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As Israel’s war grinds on around the Hamas Gaza tunnel system, non-Arab Shi’ite Iran, with the aid of Russia, China and North Korea, is expanding its influence in the Muslim and Arab worlds.

The October 7 Hamas attack was Israel’s equivalent of America’s 9/11. Since then, two members of Hamas’ politburo – Ghazi Hamad and Khalil al-Hayya – have reiterated that the intention of Hamas it to repeat this attack again and again as part of a “permanent” war to destroy Israel.

Israel is trying to recover hostages and degrade Hamas’ fighting capacity, the goal being to avoid a future war with a much stronger Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. It remains unclear whether this objective will be achieved, despite the destruction and loss of life in Gaza. Israel has found few of the 140 remaining hostages taken by Hamas.

Hamas’ extensive underground tunnel system pales before the vastly bigger Hezbollah tunnel system crisscrossing southern Lebanon, posing a much greater challenge on Israel’s northern border. Hezbollah’s army is highly trained by Iran. It boasts an arsenal of 100,000 to 200,000 missiles (many precision-guided) housed in tunnels built with the aid of North Korea, which has experience tunnelling through rocky mountainous areas.

While Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Force have been exchanging missile and artillery barrages, Hezbollah has not launched an all-out war on Israel. Iran may want to preserve Hezbollah as a buffer for protecting, in particular, Tehran’s nuclear weapons development program.

Proxies

Iran has been demonstrating its ability to wage a wider conflict utilising proxy forces – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

The Yemeni Houthis have been firing missiles and drones at shipping in the Red Sea, which carries about 12 per cent of world trade. Many shipping companies have redirected their cargo around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, considerably raising transport costs and disrupting supply chains.

Just after Christmas, Iran also threatened to attack shipping passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, which carries 20 per cent of the world’s trade into the Mediterranean or through to the Red Sea.

Despite Western-aligned Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and despite Israel’s wider peace agreements with a growing number of Arab states, Washington’s political leverage has weakened in the region. This follows a partial US pullback from Europe and the Middle East to refocus on China and the Pacific.

It is also the result of Iran using its growing militia proxy forces (Tehran’s “axis of resistance”) that allow Tehran to operate at arms-length against the United States and its allies. Iran has four strategic objectives: to push the US out of the region; gain hegemony over the Muslim and Arab world; strengthen its alliances with China and Russia; and destroy Israel.

Allies

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin had cultivated close relations with Israel, that changed after his attack on Ukraine. Putin needs Iranian drones. In exchange, Russia is supplying Iran with sophisticated missiles and fighter planes and investing in Iranian gas fields.

China brokered the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Now, China and Iran have signed a 25-year strategic investment and energy agreement. Further, China has sponsored Iran joining the BRICS group of nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

In exchange, every month, Iran sells millions of barrels of discounted oil to China.

Western forces are being spread widely, and arsenals depleted by the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and the Red Sea.

The challenges to the US and its allies are not just military, but economic. Iran and Russia have agreed to trade in their local currencies, boycotting the US dollar. The BRICS nations have led efforts to break their reliance on the US dollars, and this year Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran are due to join BRICS.

The loose coalition of antagonistic, authoritarian states generating these challenges has assessed that global US leadership is weakening, hence that the rules-based international order overseen by Washington is open to subversion and replacement.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once counselled that peace could only be maintained by an international system willing, if necessary, to use force to maintain its underlying principles. And, he warned, wanting peace at any price would only encourage the rise of the most ruthless states.

Australia’s Responses

As The Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, says, the Albanese Government has shown “dereliction in the Red Sea, equivocation on Israel, tepid at best support for Ukraine, absolute failure in augmenting the Defence Force, and nothing much else to show diplomatically. It clings to the China reset as the only remaining bright speck of a tattered and torn foreign policy fabric.”

In contrast, Israel has been the example of how a small country can build armed forces and alliances to deter aggressors. Instead of remaining reliant on the US military for our regional deterrence, Australia should be rapidly building strategic industries, running resilience exercises to build community cohesion, and arming our military with the missiles, drones, ships and manpower it needs to build deterrence to any aggressor.

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Originally published in News Weekly. Photo by Lara Jameson.