ISRAEL-IRAN: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH?

The missile war initiated by Iran against Israel on April 13 resumed with even greater intensity on the night of October 2, with potentially devastating consequences for both countries, the Middle East region, and possibly the entire world.

The immediate causes are well known: Israel’s systematic decapitation of Hezbollah’s religious and military leadership—Hezbollah being Iran’s militant arm in Lebanon—and the destruction of a significant portion of its forces. The Israeli operation was in response to Hezbollah’s aggression since October 8 in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. Over the past year, no less than 8,800 missiles, supplied by Tehran, have rained down on northern Israel, forcing the evacuation of 60,000 Israelis to the center of the country.

Yet, the spiral toward war—and possibly total war—between the Persians and Jews, two peoples once close and even allied, has much older roots. In 1979, Khomeini established a ruthless theocratic regime in Tehran, immediately naming two “Satans”: the “Great” one, America, which Iran seeks to expel from the region, and the “Little” one, Israel, which it has vowed to wipe off the map. The first “Satan” paid the price in November 1979 with the hostage-taking at its embassy, a crisis that lasted until January 1981, followed by the 1983 bombing in Beirut targeting U.S. soldiers. The second saw Hezbollah’s creation on its northern border in 1983, triggering repeated wars that only tightened the grip of this Shiite army on a now-hostage Lebanon, fully under Tehran’s control.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic pursued a long-term strategy of regional dominance through its nuclear program, started under the Shah in the mid-1970s and later militarized by the Mullahs. Iran also built one of the most powerful ballistic missile forces in the world, with 3,000 missiles ranging from 400 to 4,000 kilometers. Two colossal American blunders further aided Iran. First, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, initiated by George W. Bush, eliminated Saddam, Iran’s Sunni rival, with whom it fought a brutal war (800,000 dead) between 1980 and 1988. Thanks to Bush, Iraq, now Shiite-dominated, has become an Iranian protectorate from which U.S. forces in the region are regularly attacked by pro-Iran militias. Then in 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), which had imposed international oversight on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Now, all monitoring has been dismantled.

The cherry on top for Iran is the proxy war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine since 2022, which has brought the Russians and Chinese closer to the Mullahs: Russia receives Iranian missiles to strike Ukraine, while China buys Iranian oil in defiance of international sanctions. As a result, Iran now holds at least 450 kg of enriched uranium, enough to rapidly produce at least three nuclear bombs. This summer, we even saw joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf between Russian, Chinese, and Iranian fleets.

In this context, discussing the imminent collapse of the Mullahs’ regime following Nasrallah’s elimination seems, at the very least, premature. The existential threat to Israel will remain as long as fanatics rule a country three times the size of France with a population (92 million) ten times larger than that of the Jewish state. Last April, Israel responded with a highly targeted strike, destroying S-400 air defense systems in Isfahan but not the nearby nuclear sites. This time, the temptation to target Iran’s most sensitive nuclear sites, such as Natanz, will be strong, although doing so risks igniting a broader conflict that could draw in external powers.

Opinion Piece, October 3, 2024

By Pierre Lellouche