Since the advent of the Ayatollah regime in 1979, Iran has been the greatest enemy of the State of Israel, which it has demanded its destruction.
In all these years, the antagonism between Iran and Israel has always materialized as a “shadow war.” In it, the Hebrew security and intelligence services have sabotaged infrastructure, particularly those related to its nuclear program, and have “neutralized” officers of the Guardians of the Revolution who operated in the political branches of neighboring countries.
Subject to sanctions by the West for years, Iran has nevertheless extended its influence in the region, and this is today noticeable in countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He has also emerged from his international isolation. The war in Ukraine has shown that Russia and China have become allies of the Tehran regime, which they especially value its capacity to manufacture military technology, especially drones.
The end of the shadow war and its emergence into public light after Iran's first direct attack on Israeli territory represents an unprecedented leap in this conflict.
The Revolutionary Guards say they have calibrated the action with the aim of selling it as “revenge proportional” to the Damascus attack. But the truth is that it occurs in the heart of a region through which the deepest fault in world geopolitics runs. It is in the Middle East where the old Western world and the new world of China and its allies collide and create permanent instability.
This collision would have been more governable without the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel's government. From his first term (1996-1999) he made it clear that the Oslo Accords were for him “a waste of time.” For Bibi, the two-state solution was absurd and peace a secondary objective. Netanyahu did everything he could to weaken the Palestinian Authority. And, already as Minister of Finance (2003-2005) he buried the old social democratic Israel with a military neoliberalism that convinced its citizens that they lived in an impregnable fortress.
Netanyahu has not reached an understanding with the presidents of the United States. Not with Joe Biden either. However, he persuaded them that the Middle East of the future could do without the Palestinians and their rights. The economy, business with neighboring Arab countries, were going to work the miracle. The massacre of October 7 demonstrated the short-sightedness of that vision. Hamas has been the worst nightmare of the State of Israel.
The devastating war in Gaza, the lack of respect for the rights of Palestinian civilians in this enclave and the disregard for minimum international standards on humanitarian aid had cornered Netanyahu in recent weeks. Isolated by Western allies aware that Israel has no strategy to end the war.
Therefore, Netanyahu's temptation to escalate the war beyond Gaza has always been present. Especially when his reference in decision-making is his political survival and the support of the most extremist government in the history of Israel, part of which wants the Palestinians out of the territories in which they still live.
It is superfluous to ask whether the attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1, in which seven officers of the Revolutionary Guards died, was the subject of a deep calculation. It simply had to happen one day and place Iran in a complex dilemma to resolve.
Finally, Iran has attacked. It has used the same military strategy as the Russians in Ukraine (a mix of drones and missiles) and their Houthi godchildren in the Red Sea). It has shown that Russia and Iran share the same enemy. And they have given Netanyahu a great gift with an attack that relegates the crimes in Gaza to the background of information.
Netanyahu is no longer alone. He is in the best position in recent months. We do not know if he will submit to a coordinated response with the Western allies who finance and protect him. Or whether he will respond to Iran more harshly, an eventuality against which the Tehran regime has already warned that it will not be so measured.
What would come then would be something very similar to chaos.
