EMERGENCY CAST-- Iran attacks Israel: Start of the Wars of Gog and Magog?
Or an opportunity for regional cooperation and de-escalation?
As pretty much everyone on planet earth who does not live in subterranean cave knows by now: In the early morning hours of April 14th Iranian drones and missiles were launched towards Israel. The launch was framed as retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1st.
Nearly 99% of the projectiles were intercepted. It was Iron Dome, Arrow 3, and David Sling’s finest hour.
Although little physical or human damage was sustained, regional relations have been fundamentally recast: Sunni Arab states like Jordan and Saudi Arabia allowed the US, UK, and Israel to use their territory and intel assets to counter the threat. Israeli PM Netanyahu initially vowed a retaliatory strike, but Biden, Sunak and others are trying to dissuade him.
To discuss the late breaking developments and re-litigate their previous predictions, I was joined from Dubai by Disorder’s own Roving Correspondent, David Patrikarakos.
Listen here.
To quote David’s recent highly prescient article in Unherd,
Amid the continuing destruction in Gaza and the surrounding global fallout, one thing becomes ever clearer. Even as Israel’s war stutters, Iran’s broader campaign against it, and by extension what we might call the American-led order, is growing in strength. Six months on from October 7, it’s hard to see how Israel can achieve its stated goals of dismantling Hamas and rescuing its remaining hostages.’ This seems to support Jason’s earlier claim in our first bonus pod on the war that, that Israel had lost militarily by October 8th.
In this EMERGENCY CAST EPISODE the duo set the context of the strikes within the long durée context of decades of proxy conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic. We investigate how these events might spiral out of control to cause an apocalyptic War of Gog and Magog or how they could reconfigure regional alliances and allow for renewed Qatari/American/Egyptian mediation to find an off-ramp from the current conflict. We also investigate the current famine in Gaza and the lack of Israeli policy for long term governance solutions for the territory.
I was very moved hearing Adam Tooze discuss the issue of Domicide (i.e. a deliberate policy of destroying a given populations housing) which he rather convincingly explains is going on in Gaza. You can listen on Apple Podcast to his episode ‘Famine in Gaza’, here.
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For More Background reading and our previous work on this topic:
For an overview of the Iranian strikes and Israeli response: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/13/world/israel-iran-gaza-war-news
The Role of Biden: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-called-off-retaliatory-strike-on-iran-after-call-with-biden-new-york-times/
Read David’s sage prediction in Unherd, ‘Iran is winning the Gaza war Tehran's violent strategy could soon escalate’: https://unherd.com/2024/04/iran-is-winning-the-gaza-war/
And Jason’s plea to blame Bibi and not the Jews: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/blame-netanyahu-for-gaza-not-the-jews/
Our Oct 12th episode: The 2023 Israeli-Hamas war: A Symptom of our era of Disorder?: https://pod.link/1706818264/episode/e48504038444024ddfb4d273932b9eec