The Expanding War

There are some signs that the war between Israel and Hamas is expanding into a regional conflict. I’ve already mentioned the increased shelling of northern Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon. U. S. military bases in Iraq and Syria have come under fire lately. In the Wall Street Journal Michael R. Gordon, Nancy Youssef, and Gordon Lubold report:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Tuesday that Washington would react “swiftly and decisively” if Iran or its proxy forces attack U.S. personnel after Tehran raised the risk of a larger Middle East conflict in recent days by unleashing the regional militias it has spent years arming.

For more than six months, these Iranian-backed militia groups refrained from launching drones or rockets against American troops in Iraq and Syria, as part of what appeared to be an undeclared truce between Tehran and Washington.

That came to an abrupt end when U.S. officials said that Iran-backed groups launched 10 drone and rocket attacks against bases that U.S. troops use in Iraq and another three on a U.S. base in southeast Syria.

The attacks were carried out between Oct. 17 and Oct. 24. In one of the attacks at al-Asad air base in Iraq last week, U.S. troops shot a militia group’s drone out of the sky, where it fell atop of an American drone and destroyed it, U.S. military officials said.

In Yemen, the Iranian-backed Houthis also fired five Iranian-provided cruise missiles and launched about 30 drones toward Israel in an attack that was larger than initially described by the Pentagon, U.S. officials said.

Last week, the USS Carney guided missile destroyer, which was operating in the northern Red Sea, shot down four of the cruise missiles while a fifth cruise missile was intercepted by Saudi Arabia as it protected its airspace, according to people familiar with the episode. Those cruise missiles have a range of more than 2,000 kilometers (about 1,240 miles), the Pentagon said Tuesday, which would enable them to reach targets in Israel.

We may have the opportunity to see what the unit of measure of “swiftly and decisively” is soon. Other risks are also emerging. The active arms smuggling network from Iran to the West Bank also appears to have stepped up its activity. Also in the Wall Street Journal Sune Engel Rasmussen and Benoit Faucon report:

Iran is a patron of Hamas, which it over the years has supplied with money, weapons and training. But as Egypt has cracked down on smuggling routes through the Sinai Peninsula, which borders on the Gaza Strip, Hamas has become increasingly self-reliant on indigenously built weapons, especially rockets.

The bulk of Iranian weapons to Palestinians go into the West Bank, particularly to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group allied with Hamas, according to a senior Jordanian security official. The official said networks of smugglers, assisted by the Syrian government and Iranian-backed militias like Hezbollah, were growing.

“The weapons flow has really increased, specifically over the past year. This is because Iran has been much more focused on the West Bank recently, and trying to arm some of the groups there, especially the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is Iran’s more direct partner,” said Michael Horowitz, Israel-based head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a risk consulting firm.

The smuggling routes extend from Iran across Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk via RealClearPolitics expresses concern that we’re “sleepwalking into World War III”:

I think we are sleepwalking our way into World War Three, sleepwalking our way into World Wr Three with one foolish decision after another. Really, people should be deeply self-reflective. If they make their predictions have not come true. They should consider whether perhaps their predictions might not come true either.

The “bad decisions” didn’t just start recently. They’ve been made over the last 30 years at least. What I notice is that so many of the arguments being made in favor of the “bad decisions” are completely a priori and discussions devolve into name-calling if you dare contradict them. I have no doubt that the decisions are in sombody’s interest. I don’t see how they’re in the U. S. interest in any but the most indirect of ways.