Whoever is behind Kerman bombing risks igniting
regional war
Julian
Borger
in
Washington
US points towards Islamic State or Sunni extremists
but Iran has accused Israel
Wed 3 Jan
2024 19.51 GMT
It is still
unclear who is responsible for the double bombing of a crowd in the
south-eastern Iranian city of Kerman but whoever is behind the outrage is
clearly willing to risk igniting a regional war.
In
Washington, officials have been pointing towards the possible role of Islamic
State or some affiliated Sunni extremist group, and away from the partnership
of Israel and the secular Iranian rebel group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), who
have reportedly been behind previous attacks deep inside Iran.
Those
earlier attacks have mostly been targeted assassinations, often on scientists,
or acts of sabotage. Wednesday’s bombing in Kerman does not fit the pattern, US
and UK officials argue. It was aimed at mourners marking the fourth anniversary
of the US drone killing of Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard
commander and arch-foe of Israel and US – but the attack was a horrifically
blunt instrument, leaving scores of civilians among the dead, so it would be a
remarkable departure for MeK and Mossad.
Outwardly
at least, Iran’s leadership displayed no doubts over the perpetrators on
Wednesday. President Ebrahim Raisi flatly accused Israel, warning that the
Jewish state would pay “a regrettable price”. It will be impossible for the
Tehran regime not to respond in some manner for the worst terrorist attack
since the founding of the Islamic Republic, but Raisi provided some wiggle
room, and notably did not commit to immediate act of revenge, but rather one
“at the right time and place”.
The
conventional wisdom in Washington and Tel Aviv has been that Iran did not want
a conflict with Israel and its western backers – at least not now. Its regional
partners, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthi forces in Yemen, caused pain to
Israel in solidarity with Gazan suffering, but Hezbollah’s cross-border rocket
salvoes and the Houthi harassment of shipping have been calibrated, aimed below
the threshold required to ignite an all-out regional war.
However,
calibration is a delicate matter, especially when performed with high
explosives. The risk of miscalculation started high and has kept rising.
Most of the
drones and missiles launched by the Houthis at Red Sea shipping have been
intercepted in recent days by a US-led task force. Miraculously, there have
been no deaths on the targeted vessels. That run of luck may not continue, and
there is already a school of opinion in the Pentagon that the Houthis are a
threat to free navigation that has been allowed to fester too long. Direct
strikes on missile sites and command centres in Yemen are among the military
options on the table.
Meanwhile,
it is also impossible to know how the risk-benefit calculations in Tehran are
being affected by the escalating course of events since the 7 October Hamas
attack on civilians in southern Israel.
On 25
December a senior Revolutionary Guard figure was killed in an Israeli airstrike
on Damascus, and then on Tuesday, a Hamas deputy political leader, Saleh
al-Arouri, was killed in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut. The Hezbollah
leader, Hassan Nasrallah, called Arouri’s assassination a “flagrant Israeli
aggression on Beirut’s Dahiyeh”, referring to the southern suburb that his
organisation’s stronghold, making clear he saw it as an attack on Hezbollah and
Lebanon.
The
Lebanese embassy in Washington assured the Biden administration, diplomats in
Washington said, that the killing would not trigger mass Hezbollah reprisals
that could cause the simmering exchanges along the “blue line” disputed border
between Israel and Lebanon to boil over. But the Lebanese government has not
always been prescient in its assessments of Hezbollah intentions.
Another
highly volatile element in the whole combustible mess is Israeli politics. In
the wake of 7 October, Israelis on the northern border are no longer prepared
to tolerate an enemy presence on the other side of the fence. The US has now
intervened twice, in the immediate wake of the Hamas attack in October and then
again around Christmas, to head off an Israeli pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah
and its estimated arsenal of over 120,000 rockets.
The mantra
from Israeli government ministers however remains the same: if the
international community does not do something about the Hezbollah presence on
the border, Israel will take matters into its own hands.
The US and
France have been recent months looking at a possible diplomatic fix involving
foreign forces and the Lebanese army acting as a buffer. Another option is to
bolster the currently weak mandate of the UN force deployed along the blue ine.
Any hope of such a peaceful resolution look all the more forlorn however, in
the wake of the Arouri assassination and now the atrocity in Kerman.
.jpeg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário