I have grown old waiting for the Third World War: from the autumn of 1962 to the spring of 2018, Armageddon seemed just around the corner. Last weekend was no different. Hard-wired for disaster, I waited for a US-led aerial bombardment inside Russian-controlled airspace to go horribly wrong. Instead, nobody was killed and Bashar al-Assad got a slap on his Rolexed wrist for gassing civilians.
The Big War is, however, on its way. This time I’m sure. The shadow boxing between Israel and Iran has come into the open. Israel tends not to trumpet victories like the Stuxnet computer worm that set back Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. Iran, meanwhile, operates chiefly through proxies: bankrolling, training and arming the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.
But after an apparently armed Iranian drone was shot down over Israel in February, the gloves came off. Days before the US, Britain and France launched their attack on Assad’s chemical weapons facilities, Israeli fighters moved into Lebanese airspace and fired at Iran’s drone base in Syria. The base in Homs province, only 135 miles from the Golan Heights, was part of Iran’s forward tactics against Israel.
For the past few days there have been strange rumblings. Rumours from Syria that Israel had hit more targets, stories of mysterious explosions, feigned or real bafflement from Israel, hints from Assad’s media that the Syrian military might be targeted by electronic warfare. Plainly Assad is nervous that a deal may have been struck between the US and Israel whereby Binyamin Netanyahu’s government gets more freedom of action against Iran.
Read the article by Roger Boyes in The Australian (from The Times).