Iran Press/West Asia: Politico in an article written by Joe Gould, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Erin Banco, and Miles J. Herszenhorn wrote: Iran’s April 13 attack, which involved more than 300 missiles and drones, was almost entirely intercepted by a coalition of allies aiding the Israeli military. But Arab countries are frustrated by Israel’s killings of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr in the Beirut suburbs — and they’re vexed by threats from Tehran that they too will be targets of its fury if they intervene. It also remains to be seen how successful U.S. efforts to revive that coalition will be and how willing some of those countries will be now.
“Generally, there’s a certain degree of fatigue and to some degree I would imagine a resentment that we’re in this situation right now off the backs of the assassinations of Shukr and Haniyeh,” said Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security.
While April’s attack was led by Iran with other proxies joining in, Hezbollah has more skin in the game after Shukr’s death and is likely to target further south and use its strategic supplies of precision-guided missiles.
Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told NatSec Daily that the biggest vulnerability would be that Iran and its proxies “overwhelm a particular defense system at a particular place and a particular time,” given Israel’s depleted stocks.
“It’s inventory capacity of Iron Domes. There are not enough Iron Domes in the world to deal with 100,000 rockets, and that’s not the fault of Iron Dome or any other system. It’s just basic arithmetic,” he said.
Such a scenario would require the U.S. and others to handle any salvos coming in from Iranian territory. Meanwhile, Israel could be expected to scramble fighters and strike Hezbollah’s launchers inside Lebanon, risking a wider war.
Lord argued that Arab leaders sitting out this next round isn’t going to make peace more likely. He predicted that they would “begrudgingly” muster again.
“I would understand their feelings of frustration and anxiety, but at the same time understand that if Iran and Hezbollah are successful in creating catastrophic harm in Israel, it’s not going to lead to a de-escalation,” Lord said. “That’s going to make it much worse than the day before. I would think logic would prevail that they need to step up and continue to do their part to essentially Nerf this attack as best as possible.”
The U.S. expects that Arab allies and partners will help Israel. But a former U.S. diplomat who worked in the region, granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive diplomatic dynamics, said that any breaks in that support will be the fault of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s a question of shared frustration with a conflict in which neither side, neither Hamas nor Netanyahu, is proving amenable to compromise,” the diplomat said. “You see [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] and [President Joe Biden] constantly trying to pour water on this fire for a while, but then it flames up again, and in many instances, it’s Netanyahu lighting the match.”204
