The Iran-Israel conflict in the light of regional and global geopolitical (revisionist) antagonisms

Dionysis Pantis* Iran's second missile attack on Israel (True Promise II) in less than five months is in itself news of great geopolitical importance.

To explain: it became possible and reflects a regional and global power shift. In this paper we present an approach to the current crisis in the light of regional and global power shifts. Iran's first attack on Israel on 13 April 2024 (True Promise 1) is in itself a major change in the Middle East region. For the first time, Israel was confronted with a state adversary that could impose "retaliation" on its territory, aspiring to balance its power, which until then had been absolutely dominant in the region. In other words, up to that point, Israel could act as it wished without suffering any significant consequences, without any effective deterrent countermeasures. It could also escalate military actions - operations (it had what is referred to in the international literature as escalation dominance) without a meaningful adversary. This escalation dominance is being challenged, at the risk of Israel's escalation dominance being circumscribed: that is, the possibility of retaliation may, by increasing the risk of high - and in any case calculable - costs, prevent it from taking certain actions that are considered by the adversary to be red lines and that 'ensure' a painful response. On the other hand, Iran aspires independently and autonomously (not through proxies) to secure the possibility of demarcating Israel and to gain control of the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East (or West Asia) both in terms of the time factor, the place (within the territory of the adversary) and the intensity (we see a change in intensity between the two operations of April 13 and October 1 but also a ... future promise of an "unconceivable" next "response"). . Iran had previously created or strengthened organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi Shiite militias, which the West and Israel describe as terrorist organizations, but also Syrian President Assad and Assad-led Syria and the Houthies regime in the horn of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, creating a vast network of organizations and regimes hostile to Israel and the West in the region. But for all its complexity and intensity, this network could operate mainly by (and for) harassing Israel, with clearly inferior technological means, and by keeping Iran itself out of the war. Iran has thus managed, in the past, to keep Israel and the US busy dealing with this network that it was strengthening, keeping peace (as it can be defined in the much-troubled Middle East or West Asia) for itself. Despite all the sanctions and extreme aggressive rhetoric against it, the inclusion of Iran by the US in the "forces of evil", the problems in its economy from isolation and sanctions, its crushing of the war with Iraq, and its deliberately "third-party" bad relations with the Gulf Kingdoms, Iran managed, in the critical decades of the 1990s and 2000-2010 2010- 2020 to remain virtually unscathed. That is, at the time when the US had remained the sole superpower, the notorious - albeit temporary - "Unipolar Moment" of the world system, Iran "artfully" avoided a catastrophe similar to the one suffered Iraq from the US and the US led coalition "of the willing”. Although other factors (such as the high costs and the internal questioning of whether the Gulf war’s served indeed the real geopolitical interests of the US) may have contributed to the reluctance of the US to follow the Iraq destruction model to Iran, here we have a good application and example of "plus Athena and minus a hand" and the principle of self-protection of states. In a strange irony of "fate" and a high geopolitical lesson for those who choose or do not understand the enormous risks involved in taking on the burdens of others (bandwagoning - transferring the burden of deterrence from one power to another), instead of Iran suffering the active "reshaping" of the Middle East by the "neoconservative" USA, it was its main competitor that was wrecked: President Saddam's Iraq, the one that methodically attempted and succeeded in crushing Iran with a war of attrition, having borne this burden, intentionally or not, mainly on behalf of the US and its strategy of dealing with Iran. This is not a matter of luck, but of a high strategy of deception, crushing third parties and moving the war away from its borders via third party proxies, thus keeping Iran's declared enemies "busy" with more immediate (and ... noisy) threats. Although other factors helped, the existence of this Iranian strategy was a de facto decisive deterrent. Plus, with a combination of various types of drones and missiles that it systematically and methodically mass-produced in the previous decades when its enemies were busy with Iraq, Hezbollah, Hamas etc. who ... travelled for two hours in the first operation and 181 ballistic supersonic missiles for 12 minutes in the second operation True Promise (!) a sufficient number of them passed the best air defense system in the world : that of Israel even with the help of American and other to intercept, including British and Jordanian anti-aircraft and air force. These two operations which Iran meaningfully calls True Promise 1 and 2 "promise", among other things, a major change in the Middle East (West Asia) periphery. The game of “this for that”, of power, escalation, retaliation, propaganda, disinformation, more or less painful strikes - but affecting the civilian populations morale and international opinion - that Israel and Iran are engaged in continues and everyone, enemies and friends alike (?) are waiting to see how it will end so that they can ... take advantage of any power vacuum created. In this calculating and ruthless game are directly and indirectly involved regional antagonists of the two parties involved and Major Powers of the two Global geopolitical blocs that reinforce and protect each one their regional ally and, in particular, Turkey and the Gulf Kingdoms, the main regional competitors of Israel and Iran on the one hand and the two now formed geopolitical blocs that are more or less covertly clashing for world domination with the ambition to define and control the New Multipolar (?) World Order: Namely the Euro-Asian one under China and Russia and the Western one under the USA. Turkey, given its revisionist regional and global ambitions, is preparing to take advantage of any opportunity that presents itself. It aspires to present itself as the hegemonic Muslim power regionally and globally at the expense of Iran and the Gulf Arab kingdoms, the only power that can defend the Ummah of Islam.

In particular, a significant weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon may give Turkey the opportunity to project power in Lebanon, filling the gap of the Shiite organization with a possible dividing line (as a natural border) the Litani River in Lebanon where the northern part will be under its influence and perhaps gain a "border" with Israel and access from Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea and its wealth. It has therefore pushed forward anti-aircraft systems and radar along with the necessary logistics and transport facilities awaiting developments on the ground and the green light from President Assad, Russia, possibly the US and the Lebanese political leadership (also ensuring against a possible resumption of civil war). Turkey's advantage is its industrial infrastructure and base and its significant war industry and technology, unique in the Muslim world. It is also developing a high-profile, extreme, anti-Israeli rhetoric. With the power its industrial and defense base gives Turkey, it can and does exploit, by increasing its geopolitical foothold throughout the Middle East, the cultural and ethnological "remnants" (as in the Balkans, Caucasus, North Africa and the Turkic origins of Central Asian states that came to the geopolitical surface after the collapse of the former USSR) of the last Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire. However, the Ottoman past is also the starting point for the significant inhibiting disadvantages of Turkish ambitions: Turkey's reduced credibility/trust in the Arab World due to the traumatic national experience of the Ottoman Empire's occupation of the Arabs and Turkey's organic integration into the post-war Western security system through its participation in NATO. And the Turkish revisionists, reminiscing about the era of Ottoman rule over the Arabs, like Western neo-colonialism and Israel, are committing the same mistake in this case: they underestimate the Arabs. They do not take into account that the past of the Arab Hegemony, through the vast Arab Empire/Islamic Caliphate, from the Arabian Peninsula to Iberia, gives them the "spirit" that seeks independence, but also sovereignty, "remembering" the Arab leadership and Arab "popular" soul its cultural, political, military, military, technological, economic superiority in the glorious past. And they may not be able to directly confront Israel at the present juncture, because of their technological inferiority and their economic and defense dependence, but they are in no way reconciled to this reality. The US has been a forced ally for the Gulf Kingdoms in the era of the unipolar moment (1989-2017) and in the period of the bipolar world between the West and the Warsaw Pact, because of the dominance of the US in the world economy, in World Trade, both as a key consumer of Kingdoms unique product, oil, and of its maritime trade routes, its extraction technology and its distribution and control system of key customer-buyers. But today, the time is strongly revisionist. Geopolitical power is now distributed among more players, key ones of which are outside the geopolitical area of the Western World. The Eurasian alliance (centered in particular on China but also Russia and a number of regional allies such as Iran, North Korea, South Africa and other countries of the African continent etc. ) that has formed against American sovereignty which through technology blockades, investment, markets, financial hegemony and military supremacy is an obstacle to their national and economic ambitions has significantly counterbalanced Western power. There is now an alternative source of funding for economic and infrastructure development, military assistance and technology transfer. Iran is a reliable and indispensable ally of the Euro-Asian bloc: it is helping Russia considerably in the war against Ukraine. Similarly, Russia is strengthening Iran's security with critical weapons systems, information, diplomatic assistance and transfer of know-how. China also strengthens Iran which serves its revisionist ambitions by "resisting" Iran as a permanent opponent of US hegemony in the Middle East (or as the Euro-Asian geopolitical analysis that opposes the "European" worldview prefers West Asia as the term Middle East defines the region in terms of its proximity to Europe), it also buys Iranian oil, strengthening Iran's economy which the US is trying to bring to its knees and is implementing its own policy with the main axes of 1) mediation between Iran and the Gulf Kingdoms in order to normalize the "artificial" fomentation of religious and ethnic differences between two historical nations created by Great Britain first and then by the US, the Persian nation and the Arab nation and two main versions of Islam (Shiite Islam with Iran as its main centre and Sunni Islam with Arabs and I particular Saudi Arabia as its main centre - in ... to the dismay of the Turks - ) and 2) the inclusion of Iran, as a continuation of Afghanistan and Pakistan (hence the separatist ambitions of Baluchistan of western Pakistan, using the Kurdish "model") , in the southern Silk Road by strengthening partnerships in infrastructure and investment . For Russia, Iran is doubly important. Iran's already very high geopolitical value for Russia was boosted by the eventual conclusion of the much sought-after Moscow-Baku-Tehran-Chabahar corridor (in the Iranian south port where investments are planned to deepen it to make it capable of receiving large container ships, bulk carriers, etc.). This very important agreement serves both Russia’s interests, which finds a way out to the Indian Ocean and, by extension, the Pacific Ocean, as well as Iran’s Iran, whose geopolitical role is strengthened, gaining another "guarantee" of Russia's help in its competition with Israel, but also Turkeys interests, which, through its mediation in Azerbaijan, receives in return the Russian and probably also the Iranian consent to the creation of the Shunik (Zagezur) corridor: its road and rail link through Nakhichevan and the Armenian Shunik region connecting Turkey not only with Azerbaijan, but also with all the Turkic republics of Central Asia, realizing one of its key geopolitical ambitions of connecting Turkey (and thus influencing) with Central Asia. By concluding the two crucial trade corridors Azerbaijan won, Armenia lost a lot and Israel, which supported Azerbaijan in the war against Armenia, humiliating it [perhaps this agreement justifies the risk of the dangerous trip in the fatal helicopter to Azerbaijan of the "unlucky" President of Iran Raisi, which led to his death] seems as it has been "betrayed", . Accordingly: 1. The acquisition of the arsenal that Iran is using to try to change the facts in the Middle East (West Asia) is the result of the revisionist era and especially the diffusion of the missile and other necessary technology to produce such technologically advanced ballistic supersonic missiles that can deliver precision strikes to Israel at distances of more than 1200 km. It creates in the Iranian leadership, precisely because of Iran's significant and upgraded geopolitical importance and the credibility of the Euro-Asian bloc needed at the critical juncture of the final revision of the world system imposed by Western domination, the reasonable belief that it will be strengthened, if not protected, by Israel's countermeasures. The Gulf Kingdoms, conservative by nature, measure, calculate, distance themselves, and form partnerships. After all, their major customers are no longer in the West, but in East Asia and the Pacific. In the era of bipolarism and/or the "unipolar moment" that the planet went through, the Gulf Kingdoms could not directly confront Israel and the West that supported it, despite their economic power given by the petrodollar. This economic wealth was not enough to break the West's strategy of always keeping them one generation behind technologically, in relation to the weapons systems the West provided Israel. However, because of the existing and decisive "memory" of past domination (and of the petrodollar, of course), the Arabs decisively denied Western cultural imperialism, turning to their national and religious identity, often with extreme severity. They also managed to create and maintain an "underground" propaganda substrate that consumed the Western narrative (with their "subservience" to the West as an undercurrent), sawing off the moral foundations of the Western justificatory narrative of Western imperialist policy and denied and continue to deny the final solution sought by the US in the Middle East and in relation to the Palestinians in Israel, refusing to "cooperate" in the neoconservative New Middle East, and the liquidation of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by "transferring" them elsewhere, exposing the "operators" to long-term damage to the moral and institutional legitimacy of the "formation" of the "new Middle East" they seek, "leading" them to ever more extreme acts of extreme violence and methodically projecting it in such a way as to "expose" the bias and "hypocrisy" of the (ally and ... protector of the Kingdoms) West ! The Western arrogance and superiority "blinds" so much that this subtle strategy is not perceived, even today when, as we said before, the distribution of world power players is changing negatively for the West and Arab media have a global impact and shape international public opinion. But also Turkey finds in the Gulf Kingdoms its natural regional competitor (in the Middle East or West Asia) which, together with Israel and Iran, constitutes the Middle East system of regional competition.

The Gulf Kingdoms control the Organization of the Islamic Conference which they have established to serve, among other goals, this subtle strategy. They also control the Holy Places of the Muslim world, namely Medina and Mecca, giving them an objective comparative advantage. But they are also owners and ... users (necessary investors) of the coveted oil (petro-) dollars! The complementarily of Arab capital/investments/oil on the one hand and the Turkish-Islamic industrial infrastructure on the other, creates a basis for forced cooperation in order to serve each side's own strategic objectives. But for the Arabs of the Gulf, the destruction of Iran no longer seems as tempting as it did in the past for Turkey. In the context of the new world system (order) as promoted by the Euro-Asian bloc, they understand the importance of the Arabian Peninsula and Arab oil for China. The stabilization of Iran is likely to decisively upgrade the geopolitical importance of the Arabian Peninsula and the leader of the Gulf Kingdoms, Saudi Arabia, as the region that, by necessity, due to geography, will be the necessary corridor linking East Asia with the African continent, providing enormous opportunities to enhance the geopolitical role of Saudi Arabia and the prestige of the Saudi Royal House. Thus they are no longer as eager to take action or to support action, against Iran. The US in the midst of this whole Middle East world event seems confused. It has staked almost all its strategic potential on the success of Russian crushing and capitulation or its disintegration and change of political leadership, which would give it an absolute advantage over its main competitor, China, (basic strategy) without disrupting the profitability of its multinationals and billionaires that operate there (in China). In addition to bringing the Russian wealth-producing resources under the West’s control by the success of this basic strategy, it would also deprive China of them as an alternative supply for its industry, forcing it to accept the 'international, law-based order' of the Liberal International Order (LIO) or as it is otherwise called, the Rules-Based International Order (RBIO). Then all other issues (Iran, Middle East in general, Gulf Kingdoms etc) would be 'properly' settled. But now, even with the destruction of Iran by possible overwhelming Israeli strikes, it does not seem that the US will be able to benefit from its main challenge, that of confronting revisionist China. The pressures on the scattered military forces available in the region and the inability of the US Navy to operate in the Persian Gulf because of the many risks involved are very likely to amount to a major blow to US interests in the region. At the same time they could give China the opportunity to move either in the South China Sea resort or against Taiwan itself. In this case the US would find itself involved in one way or another in three simultaneous war resorts, all "on fire". In Ukraine, in the Middle East and 3rd in the (NW) Pacific. The obvious danger for Israel and Ukraine is that the US may be forced to choose to put additional emphasis on containing China in the Pacific rather than supporting it. The crisis in the Middle East will probably continue even after more or less successful countermeasures by one or the other, increasing the risk of even the most elementary data of the actors. The arrogance created by the absence of an efficient balance of power in the region , before the emergence of the new regional and global developments, some of which we mentioned above, may even lead to unwise escalation actions (which do not take into account the new data). In this case the risks for the participants are indeed great but also are great for the world order and the maintenance of worlds peace. The most likely remains that, despite the extreme rhetoric and propaganda, the states staffs will realistically take into account the data and de facto limit their actions, taking into account on a realistic basis gains and losses. They all have the necessary information and data. Otherwise, the Middle East (West Asia) will follow the Ukrainian example and will become a much more violent "amplifier" of rapid geopolitical developments that will test the strengths of the global system, state and superstate structures, with very real threats to world peace, precisely because critical interests of all the major world powers, but also of important regional competitors, are involved. *Dionysis Pantis, Lawyer, geopolitical analyst For more articles by Dionysis Panti, Geopolitical Analyst and former advisor to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you can find them at the following link: https://www.ibnaeu.com/?s=%CE%94%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B7+%CE%A0%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%AE https://www.ibnaeu.com/?s=%CE%94%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%CF%8D%CF%83%CE%B7+%CE%A0%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%AE