From Nezavisimaya gazeta, Oct. 4, 2024, p. 2. Complete text:
For several days now, the Middle East has been living in the unpleasant expectation that the war between Israel and Hezbollah will take on a global nature. A very bad sign is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the Iranian people, which essentially contains an unveiled call for an uprising against the Iranian authorities. Nowadays, such appeals usually precede (or accompany) an invasion of a particular country.
It seems that Israel has decided to make the most of the tool that has saved the Jewish state throughout its history – military force. Perhaps Netanyahu’s cabinet was dizzy with success: After all, in a short period of time, with little bloodshed, they managed to decapitate and disorganize Hezbollah. The “pager operation” [see Vol. 76, No. 37‑38, pp. 19‑20] and subsequent targeted strikes that took the lives of key leaders of the movement, including Hassan Nasrallah, its constant leader since 1992, are capable of creating the feeling that Israeli soldiers, backed up by the capabilities of the special services, can now do anything. Perhaps Netanyahu simply decided to take advantage of the window of opportunity that the US election campaign has opened up for Israel. With a month left before the election, the White House cannot afford to dress down its ally and potentially alienate the pro-Israel electorate.
In any case, the fact remains that the prospect of a major war looms over the Middle East.
For Tehran, this apparently came as an unpleasant surprise. Over the past few years, Iran has been making every effort to demonstrate that it is prepared to exacerbate relations with Israel (as well as with the US) only up to a certain point. Judging by the rhetoric, the “Zionist entity” (as the Jewish state is called in Iranian propaganda) has no greater enemy than the Iranian government. Iran’s authority in the Muslim world rests on its image as the main fighter against Israel, around which is grouped the “axis of resistance” (radical anti-Israeli organizations in the Middle East). However, when the Israelis or the Americans challenge Tehran, which – again, based on Iranian rhetoric – could only be responded to with force, the same thing happens: Iran launches missiles and carries out a spectacular strike on nothing, after warning the Americans or Israelis, so that, God forbid, no one gets hurt. This was the case after the assassinations of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani [see Vol. 71, No. 1‑2, pp. 3‑8] and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. This is, oddly enough, how Iran responded to the current Israeli offensive against Hezbollah.
This is due to the fact that the Iranian authorities realize that the fight against Israel is for a foreign audience. In Iran itself, it has long since become boring to everyone and does not evoke a lively response. As Netanyahu rightly noted, there are two actors in this country: the authorities and the people. The former may be genuinely stirred by the idea of a global Islamic revolution. But the latter are genuinely concerned that the country is in a dire economic situation due to sanctions caused by the conflict with the West, with a declining standard of living and great wealth inequality: Those who call for sacrificing everything on the altar of the fight against Zionism live much better than the average Iranian, who is barely making ends meet. The massive, hard-fought protests of 2021 [see Vol. 74, No. 40, p. 19], as well as the recent presidential election, which was won by the little-known Masoud Pezeshkian simply because he had the image of a reformer [see Vol. 76, No. 29, pp. 21‑22], showed that the demand for change in society is enormous. Under these conditions, the Iranian authorities, while maintaining their previous foreign policy rhetoric, are carefully trying to find a way to make peace with the West. These attempts would, of course, be disrupted by a war with Israel. At the same time, the mood in Iranian society would also change. It’s one thing when IRGC generals and other representatives of the hated government are killed. It’s another thing when residential areas are bombed. Under these conditions, both a serious war and the intensification of the Iranian nuclear program are inevitable. But these are already risks on a different, nonregional level.