Destabilizing The Middle East / Persian Gulf

By now, it should be clear that there is a significant effort in progress to destabilize the Middle East / Persian Gulf region.  The current round arguably starts with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.  It escalated with Houthi militants attacking shipping through the Persian Gulf in response to Israel’s attack on Gaza.

Then this past week, Iran started engaging in missile attacks on neighbours including Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria.  Iran’s direct engagement is interesting here because to this point, they’ve been acting as a proxy power providing resources to the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.  

To this point, Iran has been playing more of a role of providing supplies and logistics support to the various groups, and yet here we have the country directly engaging with attacks on 3 countries - one of which, Syria - is adjacent to Israel in terms of weapon range.  

Given that Israel has a track record of extraterritorial attacks on perceived enemies, Iran may be sending a message to Israel in particular that it too can reach across borders with its weapons.  Essentially making itself “a bigger threat” to discourage Israel or the US from engaging with targets in Iran directly.  

However, we cannot ignore the connections between Iran and Russia.  Iran has been supplying drones (and likely other weapons) to Russia in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine.  Sanctions have driven Russia, Iran, and China together as a political and trading bloc, and I suspect that there is more than a small amount of co-operation between them on foreign policy.  

Of the Persian powers, Iran has enjoyed a relatively lengthy period of being unmolested by either its neighbours or international powers.  That means it has been able to build up its military infrastructure considerably, including manufacturing as well as  building up direct military muscle.  It must feel that it is in a position where more direct engagement in conflict is sustainable.

Clearly, conflict in the Middle East is beneficial to Russia’s interests as it takes attention away from their actions in Ukraine, and it also serves to divert resources away from NATO.  Putin has long railed against NATO expansion, but he knows that Western economies depend on stable shipping through the Suez Canal and Persian Gulf.  Further, he also knows that Western powers are politically committed to ensuring Israel’s existence.  Therefore, conflict in the region is advantageous to Russia’s interests on multiple fronts.

However, Iran isn’t a mindless puppet subservient to Putin’s whims.  Iran’s leadership must see some advantage here.  Certainly, war against Israel is a potential unifying force among the states dominated by Islam.  So, why drop missiles on its neighbours?  I surmise that part of this is to establish dominance.  It sends out a clear message that while Iran’s weapons can reach Israel, that also means they can reach into the borders of potential allies should they attempt some kind of treachery.  

Iran likely has designs on becoming a dominant regional power.  It certainly has significant resources with which to accomplish that, and becoming the local arms supplier in the region brings a lot of political influence.  Its existing alliances with Russia and China are important here, as between them, they form a massive bloc of influence that spans across Asia, through the Middle East and into Africa.  

With Western influence in the Middle East waning, and political threats to the solidarity of NATO becoming a major part of the upcoming elections cycle in the United States, this “Eastern Axis of Influence” could easily become a major world power bloc.  

War in the Middle East could serve as an opportunity for this bloc of countries to become the “broker” with dominant control of the region.  The likely scenario that could unfold here would be another Arab-Israeli war, only on a much larger scale than previous wars.  That war serves a dual purpose - it will unquestionably fuck up shipping through the Red Sea (far more than the Houthis have done already), creating enormous economic pressures in the West, and it creates an opportunity for Moscow, Beijing and Tehran to come together to broker a “peace plan”.  

In the West, we like to believe that “economic sanctions” and the threat of NATO can hold Russia (and others) in check.  However, the balance of power in the world is shifting, and I’m not sure that remains the case for much longer - especially if a war in the Middle East takes hold.