A gigantic demonstration last Friday in Baghdad in support of the Palestinian people has so far been the clearest example of the feelings of the so-called Arab street. With one particularity: although in Iraq Shiites and Sunnis may be out to kill, and Hamas is a Sunni organization, the convener was the Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, an ally of Iran.
The Shiite militias of Iraq, the Lebanese Hizbullah, the Houthis of Yemen and the Syrian Government make up, with Iran, the so-called axis of resistance against Israel. It is not little, and perhaps hence the few steps with which Beniamin Netanyahu is moving in his offensive on Gaza.
The opening of a second front in the north – that is, southern Lebanon – would be a serious problem for the Israeli army. In 2006, what Israelis call the second Lebanon war ended badly, even though Hamas was not what it is today. Hizbullah also did not have the great war experience that it has now (thanks to Syria), and yet it exposed troops only accustomed to counterinsurgency in the occupied territories.
In this sense, the exchange of fire in southern Lebanon and in the Golan Heights (territory occupied by Israel from Syria in 1967) appear as tests or warnings. Last week, Israel carried out one of its periodic attacks on Syria – directed at Hizbullah and Iranian interests –, bombing the runways of the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo, as any routine and without consequences: Moscow and Tehran, supporters of the regime Bashar al-Assad continued without raising their voices. The day before that attack, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hosein Amir Abdolahian, visited Damascus and days later, Beirut, where on Saturday he asked the United Nations coordinator for the Middle East peace process, the Norwegian Tor Wennesland, for several things. : that the use in Gaza – as in 2008 – of white phosphorus (banned in civilian environments, and the subject of complaints for its supply to Ukraine by its allies) be investigated and that humanitarian corridors be opened. The collective punishment of Gazans is “unacceptable,” he said. And on Sunday, Abdolahian asked by phone his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to intervene before the UN Security Council. Wang Yi asked for the most complicated thing: a common position of Islamic countries on the Palestinian issue.
But the most interesting thing in this concert is that the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, and the crown prince and strongman of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman, spoke last Wednesday, also by phone. It was the first time since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations last March, precisely with the mediation of China. If the Saudis fear a nuclear Iran – which would aggravate the danger of the “Shiite crescent” in the region – and the Iranians fear the same atomic aspiration on the part of Saudi Arabia, it is no less true that Tehran was already well aware of the plans. of Washington to consolidate and make official the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel (on the other hand, existing and secret for years).
In this sense, it remains uncertain whether Iran encouraged or authorized Hamas to attack Israel at a meeting in Beirut on October 2. The answer could lie in power relations within the Iranian regime. But in any case, this has allowed Minister Abdolahian to say and repeat, in Beirut and yesterday in Qatar, where Hamas’ number two, Ismail Haniye, resides, that there are no guarantees that the conflict will not spiral out of control. In other words, “hands on all sides in the region are on the trigger,” he said.