The Middle East is a tinderbox. But is all this a prelude to WW3?

Iran‘s new president was sworn in on Tuesday. Though he’s supposedly a ‘moderate’, his investiture was accompanied by the usual cries of ‘Death to Israel‘. Death duly came only a few hours later — not to Israel but to the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the ceremony.

Haniyeh was killed in an explosion (whether a bomb or a missile is not entirely clear) at the official Iranian residence where he was a guest. Nobody has yet claimed responsibility. Nobody is any doubt Israel was behind it.

For the leader of one of Iran’s several regional proxies, through which it spreads death and destruction across the Middle East, to be assassinated in its own capital, is clearly a massive humiliation. It shows just how far Israeli intelligence has penetrated Iran’s internal security.

It’s also a worry for the wellbeing of the Iranian leadership. After all, if the Israelis can clinically take out such a prominent ally on Iran’s own turf — they knew his precise location — how safe are the autocrats of Tehran themselves, even behind the high walls of the compounds bristling with armed guards where they live and work?

Perhaps the death of the previous Iranian president, whose helicopter fell out of the sky in May, wasn’t an accident after all.

The very same day Haniyeh was killed, the Israelis had already carried out a demonstration of their ability to decapitate the leadership of their enemies.

An air strike in south Beirut obliterated Fuad Shukr, the top military commander of Hezbollah, another terrorist group — this one based in Lebanon — which Tehran arms and finances.

Shukr, who had a $5million (£3.9million) American bounty on his head ever since he played a key role in the bombing of a US Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983, had more recently been responsible for building up Hezbollah’s massive missile arsenal, 6,000 of which have rained down on Israel since Hamas’s barbaric invasion of Israel on October 7.

Last Saturday, one of his missiles landed on a football field on the Golan Heights, killing 12 youngsters, injuring more. They were to be his last victims. The Israelis saw to that.

Israel also confirmed what we already knew — that it had been behind the killing of Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military chief, in southern Gaza. If the top brass in Hamas and Hezbollah had been in any doubt they were marked men, they have no grounds for ignorance now.

Israelis joked that America should write them a $5million cheque for killing Shukr, but Washington was too busy wringing its hands to pick up a pen.

All these assassinations, muttered the Biden administration, made the chances of a ceasefire all the harder. In particular, Haniyeh had been a relative moderate, we were told, a crucial figure in the talks with Hamas to release the 115 hostages they still hold in appalling conditions. There was even speculation that Haniyeh could have emerged as the leader of new, unified West Bank-Gaza Palestinian pseudo-state.

This had more to do with President Biden’s desperation for any kind of peace deal in the dying days of his administration than any relationship with the facts.

Haniyeh played a pivotal role in Hamas’s brutal takeover of Gaza. From five-star hotel suites in Turkey and Qatar, he raised funds to pay for Hamas’s underground terror infrastructure, which made October 7 possible. He celebrated that day’s atrocities. He dragged out hostage negotiations.

The idea Israelis of any persuasion — hawks, doves, those in between — would countenance rewarding Hamas for October 7 with a central role in any new Palestinian entity is for the birds.

Western governments — including our own — talk repeatedly about the need for a ceasefire, the freeing of the hostages and reviving the two-state peace initiative. But even if there was a ceasefire and the hostages were released, nobody has a clue what would happen next, what a two-state solution would look like or who would run it. If Hamas and Hezbollah, backed by Iran, were still intact, the chances of hostilities simply resuming would be high.

Western governments increasingly moan that, if Israel continues with its ‘reckless’ hard line, then the conflict risks engulfing the whole region. For a start, it already involves most of the Middle East. It has spilled over into Jordan, Yemen, the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia largely because of the hostile antics of Iran, its proxies and the inevitable Israeli retaliation.

But outside Gaza and Israel no country has been ‘engulfed’ by the conflict. It has been contained and remains relatively low key.

There is always the risk of escalation. But the only regional enemy of Israel capable of that is Iran and, after this week, its leadership will be more cautious than ever, however loud and bellicose the rhetoric. Not for the first time, Iran’s proxies will discover their role is to do Tehran’s bidding, not the other way around.

Nor is the risk of the current conflict ‘going global’ that great. Middle East conflicts used to have dire consequences for the rest of the world. But times have changed. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arabs, which threatened Israel’s very existence, Arab oil producers, led by the Saudis, mounted an oil embargo in retaliation for the West’s support for Israel. 

Within months, oil prices quadrupled, petrol pumps ran dry, inflation soared — so did unemployment — and Western economies were plunged into recession. We learned a new word: stagflation (stagnant economy, rising prices).

There were those who feared a repeat this time. But the West is not as dependent on Arab oil as it was 50 years ago and Arab oil producers are not nearly so sympathetic to the Palestinian plight. The Saudis and other Gulf states fear Iran much more than they do Israel, with which they’re building closer economic and security ties.

Oil prices also soared after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 when the pro-West Shah was replaced by the ayatollahs, whose mediaeval Islamism still holds sway in Iran, pauperising a people who should be among the world’s most prosperous. 

Again, the West was plunged into recession, as a regional crisis had global consequences. But we don’t buy oil from Iran these days and the rest of the Arab world is largely united with the West against Tehran. Of course, Iran can count on the support of fellow dictatorships such as Russia and China, which meddle in the Middle East to undermine the West’s position. 

But neither has strategic interests in the region so important that it would go to war over them. Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and hardly needs another front. China’s eyes are on Taiwan.

The Middle East remains a tinderbox. But no longer one with the combustible power to set the rest of the world alight. That doesn’t make current events less of a tragedy. Gaza is a humanitarian disaster with no end in sight. Israel is still imperilled by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and its other proxies.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to get back the hostages or wipe out Hamas. He is unpopular at home and abroad. But those who would replace him are as bereft of fresh solutions as the Western politicians shouting from the sidelines, largely to placate pro-Palestinian protesters and Muslim voters rather than contribute constructively to a solution.

We have a stalemate with no end in sight. A grim prospect for those at its heart and the wider region. The poorest Palestinians suffer the most and there is real concern in Israel about how long it can stay in stalemate without damaging not just its economy but its democratic fabric.

But is all this a prelude to World War III? I hardly think so. There’s enough to worry about without summoning up imaginary monsters.