Last week, on a single day of an undeclared war, one of the protagonists suffered more than 500 deaths and more than 1,600 wounded, a total of over 2,200 casualties.
The country in question has a population of 5 million. Now imagine if that casualty figure had occurred in a country with a population of, say, 90 million; the proportionate casualty figure would work out at a staggering 34,000.
Well, as you guessed, the first country mentioned is Lebanon, which has been dragged into a war on behalf of the second country, that is to say the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I said dragged into a war because as everyone must know neither the Lebanese people nor what is still regarded as the Lebanese government were consulted on the wisdom let alone the desirability of triggering such a war.
The tragic episode has created a new category of war: kangaroo proxy war.
In it, the proxy uses the territory of a nation with no interest in or desire for a war in order to protect and promote the real or imaginary of a distant master.
Broadly speaking, we know two kinds of wars: of choice and or of necessity. In a war of choice, a protagonist enters the foray by choice and in the absence of any pressure from necessity. The United States was sucked into the Vietnam War by choice, as was the USSR in Afghanistan and more recently Russia in Ukraine. In none of those cases, the party that gate-crashed into a civil war, as was the case in Vietnam and Afghanistan or triggered an unnecessary war, as is the case in Ukraine, faced any mortal danger or serious threat to its vital interests.
The war of necessity, however, is caused by a sentiment that a protagonist's vital interests, indeed even its very existence, may be in danger.
Back to the current wars in our region. The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas was a war of choice. Hamas was in no mortal danger from Israel, and Gaza was doing relatively better thanks to a fairly long period of calm, growing foreign investment and a tripling of Israeli work permits for Gazan day-laborers. There wasn't the remotest possibility of Israel wishing to reconquer Gaza and dislodge Hamas.
In practical, that is to say non-ideological terms, Hamas could have chosen to live
with and profit from the status quo rather than seeking to upset it in a manner that forced the adversary into a war of necessity.
Israel's initial reaction to the October 7 attack was a war of necessity, at least in the field of geo-political perceptions.
Israel was in the same situation that the US had been after 9/11. At that time, the US might have limited its response to a police operation to dislodge the Taliban and if possible capture Osama bin Laden and his senior associates without getting involved in a 20-year low intensity war with no discernible geopolitical benefit for America.
What had started as a war of necessity morphed into a war of choice when US Democrats, having declared the Iraq war "the wrong war" dubbed the imbroglio in Afghanistan "the right war."
Is Israel heading in the same direction by transforming a war of necessity into one of choice?
It is too early to offer a definitive answer to that question. What is clear, however, is that the activities of Tehran's proxies in Yemen, Iraq and above all Lebanon encourage those in Israel who wish to transform a war of necessity into one choice with the ultimate goal of eliminating Hezbollah and, later why not, the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.
Whichever way one looks at it, the war of choice that Hezbollah started by breaking the 2006 ceasefire accord and ignoring UN Security Council Resolution 1701 can't but lead to disaster for Tehran's Trojan Horse in Beirut. It will also provide Israel with a strong "self-defense" argument to justify pursuing the war in Gaza while Hassan Nasrallah claims he is bombarding northern Israel in support of his imaginary ally Yahya Sinwar crouched in his tunnel.
Paradoxically, dragging Lebanon into the foray makes it more difficult if not impossible for Sinwar, provided he is still alive, to accept any ceasefire deal.
And even if he does, there is no guarantee that Israel would suddenly abandon a golden chance to cut Hezbollah down to size, especially with assurances from Iran not to do anything consequential to protect its Lebanese protégé.
Nasrallah is too intelligent not to realize that he has been sold a bundle by Tehran. He became a tool in a war that was someone else's choice but is becoming his necessity.
Worse still Tehran media are already musing about changes in Hezbollah paving the path for a cynical blame game of the kind only mullahs made in Iran are capable of. Soft-soaping the gullible Americans, President Masoud Pezeshkian in New York conjured the peace dove out of his invisible turban. The subtext was: we can call back the hounds of war we unleashed.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
This article originally appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat and is reprinted with some changes by kind permission of the author.
