The question of how to define victory in the current war with Iran is central to the debate over how the war is going. That makes sense—but it doesn’t account for the minor victories along the way that may turn out to be world-changing.
Part of the problem is tunnel vision: If Iran capitulates, we’re told, then it loses. If not, it wins.
But what if, while the war seems to be at an interlude (or a standoff, depending on how you look at it), Iran’s coalition is falling apart right before its eyes?
Iran is an imperial power, which means it relies on perimeter strength. This means armies away from the spotlight that provide reinforcements and redirect its opponent, safe zones to rebuild capabilities during the war, places for its personnel to hide, and—in Iran’s case, the real innovation—locating proxy forces within other sovereign states whose borders are intended to be one-way glass: Iran can shoot out from them but no one’s supposed to shoot in. Last, Iran is counting on a ring of immunity—states from which the U.S. and Israel cannot operate directly.
And all of that is crumbling.
Over the weekend, we got the news that Israel had given the United Arab Emirates, nestled mere miles across the water from Iran, Iron Dome missile-defense batteries. Moreover, these batteries require Israeli troops to operate and manage.
The significance of Israeli troops and U.S.-Israeli joint missile projects being stationed on Arab soil within spitting distance of Iranian territory cannot be overstated. True, these are defensive weapons, so they are not launching pads for IDF infiltration of Iran; but the symbolism of an overt UAE-Israeli warfighting effort against Iran, not to mention the fact that the UAE is protected by Israel from a certain amount of Iranian retaliation, is groundbreaking.
“It was a real eye-opening moment,” an Emirati official told Axios. “To see who our real friends are.”
The real friends of the Arab states, that is, are the U.S. and Israel.
Iran is far less insulated than it thought it was. The Islamic Republic built a “ring of fire” to surround Israel, but it finds itself on the way to being surrounded at home.
Meanwhile, how’s that ring of fire doing?
Amit Segal reports that top Hamas man Khalil al-Hayya “left his five-star exile in Qatar for what was intended to be a quick diplomatic trip to Cairo. After summarily rejecting a U.S.-backed disarmament proposal that offered a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, he received a text message notifying him that he had been evicted from his luxury lodgings and was officially barred from re-entering the country. It is every vacationer’s worst nightmare.”
Hopefully he has an Airbnb account or a friend with a couch. As Segal notes, Qatar didn’t take such a massive step toward cutting ties with Hamas after October 7. It’s doing so now because the U.S.-led alliance against Iran is expanding and forcing the region’s players to choose sides. America has a base in Qatar, and its relationship with Washington is its gateway to legitimacy on the world stage—legitimacy it arguably never earned and doesn’t deserve, and therefore such legitimacy would be difficult to regain should it be lost.
Qatar is a key source of funding and diplomatic and logistical support for Hamas, which is an Iranian proxy. Cutting ties with Hamas would mean choosing sides against Iran while at the same time greatly weakening Hamas’s ability to rebuild and recruit in the wake of the pummeling it received at Israel’s hands.
Then there’s Hezbollah, once Iran’s strongest and most dangerous proxy, which the IDF has put on the backfoot in Lebanon. It was hard to ignore this quote that Fouad Makhzoumi, a Lebanese member of parliament, gave to the Washington Institute’s David Makovsky, who asked Makhzoumi what should happen to Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Rodolphe Haykal if he fails to disarm Hezbollah: “At the end of the day, we are asking them to deliver. If he doesn’t, yes, he has to be removed.”
Disarm Iran’s key proxy or step aside: an ultimatum that won’t magically achieve Hezbollah’s disarmament but represents another on-the-record testimony of Lebanon’s clear alignment with the U.S. alliance.
As the clock ticks, Iran is becoming more isolated by the day. And that isolation will persist and shape the Middle East that emerges on the other side of this conflict.
Source:
www.commentary.org
