After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, there were immediate and widespread fears of a wider war in the region. Though Israel has bombarded Gaza with devastating consequences and the West Bank has seen alarming outbreaks of violence, for a while it seemed like the dreaded expanded conflict, which could pull in Iran, Hezbollah, or others, might not come to pass. The turbulent events of recent days — from Houthi rebels firing on cargo ships to Iran’s missile campaigns against multiple neighbors — have pierced that (relative) regional calm. But Alon Pinkas, a Haaretz columnist who has served as Israel’s consul general and advised former prime minister Ehud Barak and multiple foreign ministers, has argued that the seemingly metastasizing situation may not be as dire as it looks. I spoke with Pinkas about how October 7 has and hasn’t changed the Middle East, the limits of Iran’s power, and what he thinks is the biggest potential trouble spot on the map.
You recently wrote, “While it is convenient to evoke broad, regional war to describe events and connect the geopolitical dots, the Mideast is not necessarily in the midst of a general regional meltdown that threatens to suck the Americans reluctantly in. It could escalate into one for sure, but it hasn’t yet.” From a layman’s perspective, it can seem like things are spinning out of control in the Middle East, between the Houthis going after ships in the Red Sea and Iran attacking Pakistan and Pakistan attacking Iran and Syria, and everything else. Why are you a bit more sanguine about this?
I’m not faulting anyone, but the media has a tendency to cluster everything together. In order to do that, they broaden the borders of what is called the Middle East. Pakistan is exchanging fire with Iran in Balochistan, which is in the southeast — Iran bordering on Pakistan — but is considered the Middle East. The Middle East of what? It’s in the middle of Asia. And according to that logic, Afghanistan was part of the Middle East, the broader Middle East, which it really isn’t, neither geographically nor politically.
I’m quoting myself here, so excuse me — but if you are the president and you are reading the Presidential Daily Brief, you see all these dots — Israel and Gaza, potential escalation and brinkmanship between Israel and Lebanon, the Houthis firing at maritime shipping in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait leading into the Suez Canal, Iran attacking a Sunni militia in Iraq and a Sunni militia in Syria that they claimed was ISIS. And then there is this exchange of fire between Pakistan and Iran. You connect the dots and you say, “Oh my God, this is horrible. This region is in flames. This is threatening American foreign policy.” And it sort of makes sense because supposedly, these flare-ups, these conflagrations, all started in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 7. But not really. The enmity between Iran and the Sunni militias in Iraq and in Syria has been going on since the ISIS days. And the enmity between Iran and Pakistan and Balochistan has been going on for a long, long time.
If you’re looking for a center of gravity, it exists. It’s called Iran. It’s not Gaza, and it’s not Hamas, and it’s not necessarily the seventh of October. So you — America, the world, whomever, need to devise a coherent foreign policy to address Iran. But that doesn’t mean that the region is out of control. And you have to differentiate between when Iran is using proxies like Hezbollah, like Hamas, like the Houthis, and when it is operating independently, as is the case in Pakistan and Syria and in Iraq.
Of course, some of this stuff really was spurred by October 7, like the Houthi attacks.
Yes, absolutely.
And unlike some of these other factions, they seem eager to escalate, and don’t seem deterred at all.
Right, but the Houthis are not as well armed as Hezbollah is. The Houthis don’t have 30,000 precise munition missiles, and they’re 20,000 to 30,000 people at most.
Would the Houthis be the most likely group to instigate something that might spin all this out of control?
No, no. Look, they have an outsize impact on the world economy because of the geopolitics of their location — because 15 percent of world trade passes through the Red Sea. And you saw that with three of the four largest shipping companies suspending traffic through the Red Sea. And that affects supply chains and oil prices and insurance, and it especially affects freight costs. And we’re talking about billions of dollars, not you and me paying insurance for a Toyota, this is huge money.
Militarily, they can be dealt with. The U.S., after two months of vacillating about whether or not to do this and how to do this and to what degree to do this — they finally attacked, I think, five times by now. I think that the Houthis are a nuisance, they’re an irritant, and they need to be dealt with. There’s no question about that. But the one thing that can actually spin everything out of control is a war between Israel and Hezbollah. Now, of course, this has several dimensions. First, does Hezbollah want a war? Every time I hear some Israeli general explain that Hezbollah is deterred, I recall that that same general’s best friend said that Hamas had been deterred.
Yeah, I don’t think we can count on any kind of assurances like that now.
No, we cannot. But the real question is how much leverage and how much authority Iran holds over Hezbollah. I’m not an expert on Hezbollah — I should state that clearly. But everyone keeps on saying, “Well, Iran owns Hezbollah. They’re both Shiites. This is part of the web of proxy organizations that Iran built throughout the region.”
It’s been a cliché for the last decade that Iran effectively controls three or four capitals. It controls Tehran, it controls Baghdad, it controls Beirut, and to a degree, they also now control Damascus. That’s an exaggeration, but it’s not far from the truth in terms of how they laid out this network, this web of proxies. But there is another school of thought that says that the Iranians actually defer to Hezbollah. That in terms of Israel, Hezbollah are considered by the Iranians far greater experts than they are. They do not instruct them to go to war, and they can’t possibly prevent them from going to war.
But there’s obviously an interplay of interests here. I doubt that Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, would launch a massive missile attack on Israel and bear the consequences without the Iranians. Look at how reticent both Iran and Hezbollah were about October 7, explaining that “We weren’t told, we were not consulted.”
Yes, that was striking.
It was striking. At first the fears, amongst others, echoed by Biden in his speech at the White House on the tenth of October. At first, everyone said, “Well, this is Iran’s doing.” No, actually it isn’t.
It was a question on a lot of people’s lips that first week.
Oh, “It’s all about Iran. They’re an evil empire. They’re behind everything. They killed Kennedy.” I’m not saying there’s no Iranian inspiration to everything that’s being done, and obviously, Hamas wants support from them. But I am not sure that what Hamas did on the scale that they did it served any Iranian interests. In fact, you can arguably say that it exposed them. If there’s agreement that Iran is the epicenter of everything that’s bad, and — going back to the beginning of our conversation— that the region is burning, the region is ablaze, and you ask people, “Well, who started this fire?” Nine out of ten people would say Iran. Now, I’m not saying they’re nice people. I’m not at all. All I’m saying is you can’t constantly blame them for everything because they don’t control that much.
But back to your question. Effectively, if there is a flare up in Lebanon, that could turn regional. Why? First of all, we assume that escalation is something we control. That’s not the case. There are two kinds of escalations, intended and unintended — called “miscalculation” in diplomatic or securities jargon. Let’s say a Hezbollah missile strays by one degree and kills 37 Israelis because it hits a school or a bus. Or let’s say a missile or an artillery salvo that Israel erroneously fires kills 100 Lebanese. Before you know it, hell breaks loose without anyone intending this to spiral into a full war.
Then of course, you have the intentional escalation. There were reports on October 11 that Israel was seriously contemplating a preemptive strike against Hezbollah. The calculus was that Hezbollah, at some point, since the conventional wisdom in Israel is that Iran is behind both Hamas and Hezbollah, so Israel might as well hit Hezbollah. And supposedly or reportedly, the U.S. prevented Israel from doing that. I cannot tell you a hundred percent that this is an accurate description. I know that the U.S. was nervous about this, but I also think that there was a lot of opposition within the Israeli war cabinets to do it. And Netanyahu, who’s a big hero when it comes to speeches, is less of a hero when it comes to actual action. And so it hasn’t happened.
You’ve said that Netanyahu is just in it for his political survival at this point. You could argue that a broader conflict with Hezbollah would benefit him, since war may be the only thing keeping him in his job right now.
That could be one war too many. His dream scenario was to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran. He carries a credibility deficit with Joe Biden, certainly going back to January 2023 when he launched his constitutional coup, but it essentially goes back for many years. Yes, Joe Biden is a folksy guy and he truly loves Israel, and he calls him, “My buddy, Netanyahu,” and, “My friend, Netanyahu.” That doesn’t mean shit.
Netanyahu’s dream scenario was to drag the U.S. into this. Now, why would he do that? Well, for two reasons. First of all, it fits into his semi-messianic and delusional concept that this is an inter-civilizational war. That this is the West fighting against the Islamic fascists. That this is not about October 7. This is not just about Hamas. That was just an expression or one small dimension, but it’s actually about the source of all evil here, and that is Iran. He’s been saying that for decades. Mind you, he’s been emphasizing and concentrating on the less important issue, their nuclear program, rather than their web of proxies. But that’s for a different conversation.
He had hoped that some flare up with Hezbollah would lead to the Americans firing a bunch of Tomahawk cruise missiles into Beirut, which would then lead to Hezbollah or even Iran hitting American ships in the Persian Gulf. And before you know it, all hell would break loose in both the Gulf and Lebanon, and there’s a major war. And American B-52s are bombing strategic sites, including nuclear ones, inside Iran. For him, it would’ve vindicated what he’s been saying for a long time, that this is all about Iran, that this is not about Gaza. And he thinks, in his parallel-universe narrative, that that would’ve taken the catastrophe, the debacle of October 7, and turned it into a strategic triumph. How is it a strategic triumph? Because the U.S. devastated Iran. How that would look, he has no idea.
He’s not big on “the day after” planning.
He’s always been the doctor who tells you with an adequate level of accuracy what’s wrong with you. And when you say, “I get it, doctor, but what should I do?” He says, “I don’t do prognosis. I don’t do diagnosis. I’m sorry.”
That was his approach to the Iran nuclear deal — he stood in front of Congress and said he had a better plan. Where the hell is that better plan? Fast-forward to January 2024. Iran is a threshold state. They have more enriched uranium than they ever had. Their missile technology is developing. So back to the main theme of our conversation. Netanyahu is trying to turn what’s going on with Iran into some strategic triumph — if the U.S. attacks Iran. There’s a lot of naïveté in American foreign policy, but they’re not all stupid and they know exactly who they’re dealing with. No one would fall for that. But escalation with Hezbollah could actually achieve exactly that.
Lloyd Austin, in his last visit about three weeks ago, before his surgery, reportedly clarified to Israel that if Hezbollah escalates, then the U.S. will stand by Israel if need be. If Israel is seen as the one who escalated, then forget it. We don’t work for you. You can’t outsource this.
So a big question is whether Hezbollah would actually do that.
You have to remember one important thing. If you analyze, not look, if you analyze his statements and his actions and his speeches, Hassan Nasrallah is a very, very sophisticated man. He’s not your average thug like Yahya Sinwar.
He’s also been there for a very long time at this point.
I think he would be extraordinarily cautious before he escalates anything. He needs to show token participation, which is what he’s doing. It’s this sort of brinkmanship that kind of increases the chance of what we talked about before — the unintentional escalation. But in terms of intentions, I’m not sure he’s headed there.
Though obviously, as we’ve learned, the prediction game in the Middle East is not easy.
It’s like my former mentor Shimon Peres used to say, “Making predictions about the past in the Middle East is impossible. You’re asking me to make predictions about the future?”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
