Playing Chicken

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Iranian leaders recently warned commercial airlines and others to avoid Iranian airspace as the country appeared poised to launch a war against Israel. The warning came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Group of Seven foreign ministers that Iran could attack Israel within days.

That’s because the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are vowing vengeance for the killings of top personnel in Hamas and Hezbollah allegedly by Israel. “The warmongering and terrorist Zionist regime will receive harsh punishment in the suitable time, place, and capacity,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said.

An escalation might be what Israel intended, according to Elon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat and foreign policy advisor, writing in Haaretz. The killing of Hamas’ political leader in Tehran was either about “instant gratification,” or “about flirting with major escalation,” he wrote, adding it might have been done to drag the US into the war.

On July 30, Israel assassinated senior Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Lebanon, and two days later, Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran during the new Iranian president’s inauguration – Israel has not taken responsibility for the latter killing. And on Aug. 1, Israel’s military confirmed it had killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif), in an operation in July.  These killings significantly upped the ante in the conflict between Israel and the two Iranian-backed militant organizations, explained the Jerusalem Post, adding that Israel was becoming more proactive in undercutting its enemies, including in unfriendly territory.

But these Israeli attacks also significantly increased tensions throughout the Middle East, causing many analysts to fear an outbreak of a major conflict, Voice of America wrote. The US, for example, has been sending more naval ships to the region since the killings, while US officials have been conducting furious rounds of diplomacy, warning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a peace deal and Tehran to refrain from escalating the situation.

Interestingly, the assassination took place after Netanyahu’s fiery address to American lawmakers in Washington. In the address, Netanyahu defended his country’s prosecution of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ staged its deadly terror attacks on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250 others. Israel has devastated the Gaza Strip in response, killing more than 40,000 people, Reuters wrote.

“Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home,” Netanyahu told Congress, according to the Associated Press. “That’s what total victory means. And we will settle for nothing less.”

The speech in retrospect was tantamount to announcing a ramp-up in operations, wrote Sami Al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, in an opinion piece in Middle East Eye that squarely blamed Israel for perpetuating the war in a “genocidal campaign” against the Palestinians.

Iranian leaders, meanwhile, say they wanted to avoid “all-out war,” Bloomberg reported. And Lebanon, reeling from economic and political crises, is not stable enough to engage in one, analysts say.

Already, there has been a surge of refugees trying to leave Lebanon to avoid more violence. Numerous countries have also recommended that their citizens leave the country on the Mediterranean, the BBC added.

The Middle East has seen the worst of these situations too many times before, said Blinken.

“Right now, the path that the region is on is for more conflicts, more violence, more suffering, more insecurity, and it is crucial that we break the cycle. And that starts with a ceasefire,” Blinken said. “To get there, it also first requires all parties to stop taking any escalatory actions. It also requires them to find reasons to come to an agreement, not to look for reasons to delay or say no to the agreement.”

Meanwhile, the killing of Haniyeh, the top negotiator for Hamas, may prevent the talks aimed at stopping the fighting in Gaza from going any further.

Qatar, which has hosted Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders at Washington’s request for years, and has been at the center of talks, was visibly frustrated. “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Peace needs serious partners.”

But it added that while a further delay in the talks would be a blow to civilians in Gaza and the families of Israeli hostages still being held there, it could be welcomed by Netanyahu, who has been trying to derail the negotiations, the Washington Post wrote.

“Together, the recent operations underscored Israel’s willingness and ability to target adversaries beyond its borders, including deep in hostile territory – and suggested that Netanyahu’s government, like the leaders of Iran and its militant allies, is unlikely to heed calls from the United States and other outside powers to put the ongoing cycle of violence to rest.”