A gigantic demonstration on Friday in Baghdad in support of the Palestinian people has so far been the clearest display of what the so-called Arab street feels. With one particularity: even though in Iraq Shiites and Sunnis throw dishes at each other, and that Hamas is a Sunni organization, the convener was the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ally of Iran.
The Shiite militias of Iraq, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis of Yemen and the Syrian Government form, with Iran, the so-called axis of resistance against Israel. It is not little, and perhaps hence the calculated steps with which Benjamin Netanyahu is moving in his offensive on Gaza.
The opening of a second front in the north – that is, southern Lebanon – would be a serious problem for the Israeli army. In 2006, what the Israelis call the Second Lebanon War ended badly, despite the fact that Hamas was not what it is today. Hizbullah also did not have the great war experience it has now (thanks to the one in Syria), and even so it left evidence of troops only used to counterinsurgency in the occupied territories.
In this sense, the exchange of fire in southern Lebanon and in the Golan Heights (territory occupied by Israel in Syria in 1967) appear as temptations or warnings. Last week, Israel carried out one of its periodic attacks on Syria – aimed at Hezbollah and Iranian interests – with which it bombed the runways of the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo, as if it were routine and without consequences: Moscow and Teheran, advocates of the regime of Baixar al-Assad, continued without raising their voices. The day before the attack, the Iranian foreign minister, Hussein Amir Abdul·lahian, visited Damascus, and days later, Beirut, where on Saturday he asked the coordinator of the United Nations for the peace process in the Middle East, the Norwegian Tor Wennesland, several things: that the use in Gaza – as happened in 2008 – of white phosphorus (prohibited in civilian environments and the subject of allegations of supply to Ukraine by its allies) be investigated and that ‘open humanitarian corridors. The collective punishment of the inhabitants of Gaza is “unacceptable”, he said. And on Sunday Abdul·lahian asked by phone his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to intervene before the UN Security Council. Wang Yi asked for the most complicated thing: a common position of Islamic countries on the Palestinian issue.
But in this matter the most interesting thing is that the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, and the crown prince and strongman of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman, spoke on Wednesday, also by phone. It was the first time since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations in March, precisely with the mediation of China. If the Saudis fear a nuclear Iran – which would exacerbate the danger of the “growing Shiite” in the region – and the Iranians, the same atomic aspiration on the part of Saudi Arabia, it is also true that Tehran at the time was already well aware of the plans of Washington to consolidate and make official the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel (on the other hand, existing and secret for years).
In this sense, it remains in doubt whether Iran encouraged or authorized Hamas to attack Israel at a meeting in Beirut on October 2. The answer may lie in the power relations within the Iranian regime. But in any case, this has allowed Minister Abdul·lahian to say and repeat, in Beirut and yesterday in Qatar, where the number two of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh lives, that there are no guarantees that the conflict will not enter an uncontrolled spiral. In other words, “hands, in all parts of the region, are on the trigger”, he said.
