By Irina Beloglazova @Adobe Stock
Lisa Beyer and Ethan Bronner of Bloomberg report how Iranian-backed groups are provoking a widening Mideast conflict. They write:
As the war between Israel and the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas has continued, it’s stoked violence in other parts of the Middle East. Militant groups backed by Iran, which supports Hamas and for years has engaged in a shadow war with Israel, have joined in. These groups — part of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance — have attacked Israeli targets, ships in the Red Sea, and US forces, provoking retaliation. After three American soldiers died in a drone strike in Jordan in late January, US forces began to counterstrike more forcefully against Iran-linked targets in Syria and Iraq, marking a fresh escalation. […]
Where has violence spread?
- The Red Sea. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who’ve controlled northwestern Yemen since civil war broke out in 2014, have launched a spate of attacks on ships plying the Red Sea. The Houthis, who have also attempted to strike Israel with missiles and drones, say they are protesting the military campaign against Hamas by targeting any vessel with links to Israel, though no such connection was obvious for some of the affected ships. The Red Sea attacks have prompted shipping companies to reroute vessels around the southern tip of Africa, a lengthier and costlier journey. The US is leading a naval task force in the Red Sea to help deal with the Houthi threat. In mid-January, US and UK forces began to launch airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, prompting the rebels to say that all US and UK interests were now legitimate targets. Two US Navy SEALs were presumed to be dead after they went missing during a seizure of Iranian weapons intended for Houthis on Jan. 11.
- Lebanon. After the attack that set off the war, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah began launching missile, mortar and rocket strikes on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Hezbollah receives funding, weapons and training from Iran and is heavily influenced by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose Quds Force organizes and arms militias abroad. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah has become a daily occurrence, threatening to open a second front of the war. Hezbollah has a bigger, more professional fighting force than does Hamas and is better armed. Israel and Hezbollah have fought repeatedly, including in a war in 2006.
- Iraq. US military forces in Iraq — 2,500 of whom remain in the country on a mission to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State — have been subjected to increased attacks since mid-October. They have been claimed mostly by the Islamic Resistance. Until the deaths of the American soldiers in Jordan, the US had hit back selectively. Iraq blamed the US for a Jan. 4 attack in Baghdad that killed two commanders of Harakat al-Nujaba. The group is both a constituent of the Islamic Resistance and part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, originally formed to fight Islamic State and now part of Iraq’s security apparatus. After a Dec. 25 drone attack wounded three US service members in northern Iraq, the US struck three installations in Iraq, targeting Kataib Hezbollah, among other groups.
- Syria. The 900 or so US troops still in Syria — also on a counterterrorism mission — have been attacked repeatedly by militias allied with Iran. These attacks, too, previously had prompted limited retaliatory strikes from the US. However, one on Nov. 12 risked a direct confrontation between the US and Iran; the US struck facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Syria is also a theater of conflict between Iran and Israel. Iran built up a military presence in Syria to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, in the country’s civil war and to facilitate the transfer by land of weaponry meant for Hezbollah. On Dec. 25, Iran said an Israeli air strike in Damascus killed a senior Revolutionary Guard commander. Earlier, Israel had stepped up strikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria after they moved close to the Israeli border.
Why are Israel and Iran enemies?
They were allies starting in the 1950s during the reign of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, but the friendship abruptly ended with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. The country’s new leaders cut ties with Israel and adopted a strong stance against the Jewish state, decrying it as an imperialist power in the Middle East and supporting groups that regularly fight it. Israel regards Iran’s potential to build nuclear weapons as a threat to its existence and is thought to be behind a campaign of sabotage against the country’s atomic program. Iran’s leaders say they have no ambition to build nuclear arms. The Israelis point to a cache of documents their intelligence agents spirited out of Iran in 2018 that suggests otherwise. Israeli officials have repeatedly implied that if Iran were to reach the brink of weapons capability, they would attack its nuclear program using air power, as they did Iraq’s in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007.
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