Iran has crossed line in conflict

Disclosure by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has sharply accelerated its production of 60 per cent-enriched uranium, potentially capable of being converted to weapons-grade material within days, adds an ominous dimension to the Middle East crisis. Warnings by US officials, quoted by The Wall Street Journal, that “it would take Iran less than two weeks to convert enough 60 per cent material into a form that could be used in a nuclear weapon”, underline the significance of the IAEA’s announcement.

So does analysis published by the Jerusalem Post, which concluded that what is effectively Iran’s tripling of the pace of enrichment – dating from November and confirmed by IAEA inspectors on December 19 and 24 – “places before the West a challenge more ominous than anything out of Gaza or Lebanon”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubtless had that in mind when, at the weekend, he warned Iran of consequences if Tehran’s Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon escalated strikes against the Jewish state. After a series of such attacks Mr Netanyahu said: “If Hezbollah expands the war, it will receive blows it never dreamed of, and so will Iran,” which he accused of leading “an axis of evil and aggression against us”. It would be hard to disagree with Mr Netanyahu’s description of Iran as the ultimate aggressor in the conflict, or former US national security adviser John Bolton’s warning at the weekend that “the West may now have no option but to attack Iran”.

That Iran’s thumbprints are all over the crisis – beginning with the barbaric October 7 attack by Tehran’s Hamas proxy that slaughtered 1200 Jews – is incontrovertible, despite incomprehensible attempts by the Biden White House to fudge its responsibility. The extent of Iran’s involvement has become even clearer following an announcement by Tehran just before Christmas that the October 7 pogrom was “one of the acts of revenge for the (2020) assassination of the top Iran Revolutionary Guard commander General Qassem Soleimani by the US and Zionists”. Another such “act of revenge”, Mr Bolton wrote, was last month’s missile attack on a chemical carrier in the Indian Ocean off Gujarat, which has led New Delhi to deploy powerful guided missile destroyers to the region. So was the weekend missile attack on a Singapore-flagged and Denmark-owned container ship the Maersk Hangzhou in the southern Red Sea by Iran’s Houthi proxies. “Tehran has now crossed the line of armed hostilities. The West’s operating assumption should be to expect more of the same,” Mr Bolton warned. “Evidence is growing inexorably that October 7 was intended to draw Jewish blood to implement Soleiman’s ‘ring of fire’ strategy, with Iran pressing Israel on multiple fronts, directing operations via terrorists and state actors it has armed, trained and financed.”

That is the reality Israel and its supporters confront after 85 days of war. It is imperative the Jewish state and its allies are clear-eyed about what Iran’s central role in the deepening crisis means, especially given the speed with which it is now advancing to achieve what the Jerusalem Post described as not “just” possibly one Iranian nuclear weapon “but rather a potential arsenal of nuclear weapons”. Nothing appears more certain than that, as Mr Netanyahu warned, the war is likely to continue for “many months” before Israel achieves its goals of destroying Hamas and the release of all hostages. Reports that Qatari mediators have told Israel Hamas is prepared for talks on more hostage releases have been answered by Mr Netanyahu with a non-commital assertion that “we are seeing a certain shift (but) I don’t want to create an expectation”. But with Iran pulling the strings, prospects do not look promising.

Persistent, misplaced carping over Israel’s tactics is helping no one but the terrorists and their Iranian masters. Those who have done so would do well to watch the first television interview with 21-year-old Mia Schem, a French-Iranian hostage seized on October 7. With an arm shattered by a bullet and mostly untreated, for 54 days she was targeted with, and witnessed others being subjected to, acts of utter depravity and barbarity that almost defy description.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military assault on Gaza in response to the Hamas terror raid on October 7. The Middle East risks even greater peril in 2024 unless Iran is pulled back from its nuclear ambitions and forced to stop seeding the world with terror through its malevolent proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels.