Renad Mansour
In response to Hamas’s October 7 attack last year, the Israeli government launched a regional war meant to reshape the Middle East. Israel specifically targeted the so-called axis of resistance, a network of groups allied with Iran that includes Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and parts of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq. Working on a scale that dwarfs previous efforts against the axis, Israel has spent the past year trying to destroy the network’s political, economic, military, logistical, and communications infrastructure. It has also undertaken an unprecedented campaign against the axis’s leadership, killing the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah and several senior commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The ferocity of the Israeli offensive, which has been bolstered by advanced technologies and a strategy of total war that flattens and depopulates neighborhoods and cities, will significantly alter the balance of power in the Middle East. Yet for all its undeniable military superiority, not to mention its support from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, Israel is unlikely to eradicate the organizations and regimes that belong to the axis in the way it hopes. Time and again the axis has demonstrated an adaptability and a resilience that attest to the deep connections its member groups maintain within their own states and societies. What’s more, the transnational relationships that compose the axis mean that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the other member organizations are best understood not merely as discrete nonstate actors or insurgent armed groups but as interlinking nodes of durable political, economic, military, and ideological networks.
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