THE BLOODSHED IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS FAST EXPANDING / THE ECONOMIST

On many fronts

The bloodshed in the Middle East is fast expanding

Israel seems certain to retaliate to Iran’s missile attack

JEWS TRADITIONALLY mark the new year by eating an apple dipped in honey, an expression of hope that sweet times lie ahead. 

As Israeli families prepared to ring in the year 5785 on the evening of October 2nd, many must have hoped that it would at least be less bitter than 5784, which began with an atrocity. 

On October 7th 2023 Hamas, a militant Palestinian movement based in Gaza, burst through barriers walling Gaza off from Israel, massacred more than 1,100 people and took a further 250 hostage. 

During the year that has followed, Israel has not only fought non-stop with Hamas in Gaza, but also exchanged rockets with Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. 

As the year drew to an end, on September 30th, it sent troops across the border into Lebanon, to battle Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia that has been bombarding northern Israel. 

The next day Iran, a patron of both Hamas and Hizbullah, launched a salvo of 181 missiles at Israel. 

As The Economist went to press, the region was awaiting the inevitable Israeli riposte. 

Israel is now fighting wars on several fronts, with no end in sight to any of them.

The Iranian attack on October 1st targeted two air-force bases and a military-intelligence facility. 

The intention seems to have been to overwhelm Israel’s missile-defence systems by force of numbers. 

If so, it failed almost completely. 

Most of the missiles were intercepted and destroyed in mid-air. A handful evaded the dragnet, but caused few casualties. 

In the West Bank a Palestinian was killed by falling debris from a stricken projectile.

That was the second time this year that Iran has fired directly on Israel. 

The previous attack, on April 13th, came in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian general when Israel bombed Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus. 

Nearly all of that barrage was intercepted as well. 

At the time America’s president, Joe Biden, urged Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to “take the win” and not respond with devastating force. 

Israel’s retaliation consisted of an attack on a single Iranian air-defence radar installation. 

That was intended as a warning that Israel was capable of penetrating Iran’s air defences and therefore doing lots of damage.

Iran has failed to heed the warning. 

There is little question that Israel’s retaliation this time will be of a far greater magnitude. 

There are three sets of possible targets. 

Israel could go after Iran’s leaders, in the same way that it has assassinated much of the top ranks of Hamas and Hizbullah. 

It could hit Iran’s infrastructure, in order to push an already weak economy over the brink. 

In particular, strikes on the oil terminals at Iran’s ports would stop the flow of its main export and starve the regime of much-needed cash. 

Two strikes Israel has carried out in recent months against the oil terminal at the Yemeni port of Hodeida, in response to missiles fired at Israel by the Houthi militia, which is backed by Iran, were seen as a trial-run for such an attack. 

Most alluring of all, however, would be strikes against facilities where Iran is thought to be developing nuclear weapons—something Israel has been contemplating for more than 20 years.

Israeli officials believe that Mr Netanyahu has been hoping for months to provoke Iran into launching an attack that would give Israel an excuse to target the nuclear sites. 

He has long faced scepticism, both in Israel and abroad, about his conviction that all Israel’s security problems stem from Iran. 

On September 30th he said in a televised statement, “When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think, everything will be different.” 

That may be wishful thinking, but he would clearly like to see Iran’s government toppled.

For much of the past year, as Israel pummelled Gaza, killing nearly 42,000 people and displacing most of its population, Iran’s strategy of encircling Israel with proxies equipped with missiles and drones seemed to be working. 

Hizbullah bombarded Israeli communities near Lebanon daily, forcing more than 60,000 people to flee their homes. 

From Yemen, the Houthis fired both on Israel, in one case sending an armed drone as far as Tel Aviv, and on shipping passing through the Red Sea, in effect blockading the port of Eilat. 

Smaller militias in Iraq and Syria chipped in with the odd attack on Israel.

But as the bloody year draws to an end, Iran’s friends are on the ropes. 

Although thousands of Hamas fighters remain in hiding in Gaza, they are in guerrilla mode. 

The group’s command structure has been smashed, leaving it incapable of orchestrating elaborate attacks. 

The Houthis’ income has been cut along with the flow of goods through Hodeida. 

Above all, Hizbullah, the most fearsome of all Iran’s proxies, is reeling. 

Through a campaign of sabotage and bombing, Israel has killed or injured not only most of its senior leaders, but also lots of its mid-level commanders. 

Israeli intelligence estimates that air strikes have destroyed at least half of Hizbullah’s massive stockpile of Iranian missiles. 

Israel now has troops on the ground in Lebanon seeking out the remainder of Hizbullah’s arsenal. 

In spite of the ferocity of Israel’s assault, Hizbullah has responded by launching only a handful of missiles towards Israel’s big cities, presumably because it is too incapacitated to do more.

In short, the threat to Israel from Iran’s proxies has been dramatically reduced. 

As a result, Iran’s chief means of deterring an Israeli attack—that it would get its allies to pound Israel in return—no longer applies. 

What with Israel’s demonstrated ability to evade and destroy Iran’s air defences and its obliteration of Iran’s missile barrage, it has much less to fear than it did a few months ago.

One of the few remaining obstacles to ferocious Israeli retaliation against Iran is the hesitation of its closest ally, America. 

Mr Biden has condemned Iran’s attack and declared that Israel has a right to defend itself. 

Jake Sullivan, the national-security adviser, has promised “severe consequences” for Iran. 

But Mr Biden has also said that Israel’s response should be “proportionate” and specifically opposed the idea of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

America the meek

Yet one of the recurring themes of the past year has been America’s apparent inability or unwillingness to restrain Israel, which has repeatedly and openly ignored American officials’ requests, without repercussion. 

Less than a month ago Mr Biden’s lieutenants warned that there was no “magic solution” to Israel’s conflict with Hizbullah and that a full-blown war would be “catastrophic”. 

Soon afterwards Israel began its campaign of assassinations and air strikes. 

Mr Biden then called for a three-week ceasefire, but was humiliated by Mr Netanyahu, who said in private that he was open to the idea only to reject it in public. 

Days later, when Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, Mr Biden said he had not been briefed in advance. 

Nonetheless, he blessed the operation, but urged Israel not to proceed with a ground invasion. 

Israel went ahead anyway, and the Americans now say they are fine with an offensive so long as it remains small in scope.

America’s apparently limitless indulgence of Israel has also been on display in Gaza, where Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly rebuffed Mr Biden’s frequent calls for a ceasefire, more humanitarian aid and a plan for after the war. 

Arab diplomats are flabbergasted: the president and his aides, they marvel, must be extremely gullible or alarmingly dissembling. 

Either they naively accept endless hollow pledges from Mr Netanyahu or they secretly agree with his goals even as they insist otherwise.

In fact, the explanation for America’s diffidence is probably more complicated than that. 

For one thing, Mr Biden’s aides are divided. 

Some probably do agree with Israel’s tactics, even if there is broad support among American diplomats for a tougher line. 

What is more, policy on Israel has become enmeshed in American domestic politics. 

Mr Biden’s administration both wants to ward off criticism from the right that it is siding with terrorists against a close ally and at the same time demonstrate some friction with Israel, not least because it worries about the political consequences in Michigan, a swing state with a big Arab population, of too close an embrace of Mr Netanyahu. 

Either way, Mr Netanyahu has shown himself willing time and again to ignore America’s objections.

But even if Israel has Iran and its allies on the defensive, and is unlikely to be restrained by America, its ever-expanding war may still go wrong. 

For one thing, there is no guarantee that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear programme would succeed. 

Israeli insiders, in their more candid moments, admit that the chance to set it back significantly with air strikes may have passed: the relevant facilities are too deeply buried and nuclear know-how too widely dispersed. 

Bombing might hold Iran up for only a few months, some speculate.

What is more, there are limits to what a country of 10m, already straining from a year’s war on multiple fronts, can do. 

Two of the Israel Defence Forces’ six combat divisions are deployed in Gaza. 

They are skirmishing with Hamas fighters and destroying parts of the intricate tunnel network under Gaza. 

Two further divisions are already involved in the ground campaign in Lebanon, and more are poised to join.

Although Israel insists its campaign in Lebanon will be “limited”, past operations there have tended to balloon. 

The IDF has instructed residents to leave dozens of towns and villages across southern Lebanon and to move beyond the Awali river, some 60km north of the border.

 “Lebanon is a vortex that has swept us in before,” warns Tamir Hayman, a former IDF general and the head of the Institute for National Security Studies, a think-tank in Tel Aviv.

To maintain its current level of deployment the IDF has had to call up tens of thousands of reservists, many of them for three lengthy stints of duty since October 7th. 

Some nonetheless complain that the IDF lacks sufficient manpower. 

“We don’t have enough men or tanks to carry out a large operation in Lebanon,” says a reserve officer who has been called up. 

“And whatever they’re saying in public, it’s clear that this is what is being planned.”

The ongoing war is also harming Israel’s economy. 

GDP is still shrinking year-on-year and in recent days two rating agencies, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, have downgraded Israel’s government debt. 

The prolonged absence of so many reservists is hurting businesses of all sorts. 

Railway stations have been forced to shut down for lack of security guards.

Mr Netanyahu has promised Israelis “complete victory”, but has not defined what that means with respect to Gaza, much less Lebanon or Iran. 

Just before the Iranian missiles hit on October 1st, two Palestinians from the West Bank city of Hebron killed seven people and injured 16 in a stabbing and shooting spree at a commuter-rail station in Jaffa, to the south of Tel Aviv. 

Mr Netanyahu may believe Israel’s future hinges on the defeat of distant foes like Iran, but however that conflict goes, Israelis and Palestinians will still be living cheek-by-jowl. 

Even this most tumultuous of years has not changed that.