The situation in the Middle East has now deteriorated so far that the US could be dragged into a regional war. The Israeli assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, after the top Hamas leader had travelled to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, has sparked fears of retaliation. Earlier this week, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement calling on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacking Israel. “If the US and western countries really want to prevent war and insecurity in the region, they should convince this regime to stop the genocide and attacks in Gaza and accept a ceasefire,” Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, told the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Israel carried out this assassination with the apparent intention of drawing the US into a war with Iran. The scale of Iran’s response will determine whether the US gets involved. President Biden does not expect Iran to carry out a retaliatory strike if a deal is reached to end the war in Gaza, but he has not exactly helped by selling $20bn worth of weapons to Israel, one of the largest military packages since the beginning of the Gaza war. Neither Israel nor the US truly wants a war with Iran but, as Biden said in a recent interview, there is “every reason” for people to think Netanyahu is deliberately prolonging the war in Gaza for political reasons. Netanyahu has lost support globally and within Israel. As soon as the war ends, he will probably be forced out of office and face trial for corruption.
Understandably, Iran needs its response to be significant enough that it’s seen as a deterrent. But in crafting its response, it must avoid sparking a war with the US. Both sides would suffer serious losses, and the region would become even more volatile. There is also Pezeshkian’s reputation to think of. He won support from Iran’s public on a reformist platform focused on improving the country’s social and economic situation and its foreign relations, including with the US and Europe. Netanyahu intended to eliminate his chances. Iran must not play into his hands.
Just as it should tread carefully around its domestic politics, Israel should also avoid disrupting America’s domestic political equations before the November election. Netanyahu views a second Trump presidency as a boon to his agenda. He convinced Trump to withdraw the US from the US-Iran nuclear deal, allowing Iran to position itself so that it could produce enough material for a bomb within a weeks instead of a year. Trump then designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation, and in a widely controversial move, chose to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The most important issue that is helping to drive the crisis in the Middle East is Palestine. Since the war began on 7 October, at least 39,677 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. More than 90,000 Palestinians have been injured and more than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their home by Israeli strikes. The true death toll could could eventually exceed 186,000, according to a study published in the Lancet. Martin Griffiths, former UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has described the war as “the worst in my 50 years of experience” – worse than the scenes he witnessed in Syria, worse even than the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
If Iran is to advocate for Palestinian rights, rather than launching a direct military strike on Israel as it did back in April, it should use the existing levers of international law, such as the recent UN security council resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire, and the historic ruling issued by the International Court of Justice. On 19 July, the ICJ declared that Israel must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory and evacuate all Israeli settlers as rapidly as possible. It also insisted that all states and international organisations, including the UN, are under an obligation not to give aid or assistance that would help maintain the continued occupation of Palestinian territory.
There are three major steps that would help secure peace in the region. The first and most important would be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The US is the only country with the leverage to push Netanyahu to accept a sustainable ceasefire, and it should use this. Rather than a direct retaliatory military strike on Israel, Iran should focus on how to hold Netanyahu accountable. In that way, its response to the killing of Haniyeh could strengthen international support for a free Palestine and an immediate ceasefire. And if the international criminal court issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, Iran can make every effort to have them brought to justice.
The second step is for Washington to welcome Iran’s election of a president committed to ending more than 40 years of hostility with the US. If the US elects a president with a similar commitment, the two sides should work together to revive the Iran nuclear deal, end decades of dangerous regional confrontations, and bring about a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Last but not least, an essential step would be to get the UN security council to establish a forum for dialogue and cooperation between Iran and its Arab neighbours around the Persian Gulf. Together, these three steps are the best way of de-escalating tensions, preventing a regional war and achieving lasting peace and stability in the region.
Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University and a former head of Iran’s national security foreign relations committee.
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