The diplomatic equivalent of a two fingered salute

ime. But this is not the heart of the matter.

It is important to remember the series of events that led to the current crisis. On 1 April, Israel signalled a clear intention to change its modus operandi regarding Iran’s campaign against it. The killing of IRGC/Quds Force General Mohammed Reza Zahedi indicated an Israeli decision that the previous accepted rule according to which Israel would focus its responses on Iran’s proxies, rather than their Iranian patron, no longer applied.

This reflected a conviction held widely in Israel’s defence establishment that Iran is the real sovereign in the land area between the Iraq-Iran border and Syria and Lebanon’s borders with Israel. They view the ‘states’ of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as today largely fictions, with Iran either in effective control of the government (Iraq, Lebanon) or possessing freedom of operation (Syria).

From within this large area of control (and elsewhere), Iran is pursuing a strategy intended to lead to the slow bleeding to death of the Jewish state, via the activation of Islamist proxy armies. The killing of Zahedi was an announcement that Israel would now not only strike at the clients, but also directly at the patrons, including the most senior among them, where they think they are most safe….

There is, of course, a much larger question surrounding all this: namely, why are western countries acquiescing to a process whereby Iran appears to be slowly swallowing up the Middle East? With its proxies and clients, Teheran is now in control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It is able to disrupt shipping on a daily basis on a key global maritime trade route (the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden), and it has, via Hamas and Islamic Jihad, largely achieved ownership of the Palestinian cause. But in the round of escalation that began on 1 April with the killing of Zahedi, the final word remains to be said.

The western acquiescence to Iran's Middle Eastern dominance goes back to Obama, and his shift of US foreign policy away from Israel towards some kind of fantasy rapprochement with Iran via the hopelessly flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – meanwhile abandoning Syria to Iran and the Russians.