3, the Gulf countries said they would remain neutral.
G Parthasarathy, a retired Indian diplomat, notes, “They (Iran) have their problems with Sunni regimes. There is no great warmth with major powers, and therefore, there is suspicion and distrust between the US and Iran and between Iran and many Arab states.”
Already concern is growing that an Iranian response to Israeli retaliation could impact the energy and trade security of the region. Dr Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, the Gulf Cooperation Council assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation, wrote in the Arab News newspaper: “Securing energy infrastructure and trade routes in the region is a major ask by the GCC and the international community and Iran needs to ensure that its forces and those of its allies are not a threat to those interests.”
The conflict comes at a time when many West Asian countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are increasingly focused on domestic matters like boosting economic growth and looking at ways to diversify from the oil trade with an eye on future energy calculations should oil reserves dip and the world moves to renewable sources of energy.
A war would upset these plans. “The region is very tense. Suppose there is a reply from Israel and if it is of a kind where Iran is compelled to respond, and suppose it is not a token strike and causes strategic damage and huge number of casualties.
Or if they assassinate high-profile leaders, then Iran will be compelled to reply with full force of capacity,” says a former ambassador of India to Saudi Arabia, adding, “This means that the entire region will be convulsed in war. It will no longer be a bilateral matter as there will be an upsurge of popular opinion (in countries across the region).”
EVERYTHING IS ON THE TABLE: The big question that hovers like a massive war cloud over West Asia is: “what is Netanyahu’s next move?” The Israeli prime minister said on October 4, “Israel has the duty and the right to defend itself and respond to these attacks - and it will do so.”
Israel’s target options are Iran’s oil installations and its subterranean nuclear facilities: there is speculation that the 6.6 magnitude earthquake that struck Iran and Israel was Tehran conducting its first controlled underground nuclear blast, 10 km deep in the province of Semnan, in spite of American warnings not to do so. Social media exploded with speculations and rumours.
One post on X read, “Iran has gone nuclear since last night. They used the test bombs 10 km below the surface near Semnan to ensure minimum radiation exposure and it resulted in a 4.6 scale earthquake, which was recorded by seismographs. #iran #khamenai #nuclear #israel.” Another said, “The Iranian earthquake really scared Israel. They’re blubbering on whether they will attack Iran.” Joe Biden, though a lame duck president, has supported an appropriate counterstrike for the Iranian missile barrage, but has warned Netanyahu against strikes on nuclear or oil installations. If the earthquake was indeed a nuclear experiment, the perspective could change, says a former Israeli diplomat posted in Delhi.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Fox News: “At the moment, everything is on the table.”
On the other hand, former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has urged Israel to “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later.”
Netanyahu is seen to have charted his own course of action irrespective of Washington’s urgings by bombing the daylights out of Hezbollah, sending his stock up at home. Analysts noted that he has surprised his own allies with his action in Lebanon and do not rule out another surprise regarding Iran. They also note that Israel would need American help in the matter.
Still, that striking Iran would not be an easy task given that the two countries do not share a common border. “Netanyahu is on a high. His political stock has gone up and the stock of his armed forces and intelligence gathering too has gone up. He does not want to lose that sheen. He has to respond. It is linked with the domestic calculus,” says an expert.
PEOPLE’S DILEMMA: Under relentless attack by Israel, supported by the US, Iran’s Ring of Fire to encircle and destroy Israel seems to be crumbling. The cornered Khamenei, under pressure from hawks in his government, was forced to respond to the Nasrallah’s assassination by raining down 180 ballistic missiles on Israel, most of which were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome or were shot down by US battleships stationed off the coast.
He has been promptly carted off to an unknown location, presumably to avoid meeting his friend’s fate. Iran is jittery about the counterattack which Netanyahu has promised to unleash. Gallant told a reporter: “Israel will respond to the unprecedented Iranian attack in the manner of our choosing, and at the time and place of our choosing.”
When the counterstrike - a certainty since the plans are already on the drawing board in consultation with the Americans - happens, the human toll in Iran is unlikely to be high since the IAF has perfected the art of precision strikes.
In Tehran, Iran’s capital city, life is normal for now, say residents, as the West Asian country stands on the precipice of insecurity. The missile attack was seen as a demonstration of Iran’s capabilities to strike deep into Israel. But, it has now brought the war straight to Iran’s doorstep.
“The people of Iran are peace-loving and have lofty aspirations. Our newly elected President, Dr Pezeshkian, indicated in his speech at the UNGA that Iran seeks stability and security at the global and regional level,” said Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iranian politician and former Vice President for Women and Family Affairs of Iran, on an email.
War is the last thing Iranians want amid larger bread-and-butter issues of deepening inflation, a fluctuating currency, unemployment and a repressive political system.
As the people of Gaza and Lebanon have come to realise, peace is a temporary break from war in the region. “People are living their life as before,” said a resident from Tehran who did not want to be quoted.
Civilian response to Iran’s involvement in Palestine and Lebanon in the past has been with this popular refrain “No to Lebanon, no to Palestine, my life only for Iran” in a reflection of the opposition to the government’s policy of supporting Hezbollah and Hamas.
Once the dust settles, and the contours of the Middle East power structure is redrawn, Israel will emerge stronger and a more fearsome enemy for Iran, or any of its proxies to go after it again. Should targeted Israeli strikes bring about the fall of the repressive Islamic regime and a civilian democratic government take place, the US-Israeli alliance will have to ensure that a repeat of the Iraq invasion fallout does not happen. Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat agents became terrorists who savaged the region.
Care should be taken that the feared Revolutionary Guard doesn’t go rogue if the Ayatollah regime is ousted. The Iranian Crown Prince hopes to prevent such a thing from happening should he return to Tehran.
“Israel is the only exception in the Middle East as a democratic country (and) it could be an extremely important strategic partner to us. Why should we be in conflict?” he said in an interview to the Jerusalem Post.
The ayatollahs will not give up without a fight, and the formidable military and police forces at their command will resist any change. Should change come, only then will Iran’s isolation end.
