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For the first time in modern history, Israel was bombed by another country. It was difficult to imagine Israel not responding to the Iranian attack. Netanyahu, the leader known for being tough on Iran, not attacking Iran after such a barrage on Israel? What just happened, with Israel attacking Iran, was inevitable.
We are currently witnessing the escalation to an eventual full on war between Iran and Israel. The train has been set. Three Iranian officials have reported that Israel hit a military base near Isfahan in western Iran. Isfahan is central in Iran’s nuclear program, since it is the largest center for nuclear research in Iran. The Natanz nuclear site, which is at the center of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, is in Isfahan province. Many of the Iran’s Shahab medium-range missiles — which can hit Israel and beyond — are made there.
Iranian officials stated that a separate Israeli attack was thwarted in Tabriz, which is about 500 miles north of Isfahan.
Iranian media has reported that mini drones were shot down by air defenses in Isfahan and that these drones were flown by “infiltrators from inside Iran’. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that there has been no damage to Iran’s nuclear sites following the Israeli strike. An Israeli official state that the strike “was intended to signal to Iran that Israel had the ability to strike inside the country”.
The far-right in Israel has expressed a mixture of sentiments, with some praising the attack and others decrying it as too restrained. Israeli Knesset member Tally Gotliv stated: “Good morning, people of Israel. This is a morning in which the head is held high with pride … Israel is a strong and powerful country. May we regain the power of deterrence.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, on the other hand, complained: “Weak!” The stage has been set for the continuous intensification of not just militarism on both sides, but also of fanaticism in both countries. Israel struck the consulate in Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five other Iranian military officials; the Iranian people wanted to see their government be strong enough to respond, and it did. While most of Iran’s strikes did not land, it showed that Iran was willing to strike and that it had the capacity to reach Israel. Netanyahu was not going to stand and do nothing, especially in the face of a growing faction of Jewish fanaticism and of a massive section of Israeli society that constantly remonstrates about how Netanyahu is responsible for the October 7th massacre and how he has made Israel less safe. So Israel has responded. And will Iran just do nothing, especially when the nation despises the Jewish state with immense vitriol? Will the Iranian government stand by and do nothing, and enrage the Shiite mob? Or will it respond and gain a heroic image from its people and gain the praise from the Islamic world as the nation who is standing up to the zionists? In this atmosphere of rising militarism and fanaticism, the latter is the most obvious outcome for us to foresee.
The day before Israel’s attack, the head of Iran’s Nuclear Protection and Security Corps, General Ahmad Haq Talab, warned that Tehran may change its nuclear doctrine and policies and, moreover, strike Israel’s nuclear facilities in the case that Tel Aviv attacks Iran’s atomic centers. “If the Zionist regime decides to take action against our nuclear sites, it will definitely face our reaction,” Gen. Haqtalab said. He further stated: “the hands are on the trigger, so to speak, for firing powerful missiles to destroy the identified targets”. Prior to the strike on Iran, President Ebrahim Raisi had warned Tehran would deliver a “severe response” to any attack on its territory.
While Israel was successful in intercepting almost all of Iran’s barrage, Israel’s current security system will not suffice in the case of a nuclear attack. If Iran rains down on Israel a storm of missiles, and just a few of them are nuclear, Israel can intercept most of them, but can miss the few that are nuclear. In other words, Iran can distract Israel’s interceptors with a barrage of normal missiles, before hitting the country with a nuclear strike. And just one missed nuclear missile would be enough to devastate the small Jewish state. This severe danger was brought up recently by Major General Prof. Yitzhak Ben Israel who recently stated: “the interception is no different if it has a nuclear warhead, explosive material or something else inside, only that, the demand is much higher… When it’s a missile with explosives, and you get one out of the 360 they fired, it’s a great success, but if that one is nuclear, it’s a completely different story. You can’t when it comes to nuclear missiles, you can’t be satisfied with just our kind of defense. … This means that apart from the interception, the Arrow 3, which also took part a week ago, intercepts them outside the atmosphere, outside the borders of the State of Israel. If there happened to be a nuclear head it wouldn’t be over Israel, but you can’t afford them to fire at you 300 and 2 will come with a nuclear head, it’s an intolerable threat. That means you have to bring other things into the equation, it’s not just interceptions versus missiles.”
But with all this talk about war, an Iranian official told Reuters that there is no plan for an immediate response. This doesn’t mean that Iran will be quiet forever; the Islamists and nationalists in Iran would not tolerate their country standing by forever. Iran is a regional superpower, and virulently anti-Israel; if it wants to continue to gain the praise of the Islamic world as the grand enemy of the zionists, it is not going to remain idle. For every action there is a reaction, and in the midst of fanaticism and nationalism, remaining static to prevent escalation is inconceivable. “In case the Israeli regime embarks on adventurism again and takes action against the interests of Iran, the next response from us will be immediate and at a maximum level,” Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian told CNN. He further said: “If the Israeli regime commits the grave error once again our response will be decisive, definitive and regretful for them”. The chance that Israel is never going to strike Iran or its offices in other Middle Eastern countries again is highly unlikely, which means the escalation is going to continue. (Remember, Iran struck Israel as a response to an Israeli strike in Syria, not Iran. So this escalation is not purely determined by Israeli hitting Iran).
There is another strategy from Iran that can be heavily detrimental: blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the most important transit point for the shipment of oil. It lies between Iran and the UAE, a major rival to Iran, and handles almost 30% of the world’s oil trade. Just to demonstrate how crucial control of the Strait of Hormuz is for oil shipment, in just the first quarter of 2024, 15.5 millions barrels of crude and condensate were shipped from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates through the state every day. Hormuz is also vital for liquid natural gas, with more than one-fifth of the world’s supply — mostly from Qatar — passing through in the same period.
In 2023, Iran emphasized its ‘ownership’ of three contested islands in the Strait: Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb. This is a sign that Iran is going to start efforts to control the Strait. If the Iranians block the Strait of Hormuz (to quote the Telegraph) “petrol stations in the UK would start closing a few weeks later. This is why both the US and the UK maintain naval presence there; to attempt to ensure stability in a resource-critical part of the world.” On April 13, prior to launching a massive missile and drone attack on Israel, Iran announced that it had seized an Israeli-linked container ship near the Strait of Hormuz.
The major trade chokepoints around the world — Malacca, Suez, Panama, Gibraltar, Danish, Bab el-Mandeb and Dover — all have alternative routes around them. But out of the trade chokepoints that don’t have alternative routes — Hormuz and the Bosphorus — Hormuz is the only one that borders with a non-NATO state (a direct enemy of NATO at that), Iran, which has dedicated billions to be able to close the strait. Hormuz’s shipping lanes — in each direction — are just two miles wide, and with its shallow depths making it open to mines, and with its closeness to land (to Iran especially) making it open to shore-based missiles or interception by patrol boats and helicopters, it is easy to see just how volatile the Strait of Hormuz is. It is not certain if Iran will block Hormuz, but Iran has been seizing tankers. Iran’s seizure of the Israeli linked MSC Aries on April 13th of 2024 was the sixth vessel hijacked by Iran and its proxies as a response to the Israel-Gaza war. Before this seizure, the last vessel that Iran hijacked was the St. Nikolas on January 1st. Before this, the Iran-backed Houthis hijacked the Galaxy Leader on November 19th. “They will hold the MSC Aries for a long period. Iran has been holding some tankers for about a year, if not longer now,” said Samir Madani, co-founder of Tankertrackers.com. “While I can’t imagine Iran would want to fill up their anchorage with vessels, they want to keep the waters in a constant state of chaos,” Madani said. But Iran does have the capability to block the Strait of Hormuz, according to EOS Risk Group head of advisory Martin Kelly. “They have got the capability to attack ships transiting through the strait” he told Lloyd’s List. Will Iran close the Strait of Hormuz? “Can they? Yes. Will they? Probably not,” Kelly said. The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) navy, Alireza Tangsiri, warned: “We can close the Hormuz Strait but are not doing so … However, if the enemy comes to disrupt us, we will review our policy.” Julian Lindley-French, a professor at the Royal Military Academy of the Netherlands, said: ”If this threat was carried out, in a sense — denial of access through the Strait of Hormuz — then [Iran] will be on a direct route of confrontation with the West and, indeed, many of the regional powers,” he says.
If the Iranians block Hormuz, to quote Theodore Karasik, “You’ll see the price of oil skyrocket, probably up to $250 a barrel.” The closing of Hormuz would force gas prices to rise up tremendously and would cause a global meltdown and a war against Iran would be inevitable. The United States could definitely prevent and ameliorate this problem by depending on its own oil.
There is another player that will have a major role in the future conflict: Turkey. Turkey is another regional superpower that is rising in power. If Iran will be seen as the Islamic nation standing up to Israel, Turkey will want to share in the glory and will join Iran against Israel. When Israel began bombing Gaza back in October of 2023, Erdogan threatened Israel: “From now on, we will continue on our path with the motto that we may suddenly knock on your door one night.” Erdogan also declared before Turkish lawmakers, in regards to Israel: ‘the end is near for you.” And; “You may have as many nuclear bombs as you want. Whatever you possess, you are a goner”. Speaking on the Israeli strike on Iran, Erdogan condemned and blamed Netanyahu: “Those who have been silent for months about Israel’s aggressive attitude immediately condemned the Iranian response … But it’s Netanyahu himself who is the first who should be condemned.” The fact that he blames Netanyahu shows his bias, but it also bespeaks Turkey’s power ambitions to be highly esteemed in the Islamic world. Turkey wants to revive its Ottoman days, it wants to be the most power of the Islamic nations, and in pursuing this, it cannot and will not allow Iran to take all the glory of being the one who is standing up to the hated zionists. With this, Turkey will eventually pursue military action against Israel. This was hinted at by Erdogan not too long after Israel commenced its war against Gaza, when he warned Israel:
“We are such a great nation and state that our strength, our problem, our struggle is not only limited to our borders. … From now on, we will continue on our path with the motto that we may suddenly knock on your door one night.”
Erdogan was saying that Turkey’s might is not confined to its borders, but can go beyond. This has already been seen in Turkey’s military deployment into northern Syrian. Erdogan’s words are an explicit expression of desire for military action against Israel. Eventually Iran and Israel will have a full-on war, and Turkey will join in the bloody fray. Moreover, because Arab countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia are against Iran, and helped protect Israel against Iran’s missile attack, we can expect the Arabian peninsula to be in the crosshairs of Iran. Turkey shares in this animosity against Saudi Arabia (the Turks have never forgotten how the Arabs worked with the British to take down the Ottoman Empire on WW1), and Israel. The tensions will eventually erupt in a most violent denouement, in which Israel and the Arabs will be under the mercy of a massive force of both Persian and Turk. As tensions continue to intensify, we can expect fanaticism and zeal to increase in both Iran and Israel. Iran will definitely be using this conflict to raise up both nationalist and Islamist zeal, while Israel’s religious and nationalist zealots will use this conflict to advance their own ideology. Anti-Arab sentiment will obviously be increasing, with the violent bigotry of the settler only getting worse. With the desire to build a third temple also mounting amongst religious Jews, the rout of the simmering hatred that fills the Middle East’s air will gaze upon the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jew and Muslim will tare each other asunder over a city in which Christ was murdered, and which St. John called Egypt and Sodom.
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