WOLF AT THE DOOR

WELL, it’s happened. Not quite as we expected but a lot more dangerous. Once again the wolf is at the door; once again we are on the brink of another war in the region.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has now reached the gates of Israel. Last week Islam’s longrunning civil war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran led to a more serious clash, this time between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Worried international commentators warned of a regional war that could involve the US and Russia, never mind Israel and Iran.

The catalyst for new tensions between Tel Aviv and Tehran was the destruction of an Iranian drone over Israel. This was followed by the shooting down of an Israeli fighter-bomber during a punitive raid on an Iranian command centre and missile batteries around Damascus. Israel warned Tehran that it was “playing with fire”. The temperature is certainly rising. It’s the first time that Israel has openly attacked the Iranian forces busy setting up home in Assad’s rump of Syria. This sudden IsraelIranian spat has intensified fears that the Middle East is heading for a new all-out war.

Iran’s victories over IS have given it a northern corridor through Syria to the sea. Its revolutionary forces are now entrenched on Israel’s border. Tehran’s intentions are no secret; its former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, raised the stakes back in 2005 insisting that Israel should be “wiped off the map”. The sabre-rattling is getting worse. “Tel Aviv will be levelled to the ground if Israel attacks Iran, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not escape with his life,” according to a former chief of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Another IRGC general rammed the point home by confirming that Iran is determined to fulfil its historic promise “to engulf Israel in flames”. He also warned America to “stay out of it in the west Asia region”. This is fighting talk, encouraged by Iran’s victory over IS, which has allowed Iranian forces to set up new permanent bases across Syria and increasingly inside Lebanon.

To Israel this is a mortal threat. Israeli leaders have warned that any permanent Iranian military presence in Syria and the transfer of advanced weapons to Shi’ite Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon will not be tolerated. In particular, Israeli commanders are concerned by Iran’s construction of underground factories in Lebanon designed to provide Hezbollah with long-range precision missiles.

Prime minister Netanyahu has warned that Israel will act directly against Iran if necessary as Tel Aviv seeks wider support for efforts to contain its regional arch-enemy. He told the Munich security conference: “Israel will act if necessary, not just against Iran’s proxies but against Iran itself.”

Netanyahu is correct; Tel Aviv dare not risk Syria becoming an Iranian base or a supply route for sophisticated weapons to the Iranbacked Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. And the evidence is that Iran is — quite literally — “digging in” and establishing a permanent presence to threaten Israel.

For example, Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, a sworn enemy of the Jewish state, is now building a private telecommunications system in the Rmeileh area, near Sidon. Rmeileh residents were “surprised last week by the presence of a technical team extending telephone cables, and using mines dug by the Energy and Water Ministry in the [afore-] mentioned town”. The residents discovered that the team was from Hezbollah and was working without permission from the Interior or Public Works ministries. Ominously, “a leading figure from Hezbollah telephoned Rmeileh[’s] mayor and warned him that the cables must be built without any local obstruction”.

Israeli intelligence believes that the work is only part of a wider project funded by Iranian money. They assess that the construction at Rmeileh is part of a much larger and well-hidden telecommunications system buried deep by Hezbollah in the south, from the southern suburbs of Beirut, to connect with the Beqa’a Valley bases and Damascus.

Hezbollah is now taking over the Lebanese state. The Shi’ite organisation is effectively a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran, which controls the group’s purse strings of about $700 million a year. The US correctly designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. European Union countries, with the exception of the UK and the Netherlands, pretend that only Hezbollah’s military wing is really a terrorist threat. This convenient fiction allows them to ignore any EU antiterrorist sanctions against Lebanon.

The logic is cynical: first it avoids stirring up a hornet’s nest of retaliatory terror on the streets of Brussels or Paris. More important, it allows countries like France and Italy to run highly profitable trade surpluses with the Mediterranean state and its protecting power, Iran, exporting 6.7 billion euros-worth to Lebanon in 2017 and importing only 400 million euros-worth.

The truth is that Lebanon is a victim of what is little more than a hostile take-over by Iran. Tehran’s proxy, Hezbollah, now effectively controls the country. According to Toby Badran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the terror group’s aims are clearly set out in Hezbollah’s “doctrine of domination”: “First the army, then the people and then any resistance.” Hezbollah is even taking over from the Lebanese Army as the primary defender of the country. According to Badran: “This reflects the reality. The army has even patrolled roads to secure Hezbollah’s logistical and communication routes.”

Hezbollah now reaches deep into Lebanese politics as well. Even its President Michel Aoun (a Hezbollah lackey), acknowledges that the group is “an essential part of Lebanon’s defence forces”. Events support him. Only last summer when Beirut ordered the army to drive Jabhat al-Nusra Sunni rebels out of Lebanon, Hezbollah stepped in and offered to do the job for them, pre-empting the army offensive and doing the job themselves.

Iran-backed “Hezbollah” also enjoys wide support from the local Shi’ite population. The party has members elected to Parliament and ministers in government, making it very difficult, if not virtually impossible, to separate it from the state. Every pretence has been stripped away. Iran and its friends appear to own Lebanon and so now threaten Israel directly.

However Iran’s leaders know that any open conflict with Israel would give President Trump the excuse he craves — to rip up Obama’s dodgy nuclear deal, re-impose swingeing sanctions on Iran (to the dismay of the EU, now profitably trading with Tehran), and encourage Saudi Arabia to get involved in some real fighting in the Gulf. But very few Iranians really relish any major showdown with “the Great Satan”. The economic damage would be immense. And, after the recent round of domestic unrest in Iran’s cities, any new regional war could be political suicide for the regime.

The problem is that the whole region is now in turmoil. From Turkey in the north, the Iraqis and Kurds in the east and to Lebanon is the west, the chances of any post-IS peace settlement recede by the day. America is openly preparing to defend the YPG’s Kurdish area east of the Euphrates. Saudi Arabia and Iran are busy fighting their proxy war in Yemen. Iran and Israel are on a collision course over Tehran’s expanding footprint in Syria and Lebanon. Russia, now acting as kingmaker after the Syrian war, worries how easily miscalculation could lead to rapid escalation. Some sort of conflict between Israel and Iran’s local friends is looking increasingly inevitable.

The region is a mess. The risks are immense and the geographical stakes in the region could not be higher. Pat Buchanan, adviser to several US presidents, spells out the likely consequences: “Any US war with Iran could end with a Kurdish enclave in Iran’s northwest tied to Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran’s Azeri north drifting toward Azerbaijan, and a Baluchi enclave in the south linked to Pakistan’s largest province, Baluchistan, leaving Iran only Persia.”

We have been warned. There’s trouble brewing on our doorstep.