Israel opens Pandora's box in the Middle East

Iran launched at least 180 missiles at Israeli territory on Tuesday, the latest in a series of rapidly escalating attacks between Israel and Iran along with its Arab allies that threatens to push the Middle East closer to a region wide war.

Teheran said the barrage was a retaliation for a series of devastating blows Israel has landed in recent weeks against the Iran-backed militant group, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began. Earlier Tuesday, Israel launched what it said is a limited ground incursion in southern Lebanon.

As a matter of fact, to provoke Iran to join the war directly has been made a major objective of the Benjamin Netanyahu government of Israel since it realized that the heavy casualties of civilians and the humanitarian crisis it had caused in Gaza had turned the world against Israel.

Tel Avivi's purported assassination of Ismail Haniyeh during the political leader of Hamas' stay in Teheran in July should be taken as a bait on Netanyahu's fishhook intended for the Islamic Republic.

While the whole world was waiting for Iran's retaliation for Haniyeh's death, Teheran had exercised tremendous composure and calmness, thanks to effective international mediating efforts, including those from China, for the sake of a Gaza cease-fire deal to be inked at an early date to end the sufferings of the Palestinians in the enclave.

Then, Tel Aviv put a bigger bait on its fishhook. Israel bombed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the past weeks, and killed many leaders of the militant group supported by Iran.

Under pressure from various sources in its circle, Teheran finally took the revenge on Tuesday, though with perceivable vigilance, while insisting that it is not its intention to fight a war with Israel.

During the whole process, the United States has been unconditionally supporting the Netanyahu government's catch-the-big-fish war plan, which Washington believes will serve the US' geopolitical interests. By forcing Iran to throw itself to the front, both Israel and the US can save a lot of troubles, say, moral obligations, in fighting a people's war with Teheran's various regional proxies, and by destroying the leader can the US and Israel really prompt the Iran club to collapse.

That the US has quickly deployed more forces to the region indicates Washington and Tel Aviv are expected to take advantage of Iran's attacks as an excuse to markedly upgrade the war from a conflict with small militant groups to a war with a regional power.

In doing so, the two allies, particularly the Joe Biden administration, can effectively help relieve the global and domestic pressure on it over the US' accountability in the Gaza tragedy, and erect a new enemy, Iran in replacement of the more trivial Hamas or Hezbollah, both of which will prove tremendously conducive to the Democratic Party reversing its passivity over the Middle East situations to an initiative in the US presidential election.

And with a full-scale war against Iran in sight, how many people in Israel would have cared so much about the remaining hostages still held by Hamas as before, a major source of mounting domestic pressure to Netanyahu.

Just for the sake of their personal gains in politics, Netanyahu and the US politicians are doing nothing but opening the Pandora's Box in a powder keg region. Fishing in troubled waters, Washington also intends to recover the US' alleged losses that it thinks has caused by its strategic pullout from the region after the Iraq war.

By making a mess in the Middle East, the US can also effectively derail the regional development that seems to have been kept in a promising direction during the US' absence of making the Middle East countries important players on the world stage, and more importantly, squeeze the strategic space for other major countries in the region that seek to promote peace, order and stability.