Hamas v Israel: Is Iran Getting The Wider War It Wanted?

Is Iran Ready For That War?

Israel’s war on Hamas is now fully three months old.

When the war began, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian predicted a wider war was inevitable.

Almost three months on, Israel’s massive military retaliation is reverberating around the region, with explosions in Lebanon and rebels from Yemen attacking shipping in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Western countries are pumping military aid into Israel while deploying fleets to protect commercial shipping — risking confrontation with the Iranian navy.

That's in line with a grim prediction made last year by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who said that Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza meant an “expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable,” and that further escalation across the Middle East should be expected. 

Yet last week that war may have expanded in a direction even Iran might not have expected: Iran itself was attacked.

Two explosions in southeastern Iran have killed more than 100 people and injured over 210, according to Iran's state media, which said Iranian officials called the blasts a "terrorist attack."

Iranian news outlets said the blasts struck 10 minutes apart in the city of Kerman around a ceremony marking the anniversary of the killing of a prominent Iranian military leader, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Iran’s assessment was apparently spot on, as a few days later the Islamic State terror group took credit for the attacks.

The Islamic State group claim identified the two attackers as Omar al-Mowahed and Seif-Allah al-Mujahed. The claim said the men carried out the attacks with explosive vests. It also used disparaging language when discussing Shiites, which the Islamic State group views as heretics.

The statement did not mention which regional arm of the extremists carried out the attack, which other claims in the past have had. But Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that some previous claims have not specified the regional arm, and that the latest claim came directly from an account associated with the group.

Given Iran’s longstanding support for a variety of terrorist and insurgent groups, from Hezbollah and Hamas to the Houthis in Yemen, there is a certain karmic irony in Iran being made the target of some of the worst violence outside of Gaza and at the hands of a terrorist group that views Iran’s Shi’a Islam as heresy. Yet here we are, and here Iran is.

Is this the wider war Amirabdollahian anticipated? Is Iran ready to reap the whirlwind if they are indeed sowing the wind of a wider Middle Eastern war?

From the outset, the basic logic of Iran’s prediction of an expanding war was almost inevitable—in large part because Iran backs most of the terror and insurgent groups in the Middle East, including Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been targeting Red Sea shipping.

Hamas v Israel: The Iranian Connection

As YouTube combat analyst and commentator Paul Lewandoski noted in November when the Houthis first started menacing shipping in the Red Sea, Houthi missiles almost certainly came from Iran, and quite possibly were launched on instruction from Iran.

Hamas v Israel: Iran Escalating?

Paul notes that the missiles fired apparently by Houthi rebels in Yemen are almost certainly made by Iran, delivered to Yemen, and this may very well be an attack that was more or less ordered by Iran.

We know that these houthi Rebels and that control these Yemen are backed by Iran so it seems highly likely these are Iranian backed missiles and drones again likely targeting Israel but this is how sort of Iran fights its proxy wars

Paul’s take is that Iran is using the missile attacks in particular to send a message to Israel and the West, although exactly what that message might be is itself a matter of some speculation.

Paul’s assessment is in line with that of the Israeli military, which views the events in the West Bank in particular with a fair bit of concern.

The violence poses a challenge to both Israel and to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the only Palestinian governing body recognised internationally which is headquartered there.

The Israeli military said it was on high alert and bracing for attacks including by Hamas militants in the West Bank.

Hamas was trying to "engulf Israel in a two- or three-front war", including the Lebanese border and the West Bank, military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told Reuters. "The threat is elevated," he said.

Indeed, the threat is elevated quite literally everywhere in the Middle East at the moment.

In a very real sense, the war between Israel and Hamas has always been Iran’s to escalate. Iran has the connections to the terror groups. Iran is the State actor that uses such proxies to project power throughout the Middle East in lieu of traditional military forces.

Despite this, Iran has for weeks not succeeded in generating a wider conflict. The most glaring evidence of this has been the persistent lack of concern oil traders have about the stability of oil flows out of the Middle East.

War tends to be bad for maritime commerce. Had a wider conventional war erupted in the Middle East, oil shipments from that region to the rest of the world would almost certainly have been imperiled—and oil prices simply do not reflect any significant level of concern, even now.

To be sure, Israel’s war with Hamas is expanding beyond Gaza, albeit incrementally and slowly.

On January 2nd, it was reported that an Israeli drone strike killed the deputy commander of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri.

The deputy head of Hamas, the Palestinian group which rules Gaza, has been killed in a blast in Lebanon, a senior Hamas official has told the BBC.

Local media said Saleh al-Arouri was killed in an Israeli drone attack in the south of the capital, Beirut.

At least three other people were reportedly also killed in the incident. Israel has not commented.

Arouri is the most senior Hamas figure to be killed since Israel went to war with Hamas after its 7 October attack.

While Hamas personnel are a natural target for Israeli strikes, that this happened in Beirut and not Gaza inherently implies an expanded war effort by Israel.

That Hamas supporters in Beirut vowed revenge against Israel for Arouri’s death would certainly indicate that Israel can expect a wave of terror strikes over the next several days and weeks.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Beirut Thursday for the funeral of top Hamas terrorist Saleh al-Arouri, calling for the terror group to avenge his killing in an apparent Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the Lebanese capital Tuesday night.

Draped in Palestinian and Hamas flags, Arouri’s coffin and those of two other Hamas members killed in the strike were first taken to a Beirut mosque for prayers before being marched to the Palestine Martyrs Cemetery at the Shatila refugee camp, where top Palestinian officials killed by Israel over the last five decades are buried.

Perhaps more significant to the potential for a wider conflict emerging from the strike is where it occurred—within a stronghold not of Hamas but of Hezbollah.

Lebanon's state news agency says an Israeli drone hit a Hamas office in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh on Tuesday night.

A witness from the Reuters news agency saw firefighters and paramedics gathered around a high-rise building where there was a large hole in what appeared to be the third floor.

Video footage on social media showed a car in flames and extensive damage to buildings in what is a busy residential area.

Dahiyeh is known as a stronghold of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, an avowed enemy of Israel and ally of Hamas.

While Hezbollah has not been extraordinarily aggressive against Israel in the aftermath of the October 7th attack, the group has been exchanging almost daily tit-for-tat shelling with Israel along the border with Lebanon.

Perhaps in consequence of those exchanges, just hours after Arouri’s death, a second Israeli strike succeeded in killing a top Hezbollah commander as well.

Hussein Yazbek was killed amid a cross-border fire from Israel, it has been understood.

Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel across Lebanon's southern border since the war began in Gaza.

The second strike comes just hours after Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri was killed in Beirut by an alleged Israeli drone strike.

Despite this, however, neither Hezbollah nor Israel are ramping up much in the way of war rhetoric against one another—at least not yet.

In a speech in Beirut on Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed that his powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite militia "cannot be silent" following the killing of Hamas deputy Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday.

Nasrallah said his heavily armed forces would fight to the finish if Israel chose to extend the war to Lebanon, but he made no concrete threats to act against Israel in support of Hamas, Hezbollah's ally also backed by Iran.

If Iran has been hoping Hezbollah would help expand the war beyond Gaza, so far those hopes have only been minimally realized.

Perhaps the most significant effort to further destabilize the region has been the Houthi efforts to close off the Red Sea to maritime traffic. Yet even that has not had much success thus far, at least based on recent price movements for oil.

Even The Houthis Can't Raise The Price Of Oil Much

While shipping companies are looking to redirect more cargo around Africa to avoid the Red Sea and Houthi missiles, the additional transit time and costs this would impose on the world’s shipping is not inconsequential, and even momentary redirections by shipping companies such as Maersk virtually guarantees there will be resurgent inflation for most goods that routinely transit the Red Sea.

Ironically, the Houthi attacks thus far may be inflicting the greatest economic impact on Russia, which has seen the price of Urals crude falling ever since shortly after the October 7th attacks.

Russian oil shipping from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk has to transit the Suez Canal and then the Red Sea to reach Russia’s main customers India and China.

If the Red Sea is unavailable due to Houthi missile mischief, Russian tankers have to sail completely around Africa, adding considerable shipping time and cost. This additional shipping risk may be making Russian crude less attractive and thus depressing its price further on the global market.

As of this writing the Houthis are continuing to press their escalations, most recently with an attempted sea drone attack.

An armed unmanned surface vessel launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen got within a “couple of miles” of U.S. Navy and commercial vessels in the Red Sea before detonating on Thursday, just hours after the White House and a host of partner nations issued a final warning to the Iran-backed militia group to cease the attacks or face potential military action.

However, also as of this writing, shipping traffic continues to ply the Red Sea shipping route.

If the Houthis intended to interdict all shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal with their missile and drone attacks, they are not succeeding—at least, not yet.

The US in particular is holding Iran at least partly responsible for these attacks, as Iran is viewed as a likely supplier of drones and drone guidance systems.

Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the USV’s are a key part of the Houthi maritime arsenal and were used during previous battles against the Saudi coalition forces that intervened in Yemen's war. They have regularly been used as suicide drone boats that explode upon impact.

Most of the Houthis’ USVs are likely assembled in Yemen but often fitted with components made in Iran, such as computerized guidance systems, Hinz said.

At the United Nations, U.S. deputy ambassador Christopher Lu said at a emergency Security Council meeting on Wednesday that Iran has supplied the Houthis with money and advanced weapons systems, including drones, land attack cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. He said Iran also has been deeply involved in planning the Houthis' attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

At a minimum, US rhetoric is opening the door to potential retaliation against Iran directly.

While the US has thus far not attacked Iran directly, the US military has been launching more retaliatory strikes against Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq in response to attacks upon US troops in the region.

The US targeted a member of an Iranian proxy group with “US blood on his hands” in a strike in Iraq, a US official told CNN.

The target was a member of Harakat al-Nujaba, the official said, an Iranian proxy operating in Iraq and Syria, and the US had been watching him for some time before the strike.

A second US defense official said, “The United States is continuing to take action to protect our forces in Iraq and Syria by addressing the threats they face.”

Is the US building up to launching direct strikes against Iranian targets? Does the US have Iranian targets in its crosshairs? Certainly the possibility cannot be discounted fully at this juncture.

With escalations happening slowly but surely in Lebanon, in the Red Sea, and now in Iraq, and with the US taking an ever more muscular posture in the Middle East, it certainly begins to appear that Iran is finally getting the escalation it predicted and which many presume it wants.

Then the Islamic State struck Iran.

The Islamic State, being Sunni Muslim, views the Iranian Shi’a leaders as heretics, and Iran as an enemy.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, at one point was the more radical successor to Al Qaeda, and people may recall its efforts in the 2010s to establish a new caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

At the height of its powers, Islamic State imposed a reign of terror over millions of people and claimed control over swathes of the combined territories of Iraq and Syria.

Its fighters repeatedly defeated both countries' armies and carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world. Anyone who opposed its radical branch of Islam faced torture and death.

Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared his cross-border caliphate from the pulpit of Iraq's historic al-Nuri mosque in 2014 and vowed to rule it. Five years later he was killed in a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria.

Its goal of a new caliphate in the Middle East is a direct challenge to Iran’s own ambitions at regional hegemony, which makes last week’s bombings in Iran appear to be an opportunistic attempt to regain a certain relevance in the region.

This week's attack in Iran is a sign that the group is seeking to rebuild its power and relevance, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, told Reuters.

"The group's goals remain ever the same: waging jihad against all the group's enemies in order to establish the territorial Caliphate that should eventually rule the whole world," he said.

While there is little doubt that Iran’s clerics would delight in a wider Middle Eastern war emerging from the Israeli conflict with Hamas, it seems unlikely that Iran anticipated being the target of terrorism as a result. It certainly would be the height of insanity to presume that Iran wanted to be on the receiving end of a resurgent ISIS attack.

Yet Iran apparently is now exactly that. Which begs the question: what does Iran do now?

While there has been speculation that ISIS might have hoped to spur a retaliatory attack on Israel from Iran, that they have claimed the terror strike as their own arguably undercuts that strategy. Iran is no friend of Israel, but ISIS is also no friend of Israel, which makes the ISIS attack on Iran a violent and bloody distraction from Israel’s conflict with Hamas.

Iran gains nothing by attacking Israel directly over this terror attack on its own soil. ISIS would happily let Israel bear the brunt of its attacks, and it takes no great understanding of Middle Eastern politics to realize that if Iran gets focused on attacking Israel they risk the possibility of future ISIS attacks.

At the same time, Iran’s modus vivendi with militant groups in the Middle East generally revolves around supporting them, not fighting them off. In this regard, even the much reduced ISIS is very much a wild card, with no ties to either Israel or Iran.

Can Iran project sufficient power to discourage ISIS from further mischief? Can Iran figure out how to stop would-be suicide bombers before they can do their damage? Does Iran have the capabilities for either?

Iran wanted a wider war in the Middle East. With suicide bombers clearly now willing and able to venture inside Iran proper, Iran may very well have gotten what it wants, but not at all in the way it wanted. An emboldened and resurgent ISIS attacking Iran is hardly an escalation that benefits Iran.

This much is certain: Iran’s capacity to be the regional hegemon is being put to the test. Time will tell if Iran has the political will and the military insights to play that role effectively.