After Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a clear and direct threat against Cyprus, one would have expected that either the European Union, Great Britain – which has military installations on the island – or the United States, which has strengthened relations with Nicosia in recent years, would have made a well-publicized declaration at the highest levels that threats to the island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea will not be tolerated.
One would have thought that one or all of these parties would have warned Nasrallah and his patrons in Tehran, in the strongest terms, that any direct attack on a European ally would be met with a swift and significant response in kind.
Instead, a low-level spokesman for the EU put out a muted response to Nasrallah’s threats in the form of a short statement to the effect that a threat against one union member state is a threat against all.
A strong statement of support for the Cypriots was registered though – from the Greek foreign minister. The Greek response took on further significance after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan backed up Hezbollah claims and asserted that Cyprus is turning itself into a target for the Shi’ite jihadist group.
This lack of a worthy response by Western nations is another example of how the “West” at large continues to mishandle the provocative words and actions directed at it by the regime in Tehran and its imperial underlings across the Middle East.
This mishandling serves to reinforce Iran’s strategic thinking on how to deal with these Western powers and their interests, which can be summed up as follows:
The United States, European powers, and their allies will do almost anything to avoid a confrontation with Iran and its proxies.
These same Western powers can have their interests in the Middle East and Mediterranean basin threatened, and as such can be extorted and blackmailed, including being made to exert various sorts of diplomatic pressure on Israel. Even if this pressure proves to be ineffective, for Iran it is still worthwhile as it corrodes Israel’s relations with Western countries and diverts global attention.
A second Iranian strategy is leveraging global anti-Israel sentiment
ANOTHER IRANIAN strategy is to leverage and manipulate both the inherently hostile-to-Israel global mainstream media, as well as antagonistic international institutions to delegitimize Israel, to impede the Jewish state from defending itself.
Through intimidation and threats, Iran and its allies can further push the US and her allies out of the Middle East, as they have already successfully done in Iraq, Afghanistan, and to a great extent in Syria.
As goes Iranian and Hezbollah thinking, threaten Cyprus and you throw European nations and the US – all already preoccupied with the war in Ukraine – into a semi-panic. As a result, those nations will at least try to pressure Israel into avoiding a war with Hezbollah, a war that could escalate the mid-intensity regional war between Iran and Israel into one of high intensity.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. alluded to one of the main points of leverage Iran and its proxies have on the US, which has been a top concern for the Americans since the war that started on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah broke out on October 7: the vulnerability of US military and diplomatic installations and personnel in the Middle East to direct or indirect Iranian attack.
The general has been quoted recently as saying, in reference to a war between Hezbollah and Israel, that he is concerned about “how that might play out and how it impacts not just the region, but how it impacts our forces in regions as well.”
In the aftermath of the genocidal jihadist attack on Israel on October 7, Washington sent reinforcements to the Middle East and Southern Europe to better defend its forces and installations in the region, and to be prepared to evacuate American citizens and other Westerners in the area if they came under threat. The US is now doing so again.
Along with that, the rhetorical tone coming out of Washington, Brussels, and elsewhere recently, has in fact been one of great angst, and there is continued effort to apply pressure on Israel to lower tensions in the region. For the Iranians and their imperial proxies, this is precisely the reaction of the West that they sought to provoke with their Cyprus gambit.
IRAN HAS field-assessed this strategic calculus in the southern Red Sea as well, albeit without the desired result. By attacking international shipping and disrupting global commerce, the Islamic Republic, through the Houthis, has sought to have international pressure applied to Israel to end the war in Gaza. This so that Tehran can salvage and reconstitute what remains of its assets there – Hamas, ISIS and Islamic Jihad.
Houthi attacks have persisted for months, but international concern and pressure have not moved Israel off its target. The Houthis have even escalated the confrontation over time, by attacking US and allied military assets tasked with containing the threat they pose – containment that has proven mostly ineffective.
For Iran, even if attempts to create international pressure on Israel do not work, the opportunity for it and its proxies to test new weapons, tactics and the multi-front “ring of fire” that it has been striving to create around Israel is one it has seized upon.
It was also part of Tehran’s thinking when it attempted a massive, globally unprecedented direct strike on Israel with a barrage of ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles. The attack’s main purpose was to create a new strategic balance after the elimination of high-ranking Iranian military officials in Damascus.
Iran’s desire to create this new strategic balance, along with the battlefield testing of their weapons systems, had dismal results. Israel proved the effectiveness of its first-of-their-kind aerial defense capabilities, which are unique in the world. Apart from a small amount of damage at one airbase, Israel’s multi-tiered and multi-faceted defenses performed impeccably.
In response to the Iranian attack, Israel also reportedly struck at the very heart of Iran’s own aerial defenses, destroying a central element of a system protecting one of its main nuclear sites. A new strategic reality was set, but not one to Tehran’s liking.
American officials have felt it necessary to indirectly message the terror group
GETTING BACK to Hezbollah, reports have surfaced that American officials have felt it necessary to indirectly convey messages to the terror group, that they should not assume the US can prevent Israel from acting against them.
This indicates that at least some in Washington understand that Iran and its allies have been using them as a pawn in a geopolitical chess match. Though this maneuvering often matches Washington’s own interests, it seems that at this point, the Americans have realized that this is doing more damage than good in their attempts at diplomacy and de-escalation.
The Iranian nuclear program, Tehran’s highest and most coveted priority, has also seen the regime of the ayatollahs capitalize on intimidation of the West.
The illusion that the nuclear crisis can be settled with a few signatures on a stack of papers is too strong of an urge for the West to forgo. Iran’s bellicosity worries the West and makes it want a deal as quickly as possible: a quid pro quo in Iran’s favor that the West can live with, but one with which Israel absolutely cannot.
In a multi-polar world, Israel is a country that is a pole unto itself, a nation that has faced superpower challenges for decades. For weeks, there was an attempt by the US and other Western countries, as well as various international bodies, to pressure and at other times “persuade” Israel not to take Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Israel is instead smashing Hamas-ISIS in Rafah, and the adjacent Philadelphi Corridor is in Israel’s hands.
When necessary, Israel will do the same on all the other fronts, near and far, where its vital interests are at stake and its survival threatened. Pressure from friend, foe, or both will never change that.
The writer is an Israeli hi-tech entrepreneur and a member of the Israel Leadership Forum. He is involved with various Israel advocacy causes including working with Christian Zionist and pro-Israel Noahide groups.