The crisis in the Middle East escalated on Saturday night with a reported launch of several hundred cruise missiles and armed drones by Iran towards Israeli territory.
The missiles and drones were reportedly eliminated to a large degree through the Israeli iron drone systems and with the express help and involvement of the United States and British militaries.
Reuters is reporting that US and British warplanes were involved in shooting down the missiles and drones in before they could strike their intended targets in Israel.
This latest escalation was precipitated by an apparent Israeli airstrike targeting the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria. The attack killed many persons including four high ranking Generals of the Iranian military.
An attack against a Consulate or Embassy is considered an attack against a sovereign state and a declaration of war.
Iran had promised a retaliation and said it would be in self defense after they were attacked by Israel.
The Israel-Gaza crisis which has now escalated beyond the Israel and Palestine was started after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing over a thousand people and taking several hundred hostages.
That attack provided a cover for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to declare war and stave off a growing opposition to his rule in Israel.
Despite several calls to scale back the war efforts, Netanyahu has pressed on, resulting in casualties of over 40,000 persons on the Palestinian side and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
The attack on Iran has been seen as a deliberate attempt, albeit a successful one to drag in the United States into the latest conflict in the region.
The response by Iran is also a new development of directly targeting Israeli territory, after decades of using proxies to fight back at Israel.
The new war front now seems to be a strategy to take away the focus from the original Israeli-Gaza conflict, and the efforts aimed at attaining a sustainable cessation of hostilities, release of hostages and delivery of humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable persons affected by the fighting.
It also seeks to divert the growing angst against Bejamin Netanyahu and his hardline tactics in holding on to power, while using the war as a justification for not calling elections that might remove his hold on power in the Jewish state.
However, this is a dangerous escalation which could set off a wider Middle East conflict.
Already, the menace of Yemeni’s Houthis have made the Red Sea passage for commercial ships to become too dangerous with enormous global costs on sea freighting along those routes.
A wider conflict is sure to cause more global economic pain, with ramifications for spikes in energy and related commodities costs.
