Iran 🇮🇷 Attacked Israel 🇮🇱, Now What?

 

(These are the flags of Israel 🇮🇱 and Iran 🇮🇷. The flag on top is the Israeli flag 🇮🇱 and the one on the bottom is the Iranian flag 🇮🇷.) 

 

What's going in the Middle East between Israel 🇮🇱 and Iran 🇮🇷 is kind of unprecedented because for the longest time, the conventional wisdom about the relationship between these two countries was that despite Iran 🇮🇷 hating Israel 🇮🇱, and saying that they want to destroy Israel 🇮🇱, they would never attack Israel 🇮🇱 directly. That was just their rhetoric, what they tell their people, and what they tell the people in the region, and what they tell the world, to make it seem like they're hardline on Israel 🇮🇱. Even as the Gulf states soften their stances on Israel 🇮🇱, Iran 🇮🇷 would stay the course, and stay tough on Israel 🇮🇱, but they wouldn't actually do anything. It was all talk.

Whenever you would talk to a Middle East expert, and ask them if Iran 🇮🇷 would ever make good on their threats, and attack Israel 🇮🇱, they would usually say "No." "Iran 🇮🇷 would never attack Israel 🇮🇱 directly. They'll just use their proxies to do that. But, they would never attack Israel 🇮🇱 themselves because they don't want to risk a wider war," they would say. Even I bought into this line of thinking that Iran 🇮🇷 was just bluffing, and they would never attack Israel 🇮🇱 directly because doing so doesn't serve their interests, and would weaken their position in the region and in the world rather than strengthen it.

If any attack would come, it would come from one of their proxies, like Hamas, even though I've argued in the past that just labeling Hamas as an Iranian proxy 🇮🇷 is wrong, and it completely ignores Hamas's own agency and their own responsibility for their actions. Hamas didn't attack Israel 🇮🇱 on October 7 because Iran 🇮🇷 told them to, they did it because they wanted to attack Israel 🇮🇱. 

 

(This is the flag of Hamas.)

 

They were afraid of Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 normalizing relations with Israel 🇮🇱, and they were afraid of the region as a whole moving on from the Palestinian issue 🇵🇸, and they themselves becoming irrelevant. So, they had to do something big, and something terrible to bring the Palestinian issue 🇵🇸 back into the limelight, and make it something the Israelis 🇮🇱 and the rest of the region and the world could no longer ignore. That's not me speculating or anything, that's the actual reason that Hamas gave for why they attacked Israel 🇮🇱 on October the 7th. Read my other blog post about Hamas's motives to learn more. 

The October 7 attack came as a surprise to the Iranians 🇮🇷 just as it did to everyone else because Hamas didn't tell them ahead of them that they were going to attack, and massacre a bunch of Israeli civilians 🇮🇱, and take a bunch of them hostage. Iran 🇮🇷 just decided to take advantage of the situation, and used it to advance their own interests, to pursue their own goals for the region. The same goes for the militia groups that people label as Iranian proxies 🇮🇷 such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria 🇮🇶🇸🇾 such as Kata'ib Hezbollah, the group responsible for the Tower 22 drone attack in Jordan 🇯🇴 on Sunday January 28, 2024.

Well, now that thinking, that conventional wisdom has been thrown out the window. Now, Iran 🇮🇷 has attacked Israel 🇮🇱 directly. Granted, it wasn't a full-scale invasion of Israel 🇮🇱 or anything, like Iran 🇮🇷 isn't rolling tanks into Israel 🇮🇱, and trying to capture Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or anything like that. But, it was a drone attack. Iran 🇮🇷 launched kamikaze drones at Israel 🇮🇱 on Saturday April 13, 2024, the same kind of kamikaze drones that they've been supplying to the Russians 🇷🇺 to use in Ukraine 🇺🇦. They also used cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. 

 

 

(This is the flags of Yemen 🇾🇪 and the Houthis. The flag on top is the Yemeni flag 🇾🇪 and the flag on the bottom is the Houthi flag.)

The Iranians 🇮🇷 also had help from the Houthis and their government in Yemen 🇾🇪 called the Supreme Political Council (SPC), Hezbollah of course (which is based in Lebanon 🇱🇧), the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (which are all the Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq 🇮🇷🇮🇶), and the Popular Mobilization Forces (which is another group of Iranian backed militia groups 🇮🇷 in Iraq 🇮🇶, only these ones are Sunni rather than Shia). And while Israel 🇮🇱, the United States 🇺🇸, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, and Jordan 🇯🇴 did intercept a lot of these drones and missiles, some did manage to hit their targets, and did cause some minor damage to one Israeli military site 🇮🇱. France 🇫🇷 also deployed its navy, but the Wikipedia about these Iranian strikes 🇮🇷 didn't say what exactly the French 🇫🇷 did, if anything. 

Iran 🇮🇷 has been criticized by the majority of the international community and by the United Nations 🇺🇳 itself for these strikes. The only countries that haven't openly criticized Iran 🇮🇷 for these strikes unsurprisingly have been Russia 🇷🇺, China 🇨🇳, Syria 🇸🇾, and North Korea 🇰🇵. It's very unlikely that any of those countries that I just listed would criticize Iran 🇮🇷 for what it did in anyway.

 

(This is the flag of Syria 🇸🇾 from 1980 to 2024.)

 

I guess, that Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria 🇮🇱🇮🇷🇸🇾 was just a step too far the Iranians 🇮🇷 that they felt that they had respond directly, rather than just use one of their proxies, which they don't even really have as much control over as some western experts and western pundits assume. They basically did what a lot of people feared they do to the US 🇺🇸 after they killed Qasem Soleimani in Iraq 🇮🇶 back in 2020. Realistically, Iran 🇮🇷 really doesn't have the capacity to attack the US 🇺🇸 directly, like they can't hit American soil 🇺🇸 or American airspace 🇺🇸 with any of the weapons they currently possess. 

 

(This is the flag of Iraq 🇮🇶.)

 

The most they can do is just attack one of their many military bases in the Middle East, which is basically what Kata'ib Hezbollah did with the Tower 22 attack. But, that wasn't Iran 🇮🇷 itself that did that, it was a militia that was aligned with Iran 🇮🇷, and financially and militarily backed by Iran 🇮🇷, but still separate from Iran 🇮🇷, and still able to make its own decisions regardless of what Tehran wants or doesn't want. But, Iran 🇮🇷 is close enough to Israel 🇮🇱 that they could launch drone and missile attacks on them, which is why I think they chose this course against in response to Israel 🇮🇱 bombing their embassy in Damascus, and killing yet another IRGC general, Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

So, now the US 🇺🇸 is in quite a tough spot because this is exactly the sort of thing that they've trying to avoid for the past  7 months, ever since the war in Gaza began. This all happening within the context of the worsening humanitarian crisis inside Gaza, the Biden administration being pressured by the American left 🇺🇸 to put pressure on Israel 🇮🇱 to allow humanitarian aid to pass through, and get to Palestinian refugees 🇵🇸 inside Gaza, and prevent a famine. 

 

(This is the flag of Palestine 🇵🇸.)

 

 

So, now that Iran 🇮🇷's attacking Israel 🇮🇱, the US 🇺🇸 of course wants to support Israel 🇮🇱 since they're one of their allies. But, how could the US 🇺🇸 support a country that a good percentage of the American public 🇺🇸 hates, and sees as a genocidal neocolonialist, semi-apartheid, occupying force that's killing and oppressing innocent Palestinians 🇵🇸, and letting them starve to death? This is one of the most difficult foreign policy moments for the Biden administration, and it's happening within an election year. How the hell do get out of this situation, and how do you resolve this issue without causing a larger regional war? Because everyone will blame the US 🇺🇸 causing this war if it escalates into a large war that engulfs the entire region, even if the blame for starting it would actually fall squarely on the shoulders of Iran 🇮🇷. Iran 🇮🇷 is the one escalating this to a point that it doesn't need to be. America 🇺🇸 is just an unwilling participant, or like a mediator. They don't want any of this.

If it were up to the Americans 🇺🇸, none of this would be happening, and the only foreign policy issue that the US 🇺🇸 and its allies would have to worry about is the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦, and trying to get more weapons and equipment to Ukraine 🇺🇦 when you have a Republican majority House with a Republican Speaker who's hostile to Ukraine 🇺🇦 and favors Russia 🇷🇺. That's what the Biden administration wants to be focused on as far as foreign policy is concerned, and in a different world, it would be. But, it's not, and the Middle East once again has to be a foreign policy priority for the US 🇺🇸, during one of the most inconvenient times, when President Biden is trying to win re-election against Donald Trump.

Now, do I think this will lead to some wider war within the Middle East, or even lead to World War III? No, I don't really think so. I would like to hope that it doesn't, but I have been wrong before. All we can do now is wait and see how it plays it out. But, I have strong feeling that this won't lead to a wider war, and things will work out in the end with the different sides coming to a diplomatic understanding. Or rather, the US 🇺🇸 and the international community as a whole will pressure Israel 🇮🇱 and Iran 🇮🇷 not to escalate further, and two will just calm down, and just leave it at where it is. 

 

(These are the flags of Hezbollah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and the Popular Mobilization Forces. The flag on top is the Hezbollah flag, the flag in the middle is the Islamic Resistance in Iraq flag, and the flag on the bottom is the Popular Mobilization Forces flag. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq flag for some reason has been nominated for deletion on Wikipedia. Apparently, the flag was unsourced, and Wikipedia doesn't allowed unsourced flags to represent governments or organizations. So, I don't know if that flag is genuine or not, or if it'll stay on Wikipedia or not. But, it was the flag used to represent the Islamic Resistance in Iraq in the belligerents section on the 2024 Iranian strikes in Israel 🇮🇷🇮🇱 page.)

 

 

Maybe, there'll be some retaliatory strikes, may not against Iran 🇮🇷 itself, but against the proxy groups that helped Iran 🇮🇷 in these attacks like Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and the Popular Mobilization Forces. Whether or not that Iran 🇮🇷 would actually get the message from that or not is yet to be determined, but that's likely what the US 🇺🇸 will do in response to the airstrikes on Israel 🇮🇱 by Iran 🇮🇷, while keeping Israel 🇮🇱 as much out of the fight as possible.

The fear being that if Israel 🇮🇱 is the one that retaliates, then things will really escalate, and then we'll really have a full-scale war between Israel 🇮🇱 and Iran 🇮🇷 that the US 🇺🇸 and its allies would inevitably get dragged into. So, if there are going to be retaliatory strikes against Iran 🇮🇷 or its proxies (probably just its proxies), then it'll be the US 🇺🇸, the UK 🇬🇧, France 🇫🇷, and maybe Jordan 🇯🇴 that does them. 

 

(These are the flags of the United States 🇺🇸, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, France 🇫🇷, and Jordan 🇯🇴. The flag on top is the American flag 🇺🇸, the first flag in the middle is the British flag 🇬🇧, the second flag in the middle is the French flag 🇫🇷, and the flag on the bottom is the Jordanian flag 🇯🇴.)

 

But, the ideal is that this crisis is resolved diplomatically, and that the fighting fizzles out before it gets the chance to ignite into something bigger and more dangerous. Biden is pushing for a diplomatic solution. I really hope there is, not just for his sake, but for the sake of all of us, Americans 🇺🇸, British 🇬🇧, French 🇫🇷, Israelis 🇮🇱, Palestinians 🇵🇸, Jordanians 🇯🇴, Iraqis 🇮🇶, Syrians 🇸🇾, and even Iranians 🇮🇷. So many lives are at stake, so much is on the line right now.