New developments fall upon our region like night, but they are not followed by the rise of the day politically. Every development makes the scene more complicated, there are no solutions, and it is as though everything is a reaction that has no political horizon.
Hassan Nasrallah was killed after having issued a challenge to Israel calling on it to carry out a ground operation. Israel eliminated him, along with other leaders who have yet to be identified, through an unprecedented intelligence breach. Now, Israel is “pounding Lebanon,” as Reuters put it.
Nasrallah's killing was welcomed in Washington. All of its political leaders responded with statements about how “the world is safer,” although we did not see similar reactions following the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani upon orders by their own president at the time, Donald Trump.
Today, Israel is bombarding southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, the stronghold of Nasrallah and Hezbollah. It also struck Hodeidah in Yemen, it is strangling Gaza, where there is no room to breathe or make a sound, and its planes roam the skies over Damascus and drop missiles.
As all of this is happening, everything Washington has done, not said, has helped Netanyahu. After his belligerent address to the world at the United Nations, he is now doing everything he can to drag Iran into this battle, hoping that this draws US involvement.
Today, Netanyahu's plan is clear: cut off the "tentacles of the octopus," Iran’s proxy militias. The "octopus" is a notion first introduced by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and today Netanyahu is following his own reasons and Israeli security concerns.
In the past, Netanyahu had helped these "tentacles of the octopus" expand, preferring to empower Hamas and undermine the Palestinian Authority, to allow Hezbollah to weaken the Lebanese state, and for a weak Assad to remain in power and secure Israel's border.
Since Iran's nuclear program came to light, it has been a concern for Netanyahu's Israel. However, they viewed the “tentacles” as a tactical asset that allowed it to delay meeting its obligations to peace agreements and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Then came the October 7 operation, which shattered Israel’s deterrence and was dubbed Israel's 9/11.
At that point, the threat became existential. Netanyahu realized he would go down in history as the man who had empowered the "tentacle" and crushed Israel's prestige. Therefore, Netanyahu is now reversing his own policy, hoping history will remember him as the man who cut off the "tentacles" and besieged Iran instead.
It is clear today that Netanyahu decided to start off from 2003, the year Saddam Hussein fell and militias rose and militants encroached on states. The question is, does Netanyahu seek this? Or is it an American strategy that Netanyahu was tasked with implementing after October 7?
“We are in the midst of a campaign against Iran's axis of evil,” he said yesterday, and the geographic range of this axis is known to all. As I mentioned, Israel has destroyed Gaza, and now it is destroying Lebanon, doing what it likes in Syria, and is striking Hodeidah. Eventually, it could strike Iraq, meaning that we are looking at an open conflict using the proxies that had been developed after the fall of Saddam.
The fundamental question: Is there a strategy, or is every action merely a reaction? Is there a plan for the day after, or will we see only more chaos? The problem is that Israel’s project is destructive, just like the Iranian project. Is there an alternative project? Is there a way to seize opportunities? Is every crisis an opportunity, as they say?
