Vladimir Putin has reportedly told Iran to avoid civilian casualties in any retaliatory attack on Israel for the assassination of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, an underlining of the constraints it faces as it frames its response – and a call for restraint likely to be echoed by many foreign ministers from the 57 countries inside the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at a meeting in Jeddah on Wednesday as tensions in the Middle East grow.
The meeting – jointly called by Iran and Pakistan – will produce unanimous condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh as an escalatory and illegal act by Israel, but Iranian diplomats will also be working to avoid being left isolated by the more cautious Arab Gulf states.
The warning by Putin, a close ally of Iran, was reportedly delivered by Sergei Shoigu, his former defence secretary and the secretary of the national security council of Russia, when he visited Tehran on Monday after the death of Haniyeh last week. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its role but is widely acknowledged to be responsible.
It is not a full reproach to Iran since most of Iran’s leadership have been aiming to strike military targets, but it underlines Russia’s concern that the response to Haniyeh’s killing could get out of hand – especially if multiple members of Iran’s semi-state axis of resistance, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, launch their own less disciplined military responses at the same time. The Houthis have already hit residential buildings in Tel Aviv.
The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on Tuesday vowed a “strong and effective” response to the killing of its military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut by Israel last week and said it would act either alone or with its regional allies. “Whatever the consequences, the resistance will not let these Israeli attacks pass by,” he said in a televised address to mark one week since the assassination.
Western officials say the chances of Iran being persuaded to pull back from any military action are now vanishingly small, and the focus in calls still going into Tehran and Oman is on trying to convince Iran to avoid steps that lead to an all-out war in the region. The west argues that such a war would benefit no one, and eventually lead to Iran’s isolation at the moment its new government under a reformist president is seeking improved links with the wider world.
The last major Iranian effort to enlist the support of the OIC came at a joint meeting of the group with the Arab League in November, the first time the then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi had visited Saudi Arabia. In a 30-minute address, Raisi tried to persuade the Gulf states that the arena for words was over, and it was action that was required.
He brought a 10-point plan including freezing diplomatic relations with Israel, mounting trade boycotts, a ban on energy sales, a ban on arms transfers to Israel from US airbases and “sending a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people from Islamic countries”.
But Iran’s action plan was largely missing from the eventual vast communique that instead focused on an utter condemnation of Israel for its behaviour in Gaza, behaviour that subsequently has been condemned further by the UN security council, the international court of justice, and led to a call for arrest warrants from the international criminal court prosecutor Karim Khan.
It is no more likely that the foreign ministers will adopt any such bold action plan in Jeddah today than it was in November. Instead the meeting provides Iran with a platform to assert its sovereign right to respond to Haniyeh’s killing. It also gives Iran a chance to press states such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia not to do anything that diminishes the effectiveness of Iran’s response. When Iran launched an air attack on Israel in April, it was clear Saudi Arabia and Jordan either permitted the US to shoot down Iranian missiles crossing its sovereign territory, or its air force itself intervened to do so. It is less clear they will do so again.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia would also be the two nations that would normally be on the path of projectiles fired from Yemen to hit targets in Israel.
It is a matter of diplomatic judgment for the new Iranian leadership whether to call out what they may regard as the Gulf states’ weakness over Israel, a step that would run counter to the efforts to improve relations in the region with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Gulf leaders do not take kindly to Iran trying to stir anger among their people about the inadequacy of their efforts to protect the Palestinians.
The focus of the Iranian foreign ministry is now more on persuading fellow Muslim states of America’s duplicity, and building a coalition of support for its right to respond but this cannot disguise the deeper disputes between Iran and the Arab states about how to approach Israel.
The Arab world’s hesitancy about military action against Israel is deeply entrenched in the Arab psyche because of the harrowing defeats in the 1967 and 1973 wars. The deeper trend is towards normalisation if only Israel had a different political leadership. Most Arab states support a two-state solution, but Iran, by contrast, supports a referendum on Israel’s future conducted among Israelis, Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian refugees.
Until Iran changes that position, and stops arming the axis of resistance, Israel insists, the tensions will keep escalating in the Middle East, bringing the whole region to the brink of a war of unknown proportions.