All-out war in the Middle East? Netanyahu bids for an escalation

The killing of Hamas’ main leader and chief negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Tehran, Iran is part of a cynical attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to provoke an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East just so that he can stay in power. In this he can count on the complicity of Western imperialism, which allows him to remain in office as their main reliable ally in the region. 

While Netanyahu made a triumphant visit and speech to the US Congress last week, the ugly reality of ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ is evident to anyone who cares to see it. Netanyahu reiterated his usual war propaganda to the ecstatic applause of a section of Congress, but at the same time, his parade was beset with boycotts and protests.

However monstrous the crimes of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Biden has tied himself and US imperialism to support it ‘unflinchingly’. Biden has dutifully done so, as has Vice-President Kamala Harris, albeit more reluctantly. Netanyahu knows this very well and is taking full advantage of the public display of US imperialism’s full commitment and support for his next moves. 

Sabotaging a negotiated settlement

We have pointed out many times that a negotiated settlement is not in Netanyahu’s interests. He has consistently sabotaged it – so blatantly, in fact, that his own team accused him of undermining the negotiations. Now Israel has killed Hamas’s main political leader and chief negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh. Netanyahu relies on prolonging the emergency situation after 7 October, by constantly pouring oil on the fire, at the cost of escalating the conflict to the whole region. This is the only way he can stay in power. Now, he is merrily cashing in the blank cheque that the White House has placed in his hands.

Here we see, in practice, the limitations of US power. Netanyahu has overcome all attempts to rein him in. The increasingly vocal ‘concern’ on the part of the US administration for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is just a smokescreen. What they are worried about is not the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed in Gaza. They have done worse themselves. Rather, they are concerned about the enormous political and economic implications to their interests. On the one hand, the continuation of the war threatens potentially revolutionary implications in other US-allied regimes in the region. Furthermore, an escalation of the war across the region would lead to the near-complete isolation of US imperialism, and would have devastating consequences for the world economy.

Blinken even resorted to the incredible pretence that the assassination of Haniyeh was “something we were not aware of or involved in” / Image: public domain

The attempt by the US and a section of the Israeli ruling class to plot Netanyahu’s downfall by leaning on Benny Gantz, his most outspoken enemy, failed miserably; and now Washington is forced to continue to back Netanyahu to the very bitter end. Biden has just announced redeployment of US forces to protect Israel from Iranian retaliation. When the chips are down, US support for Israel is unconditional. This was the very clear message sent by Biden immediately after 7 October, with his visit to Israel. 

A few days after Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress, we find the whole of the Middle East again on the brink of an all-out war, after the killing in rapid succession of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, by an Israeli air strike in Beirut (which also killed two children and one woman, and injured 74 people), and shortly afterwards, the aforementioned killing in Tehran, again by air strike, of Haniyeh. Both cases represent a deliberate provocation by Netanyahu against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Of course, the killings were followed by the usual choir inviting ‘all sides’ to keep the peace and de-escalate. US Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken and the EU leaders again appealed to ‘all sides’ to restrain their response. 

Blinken even resorted to the incredible pretence that the assassination of Haniyeh was “something we were not aware of or involved in”; at the cost of appearing ridiculous, impotent, or both. It is very difficult to believe that Israel carried out a strike like this, which will lead to an escalation in the region, including consequences for US forces stationed in the Middle East, without telling Washington. But even if we are to accept that the Israelies did not tell them, it is ludicrous to think that US intelligence, deeply embedded in the region and well connected, did not know in advance. They either knew and gave tacit approval, or knew and chose not to do anything about it. Either way, Washington is complicit. 

Needless to say, these calls are completely hypocritical and seem to apply to ‘all sides’ – apart from Israel. In international diplomacy it is generally accepted that nations are entitled to respond proportionately to an attack or provocation by other, rival nations. We could ask what would the US Administration consider as an ‘acceptable’, proportionate response to a hypothetical attack by a hostile foreign power, targeting a third party hosted and protected by the US Administration on US soil, killing and maiming US citizens in the process? Whatever the answer to this question may be, we are quite sure that the same standards will not be applied to Iran.

Hypothetically, for instance, what would have happened had Cuba decided to carry out an air strike to take out CIA-backed Cuban-American terrorist Posadas Carriles in Miami? The question answers itself. 

Tipping point?

Israel has not openly claimed responsibility for the attack in Tehran, but this is not surprising: the attack and denial followed an established pattern. The public gloating of Israeli officials betrays them. However, the consequences of this attack may be broader than the inevitable Iranian retaliation against Israel. The Iranian regime has made it very clear that it regards the US as responsible for the attack, regardless of Blinken’s professed astonishment. These events have the potential to set fire to the whole region, where instability is reaching a tipping point. 

The criminal Israeli onslaught on Gaza is continuing, without respite / Image: public domain

The criminal Israeli onslaught on Gaza is continuing, without respite. Aside from the bombs, famine, and epidemics spreading in the absence of clean water and any infrastructure, are exacting a heavy toll on Gaza’s population, especially the children and the wounded. No one is lifting a finger to prevent it. Biden’s ‘humanitarian’ pier was just a fig leaf to divert attention (and has now been dismantled after having catastrophically failed), while the IDF reduced Gaza to rubble, killing 40,000 people, mostly women and children, maiming more than 100,000 and displacing the entire Gaza population multiple times, leaving nowhere safe to go.

Biden’s newly announced sanctions against a few extreme right-wing Jewish settlers in the West Bank were devised to distract from the fact that these thugs are being organised and protected directly by Jewish supremacist ministers like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, against whom of course no action is taken. Europe’s ruling classes are falling over themselves pontificating about human rights, while making sure that anyone who dares to protest against Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza is portrayed as anti-semitic, then criminalised and suppressed. 

Regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are concerned by the rise of internal resentment at their complicity with Israel, and the growing anger of workers and youth, but the ruling elites of these reactionary regimes are unwilling to sever the thousand-and-one economic and strategic threads that tie them to US imperialism and Israel. As in April, they will offer their services to protect Israel from Iranian retaliation. 

On the other side, the Iranian regime is using the plight of the Palestinians to further its own regional ambitions. This is why the killing of Haniyeh represents a provocation they cannot ignore.

Unlike the military leaders of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh was a relatively public figure, based in Qatar, travelling regularly to Turkey and Iran. The time and place of his killing was deliberately aimed as a provocation to the Iranian regime. Haniyeh was in Tehran on an official visit, to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian President. He was hosted by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards, who were responsible for his security. 

The precision of the air strike that killed him implies that Israeli intelligence had very accurate knowledge of the whereabouts of Haniyeh and his movements. It implies that such intelligence may have come from Israeli agents within the Guard itself. This is extremely humiliating for the Iranian regime, but it is not just a matter of wounded pride. It also means that Iran is in fact unable to guarantee the safety of their allies, even when they are on Iranian soil. It is a declaration that all of them, including those in the upper echelons of the regime, could become targets of Israel at any time. The Iranian regime cannot afford to be seen as weak by its friends and foes, and the Revolutionary Guards even less so. 

Furthermore, Haniyeh was the main negotiator on the part of Hamas in the talks for a ceasefire, hosted by Qatar. His assassination makes a mockery of these negotiations and will of course have a negative impact on the possibility (already remote) of a negotiated settlement. This also suits Netanyahu, whose political future depends precisely on there not being an agreement. 

Consequences of Netanyahu’s deliberate provocation

This leap in the crisis in the Middle East was set in motion by an apparently unconnected chain of events, which was cynically used by Netayahu to justify his attack on Hezbollah and Iran. 

The nature of the attack on Majdal Shams is unclear / Image: Nizzan Cohen, Wikimedia Commons

On 27 July, a rocket hit a playground killing 12 children in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, injuring many others. The town is in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s President Herzog and the extreme right-wing finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, backed by IDF and US sources, immediately attributed the attack to Hezbollah, and vowed revenge against them. In fact, Smotrich even claimed that the whole of Lebanon must pay. Netanyahu cut short his visit to the US and seized the moment in his usual opportunistic fashion.

The nature of the attack on Majdal Shams is unclear. What is certain is Hezbollah had no interest in deliberately targeting the Druze civilian population, especially considering that Hezbollah has been working on a deal with the Druze leaders in Lebanon. It also flies in the face of Hezbollah’s approach ever since the Israeli onslaught on Gaza started after 7 October, which has consistently been to explicitly limit its operations to launching rockets against Israeli military targets. 

The killing of these children may have been the tragic consequence of a malfunctioning rocket, interference by the Israeli Iron Dome defence system, or a mistake, as the trajectory indicated the target might have been an Israeli military base located close by. None of this was even considered. Netanyahu had the excuse he was looking for. Lebanese authorities’ calls for an international investigation have been brushed to one side by Israel.

It mattered even less that the Golan Druze – a discriminated against minority, subject to the same policy of Israeli occupation and colonisation as the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – vocally and publicly opposed the idea of Netanyahu using their tragedy to foster new attacks and war on Lebanon. Bitter protests erupted during the funerals against the insulting presence of Smotrich and Netanyahu, who were forced to leave.

This new twist in the crisis in the Middle East is not an accident. The conditions for an escalation have been laid time and time again by Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing Jewish supremacist allies in the Israeli government. All along, they have been supported and abetted by US imperialism. 

However, all this comes with a cost. US influence in the region has been heavily undermined. The anti-imperialist sentiment of the masses throughout the region and beyond is becoming stronger day by day. A further escalation of the conflict suits Netanyahu’s agenda, but it also increases the instability and the risk that the whole of the Middle East is drawn into a larger conflict, with unpredictable consequences. This will not be stopped by the hypocritical peace pleas by the so-called international community, nor by the UN's hollow denunciation of Israeli war crimes. 

On a side note, the newly elected Labour government in Britain has no intention of changing British imperialism’s support for Israel’s genocidal war. Despite empty gestures like dropping Britain’s objection to the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Sir Keir Starmer reiterated a few days ago his policy of support for Israel’s ‘right for security’, adding half-heartedly the ‘need for a ceasefire’. The leaders of the Labour Party are continuing to piggyback on whatever position is put forward by the US Administration. 

David Lammy, the new British Minister of Foreign Affairs, is now in Doha, after visiting Washington and Israel in his first two official trips. He has been conspicuous for his silence, while British air bases in Cyprus continue to be an active part of the US-British network of support backing Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza, and British military ties with Israel are growing.

Down with the warmongers! Down with Imperialism!

Netanyahu is not the cause of the present crisis of world capitalism and the increasing frictions between imperialist powers. His policy is just a manifestation of the sickness of capitalism and its poisonous consequences. However, Netanyahu’s actions bear serious consequences for the escalation of the crisis, which already has a global impact. The Middle East has become the focal point of the crisis of world capitalism. Provocations will be followed by further provocations, and an escalation will become more and more inevitable. 

The whole history of the Middle East shows that it is not this or that individual that has created the present nightmare. It is imperialism that breeds crisis and war. The only solution to this crisis is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and imperialism. Only a socialist revolution will allow all peoples of the Middle East to live together as part of a Socialist Federation. As a starting point, the workers and youth of the whole world must unite in a common struggle against imperialism. 

We call for an international mobilisation of the working class and youth against imperialism and oppression. This movement must be aimed first and foremost against our own ruling classes, by exposing and fighting against our own ruling classes’ complicity in the onslaught of Gaza, the plight of the Palestinian people and their brutal oppression by the Zionist regime.

Expropriate the capitalist war profiteers!

Stop Israel’s onslaught on Gaza!

End the occupation!

For a workers’ boycott of Israel’s war machine!

Peace among the peoples, war on the ruling class!

Overthrow capitalism and imperialism!

For a socialist federation of the Middle East!