Brussels – The walls of the black hole into which the Middle East has slipped since October 7 are becoming wetter and more slippery every day. At the bottom is the scenario of an increasingly likely regional war, especially after the two Israeli raids in Beirut and Tehran, where Fuad Shukr, one of the commanders of the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was in the Islamic republic’s capital to celebrate the inauguration of Iran’s new president, were killed.
On the one hand, Netanyahu’s announced response to the Hezbollah attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied territory of the Golan Heights, which resulted in the death of 12 young men on a soccer field. On the other, the materialization of the possibility of eliminating one of the Jewish state’s worst enemies, who had made his visit to Tehran known. Israel’s latest military decisions not only threaten to ruin the already very fragile ceasefire negotiations in Gaza and the release of the Israeli hostages—it was Haniyeh himself who was leading them on behalf of Hamas—but open the door to a possible escalation of the conflict that will flare up throughout the region.
According to a script already seen in recent months, statements following the Israeli raids do not go at all in the direction of détente: the attack “will not go unanswered”, warned the Palestinian terrorist group, while Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Miqati, declared that he will “take measures” to “deter Israeli hostility.” Eyes are especially on Iran, which is foraging the anti-Israeli struggle of Hamas and Hezbollah: “The Zionist regime will undoubtedly face a harsh and painful response from the powerful and vast resistance front, particularly Iran,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement, before announcing three days of mourning, thus leaving very little leeway for the newly elected reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian.
The latest developments are also wreaking havoc at NATO headquarters, with the United States confirming its support for Israel in the event of a regional conflict and Turkey reiterating its threat to intervene in support of the Palestinian cause. In Brussels, concern is at an all-time high: while the leaders and diplomatic corps of member countries have repeatedly contacted their counterparts in Lebanon, Israel, and Iran to try to calm tempers and end the spiral of violence, European External Action Service (EEAS) spokesman Peter Stano called on “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and avoid any further escalation.”
On Haniyeh’s assassination on Iranian soil, Stano stressed that “the EU has a principled position that rejects extrajudicial killings and upholds the rule of law, including in international criminal justice,” even though Hamas is included “in the list of terrorist organizations and that the ICC prosecutor has requested an arrest warrant against Ismail Haniyeh on various war crimes charges.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
