Since the advent of the regime of the Ayatollahs, in 1979, Iran has been the greatest enemy of the State of Israel, whose destruction it has demanded.
During all these years the antagonism between Iran and Israel has always materialized as a "shadow war". In this conflict, the Hebrew security and intelligence services have sabotaged infrastructure, particularly those related to their nuclear program, and have "neutralized" officers of the Guardians of the Revolution who were operating in the political branches of neighboring countries.
Object of Western sanctions for years, Iran has nevertheless extended its influence in the region, and this is today noticeable in countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Yemen. It has also emerged from its international isolation. The war in Ukraine has shown that Russia and China have become allies of the Tehran regime, which they particularly value for their ability to manufacture military technology, especially drones.
The end of the war in the shadows and the emergency in the public light after the first direct attack by Iran on Israeli territory, represents an unprecedented leap in this conflict.
The Guardians of the Revolution say they have calibrated the action with the aim of selling it as "proportional revenge" for the attack in Damascus. But the truth is that it is a place in the heart of a region through which runs the deepest fault in global geopolitics. 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 manageable without the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu in the Government of Israel. From the first term (1996-1999) he already made it clear that the Oslo agreements were for him "a waste of time". For Bibi, the two-state solution was absurd and peace a secondary goal. 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 never gotten along with US presidents. 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 the neighboring Arab countries, had to work the miracle. The massacre of October 7 demonstrated the short-sightedness of that vision. Hamas has been the State of Israel's worst nightmare.
The devastating war in Gaza, the lack of respect for the rights of Palestinian civilians in that enclave and the contempt for minimum international standards on humanitarian aid had cornered Netanyahu in recent weeks. Isolated from Western allies aware that Israel has no strategy to end the war.
For this reason, Netanyahu's temptation to escalate the war beyond Gaza has always been present. Even more so when their decision-making reference is their 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 where 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 were killed, was the subject of a deep calculation. It simply had to happen one day and present Iran with a complex dilemma to resolve.
Finally, Iran has attacked. He has used the same military strategy as the Russians in Ukraine (a mix of drones and missiles) and their Huthi affiliates 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 of Gaza to the news background.
Netanyahu is no longer alone. He is in the best position in recent months. We don't know if he will agree to a coordinated response with the Western allies who finance and protect him. Or if it will respond to Iran more harshly, an eventuality against which the regime in Tehran has already warned that it will not be so measured.
What would come then would be something very close to chaos.
