The Middle East has been on the cusp of an all-out regional war ever since Hamas struck Israel on October 7, 2023, raping, pillaging, killing and taking hostages. The latest event over the weekend taking it even closer to the precipice was Israel raining missiles on Iran aimed at taking out the anti-missile defences around energy sites processing oil and petrochemical refineries while effectively taking out S-300 systems. The world now awaits Iran’s response that will define how this war goes and whether an even worse escalation will be ordered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran had invited action on itself after responding to attacks on its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels — even though it was not threatened territorially in the Gaza and Lebanon wars and still it rained 200 missiles on Israel, though somewhat ineffectively, killing one Palestinian in the West Bank. If the Iran versus Israel exchanges sound like war games rather than the real thing, consider the fact that Iran wants to fire missiles lest it be seen as weak and intimidated by Israel and yet it wants to avoid escalation lest Israel cross a significant red line and take aim at its oil and nuclear facilities. This is more like a Mexican standoff except that all it needs is very little to light up a conflagration, going beyond the euphemism of measured and targeted responses that Iran and Israel are swearing by.
The avenues for any talks towards a Middle East peace, into which the West and some .
