Iran’s current role in the Middle East crisis has been put centre stage by Israel’s air attacks on key military targets there and in the wars its allies Hizbullah and Hamas are continuing against Israeli forces in Lebanon and Gaza. How and when Iran’s leaders respond to the air attacks will be guided by internal pressures on the regime and by external factors among which the outcome tomorrow’s US presidential elections looms largest. Over the weekend the country’s supreme leader promised a " crushing response.”
Against this backdrop, the overwhelming need for ceasefires and political agreements in Gaza and Lebanon must continue as urgent priorities for European and international diplomacy.
Iran’s leadership is finely balanced between hardline military, religious and more civilian factions following the election of the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian as president this summer. The divisions reflect continuing economic and social constraints on its regime.
President Pezeshkian wants to reopen political and economic relations with regional, European and international partners. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military escalations against Iran cut right across those efforts. He believes Iran is a fundamental opponent of the Jewish state and wants to topple its religious regime.
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Netanyahu has his own political interest in continuing the Gaza and Lebanese wars and confronting Iran, as it keeps his far-right coalition in power. His campaign of assassinations against Iran-backed resistance leaders has bolstered the government’s popular support in Israel.
If Donald Trump wins, Netanyahu’s leeway to pursue these objectives will increase. As its principal arms supplier President Biden’s leverage over Israel through the Gaza war is objectively huge; but the US has been permissive and hesitant in practice against the radically disproportionate response orchestrated by Netanyahu to Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of October 7th last year. That policy profile is shared by Kamala Harris’s campaign, risking the loss of Arab-American votes.
European and international actors should redouble their efforts to pursue ceasefires and political agreements in Gaza and Lebanon during this dangerous moment. European states working through the EU have a fundamental interest in supporting moves towards peace – including in Israel – so that the desperate conditions facing Gazan and now south Lebanese civilians can be eased. They should oppose a wider regional war focussed on Iran and encourage that state’s efforts to head it off, including by reviving the nuclear talks abandoned by President Trump in 2018, which President Pezeshkian supports.
Working with Middle Eastern and international states like India and China, the EU should instead focus on diplomatic and security guarantees capable of creating a peace-making dynamic in the region.