How old foes might stumble into armed clash

How America plans to go to war with Iran, and how Iran plans to go to war with America, are two very different things.

The security apparatus on both sides understands this very well but in both cases the security ­apparatus and the politicians are not on the same page, and that is where the danger lies.

America thinks in terms of overwhelming military force: understandable with 11 aircraft carrier fleets around the world. These are the sort of assets with which America takes out key “hostile targets” (think nuclear installations) and changes regimes.

Iran’s military preparations are different. A key meeting is said to have taken place in Beirut between Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s foreign operations arm, the al-Quds Brigade, and Ziyad al-Nakhalah, who is head of the Gaza-based militant organisation Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It hardly seems coincidental that last weekend it was his outfit that triggered the heaviest fighting ­between Israel and Gaza for five years.

The swift rise of PIJ gives a glimpse into Iranian strategy. Tehran has been the main backer of Hamas, which runs Gaza, but the two were on opposite sides in the Syrian civil war. Soleimani, who “advises” Iran-funded militias like PIJ, switched emphasis: PIJ now has more rockets targeting Israel than does Hamas, its more established brother.

What last week’s confrontation showed is that Iran has little intention of hitting back against American targets directly: that would be suicidal. It can provoke Israel into such extreme measures against its neighbours that Western support for the “Zionist entity” is undermined.

Read the article by Richard Spencer in The Australian (from the Times).