Now everyone can see Iran is the aggressor
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has finally flushed out the true perpetrator of most of the ills in the Middle East. On Tuesday night, Israelis took to their bomb shelters as scores of missiles were fired by Iran, reinforcing what everyone already knows: that Tehran is the principal cause of the region’s instability.
For years, the regime has sponsored terrorist proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis to target Israel. Yet when the latter fights back, Western leaders like Joe Biden and Sir Keir Starmer urge restraint.
They do not want the war to escalate into a wider conflict that draws in the West. But if Iran is now firing ballistic missiles this changes the dynamics entirely. At some point, the regime in Tehran will have to be dealt with.
One reason why US officials were urging a ceasefire on Israel is because they feared Benjamin Netanyahu was seeking to trigger a wider war in which the Americans would have to intervene.
The Israel Defence Forces have now crossed the border on what the government insists will be a targeted operation specifically to dismantle these bases, which should have been removed years ago.
Jerusalem says it does not intend to occupy parts of Lebanon as it did for years after the 1982 invasion but there is concern that mission creep will draw the IDF deeper into the country and pull the entire Middle East into war.
None of this would be happening if Iran stopped funding its Shia proxy, allowing it to build stocks back up again. The malevolent influence of Tehran is everywhere. Among those killed alongside Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah last week was a senior Iranian general attending the group’s ill-fated summit.
Mr Netanyahu recently appealed to the people of Iran to recognise that the theocracy that runs the country is dragging it to disaster. Whether the opposition is strong enough to use this crisis to topple the regime is unclear; but for as long as the mullahs remain in charge there will be no peace.
Israel would not be at war with Hezbollah and Hamas if they had not been attacked. The solution is clear: the disarmament of the terror groups supported by Iran and a buffer zone to protect the Israeli border.
If that can only be achieved by putting forces on the ground then it is not for President Biden, Sir Keir or David Lammy to tell the Israelis otherwise. They now need to decide what to do about Iran, not Israel.