While Israel is preparing its attack on Gaza against Hamas, fears of Iran entering the war are increasing: the US is alarmed, and the consequences would be catastrophic.
Will there be a war between Israel and Iran? A nightmare more than a question, given that a possible direct military clash between the two countries could generate a global conflict, not to mention that Israel has the atomic bomb.
On Saturday 7 October Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, which responded by declaring a state of war and targeting the Gaza Strip with some areas literally razed to the ground: the current toll shows 1,400 Israeli deaths and 2,600 Palestinians who, however, have a thousand missing under the rubble.
Due to the methods of the attack launched by Hamas, the finger was immediately pointed at Iran accused of being the deus ex machina of the operation but, at the moment, no evidence has been found in this regard.
For days, Israel has massed its troops along the borders of the Gaza Strip, preparing a land offensive to resolve the Hamas issue once and for all. Given international pressure and threats from Arab countries, the Israelis are delaying the operation to evacuate as many civilians as possible: over 600,000 Palestinians have abandoned the territory ready to be invaded in the last few hours.
Despite this slowdown, fears of an extension of the war to Iran are becoming increasingly concrete, while in the North the clashes between Israel and Lebanon have intensified; furthermore, in recent days, the Israelis have bombed the airports of Damascus and Aleppo in response to some rockets launched from Syria.
Considering that the conflict in Ukraine, which has been going on for 600 days, has a superpower like Russia involved, also by virtue of the latest news coming from the United States everything would suggest a possible imminent outbreak of a world war.
Why we risk an Israel-Iran war
When Benjamin Netanyahu gives the order, the Israeli army will enter the Gaza Strip shouting "every member of Hamas is a dead man"; everyone’s fear, however, is that in the end, this operation could also be a massacre of civilians.
“If apartheid, Israel’s war crimes and genocide are not stopped immediately - Iran ’s mission to the United Nations tweeted -, the situation could spiral out of control and cause far-reaching consequences, the responsibility for which falls on the United Nations, the Security Council and the states that are leading the Council towards a dead end”.
This is a clear position taken by Iran, which came shortly before the senior intelligence official Mohammad Akiki was seriously injured following an attack in Tehran: in this case, all suspicions would instead be directed towards Israeli intelligence.
In the same hours, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would have moved some of its members stationed in Syria towards the Israeli border; again in the USA, the national security advisor Jake Sullivan was even more direct: “ We cannot exclude that Iran chooses to directly engage in some way. We must prepare for any possible unexpected event ”.
As proof of the White House’s fears about Iran’s involvement in this war, there is the fact that the US is sending a second aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean after the Ford as "deterrence against hostile actions against Israel".
The consequences of an Israel-Iran war
If Washington’s fears prove to be well-founded and if we could indeed soon witness a war between Iran and Israel, the consequences could be catastrophic if not apocalyptic.
For the West, the first consequence would be a surge in the price of oil and gas given that the entire Middle East would be plunged into chaos: high bills and high fuel could deal the final blow to our GDP which is already largely downsized compared to the forecasts of a few months ago.
Inflation, however, would become a secondary problem if the US were to come to the aid of its friend Israel; a war by the United States against Iran at that point could move Tehran’s friends, i.e. Russia, China - Beijing in recent hours has warned of how Israel is going " beyond self-defense” - and North Korea.
With the Ukrainian front still open, we would end up with five nuclear powers - USA, Russia, China, Israel, and North Korea - at war with each other, with other NATO nations potentially joining too.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2023-10-16 08:24:38. Original title: Guerra Israele-Iran vicina? Cosa sta succedendo e possibili conseguenze
