ISRAEL’S policy of climbing the escalation ladder has now brought West Asia to the brink of a much larger war. With Israel entering Lebanon and Iran’s missile strikes on Israel, it is no longer about the fate of Gaza and its people, which has been under Israel’s genocidal attack for almost a year. The war is about to enter a new phase with Israel’s threatened response on Iran’s nuclear facilities and full US support. It risks drawing Yemen, Syria and Iraq into a much larger war with global implications well beyond the region. The new war-speak of escalating to de-escalate that the US and Israel have embraced fails to remember that First World War broke out despite no major country wanting a war as the parties climbed the escalator ladder, hoping the other side would then back off. To quote the American philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Except that this time, any war risks ending up with the use of nuclear weapons. If the US helps Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, we could see the beginning of a Third World War as Russia and China would find it hard to accept a return to a neocolonial West Asia.

Israel’s attacks in Gaza have destroyed all civic infrastructure, killed more than 42,000 people, destroyed more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s buildings, and internally displaced 1.9 million of its citizens (nine out of ten), most of them repeatedly. The war against Gaza’s population, most of them refugees displaced during the Nakba, continues. However, it is overshadowed by the extension of Israel’s war to Lebanon and now drawing Iran into it. Before we move on to the larger picture, it is important to remember that Israel has bombed Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing key diplomatic and military figures, attacked Syria, and still occupies not only the entirety of Palestine, promised as an independent state in the Oslo accords, which Israel has officially buried.

Why did Israel extend the Gaza War into Lebanon? The pager and walkie-talkie attacks, the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and the invasion of Lebanon do not make military sense. Even after almost a year, Israel has failed in its military objective of destroying the Hamas in Gaza, a tiny sliver of land. By itself, it makes no sense unless we factor in the two other Israeli objectives and couple them with the larger US-NATO strategic objectives in the region.

The weakening of the US control of West Asia (what the west or the Atlantic powers call the Middle East) and their inability to control the rise of Iran, its alienation from the Iraqi population after the US invasion there, and failure to enact a regime change in Syria, mean a threat to the Carter Doctrine. The doctrine stated that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its “national interests” in the Persian Gulf. In other words, the US believes that oil in the Gulf region is a part of the US “strategic reserves”. It also fits into why Israel is a militarised extension in the West, acts as an arm of the US and NATO, and why it has total support from the US and its NATO allies in Europe. This also explains why the US refuses to bury the hatchet with Iran, and why its regime change operation continues in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The extension of the Gaza War into Iran and Lebanon started with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas, who resided mainly in Qatar. His assassination took place in Tehran when he was attending the swearing-in of Iran’s new President Peshnian. In the earlier air strike against Israel, Iran had retaliated with a limited missile strike after informing the US and its allies of both the nature and the timing of the strike. This time the response to the assassination of Nasrallah was a much more powerful missile attack, many of which seemed to have got through the three-tier anti-missile defence of Israel – Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow batteries. According to the Military Watch Magazine, Israel suffered significant damage to its advanced squadrons of F-35s, headquartered in Nevatim Air Base and the older F-15s at Hatzerim Air Base. According to the website, “Footage from Israel has confirmed the impact of dozens of ballistic missiles which Israel’s air defence network failed to shoot down, with targets impacted including the headquarters of the intelligence agency Mossad, located in Tel Aviv, which was levelled by the attack.” If this analysis is indeed accurate, it would show the failure of Israel’s much-vaunted three-tier anti-missile defence and show that against a peer opponent, missile defence has significant weaknesses.

The West, the leaders of the self declared “Rule based World Order” – a handful of ex-colonial and settler colonial countries – have predictably screamed about how Iran violated international law and how there will be consequences. It was very unlike the approving noises that the rulers in the West made after Israel assassinated Nasrallah, and its booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies killed a number of Hezbollah members and other civilians. International law bars the use of such booby-trapped devices. Former CIA director Leon Panetta labelled the deadly pager explosions in Lebanon as terrorism, “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism.” ...“This is going right into the supply chain,” he added. “And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question: ‘What the hell is next?’” Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch said, “Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today.”

Again, on the assassination of Nasrallah, in which one complete block of high rise buildings in Beirut was demolished using US bunker buster bombs and US aircraft F-15s, the US had nothing to say about its weapons being used, causing civilian casualties and assassinating a leader of a political formation that participates in elections, carries out a range of social and welfare activities including hospitals, clinics and educational institutions. The bombs used were 2,000-pound bombs, including the US-made BLU-109, a total of 80,000 Kgs of explosives dropped by US-made F-15s to penetrate the underground bunker and the buildings above.

And how did the leader of the “Free World” respond to this blatant violation of international law? By congratulating Israel! The US media carried approving noises from the president of the US, and various fawning anchors, US spokespersons and various other “experts” seem hell-bent on widening the war in West Asia.

Those who remember history would know that Nasrallah became leader as a consequence of the occupation by Israel of southern Lebanon in 1982. Israel allied with right-wing militias in Lebanon to attack the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, killing 2,000-3,000 women and children, after the PLO fighters had left Lebanon under a peace agreement with Israel. It was in response to these massacres and the occupation of Southern Lebanon that Amal and the Communist Party of Lebanon jointly fought a war and forced Israel to finally withdraw in 2000. Hezbollah and Nasrallah were created out of this armed struggle. Hezbollah again fought Israel during its attack on Southern Lebanon in 2006 to push Hezbollah back to the east of the Litani River but failed, taking heavy losses. During this round of escalations in Lebanon, Israel has asked that Hezbollah vacate the Lebanese territory up to the Litani River. What Israel and the western media do not mention is that Hezbollah had agreed to do so, provided Israel accepts a ceasefire in Gaza. As Trita Parsi writes, “That was too much for Israel, and it opted instead for war because it knew Biden would once again line up behind Netanyahu.” And true to their belief, President Biden and Blinken, the foreign secretary, act as if they are Israel’s lawyers.

The march up the escalatory ladder – the threat of more escalation – and a physical attack by the US and Israel on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is very much on the cards, with Iran’s retaliation on the ammonia plant near Tel Aviv and the Dimona nuclear plant, both of which can cause immense damage to Israel and its civilian population. What is deeply disturbing is India’s complete abdication of its commitments to international law and abstaining in the United Nations when the majority of the countries have condemned Israel for its continuing genocide in Gaza. Believing the theory of multiple alignments, as the foreign minister has pronounced instead of non-alignment, obscures that the core of India’s non-alignment was the de-colonisation and solidarity of the Afro-Asian people. Without this core, India’s multiple alignments means isolation from what is moving the world: the final chapter in decolonising Africa and West Asia. This is what is being played out on the world stage, and it is this recognition that is making even NATO members come out against Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people.