Iran’s ayatollahs play the Middle East’s most dangerous game
Israel’s war with Hamas may become a wider Middle East conflagration are flashing ominously. America has sent a second carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower to the Persian Gulf. “There’s a likelihood of escalation," said Antony Blinken, the American secretary of state, on October 22nd.
The chances of further attacks by Iranian proxies on American forces are growing, he continued: “We don’t want to see a second or third front develop." Fears are also growing in Lebanon that Israel could use America’s cover to launch a pre-emptive strike. Israel has evacuated its towns near the border with Lebanon and Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has cautioned that if Hizbullah, an Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, enters the fighting, the consequences for Lebanon will be devastating. One reason Israel has delayed its offensive in Gaza may be to bolster its preparations for escalation on its northern front.
Iran’s foreign minister has said the region is like a “powder keg". Iran’s autocratic rulers hold one of the matches that could set it alight: an “axis of resistance", or network of violent proxies across the region. They have spent two decades building this up in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
Iran preys on places where the local polity is weak, where it is easy to funnel in personnel and weapons and where no external actor can challenge it, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in London. Iran’s ability to cause mayhem at arm’s length—through Hamas, Hizbullah, Iraq’s plethora of Shia militias and Yemen’s Houthis—may even give it more leverage than its conventional military capabilities, which are relatively weak. Iran’s goal right now, as it has been over the past
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