The snow-clad peak of Mt Hermon, where Syria, Lebanon and Israel’s Golan Heights meet, is at the fulcrum of a feared World War 3, should the Middle East conflict radiate further outwards.
To the east of Mt Hermon — where a UN peacekeeping force has maintained a lookout post since 1974 — is Iran, the king in this chess game, according to conflict analysis podcast RealLifeLore. To the west, Iran’s “queen”, Hezbollah in Lebanon. To the northeast, you’ll find a bishop, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, while the knights — the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria — are to the southeast.
Further out, to the south-southeast, is a rook, the Houthis in Yemen, and to the southwest, the pawns: “the many Palestinian militant groups operating in the Gaza Strip”.
While mainstream US media such as The New York Times have followed the White House line that there is no widening war in the Middle East, investigative journal The Intercept stresses that, already, 16 nations are actively engaged: the US and UK and almost the entire region except Turkey and Cyprus, while Africa makes a showing too, with Djibouti hosting US ships.
Sarit Zehavi, who runs the Alma Research & Education Centre, a think-tank focusing on the northern front in the Israeli war, sounds a similar warning. Situated in the north of the country, the centre is a short drive from where Hezbollah observation posts in Lebanon direct fire into Israel.
Zehavi, an Israeli reservist military intelligence lieutenant-colonel, says Iran has increasingly spoken about a “unification of fronts” against Israel of 15 jihadi militia in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine, funded to the tune of billions of dollars. It’s led by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran) and forms a politico-military coalition that Iran calls the “axis of resistance”, she says.
Already, the conflict has slipped the borders of Israel.
On January 2, the Jewish state assassinated Saleh al-Arouri, founder of Hamas’s military wing, in an air strike on Beirut. Then, on April 1, Pasdaran commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi was killed in an air strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
On April 14, in retaliation, Iran co-ordinated a huge missile and drone barrage on Israel, its first direct attack from its own soil despite decades of “death to Israel” rhetoric. Most of the 300 missiles and drones were shot down, but two airbases and a building at the Dimona nuclear reactor were damaged.
Iran’s attack on Israel has shifted from the use of proxies and engagement with Israel in Syria to include direct military confrontation
— Raz Zimmt
Though Iran’s ambassador to the UN said Tehran “does not seek escalation or war in the region”, UN secretary-general António Guterres warned he was “deeply alarmed about the very real danger of a devastating region-wide escalation”.
Israel’s strike back four days later was limited, suggesting a preference for avoiding outright war.
Writing for think-tank the Atlantic Council, Raz Zimmt, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, notes that Iran’s direct attack on Israel “marks a new phase in the countries’ strategic rivalry”.
“For years, Iran has opted to act against Israel through its regional network of partners and proxies to retain deniability and minimise military consequences for its actions ... Iran’s attack on Israel has shifted from the use of proxies and engagement with Israel in Syria to include direct military confrontation.”
He adds: “The Iranian leadership appears to have concluded that the country’s geostrategic situation is steadily improving thanks to better strategic military capabilities, a network of proxies, and the support of Russia and China.”
Still, Israel’s measured response has “allowed the two countries to temporarily close their current round of conflict”.
As for the Israel-Lebanon conflict, Zehavi tells the FM on a recent visit to the Alma centre that Hezbollah started rocketing Israel the day after the Hamas terror attack on October 7. “There has been a gradual escalation since then.”
After the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2001, Hezbollah re-established itself there. “Their ideology is loyalty to the supreme leader of Iran, and loyalty to the state of Lebanon is a distant second, if ever,” Zehavi says.
It’s no small point of concern. “We evaluate they have 50,000 fighters in active service,” including battle-hardened special forces, “and another 50,000 in reserve”, she says. Then there’s Hezbollah’s arsenal, which she puts at 140,000 mortars, 65,000 rockets and missiles of 45km-80km range, 5,000 missiles of 80km-200km range, about 5,000 missiles with ranges of more than 200km, 2,000 drones, and hundreds of special conventional weapons such as cruise, precision-guided, and surface-to-sea missiles, air-defence systems, and even mini-submarines and torpedoes.
Though Israel is still dependent on food and oil imports, two new industries have proven critical to buttressing its autonomy in recent years: five desalination plants provide about 80% of its potable water, while the Tamar and Leviathan offshore gas wells supply 70% of its energy needs. All are within easy striking distance of Hezbollah cruise missiles.
East of Mt Hermon is imploded Syria, at war with Israel since 1948 and playing host to Hezbollah units. Pakistani and Afghan proxies numbering 20,000 are stationed just opposite the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israel has invaded Syria and Lebanon on several occasions over the decades. But none of those conflicts saw opposing US, Iranian, Turkish, Russian and jihadi military bases stationed inside the same battlespace.
Though the US bases are mostly located in the Kurdish oilfields, its anti-Islamic State coalition is also in occupation of a large chunk of Syria’s southeast. And while Russia’s bases are mostly located in support of Turkey’s northern invasion line, Moscow has a significant presence along the Golan, in Damascus, and in Syrian regime-controlled areas.
Turkey and Russia have attacked US-allied Kurdish forces; Russian and US warplanes are increasingly engaged in midair “incidents”; and US clashes with proxies of Russian ally Iran — over control of the arms and oil pipelines into Syria from Iraq — have escalated since October 7.
While neither Washington nor Tehran appears keen to escalate towards a direct confrontation, risks are significant
— International Crisis Group
To the southeast is Iran’s primary concern: its Sunni arch-enemy Saudi Arabia. An anti-Shia state, it has been unofficially co-operating with Israel since 2012. It’s not the first Middle Eastern nation to do so. Egypt, then Jordan, were the first to break ranks and recognise Israel decades ago. But since 2020’s “Abraham accords”, Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain and the UAE have signed on, with the accords likely to be signed by Saudi Arabia, and expansion plans including Indonesia, Niger, Mauritania and Somalia.
In Yemen, the Tehran-aligned Houthis have since October 19 last year fired cruise missiles at southern Israel and, of greater concern to the world, have attacked at least 15 ships in the Red Sea, sinking one. Two have been hijacked. A US-led naval carrier strike group is positioned offshore and actively countering them.
The Red Sea crisis has the potential to draw even more nations into a Middle East conflict, as the foreign naval bases on the Red Sea include those of the US, China, Japan, France, Turkey, the UAE and Qatar — with a Russian naval base agreed to last year by Sudan.
In a lengthy regional analysis in February, the International Crisis Group warned: “While neither Washington nor Tehran appears keen to escalate towards a direct confrontation, risks are significant ...
“As an acceptable fallback” to resuming informal US-Iranian talks disrupted by October 7, “they both appear to be trying to keep within enemy red lines while conveying their own messages as to what would prompt a greater escalatory response. This manoeuvring may keep them from crossing a threshold toward direct confrontation but leaves considerable room for turmoil below it.”
But a secret and tentative rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia was also disrupted by October 7, and April’s retaliatory attacks between Israel and Iran may have inexorably upset the balance. After meeting with Israeli state figures in April, Bruno Maçães — a former secretary of state for European affairs in the Portuguese government, and now a correspondent for The New Statesman — warned that Tel Aviv may be attempting to “drag the US into a wider regional war” against its primary threat, Iran, “while the ‘ironclad’ American support stemming from October 7 is still available, and practically unconditional”.
US President Joe Biden might claim the war is contained in Gaza, but it has already broken out of the Middle East and its potential to escalate seemingly rests on a hair-trigger.
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