Iranian rockets may hit Israel within hours – but here’s why tit-for-tat battle could lead to all-out-war in Middle East

ONCE more the Middle East is on the brink.

By the time these words are published, Iran may already have launched a missile barrage on Israel. If not, then it is likely to come soon.

Neither nation wants a full-scale war but warfare isn’t a precise business. Mistakes and escalations happen inadvertently.

Sometimes nations just walk over the frontier of open warfare because they can’t see any way back.

It is why Sir Keir Starmer has been on the phone to Iran’s new reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian.

Unlike the USA, the UK has an embassy in Iran and we have tried to maintain some sort of relationship with its leaders.

What Sir Keir was trying to do was appeal to Pezeshkian’s more moderate instincts, as opposed to his boss Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s more hardline attitude.

Spiral of escalation

Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old heart surgeon, won elections this year despite all the vote-rigging and manipulation that went on.

A relative moderate — though not as moderate as those who were prevented from standing at all — he was the nearest to a popular choice the Iranian regime would allow.

So I’m sure what Sir Keir was trying to do was to strengthen Pezeshkian’s status within Iran, plus try to temper the strike on Israel which appears imminent.

The worry is that the attack will provoke another spiral of escalation.

Khamenei will make the ultimate decision. The question is how severe the response will be.

Over in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival now hinges on him being a war leader. Yet his critics say he is leading his nation into a strategic blind alley, with a policy that means more war and more destruction.

Others say that, sooner or later, he or his successors will have to take on Hezbollah and Iran. They both want the destruction of Israel so why not degrade their capabilities now?

So how did the Middle East come to be teetering on the precipice once more?

Iran wants to avenge the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil by Israel last month.

Haniyeh lived in Doha, Qatar, but was visiting his paymasters in Iran’s capital Tehran for the inauguration of President Pezeshkian.

The Israelis killed him in one of the guesthouses of the presidential compound, where he was staying for the official state occasion.

That is as bold as you get and proves just how good Israeli intelligence is.

It was seen as a huge insult to the Iranians and a demonstration that nowhere in Tehran is safe if the Israelis go after you.

What Israel was saying to the Iranian leadership was: “We can kill all of you if we choose to.”

Iran wants to avenge the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil by Israel last month

So, firstly, Iran wants the political satisfaction of revenge. Secondly, they feel they have to re-establish a sort of deterrence.

They feel that after the audacity of this Israeli assassination, they have to underline the fact that such a brazen act isn’t without consequences.

It is the same principle the Israelis also use.

Last month they assassinated Fuad Shukr, a senior military commander from the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah in Lebanese capital Beirut.

It was in response to the killing of 12 children from the Druze religious group by Hezbollah — probably accidentally — in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Iran has already crossed a red line and directly attacked Israel this year.

In April, Britain, the US and France helped to defend Israel from a barrage of more than 350 Iranian drones.

RAF fighter jets and refuelling aircraft, taking off from bases in Cyprus, were involved in the operation.

The attack was in retaliation for Israel’s air strike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, killing eight Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers.

Yet Iran’s strike inflicted little damage in Israel. Will they try to up the ante this time?

And will they activate their proxy groups, terror franchises Hezbollah, Hamas and, in Yemen, the Houthis, to join the attack on Israel?

Iran made it clear yesterday that it wasn’t backing down.

Something more deadly

Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said: “Iran is determined to defend its national security.”

Meanwhile, the US has deployed a guided-missile submarine and is rushing the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, armed with F-35C fighter jets, to the eastern Mediterranean.

Western capitals don’t believe either Iran or Israel want an all-out war. Yet both are prepared to flirt with brinkmanship.

Western capitals don’t believe either Iran or Israel want an all-out war.

Yet both are prepared to flirt with brinkmanship. Both are prepared to go closer to the frontier of open war because they feel drawn to it by their own motives, but neither wants to cross it.

The shadow-boxing phoney war the two have employed for years now threatens to be ratcheted up into something more deadly.

Much will depend on if and where Iranian missiles land in these deadly tit-for-tat exchanges.

Israel hopes it will be Iran that blinks first.

• Michael Clarke is a visiting professor of defence studies at King’s College London.