81 days after the start of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, the conflict is increasingly taking on regional proportions. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant assured this Tuesday in the Defense Committee of Parliament that his country is fighting on seven fronts and that so far it has responded to attacks on six of them. In addition to the Gaza Strip, where almost 21,000 people have already died, and the West Bank – which Gallant described as “Judea and Samaria” – where raids occur almost daily, hostilities have also spread to Iran, Yemen, Syria, according to the minister , Lebanon and Iraq. “I’m saying it here in the clearest way possible,” Gallant warned during his speech. “Anyone who acts against us as a potential target has no immunity.”
Until Monday, Israel's fighting beyond its borders and those of the occupied territories was limited to secondary, Iran-aligned actors such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose attacks on the north of the country forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis. But two days ago, Tehran accused the Israel Defense Forces of killing Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Razi Mousavi and three others by firing multiple rockets while he was in Sayida Zeinab, a neighborhood south of the Syrian capital Damascus. Israel, which has not confirmed its involvement in the attack, accused the Iranian general of smuggling weapons from Iran and funding Lebanese Shiite guerrillas and other Islamist organizations in Syria.
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Iranian public television interrupted its broadcast to report the news. The country's president, Ebrahim Raisí, assured that the attack was “a sign of the Zionist regime's frustration and weakness, for which it will certainly pay a price.” The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in turn, issued a statement with a similar tone. “Undoubtedly, the usurper and brutal Zionist regime will pay for this crime,” said the note, which predicted “suffering” for Israel. Mousavi was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran and was one of the main collaborators of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force (a special force of the Revolutionary Guard), who was assassinated by the US in a drone strike on January 3, 2020 in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
If Israeli responsibility for the death of the senior Iranian military official is confirmed, it would mean an escalation of the conflict. Although the Tehran regime has not yet taken any direct action against Israel and has only increased its threatening rhetoric, it has significantly intensified its activities against that country since October 7. Not only funding and arming Shiite militias in Lebanon and Syria, but also the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned that Israel's arch-enemy has tripled production of uranium enriched to 60% in recent weeks, below the 90% needed to make nuclear weapons but well above the level in the deal A maximum of 3.67% was set in 2015 through its nuclear program, which the United States unilaterally abandoned three years later.
Houthi rebels
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Another front mentioned by Gallant is the Yemeni one. Since the conflict began, the Houthi militia, also backed by Iran, has launched several drone strikes against southern Israel and has been harassing ships transiting the Red Sea for weeks, forcing the United States to organize a multinational force to counter them and block maritime traffic to and from it Facilitate Suez Canal.
The last two incidents in this area were recorded this Tuesday. Britain's Merchant Marine Authority has recorded two explosions and announced that two drones were spotted five nautical miles from a ship traveling off the coast of the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. Another ship was attacked with missiles in the same area. The projectiles, which struck from a distance of half and four miles, did not damage the freighter, according to the same source, who confirmed that there were no casualties among any of the crew.
On the Lebanese front, Israel has again attacked Hezbollah targets in the south of the country in the umpteenth battle between the two sides since the October 7 attacks. According to a military spokesman, the Israeli armed forces responded to the firing of an anti-tank missile that directly hit the Orthodox St. Mary's Church in the Israeli town of Iqrit on the border with Lebanon. Nine Israeli soldiers were injured in the attack, one of whom is in serious condition. Hezbollah rockets also hit an agricultural cooperative in the Israeli town of Dovev.
In another war scenario enumerated by the Israeli defense minister, the Iraqi one, it was the United States that acted militarily on Monday after the pro-Iranian militia Kataib Hezbollah attacked the US base in Erbil by firing a drone over it and leaving it in critical condition to an American soldier and wounded two others. It is not the first attack on Erbil or other US military facilities in Iraq and Syria since October 7th. “These attacks aim to hold perpetrators accountable and impede their ability to continue attacks. “We will always protect our forces,” Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement reported by Portal.
In the occupied territories, Gallant cited the West Bank as another front, where Israeli raids and attacks have taken place since the start of the conflict and support for Hamas continues to grow, having almost quadrupled since October 7. This Tuesday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 31-year-old man and a 17-year-old minor in the Al Fawwar refugee camp south of the city of Hebron.
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