Commentary: Renewed hostilities in the Middle East is a question of when, not if

Commentary: Renewed hostilities in the Middle East is a question of when, not if Tit-for-tat strikes may have stopped, but Israel and Iran have left the door open to a renewal of hostilities whenever the opportunity arises, says James M Dorsey of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies. SINGAPORE: Iran and Israel have halted strikes on each other following an appeal from US President Donald Trump. The question is for how long. The latest hostilities, sparked by a parallel conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, threaten to derail a deal between Washington and Tehran to end a more than three-month-old war. Hezbollah, a Lebanese armed group, had fired rockets at northern Israel on the morning of Sunday (Jun 7). It remains an unknown whether Hezbollah, adhering to a long-standing maxim in Middle Eastern geopolitics of regional hardliners reinforcing one another, coordinated its attack with Iran or acted on its own. Either way, it triggered tit-for-tat strikes, with Israel striking Hezbollah infrastructure in the Lebanese capital of Beirut later on Sunday. The strikes prompted Iran, which has long said that any peace deal with the US would depend on a ceasefire also holding in Lebanon, to fire missiles towards Israeli territory. Israel retaliated by bombing military and industrial facilities across Iran, shattering a fragile ceasefire and marking the most direct confrontation between the two countries since April. DOOR OPEN TO RENEWED CONFLICT The latest events have left the United States caught in the middle. Concerned that the tit-for-tat could spin out of control and further complicate already difficult negotiations to end the Iran war, Mr Trump was quick to stop Iran and Israel from further attacking each other. “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting’,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social network on Monday. Both Iran and Israel have since responded positively, although they have also potentially set themselves up for another round. Iran’s joint military command warned that it would respond with “much more severe and crushing measures” if Israel continues with “acts of aggression and hostility … including in southern Lebanon”. Israel has rejected the warning, pledging to press ahead with operations against Hezbollah and to launch attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs in response to any strikes on northern Israel. In doing so, Israel and Iran have left the door open to a renewal of hostilities whenever the opportunity arises. Israel believes that the Iran problem can only be resolved militarily, but will need to tread carefully so as not to rupture already strained relations with Mr Trump. While the latest bombing on Sunday came in apparent defiance of Mr Trump who asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran's latest missile barrage, Israel’s bombing was calibrated. On the other hand, Iran sees a contained conflagration with Israel as a way to ensure that the no-war-no-peace stand-off in the Strait of Hormuz does not become a fixture, break the stalemate in talks with the US while maintaining credibility by standing up for Hezbollah. These form the potential time bomb ticking under Iran and Israel’s pullback from the brink. THE HOUTHI WILD CARD? One card Iran has up its sleeve is Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. It’s unclear whether the Houthis will abide by Iran’s deferral of attacks against Israel. The Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Monday. They have also declared that they would expand the hostilities from the Strait of Hormuz to the strategic Bab al-Mandab waterway that connects the Suez Canal to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean by blocking Israel-related shipping. The Houthis regularly attacked ships in the Red Sea in what they described as an effort to force Israel to end its bombardment of the Palestinian enclave during the Gaza war. Impeding navigation through Bab al-Mandab, where some 10 per cent of global trade passes, would significantly increase the impact of the Iran war on the Gulf states, global energy markets and international trade. It also risks dragging more countries, including Saudi Arabia, into the war. Saudi Arabia has enjoyed a de facto ceasefire with the Houthis for the past four years after the kingdom went to war against them in 2015. The ceasefire has ensured that the oil-producing kingdom is one of three Gulf states, alongside the United Arab Emirates and Oman, that can circumvent Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis officially joined the Iran war in late March but have since then only symbolically fired missiles at Israel on four occasions and not since early April. The Houthis had good reason to hold their fire and limit their support for Iran to statements and a few missiles. By doing so, they positioned Yemen as a potential option for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states seeking alternative routes to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz, rather than as a continued threat to regional stability and security. The question now is whether the Houthis believe that they are best served by returning to the sidelines of the US-Israel-Iran conflict or by putting all their eggs in Iran’s basket. For Iran, expanding the disruption of maritime traffic to the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait would enhance its leverage in talks with the US on a so far elusive deal to end the war. Dr James M Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Associate Editor of WhoWhatWhy, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M Dorsey.