Aug 21, 2024 09:05 PM IST
As the world braces for the next salvo in the series of violent tit-for-tat attacks between traditional rivals Iran and Israel, a sobering fact bears reminding. There are no clear winners in this blood feud that has defined geopolitical fault lines in West Asia for over four decades.
As the world braces for the next salvo in the series of violent tit-for-tat attacks between traditional rivals Iran and Israel, a sobering fact bears reminding. There are no clear winners in this blood feud that has defined geopolitical fault lines in West Asia for over four decades. Each side in this contest of national egos and antagonistic ideologies has used varieties of lethal force to impose its will over the other. But, in the end, neither party gains a decisive victory that can silence the other’s guns, bombs, assassins, missiles and drones. It is a classic lose-lose situation.
Israel undoubtedly enjoys a qualitative military edge over Iran. It has a stronger economy and the backing of the United States (US). The daredevil attacks that Israel has undertaken against high-profile targets inside Iran and in Iran-allied territories of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen also prove that the former holds the advantage in intelligence and covert operations.
Israel has been on the offensive by betting that an inferior Iran has no choice but to stand down and avoid a full-scale war that would be detrimental to its survival. But this assumption is risky, as Iran can raise the costs of Israeli offensive doctrines without triggering full-scale war. Iran uses the non-conventional warfare approach and has weaponised a range of Sunni and Shia proxy militias to create a “ring of fire” to burn Israel.
The deadly combine of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and Hashd forms Iran’s “axis of resistance” against the “Zionist enemy”, Israel, and the “crusader enemy”, the US. Iran empowers these forces to carry out attacks to intensify pressure on Israel from multiple directions.
For instance, the military heat Israel has faced on its northern front with Lebanon since October 2023 is due to Hezbollah’s explicit campaign of cross-border attacks to compel Israel to slow down its war with Hamas on the southern front in the Gaza Strip. Iran has also equipped the Houthis of Yemen with sophisticated weapons to harm Israeli maritime commerce and territory. The Houthi drone that flew over 1,000 miles to hit Tel Aviv and claimed Israeli casualties in July 2024 conveyed a message that the Jewish State might be attacked simultaneously from different corners through a swarm that overwhelms its air defences.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sounded nonchalant and claimed that his country is “already in a multi-front war” with Iran and its allies. But bravado apart, Israel will have to incur a big price in a genuinely all-out multi-directional war. It would entail more deaths for Israeli soldiers, further forced displacement of Israeli civilians and heightened insecurity of Israelis residing in border areas.
The casualties that Israel has suffered since the October 2023 war commenced are less than what has been incurred on the Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, and Yemeni sides. But as a fragile democracy that is answerable to public opinion and mass protests over agonising national security choices, Israel’s threshold of accepting human losses is lower than what authoritarian Iran and its proxies are willing to sacrifice. Israel frequently releases Palestinian prisoners in disproportionately higher numbers to win freedom for far fewer Israeli citizens held in captivity. Iran and its axis are aware of this democratic frailty of Israel and believe they can exploit it.
Repeated flare-ups between Israel and Iran are not resolving core security dilemmas. At best, they help incumbent political leaderships in Tel Aviv and Tehran in justifying their rule and burnishing their credentials as protectors of their nations. Despite its inferiority, Iran has enough chips on the table to keep harassing Israel. Given that full-blown war is being carefully avoided by both sides, Israel can’t establish lasting deterrence against Iran through calibrated coercion. The only way out of this gory stalemate is a tactical truce between Tel Aviv and Tehran that permits some form of coexistence with agreed limits on how far each side is allowed to go. Washington must also chip in by not resorting to extreme measures such as the Israel-assisted US operation to assassinate Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. The cycle of revenge which that operation seeded spurred Iran to prepare Hamas for counter-attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, and killing over 1,200 people.
It is time for the principal players in this Cold War to break out of the perpetual vendetta syndrome. Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have open lines to Israel, Iran and the US, could come forward to mediate pragmatic security arrangements. The alternative of continuing to act out of rage and endlessly avenging strikes with counterstrikes will leave everyone, including neighbouring countries, worse off in a permanent spiral of instability and destruction.
Sreeram Chaulia is dean, Jindal School of International Affairs.The views expressed are personal
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