Short of bombing Tehran, there was no bigger escalation available to Israel than attempting to kill Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, but that is exactly what it did on Friday evening.
It is a gamble extraordinaire. The repercussions may be huge, and felt for years to come.
The first signs of a decisive Israeli move came as huge blasts and secondary explosions ripped through the southern suburbs of Beirut as the sun fell on the Lebanese capital on Friday evening.
Witnesses said they had never seen explosions like it, and certainly not since Israel’s last war there in 2006.
At the time of writing it is not clear if Nasrallah, a hero to millions on the Shia Arab Street, was killed but that Israel was targeting him there seems little doubt.
Whether he survives or not, the consequences of the attempted assassination of Nasrallah are likely to be profound.
Hezbollah is seen by Iran as its deterrent in the region: a powerful military force it relies on to keep Israel from striking it directly.
If Israel is willing not just to degrade it but to decapitate it, that strategy, that chess piece, will be gone and the fragile balance of power between Israel and Iran fundamentally changed.
Israel is in effect signalling that it is ready to take on Iran directly and is challenging the world’s biggest and most powerful Shia Arab nation to hit back, if it dares.
“There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that is true of the entire Middle East,” said Benjamin Netanyahu in his UN speech.
“And now I have a question to you: will your nation stand with Israel? Will you stand with democracy and peace? Or will you stand with Iran, a brutal dictatorship that subjugates its own people? Exports terrorism across the globe?”
It’s not clear if Mr Netanyahu regards that as a rhetorical question. After all, all Israel’s allies, including the UK, were until hours ago pushing him to urgently de-escalate.
Moreover, when Iran launched a massive drone and missile strike against Israel in April, it was a US-led coalition including the UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Jordan that swung into action to shoot most of the missiles down.
Will they come together to do it again if Iran attacks Israel directly in response to the strike against the leader of it’s most powerful terrorist proxy?
That’s the question Iran will be mulling now as it plots its revenge. And given that several of the countries involved walked out of the UN chamber as Mr Netanyahu stood up to speak, the answer is not at all clear.
Source Agencies
