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Iran’s attacks on Israel are the latest sign that conflict in the Middle East is intensifying, posing growing threats to global security

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Israeli police inspect a damaged school constructing in the southern city of Gedera after Iranian missile fire on October 1, 2024.
Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

How rather more dangerous has the Middle East turn out to be in recent weeks?

The Middle East is in a rather more unstable situation than it was a yr ago. This conflict has spread far beyond fighting, mainly between Israel and Hamas.

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Currently, Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in a conflict that has developed over the past yr and which appears to be more dangerous than the Israel-Hamas conflict. This involves exploitation Israeli special operations unitswhich have been secretly operating in Lebanon in small groups since November 2023. Moreover, Israel was accused by Hezbollah of conducting unconventional military operations – like exploding walkie-talkies and pagers – and launched lots of of air and missile attacks in Lebanon over the previous few weeks. The combination of those operations destroyed Hezbollah’s weapons caches and military infrastructure killed several senior leaders of the groupincluding Hassan Nasrallah.

The human costs of those attacks are significant because over 1,000 people died in Lebanon. It is unclear how a lot of this number were killed and injured actually Hezbollah fighters.

Israel and Hezbollah recently had one direct war in 2006which lasted 34 days and over 1,500 people died between Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah fighters. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been waging a shadow war – but not with the intensity and every day pattern we saw after October. 7 landscape.

Today, the conflict may spread well beyond the region and even to the entire world.

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What does Iran have to do with the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah?

Iran said fired rockets to Israel in retaliation for attacks on Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian army.

Coalition of groups and organizations now tagged as “Iranian”Axis of Resistance” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and senior military commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, have issued unified guidelines to all different elements, whether it is Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon or Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.

Before October 7, 2023, all of those groups were ideologically opposed to Israel to some extent. But additionally they struggled with their very own conflicts and didn’t rally around supporting Hamas. Now everyone has turn out to be more energetic around the common goal of destroying Israel.

In particular, Iran and Hezbollah have a deep relationship that dates back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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In 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon to thwart cross-border activities attacks the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Palestinian groups attacked Israel. Newly created Iranian The IRGC sent advisers and trainers to the south Lebanon to cooperate with like-minded Lebanese Shiite fighters who were already fighting there Civil war in Lebanon. They wanted to fight the Israeli army and elements of the so-called a multinational force consisting of American, French and other Western troops originally sent as peacekeepers to put an end to the fighting.

How does Hezbollah’s history help explain its actions today?

Relationships between Iranian experts and Lebanese fighters during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war led to the creation of Hezbollah as a small, secret group in 1982.

Over the next few years, Hezbollah launched a brutal campaign of terrorist attacks against American, French and other Western interests in Lebanon. The group then often known as Islamic Jihad was the first to attack US Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983. This attack killed 52 Lebanese and American embassy employees. However, at the time, U.S. intelligence personnel and other security experts were unsure who was accountable for the embassy bombing. And given this lack of information and insight into the matter Hezbollah as an emerging terrorist threatthe group aimed even higher in 1983.

After the attack on the embassy, ​​Hezbollah carried out October 1983 Marine barracks bombing in which 241 American service members died. Before the 9/11 attacks, it was the largest single act of international terrorism against the US

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Hezbollah was also responsible kidnapping and murder of American residentsincluding William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut. He also committed plane hijackings, including the infamous ones TWA 847 Incident in 1985, the yr a U.S. Navy diver was murdered.

Thus, Hezbollah has an extended history of regional and global terrorism.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is a form of parallel government to Lebanon. The Lebanese government has allowed Hezbollah to be a state inside a state, nevertheless it doesn’t cooperate in military operations. Currently, the Lebanese army doesn’t respond to Israeli attacks on Lebanon. This shows how dominant Hezbollah has turn out to be.

A large group of men hold red, white, black and green flags and stand together in the street.
Iranians march and hold Iranian flags after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a protest in Tehran, September 30, 2024.
Hossein Beris/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

How damaging are Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah?

Hezbollah clearly suffered fighter losses, but Hezbollah is a much larger group than Hamas and operates over a much larger physical territory throughout Lebanon.

It has a much larger stockpile of advanced weapons than Hamas ever had, and a big fighting force that encompasses it 40,000 to 50,000 regular forces organized in a standard military structure. It also has this 150,000 to 200,000 rocketsdrones and rockets of assorted ranges. He runs a dangerous global terrorist unit called the External Security Organization who attacked the interests of Israel and Jews in the US The Nineties in Argentina and Jewish tourists 2012 in Bulgaria.

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The Israeli military estimates that it has destroyed no less than half of Hezbollah’s existing weapons stockpile, depending on volume and intensity their activities over the previous few weeks. If true, it will pose a major challenge to Hezbollah’s long-term operational capability, which has taken many years to achieve.

What security risk does this evolving conflict pose to the United States?

Looking at how Hezbollah has demonstrated these capabilities over the course of 40 years, and given Israel’s current attacks on this militant group, it will not be far-fetched to speculate that Hezbollah has ordered or is considering some form of terrorist attack far beyond the country’s borders in the region – similar to what the group did in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. It is unclear what this conspiracy would appear like, how many individuals can be involved, or the possible goal of such an attack.

Hezbollah leaders said they blamed Israel for the attacks on it. About every week before Nasrallah died he said Israeli pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon “declaration of war” and “the enemy has crossed all red lines.”

Since then, Hezbollah has remained defiant, despite the group’s significant losses to Israel over the past few weeks. Questions also remain about how Hezbollah’s leaders will similarly hold the United States accountable for Israel’s actions. And in that case, would this mean a return to the form of terrorism that Hezbollah inflicted on American interests in the region in the Nineteen Eighties? As recent events have shown, the world faces a dangerous and unstable security environment in the Middle East.

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International

What is a drug captagon and how is it related to the fallen regime of Syria Assad?

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After the fall of the Al-Assad regime in Syria Apparently it was discovered.

It is believed that the supplies, found by Syrian rebels, are related to the al-Assad military seat, implying the fallen regime In the production and distribution of the drug.

But as we are going to see, Captagon was once a pharmaceutical drug, similar to some of the legally available stimulants, which we still use in conditions, including hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

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Captagon was once a pharmaceutical

Captagon is the original brand of the old synthetic pharmaceutical stimulator originally Made in Germany in the Nineteen Sixties. It was another to amphetamine and methamphetamine, which were then used as drugs.

The drug has energetic ingredient Phenetic And initially it was sold to the conditions, including ADHD and NARKOPSY Sleep disorder. It had a similar application to some of the legally available stimulants that we still use, resembling demfetamine.

Captagon has Similar effects For amphetamines. It increases dopamine in the brain, which leads to a sense of well -being, pleasure and euphoria. It also improves concentration, concentration and endurance. But it has many unwanted unintended effects, resembling low level psychosis.

The drug was originally sold mainly in the Middle East and part of Europe. It was available without a prescription (without a prescription) in Europe for a short time before it only became prescription.

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It was approved only briefly in the United States before it became a substance controlled in the Eighties, but it was still legal to treat narcolepsy in lots of European countries until recently.

According to International Drug Control Council Captagon pharmaceutical production stopped until 2009.

Illegal trade took control

The illegally produced version is often referred to as a captagon (with small C). Sometimes it is called “Chemical courage“Because it is believed that it is utilized by soldiers in war -torn areas of the Middle East to help them in focus and energy.

For example, apparently it was found on The bodies of Hamas soldiers During the conflict with Israel.

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Its production is relatively easy and inexpensivemaking him an obvious goal of drug trafficking on the black market.

Black Captagon market It is now almost exclusively produced in Syria and nearby countries, resembling Lebanon. It is most frequently utilized in the Middle East, including recreationally In some states of the Persian Gulf.

This is one of the most commonly used illegal drugs in Syria.

AND Last report He suggests that Captagon generated over USD 7.3 billion in Syria and Lebanon in 2020–2022 (about $ 2.4 billion a 12 months).

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We learn about illegal drugs normally that every one attacks or repression about production or sales have a very limited impact on the drug market, because one other manufacturer or distributor appears to satisfy demand.

So, almost certainly, given the size of the Captagon market in the Middle East, the latest drug discoveries and convulsions will probably reduce production just for a short time.

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Who is the new Prime Minister of Syria – what will he do?

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Dressed in a modest gray suit and tie with a lightweight blue shirt, bald and bearded, 41-12 months-old Mohammed al-Bashir turned to his Syrians on Tuesday from behind his desk in an empty conference room. Asking for “stability and peace”, he announced that he will be the head of the transitional government until March 1.

Less than two weeks ago, each such address can be provided by Bashar Al-Assad, a brutal dictator who supervised the killing of a whole lot of 1000’s of Syria residents and displacement of over 11 million.

But the Assad regime and 54 years of single-family rule collapsed after the 11-day rebel offensive. He and his wife Asma They were smuggled Damascus by Russian intelligence officers who flew them to Moscow.

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Bashir talked to his compatriots full of hope, but in addition not vital what may occur. I will thank for his position of the Islamist fraction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which conducted the Coalition of Rebellia, which overturned Assad. From the starting of 2024, Bashir was the political head of the Syrian government of salvation (SSG), the administration of the opposition area run by HTS in northwestern Syria.

Supported by Turkey, HTS and SSG ensured the management and measure of stability in the part of the Idlib and Aleppo provinces since November 2017, but they were also accused by Human rights groups abuse of power and discrimination of religious and ethnic minorities. Despite the breaking from Al-Qaeda in 2016, HTS is also designated as “terrorist” by the UN, USA, Great Britain and a few European countries.

In an interview with Italy Corriere della cheese In the newspaper on December 11, Bashir was asked about the HTS past. He replied: “The necessary actions of some Islamist groups led many people, especially in the West, to associate Muslims with terrorism and Islam with extremism. There were errors and misunderstandings that distorted the true importance of Islam, which is a “religion of justice.” Precisely because we are Islamic, we guarantee the rights of all people and all communities in Syria. “

Syrian rebels pose a Syrian opposition flag at Homs, Syria.
Mohammed to Rifa Muhammad to Rifai / EPA

Aiming towards stability

Born in the Idlib Province, Bashir graduated from electric engineering at the University of Aleppo in 2007. He worked at the Syrian gas company, and after the start of the Syrian Uprising in March 2011, he was the director of the institution ensuring education for youngsters to children affected by conflict. In 2021 he obtained a second degree of Sharia and law at the University of Idlib.

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The Prime Minister is an indispensable technocratic contrast with the HTS Ahmed Al-Sharaa leader, before Abu Mohammed Al-Golani. It was the latter who drew all international attention and questions after the fall of Assad.

IN Interview with Sky News After displacing the previous government, Al-Sharaa turned to other countries: “Their fears are unnecessary, a willing God. Fear comes from the presence of the regime (Assad). The country is heading towards development and reconstruction. He goes towards stability. ”

Bashir is the face of this stability. When the rebels moved south of Idlib and Aleppo to free Hama City at the starting of this month, not only the “new dawn of freedom and dignity”, but promised: “We promise you in the government of salvation that we are involved in meeting your expectations, rebuilding your city to return them to the leading civilized status … It is a day of joy and pride, but it is also a day of work and work and responsibility.”

This seek for responsibility and ID is far more than the prime minister. Shortly after his Tuesday, Bashir reported a gathering with members of the Old Government and a few administration directors in Idlib and the surrounding area “to facilitate all necessary work for the next two months.”

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Technocrats are already developing administration plans by reviewing the regime’s bureaucracy. Mohammad Yasser Ghazal, delegated from Idlib to managing the city of Damascus, he said: “Everything will become one. All government bodies will be resolved: without the government of salvation, no faction, nothing. Everything was all in one Syrian republic. “

In the face of the legacy of the regime in the field of corruption, buddies and centralized power, new officials asked the heads of departments to say their messages and explain the function of their department. They I met the staff Quoting government textbooks from the Nineteen Thirties and Sixties, while not answering direct questions on their duties or decision making.

Fast movements in the early days

There are early days, but up to now a fast transition to the rebels, and now government governments have been largely peaceful together with the continuation of services and on a regular basis business. Rebels issued an announcement Promotion of respect for all minorities. And in the face of plunder possibilities, they warned against any destruction of public or private property and imposed a police night.

The tools have been maintained. In Aleppo City, one of the first acts was to put in new cells of mobile phones. The economic system has been secured and the airports will soon be opened again. Remuneration, which amounted to a mean of around $ 25 ($ 19.80) per 30 days as part of the regime, will be increased According to SSG remuneration, as much as around $ 100 per 30 days.

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A complete amnesty was declared for army soldiers, police and protection staff, provided that they submitted documents regarding official patchy and identification cards. Hundreds The men lined up in the queue In hours after the Aleppo trial.

Two armed men look at the road.
Two armed men are watching the way in Damascus in Syria on December 11.
Friends / EPA

Individual acts of revenge were reported in relation to some data related to the regime. One of the performed was Jalal al-Daqqaq, who was involved in Killing over 200 detainees in SyriaApparently, feeding the throats for pets.

However, there was a general compliance with the rebel order to avoid violence. Posts on X suggest that sources from minority sects, including Druze, Ismailiis and Alawites (whose members include Assads), confirm That all revenge operations weren’t ethnically motivated.

The new government is aware that maintaining security and services is a great politics. Because the Assad regime leaves the basketball economy, in addition to mutilated society, international help will be useful.

To be obtained, HTS will must be faraway from the UN, the USA and European Black. Ghazal sums up that technocrat plans “require political recognition (and addressing) a terrorist designation, which, I think, soon.”

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But good politics will also must persuade abnormal Syrians who lived under the regime. In the store selling freshly printed Syrian revolutionary flags in Damascus, the seller of Fadi Al-Myly was asked by Washington Post to discover the new prime minister. He couldn’t. But whoever he is: “We don’t want him” The butterfly said. “We want choices.”

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Why does Israel attack Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad?

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Benjamin Netanyahu was satisfied with the fall of Bashar Al-Assad This month and claimed that his decision to fight Hamas and Hezbollah contributed to “changing the Middle East face.” Since then, Israel has began the largest bomb campaign in the Syrian land since the war of Jom Kippur in 1973.

The Israeli army also invaded to ascertain a buffer zone between Golan Heights and the territory of Syria, using the highest and most strategic area on the border of Syria.

Israel’s statements and actions are proof that he’s satisfied with the fall of a key element in the resistance axis of Iran, but in addition that it considers it to be a gaggle of rebels that took power in Damascus. In the light of this Israel adopts the “better safe than sorry” approach: while the intentions of the latest Syrian government remain unclear, Israel tries to make the country toothless.

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According to Israel’s defense forces, their 600 strokes They destroyed about 80% of the military abilities of the former Assad army. Israel also tries to make sure the freedom to act in the sky of Syria for a few years – the first goals that might be destroyed were all air defense systems.

What does Israel want in Syria?

Israel’s wtchody strives for several goals. The first is to guard strategic areas, from which attacks could be launched towards Syria or Israel. The second is to create a buffer zone between two countries, and thus avoiding surprise, akin to Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. The third is to amass a negotiating system for possible negotiations with the latest Syrian regime. If Damascus desires to regain these territories, he may have to indicate the value of good will and negotiate with Israel, one other case of the well -known Israel diplomatic strategy.

Israel celebrates Assad’s fall because he breaks the loop that Iran patiently tightened around Israel’s borders in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Pincer Tehran is now broken and has grow to be useless. From the point of view of Israel’s broader conflict with the Islamic Republic, the fall of the Assad regime is a strategic victory.

However, the groups that defeated Assad (and what Iran) in Syria are unlikely to indicate a friendly approach to Israel. Hence Israel’s caution: if Syria goes into anarchy or grow to be a state of jihadists, they need to make sure that she lacks tools for his or her box.

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What is left of the Iran resistance axis?

Axis of resistance-with what only pro-Iranian militia grouped at Iraqi with Popular mobilization forces And Houth in northern Yemen stays intact – that they had as a tool each to attain the regional hegemony of Tehran and to stop the possible attack on Iran.

The point was that if the US or Israel had ever dared to bomb or attack Iran, Tehran prompts the axis of resistance, thus plunged the region into chaos. Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen were dormant volcanoes ready for explosion, but with three of these volcanoes already deactivated, the Islamic Republic now needs one other real deterrent agent.

However, Israel’s indirect victory over Iran in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria can ultimately generate a good greater threat, because the simplest and most radical solution in the 12 months of Iran’s failure can be to desert any ambiguity and the development of nuclear weapons.

Pretzel are clear: the only regimes and countries that survive are such arsenal. People who deprived their nuclear programs weren’t accomplished – Libya, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine – suffered inventory changes or regimes.

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Tehran knows that completing a nuclear program can be a degree with out a return. This would offer guarantees against a foreign attack on its territory, however it would also mean international insulation.

However, Iran just isn’t North Korea. This just isn’t a rustic that may easily cut off from the world, because such a movement could cause economic and social shocks, which in turn can result in rebellions that will overthrow the regime. It may result in the development of military nuclear programs in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which might not also serve the interests of Iran.

The Islamic Republic is subsequently in the face of a difficult alternative on easy methods to proceed restoring balance in the face of the loss of Damascus. For its part, Israel will rigorously watch how his victory develops.

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