It’s already the worst fighting in Israel in a quarter-century, but many are worried the clash with Hamas could spiral far beyond Gaza and trigger a larger war that draws in both regional and even global powers, including the U.S., China and Russia.
A worst-case scenario could see the current clash in Gaza draw in other Iran-allied militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian extremists in the West Bank and Syria, before ballooning into a direct Israel-Iran war featuring long-range ballistic missile barrages from Iran and potentially nuclear strikes by Israel on Iranian military sites.
From there, analysts say the risk becomes real of a widening geopolitical conflagration in which Russia and China align behind Iran against Israel, the U.S. and Western allies, with regional powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Mideast nations pulled in both directions and forced to choose sides.
National security strategists say such a scenario would be tantamount to a World War III-type dynamic, with different hot wars suddenly raging in multiple parts of the world, particularly if the Ukraine-Russia war drags on and China seizes upon the spiraling Mideast chaos to make a military move on Taiwan.
“There is the potential for a multi-front conflict triggered by Iran that plunges the wider Middle East into crisis. If this transpires in parallel to other hot wars such as Ukraine, and if China decides to use this as a diversion to move on Taiwan, you’re increasingly looking at a global conflict,” said Jonathan Schanzer at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“In other words, if there are multiple fronts going on at the same time, that is World War III,” he said in an interview. “Not every front has to be connected with a straight line. There can be a dotted line between them.”
Mr. Schanzer tempered the analysis by asserting that such a scenario is precisely what Israel aims to avoid. Iran had denied knowing about or helping plan the Hamas uprising, and both the U.S. and Israeli governments have said in recent days they have seen no intelligence Tehran had a direct role in the surprise attack that has now killed over 2,000 Israelis and nearly two dozen Americans living in Israel.
“I don’t see World War III,” Mr. Schanzer said. “The worst-case scenario I see is a multi-front conflict for Israel,” he said, adding that Israeli leaders hope to rout Hamas from Gaza without confronting Palestinian elements in the larger West Bank area or being drawn into a simultaneous clash with Hezbollah or Iran.
While the Biden administration has issued veiled threats to Iran not to exploit the current crisis, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has framed Hamas as an Islamic State-like entity that must be crushed, regardless of its ties to Iran.
Order of battle
With that as a backdrop, Mr. Schanzer said the “real question for Israel is the order of battle.”
“Israel has an immediate challenge in front of it and that is to dispatch Hamas,” he said. “From there they will likely need to tangle with Hezbollah and … then the path is probably clear for a battle with Iran.”
Alex Traiman, Jerusalem bureau chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, offered a similar analysis, calling it difficult to assess where the current clash will lead beyond Israel and Hamas — a jihadist militant group characterized by the U.S. State Department as an Iran-backed terrorist organization that has long refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
“This could be anything from an Israeli incursion into Gaza that lasts two weeks and Israel is pressured to stop and the jihadi genie gets put back in the bottle… or this could escalate very quickly into something worse than anyone imagined,” said Mr. Traiman.
He added that the Biden administration moved quickly to deploy the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean “because they understand a wider conflict is quite conceivable.”
For its own part, Israel appears to be laying groundwork for military backing from a wide slate of Western allies.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is slated to brief commanders from across NATO on Thursday, a development likely to spur debate over the willingness of the 31-nation alliance — already burdened by the Ukraine war — to entangle itself in an escalating Middle East conflict.
There are already signs of division within NATO, as the alliance’s only Muslim-majority member nation Turkey has sharply criticized Israel’s counterstrikes against Hamas.
There are also questions over the extent to which a potential Israel-Iran war could impact the future of Russia’s nearly 19-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
Agence France-Presse noted Wednesday that Mr. Gallant’s briefing to NATO commanders comes amid concern from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the crisis in Israel could distract the United States — the driving force behind the alliance’s support for Ukraine.
Mr. Zelenskyy appeared at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday to urge alliance members to provide further weaponry for Ukraine’s ongoing counter-offensive against Russia, as well as air defenses to protect against an anticipated winter onslaught by Russia.
The Russia factor
Russia and China are treading cautiously in response to the Israel-Hamas clash.
China’s foreign ministry has called for de-escalation, but has also refused to condemn Hamas.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to exploit the situation as a vehicle for tarring the image of the United States, and to portray himself as a potential peace-broker.
Russia’s position is complicated by Moscow’s expanding strategic relations with Iran, relations that have reportedly featured large shipments of Iranian bullets, rockets and mortars to aid the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
But it’s not clear whether Russia would aid Iran in a war against Israel.
Analysts note Mr. Putin’s history of cooperating with Israel and delicate relations with various Arab powers, including Saudi Arabia, which has positioned itself as a rival of Iran.
“I don’t think that Russia wants to go all-in with Iran,” said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based analyst with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and an expert on Russian policy in the Middle East.
“Will Russia see no choice but to further drift into the Iranian orbit, if there’s a larger war? They might have to,” Ms. Notte told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty this week.
Others note the precarious evolution of Russia-Iran and Russia-Israel relations within the context of the nearby civil war in Syria.
“For years the two major forces operating inside of Syria were Iran and Russia and both had an interest in keeping the other one at bay,” said Mr. Traiman. “At the time Russia and Israel had some pretty significant cooperation with a tremendous amount of respect between Putin and Netanyahu.”
“But that has all changed with Russia’s invasion into Ukraine,” he said. “We’ve seen Iran providing weapons to Russia, while Israel has been under extreme pressure from the West and the United States to side with Ukraine … which has significantly angered Putin.”
It is also possible that an expanding Middle East conflict would work to “Putin’s advantage because it attracts significant attention away from the atrocities taking place in Ukraine,” Mr. Traiman added.
“It’s unknown if Russia would come to Iran’s aid,” he added. “But I don’t think it would be wise to rule out any potential scenario, and if it happens, you’re literally talking about World War III.”
Others say Washington must stand by Israel, but also quickly use diplomacy and military deterrence to ensure the current conflict does not spread throughout the region and the world.
“The risk of that happening is unquantifiable but real,” according to Andreas Kluth, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering geopolitics.
“It wouldn’t be the first time that seemingly unconnected conflicts have merged into an even bigger disaster, if only because the same parties have stakes in all the fights,” Mr. Kluth wrote this week. “In 1914, such a chain reaction led, in the space of four weeks, from the assassination of a Habsburg archduke by a Serbian nationalist to all-out war between the Great Powers.”
“Nothing of that sort must happen in 2023, and it falls to the U.S. to make sure of it.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.