Brink

The arc of war appears to have widened the past few days, bringing all of us closer to the brink.

A day after American and British warplanes bombed Houthi targets in Yemen, ballistic missiles launched from within Iran hit targets at the city of Irbil in Northern Iraq. Irbil is the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

The missile attack killed four civilians and injured six more. A spokesman for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards claims they struck “spy headquarters” used by Israel’s Mossad. That turned out to be the home of wealthy businessman Peshraw Dizayee, a prominent supporter of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

In response to the attack, Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran as an act of protest for the “blatant violation” of its sovereignty. Iraq, adjacent to Iran, has a Shia majority coexisting tenuously with the Sunni and Kurdish minorities.

At around the same time, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards also mounted missile attacks on what it called “terrorist bases” in Syria’s Idlib province. This particular attack is thought to be in retaliation for the suicide bombing that targeted a crowd commemorating the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Revolutionary Guards leader Qasem Soleimani by way of a US airstrike in Baghdad. This suicide bombing that killed scores of people was claimed by the ISIS, a terrorist group based in Idlib.

Also last Tuesday, Iranian missiles hit targets in western Pakistan, killing two children. The Iranian army said it targeted two bases used by the militant group Jaish al-Adl. Pakistan has protested this “blatant violation” of its territory. Iran considers the attacks security operations against terrorist groups close to its borders.

There are several significant characteristics of the recent missile attacks launched by the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian army itself.

Although not entirely unprecedented, the attacks could draw Iran right into the vortex of violent confrontations happening in the region. Over the past few months, Tehran seemed content letting her proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – do the fighting. All three groups receive significant amounts of weaponry from Iran.

Hamas’ fighting capacity has been seriously degraded by Israel’s incursion into Gaza. This incursion has been devastating for the population of Gaza. Over 20,000 died and nearly the entire population has been displaced. The incursion was provoked by a murderous attack by Hamas militants on Israeli settlements last Oct. 7. Even as Israeli bombing destroyed a significant amount of its infrastructure, Hamas continues to fire missiles aimed at Israeli cities.

As the war in Gaza raged, artillery duels between Israeli forces and Hezbollah units across the border with Lebanon continued. Tehran might have been goading the Hezbollah to escalate actions against Israel possibly to rescue the Hamas from complete annihilation. But the Hezbollah appears reluctant to escalate, fearful of a full-blown attack from US naval forces nearby.

In the face of Hezbollah’s apparent reluctance to escalate attacks on Israel, Iran must have asked the Houthi rebels in Yemen to take action. The Houthis tried firing ballistic missiles over the long distance to Israel. But all those missiles were intercepted, mainly by US warships positioned in the Red Sea.

Since Israel is too far for them to bomb, the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea. This threatens a vital trade route, passing through the Suez Canal.

The Houthis threatened to shut down the narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, necessitating military action by US and British forces. By the latest report, a third round of bombings have been launched by the allies on Houthi facilities in Yemen.

The bombing in Iran was claimed by ISIS. This opens a significant fault line in this volatile region, with its mad tapestry of ethnicities, religious affiliations and contested boundaries.

This week’s missile attacks launched by the Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian Army in Pakistan, Syria and Iraq indicate a growing perception in Tehran of increasing vulnerability to radical Sunni Muslim groups. Both the Al Qaeda and the ISIS networks are based mainly among Sunni Muslims antagonistic to the Shia theocracy that rules Iran.

Rivalry between the Shia and Sunni religious currents always simmered beneath the surface. The current political volatility creates conditions for radical Islamist groups – both Shia and Sunni – to try and settle centuries-old grievances.

Recall that a full-scale war erupted years ago between Iraq and Iran. After years of bloody artillery duels, Saddam Hussein’s army was able to hold the Iranians to a stalemate.

When the European colonizers arbitrarily drew boundary lines to create “nations,” they completely forgot about the Kurds. The Kurdish population became an ethnicity without a country, spread over what is now Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

In Iran, the Kurds are a persecuted minority still fiercely clinging to their tribal identity. In Turkey, the Kurds rally around a separatist armed movement, the PKK. In Iraq, the Kurds are a significant minority currently enjoying semi-autonomy in a modus vivendi with the government in Baghdad. In Syria, the Kurds are mostly with the opposition against the Assad regime in Damascus.

The escalation of armed hostilities in the region, mainly at the goading of Tehran, could let the genie of Kurdish nationalism out of the bottle. There are other ethnicities in the region, such as the Yazidis, but they have been heavily decimated by genocide the past few years.

The situation in this cauldron of distinct ethnicities and religious loyalties could escalate very quickly.