In the year that elapsed since the brutal and outrageous events of 7th October 2023, when the Palestinian militant-cum-terrorist outfit, Harakat al-Muqawwamah al-Islamiyyah, known by its popular acronym, HAMAS, caused the death of over a thousand Israelis and abducted about two hundred fifty others, the Middle East as a region has come closer to a full-blown regional conflict than at any other time since 1973. The wrath that the Israeli state has unleashed since then on Gaza, where the HAMAS has its stronghold, more than 42,000 Palestinian lives have been lost, mostly women and children.

A day after the 7 October 2-23 operation by HAMAS, the Hizballah – a militia based in Lebanon, which has been waging its own conflict with Israel – began a series of rocket attacks on Israel, allegedly in solidarity with their Palestinian ‘brethren.’ Similarly, the Houthi militia of Yemen has also opened another front by firing missiles at Israel as well as targeting ships passing through the Red Sea corridor, either destined for Israel or belonging to Tel Aviv’s purported ‘friends’. 

Because all three militias are part of the mehvar-e moqawwamat (axis of resistance) funded, trained and provided for by the Islamic Republic of Iran, with which Israel has been fighting a shadow war for nearly a decade, Tel Aviv has been trying to convince the international community that Tehran’s inducement and encouragement has been responsible for all of this malevolence.

In April 2024, Israel even began to target the Islamic Republic directly – first on foreign soil (Iranian Consulate in Damascus) and then on Iranian soil itself. Tehran followed with two direct attacks on Israel – increasing the prospects of larger escalation.

The future trajectory of the impending conflict – it is widely being argued – depends much on the nature, manner, and scale of Israeli response to Iran’s calibrated missile attack on 1 October 2024, seen as being in response to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, and a long-standing ally of Tehran in the larger region.

From the trends that can be seen so far, however, Israel does not seem to be in any mood to avoid further escalation in the conflict, engaging as it is in a game of brinkmanship. The regional situation is poised so delicately that at the slightest (even unwitting) provocation, a larger conflict may easily break out, which none of the prospective belligerents seem really to desire.

The ‘right-to-exist’ versus ‘two-state’ solution

Back in the late-1980s, even as it was grappling with the Palestinian Intifada (uprising), the state of Israel had come to realise that there could be no military solution to the Palestinian problem. Accordingly, back-channel talks began which culminated in the two-state solution of the Oslo Accords of 1993, where it was decided that in return for Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s right-to-exist, a much-truncated state of Palestine will be created within the 1967 borders (comprising West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem). 

Till such time as the state of Palestine came into being, the Palestinians shall be allowed to administer themselves through a Palestinian Authority (PA), which would administer the regions of West Bank and Gaza Strip, till all other issues including the final status of Jerusalem were resolved.

The arrangement came under fire from both the Israeli right-wing (led by Benjamin Netanyahu) and the Palestinian hardliners (viz HAMAS, al-Harkat al-Moqawwamat al-Islamiyyah, i,e Islamic Resistance Movement).

The Israeli right rejected the idea of a Palestinian state and conceding land-for-peace as detrimental to Israeli security; HAMAS refused to accept the truncation of Palestine into two, and thus to recognize Israel’s right to exist. HAMAS, thereafter, embarked on terrorist attacks against Israel on an unprecedented scale to drive them out. The Israeli right, on the other hand, used this to argue the failure of the land-for-peace formula of Oslo Accords to stymie the final status talks.

The nearly two-decade domination of the Israeli political right that began in 1999, (largely by Netanyahu himself, but also Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Naftali-Bennett and others) has virtually reduced the Oslo Accords to a dead-letter, and thwarted the two-state solution by playing the Fatah faction (led initially by the PLO veteran Yasser Arafat and then Mahmud Abbas) against the HAMAS.

As many of Israel’s estranged Arab neighbours came under pressure over the last decade for reforms domestically during the so-called Arab Spring, they embarked on a kind of course correction. In a bid to revamp their foreign policy during this time, some of Israel’s Arab neighbours considered normalizing their relations with the ‘Jewish State’, to which Tel Aviv responded warmly – hoping this would cut their support that had kept the Palestinians going for a long time.

The resultant Abraham Accords of 2022 led to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain recognising Israel’s sovereignty, which also opened the prospects of Saudi Arabia treading the same path. Once Riyadh joined, the Palestinian cause would have lost its resonance as an Arab cause altogether, and the prospect of a Palestinian state would for all practical purposes have been buried.

The outrages of 7 October 2023 were, thus, presumably a desperate attempt to bring the two-state solution back onto the table – as the USA and its allies in the global community have begun talking about it yet again.

The course of the conflict

In the immediate aftermath of 7th October, as Israel began deliberating on how should it respond, the Israeli establishment seemed to be divided between those who wanted a punitive operation over and above the rescue of hostages held by HAMAS, and those who wanted to physically dismantle the ‘terror infrastructure’ built by the Palestinian militant outfit, not excluding ‘elimination’ of the top brass of the organisation.

In course of the last year, a significant number of the fighters of HAMAS have thus been eliminated, including its top two leaders – Ismail Haniyeh and his successor Yahya al-Sinwar. In addition to the regular and systematic onslaught on Gaza, where the HAMAS is based, Israel has carried out air, artillery and drone strikes, apart from a ground incursion.

Gaza today has been laid to waste, with hardly any of its civilian infrastructure left standing, pushing the civilians there to the edge of a famine. A humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions is in the offing for its 2 million plus inhabitants, which, according to some, borders on a genocide or at least war crimes. However, despite the routine bombardment and high-level assassinations, Israel does not seem to be any closer to the elimination or subjugation of HAMAS – either as an organisation or as a phenomenon.

All this while, Israel has been in negotiation with HAMAS through the mediation of Egypt, Qatar and the USA – even though the interlocutors are skeptical about Israel’s good faith in the talks, aiming merely at a temporary ceasefire in exchange for hostage release. After one such negotiated arrangement resulting in the release of over a hundred hostages, leaving behind only about a hundred of hostages (of whom probably fifty odd hostages are alive at present), Israel seems to be less keen on further negotiations.

It would seem though that the Israeli strategy has been evolving since it began its Gaza offensive. The very existence of the Hizballah militia (which has been engaged in a sub-conventional conflict with Israel for some time) on Israel’s northern frontier had prevented full-scale mobilization against Gaza. The rocket and artillery barrage that has been carried out by Hizballah since 7th October had, in a way, borne this out.

A section of the Israeli defence establishment now seems to be determined to undermine and diminish (if not altogether dismantle) the militia to a point that it cannot pose a major threat to the Jewish state in the near future. Ever since 2006 Israeli bombardment of Beirut, when Hizballah held Israel effectively to a draw, Israel had been preparing for a showdown with Hizballah (as evinced by its penetration of the militia’s telecommunication network, forcing it to resort to low-tech paging devices, and then penetrating even that).

The crucial point against any forward thrust against Hizballah, however, has always been the element of Iranian reprisals in defence of its proxy in Lebanon. Tehran has kept Hizballah supplied with drones, rocket launchers, and even short-range ballistic missiles that have turned its inventory into perhaps the most well-equipped arsenal of a non-state actor in the world. The chances of Iran sitting idle in the face of a full-blown Israeli offensive against Hizballah were considered to be quite low.

However, right from the beginning of this conflict, Tehran has appeared extremely reluctant to get dragged into the escalatory spiral of regional conflict. Despite all the fire and brimstone that was peppering the rhetoric coming from the Islamic Republic against Israel, Tehran even cautioned Hizballah that Iran must not be dragged into its conflict of Israel.

This seems to have emboldened Israel sufficiently to even bump off the high-ranking Iranian General Mohamed Reza Zahedi of the para-military Islamic Republic Guards Corps (IRGC) on Iranian consular territory in Damascus in April 2024, which revved up ongoing Israeli attempts at thwarting Iran’s growing presence in the region. At this stage, with its own consulate being destroyed, Tehran decided to respond with a combined missile and drone attack directly on Israeli territory – lest it appeared weak.

However, in a move clearly calibrated to prevent further escalation, Iran gave ample public indications of its intent, and ended up dispatching the slowest moving of its stock of missiles which Israel (with support from USA, UK, Jordan, UAE and possibly even Saudi Arabia) managed to intercept quite easily. When Israel retaliated with an equally well-calibrated attack, knocking out a radar facility in Esfahan, Iran dismissed it as a failed attempt, thus signaling its decision to forestall further escalation.

Israel’s high-risk strategy and threat of wider escalation

Although, prima facie, the tit-for-tat attacks of April 2024 did not immediately broaden the scope of the conflict as they may well have done, they stand as a kind of landmark in the broadening spiral of escalation.

Iran’s missile and drone barrage on Israel constituted the first actual attack on the country by a foreign power since 1973 (aside from Hizballah, which is a non-state actor), shredding the assumption that constituted the bedrock of Israeli national security in the last fifty years – that no country in its environs had the military capability of mounting a direct attack on Israel. 

This attack appears to have sent Israeli strategists back to the drawing board.

While a long-term overhaul of Israeli defence policy must be now well underway, a short-term tactical recalibration premised upon brinkmanship now seems to be afoot. In the months that have followed, Israel went on with high-profile assassinations, often using drones and remote-targeting – as of Fouad Shukr (Hizballah, in Beirut), Ismail Haniyeh (HAMAS, in Tehran), Nasrallah (Hizballah) and Yahya al-Sinwar (HAMAS, in Gaza) – eliminating significant figures in Iran’s axis of resistance.

At least one – the killing of Haniyeh in the heart of Tehran after the swearing in of the new Iranian President would have previously constituted a kind of red line for Iran (for the choice of the venue, not the target) that the Israelis would not have crossed very easily. This was quite clear during the assassination of Qassem Soleymani, where Israelis provided the intelligence for the hit, but refrained from striking directly out of considerations of escalation. 

It would almost seem Israel now is picking for a fight with Iran unlike in recent times.

There are some limits, though, to this Israeli policy of brinkmanship, i.e. going to the brink but not taking the leap. Israel’s staunchest ally, the USA, is probably the reason that Gaza death toll is not several times higher than the present figure.

The White House has worked like a restraining hand by repeatedly criticising senseless killing of civilians. Owing to Israel’s dependence on the supply of munitions and other forms of military aid from Washington, Bibi Netanyahu cannot afford to scoff at President Biden. Thus, he cannot readily accept many policies being recommended to him – such as starving the people of Gaza to force the surrender of HAMAS leaders. 

However, US pressure on Bibi to declare a ceasefire is not working much largely because cabinet colleagues (Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who want to annex Gaza and open it to Jewish settlers) will pull the government down if Bibi relents on the ceasefire issue. Moreover, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) was initially reluctant on going into Gaza (and which they initially seemed to rule out annexing again in 2023). In the changed circumstances post-April 2024, they are no longer reluctant to rule out self-determination by the people of Gaza for the time being – which is an unacceptable idea to the Americans. 

It is equally clear that Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon in October 2024 (and from all accounts the assassinations of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and al-Sinwar) are being carried out without any prior intimation to the White House – presumably with the calculation that in an election year, Israel would be given a long rope.

The fear, however, goes that the rope given might be so long as to turn into a noose.

Iran might find itself pushed beyond the point that makes retaliation difficult to avoid – seriously, without the advantage of a prior intimation of 12 hours as it did during the ballistic missile and drone barrage on 1st October 2024. The success of at least 20 missiles penetrating the superlative Israeli missile defence shield indicates that the impact of a surprise attack on Israel could be much different.

The USA has stationed naval vessels in the Mediterranean hoping to deter Iran, besides swiftly a terminal missile defence system to Israel. Tel Aviv, meanwhile, seems intent to test the limits of Iran’s reluctance to fight, so that it could serve to weaken the military capabilities of Iran’s allies in the Axis of Resistance till that point.

Such a strategy of brinkmanship, however, could prove to be of higher risk than of any worth.

The Risk Factor in Escalation

There are multiple routes through which Israel’s high-risk strategy of brinkmanship may come to grief.

First, Israel had gone into Gaza in a fit of justifiable rage in October 2023, but without an exit strategy. One year on, it still has no exit plan from Gaza. Large sections of Israeli society had come around to the position that a two-state solution cannot be returned to, since co-existence with Palestinians no longer appears politically kosher after the horror of 7th October.

The fundamental problem is - reoccupation of Gaza and West Bank (as right-wing extremists seem to want) cannot be sustained with 7 million Jews pitted against 7 million Arabs (2 million Arab citizens of Israel, 3 million Arab non-citizens in West Bank and 2 million in Gaza) in the long term, as the Israeli statesmen of the 1980s had realized much ahead of time.

And just as HAMAS pushed Israel beyond a point of no-return, it is difficult to see how the Israelis envisage Palestinians returning to status quo ante after the most vicious military operation in the history of occupied Palestine. Thus, the elimination of the HAMAS top leadership is not likely to be very productive in breaking its back (after all, it is difficult to think of a HAMAS leader who has not died in Israeli hands).

A ceasefire – in the event of Israelis agreeing to one – is unlikely to return the two sides back to Oslo after all the blood has been shed.

Second, since 1948, Israel has historically been averse to long-drawn campaigns, relying on strategies that ensure swift and decisive victories. The ongoing maelstrom of violence is precisely what Israel realized that it cannot sustain when it decided to smoke the pipe of peace with Arafat in the wake of the Intifada.

Hence, if Israel is able to push its enemies in the region to their limits, and successfully reduce their military capabilities to an extent they are no longer capable of threatening the existence of the state, it could be said to have succeeded.

However, adventurism of the kind that Israel is presently trying to engage in, such as by trying to rally the anti-Hizballah forces (especially its one-time Christian allies) in Lebanese politics might reopen old wounds and destabilize the region to a point that it spirals out of control, and ties down Israeli forces there for a longer haul than it now anticipates.

Third, and possibly the most worrisome, is the Iran factor. The Islamic Republic is possibly the only party that seems altogether determined to avoid a conflict, because it fears a long-drawn and/or direct participation in regional warfare would tie down much of its security forces in the regional theatre. Such an engagement would leave the country vulnerable domestically, as Tehran only narrowly survived a popular upheaval in 2022 over the hijab issue by crushing dissent, not winning over its citizens. 

The Islamic Republic fears more of the same in the future because the objective economic and political conditions of the sanctions-strapped regime have worsened. An unwanted regional war, in which the Islamic Republic is not directly affected, could tip the balance against the regime. This is the reason why the regime is calibrating its responses to Israeli brinkmanship in order to avoid a war – as Tel Aviv knows, and which in turn emboldens Israel in targeting Iranian assets at home and abroad.

However, this could go wrong in two ways. One, segments in the Iranian establishment are rightly concerned that Iran’s refusal to engage Israel in defence of her own regional allies may cost her those very allies – hence Tehran may beef up both HAMAS and Hizballah financially and with military hardware, as it has done in the past. This is likely to tip the succession to Nasrallah and al-Sinwar in the hands of those who are as much hardline in their disposition to Israel as their predecessors have been, if not more – something that is probably transpiring if Khalil al-Hayyah is chosen as the successor to Sinwar. 

At some stage in the near future, Iran may even decide to engage a little more energetically than it has done so far. Thus, the risk of Tehran being dragged into the conflict, turning a local conflict into a larger regional one, remains.

Far more dangerous as a prospect, of course, is the manner in which Tehran rewrites its defence policy after the tit-for-tat strike on Esfahan in April 2024. Just like Israel, Iran has also enjoyed relative security vis-à-vis its neighbours since the end of the Iraq war in 1988.  By striking deep into the heartland of Iran, Israel has punctured a hole in Iran’s strategic thinking as well. 

For nearly two decades now, Iran had been exploring the nuclear option as a part of its defence capabilities, but the reformist and pragmatist segments of the Iranian establishment have always held the hardliners back – hoping to be able to normalize the country’s ties with the West, and revive the embattled Iranian economy.

The hardliners, who advocate nuclearizing Iranian defence capability, believe that is the ultimate insurance against the threat of regime change by the US or its allies. While the pragmatists managed to put the programme on hold with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, the hardliners sought in return a free hand in expanding Iranian influence in the region with its Axis of allies.

If Israeli operations undermine the Axis in the region, and an existential threat begins to be posed to the regime, Tehran might decide to cross the nuclear threshold.

It is believed Tehran is less than a month away from attaining nuclear capability (thanks to the acceleration of its nuclear policy after Trump pulled USA out of JCPOA), and only a few months away from perfecting delivery capability (i.e capable of devising nuclear warheads).  Unbeknown to the world, Tehran may have accelerated its nuclear programme further since April 2024, and may be on the verge of attaining nuclear weapons capability. 

This is largely the reason why Israel was thinking of attacking Iranian nuclear installations.  However, the risk is if Israel is unable to completely incapacitate Iranian nuclear capability in one strike, it would guarantee both Iran going nuclear in the near future, and a conventional war against Israel.

Such a scenario is equally certain to blow up in a larger regional war as Tehran might lash out against all those countries that are not friendly to it – viz Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain, and that in turn is likely to throw the global market of oil into turmoil. This is the reason why USA is keen on stopping an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and oil installations alike.

If you thought the assassination of Nasrallah and the entire top leadership of Hizballah and the assassination of Haniyyah and al-Sinwar presents light at the end of the tunnel, think again.