by James M Dorsey
Iran, Hezbollah, and Israel have successfully evaded an all-out Middle Eastern conflagration more than a month after Israel killed a senior Hamas official in Tehran and a military commander of the Lebanese Shiite militia in Beirut.
The question is how much longer they can hold the line.
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This week, Israel attacked multiple Iran-linked targets in Syria a day after a reportedly lone wolf Jordanian national killed three Israelis in an Israeli-controlled section of the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge that links the occupied West Bank and Jordan.
To avoid an escalation, Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attacks in Syria.
Nevertheless, the timing of the incidents in Jordan and Syria added to the heightened risk of an escalation.
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IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Herzi Halevi, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and US General Michel Kurilla. Credit: Israel Ministry of Defence
General Michael Kurilla, head of US Central Command, appeared to underscore the risk by visiting Israel for talks with Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. General Herzi Halevi and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
The IDF said Mr. Kurilla focused “on threats from Lebanon and Iran in the northern arena.”
The bridge killings and the Israeli strikes occurred days before Jordanians went to the polls to elect a new lower house of parliament in a country in which Palestinians account for up to 50 per cent of the population.
Israeli officials fear that the killings could boost the electoral chances of Islamist, nationalist, and left-wing parties that want Jordan to abrogate its 1994 peace treaty with Israel because of the Gaza war.
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2024 Jordan elections. Credit: Al Jazeera
The Islamists, nationalists, and leftists took King Abdullah to task for ordering in April the kingdom’s armed forces to intercept in Jordanian airspace Iranian drones and missiles headed for Israel in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Jordan insisted that it would not allow its airspace to become a combat zone
Within hours of the bridge incident, groups related to the Muslim Brotherhood marched in support of the killer, Maher Al-Jazi, a 39-year-old Jordanian truck driver who hailed from an influential East Bank tribe loyal to the monarchy and proud of Mr. Al-Jazi’s ancestors who served in the military and fought the Israelis in battles in 1948 and 1968.
Demonstrators shouted, “We salute you, Maher. You caused an earthquake in Israel.”
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Demonstrators march in support of the bridge shooter. Credit: Mehr News Agency
The Jordanian interior ministry, concerned that Jordan could become the next Israeli-Iranian battlefield, insisted in a statement that the killings were an “individual act.”
At the same time, Israel detained for questioning two other Jordanian drivers.
The ministry statement appeared intended to counter Israeli insinuations that Iran may have instigated the bridge shooting.
Responding to the killings, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Israel was “surrounded by a murderous ideology led by Iran’s axis of evil,” a reference to Syria and Iran’s non-state allies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq.
“The attack on the Allenby Bridge did not surprise anyone in the security establishment. For almost a year, Iran has been doing everything in its power to ignite fires” along the 309-kilometer Israeli-controlled border between the West Bank and Jordan, said Ehud Yaari, a well-connected veteran Israeli Middle East affairs journalist and analyst.
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Israel insinuates Iran is responsible for bridge killings. Credit: Hindustan Times
Neither Israel nor Jordan has publicly addressed the security breach that enabled Mr. Al-Jazi to enter the highly securitsed bridge area armed with a handgun.
Mr. Yaari reported that Jordanian intelligence had recently dismantled Iranian sleeper cells in the capital, Amman. Even so, Iran is “working to establish sleeper cells, equipped with advanced weapons for which they recruit young Jordanians,” Mr. Yaari asserted.
In recent months, Jordanian security foiled several individual attacks on Israeli targets. In April, a man reportedly opened fire on an Israeli border patrol.
Mr. Al-Jazi was not known to have Iranian connections. Moreover, Jordanians suggested that public outrage at Israel’s Gaza war conduct was at levels that made attacks like the bridge incident all but inevitable.
“We need to investigate who was behind the attack…and why it happened, but we don’t need to go far. The atmosphere in Jordan over the last months of the war has created fertile ground for such attacks… You can’t imagine the extent of the rage and frustration among Jordanians,” said a Jordanian journalist.
In effect, the journalist suggested that the risk of attacks like the bridge killings was homegrown, even if it may create opportunity for Iran.
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Iranian arms cache discovered by Shin Bet. Credit: Shin Bet
Israel has suggested that Iran uses Jordan to smuggle weapons and explosives to armed Palestinian groups in the West Bank at a time that Israel has stepped up raids on cities and refugee camps in the occupied territory.
Israel’s domestic security service, Shin Bet, said that Unit 4000, the intelligence unit of the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and the Special Operations Unit 18840 of the Guards’ Quds Force in Syria, organized the smuggling of arms into Jordan.
Mr. Yaari reported that the Guards used Hamas facilities in Beirut and Istanbul managed by Zaher Jabarin, Hamas’ Chief Financial Officer, for all practical purposes. Mr. Yaari said criminal gangs smuggled the weapons across the porous Syrian-Jordanian border.
There are limits to Iranian covert operations in Jordan. While assisting in the funding and arming of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory, Iran will likely not risk its relations with Gulf states by destabilising the Hashemite kingdom.
However, Iran has less compunction about attempting to strengthen Palestinian militants in Israeli occupied territory.
In response, Al Fatah, the movement that forms the backbone of President Mahmoud Abbas’ internationally recognised, West Bank-based Palestine Authority, has accused Iran of interfering in internal Palestinian affairs and aiding armed groups.
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Israel attacks Iranian arms development center in Syria. Credit: SANA
The killings and the Israeli attacks on Iran-related targets in Syria, including an alleged research facility developing weapons for Iran’s non-state allies, came as the US-Qatar-Egypt-mediated Gaza ceasefire negotiations appeared close to breakdown.
A breakdown could prompt Iran to as yet retaliate against Israel for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Iran has held back to give the ceasefire talks a chance to succeed and avoid being blamed for a potential breakdown. Going a step further, Iran has indicated that a ceasefire could persuade it not to take revenge.
However, Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, told a rally in western Iran in late August to expect “good news about Iran’s revenge.”
Mr. Salami may have been signaling that Iran cannot or will not continuously exercise restraint.
Mr. Salami’s “good news,” if and when it materialises, is likely to be calibrated to make Iran’s point while allowing Israel to respond in ways in which the tit-for-tat does not spark an all-out Middle East war.
However, that could prove to be difficult. Israel and Iran are locked into an increasingly precarious balancing act, with countries like Jordan struggling to stay out of the fray.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.