Why the world's biggest powers can't stop a Middle East war
Stop-and-start negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip, pushed by the United States, have repeatedly been described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, only to fail. The current Western-led attempt to avert a full-scale Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amounts to a scramble to avert disaster. Its chances of success seem deeply uncertain after the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, on Friday.
«There's more capability in more hands in a world where centrifugal forces are far stronger than centralizing ones,» said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. «The Middle East is the primary case study of this dangerous fragmentation.»
The killing of Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah over more than three decades and the man who built the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful nonstate armed forces in the world, leaves a vacuum Hezbollah will likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the chief backer of Hezbollah, that may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. Whether full-scale war will come to Lebanon remains unclear.
«Nasrallah represented everything for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was the advance arm of Iran,» said Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on the Middle East and author of a book on the world's upheaval since Oct. 7. «Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps mortally, and one wonders who can even give an order for Hezbollah today.»
Artific
