The Middle East Metastasizes

January 25, 2024

The Gaza-Israel war spreads as Iran, Russia, and their proxies coordinate efforts to suck Washington and others into a regional war. On January 16, a new Kremlin narrative surfaced, propagated by insiders, that the next world war was about to start in the Middle East. Iranian-backed militias are doing their best to provoke Washington and have attacked American troops 140 times in Iraq and Syria, wounding 70. For Russia, a full-on regional conflagration in the Middle East would meet two objectives: It would further distract world attention away from its atrocities and setbacks in Ukraine, and it would amplify the rallying cry in the Global South against Israel’s Gaza casualties as well as against America. For Iran, a wider war enhances its aim of destroying the Jewish state and also upends Tehran’s historical foes — namely all Arabs, Sunni Muslims, and the Great Satan in Washington. Since the October 7 atrocities by Hamas, a total of seven countries have become engaged in warfare — a regional battlefield that is aimed at pulling America back into the muck of the most ungovernable part of the world. So far, Tehran and Moscow have much to celebrate.