References to Iran have been glaringly absent from commentary on the clash between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza, even though two primary terrorist organisations, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have effusively praised Tehran and its regional proxies for providing their military capabilities and finance.

Moreover, the way the conflict was framed both by the Gaza groups and by Iran’s broader regional network, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen, makes it clear that they all view their regional battles as mere fronts in an integrated transnational jihad directed against Israel by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

As Islamic Jihad and Hamas have repeatedly asserted for years, they would have little capacity to start these wars against Israel without IRGC training, funding, arms transfers and expertise. Not only does Iran provide arms and rockets, but it has also established local production capability for all its proxies and trained operatives externally in the technical aspects, even custom-designing cruder rockets like the Badr-3 that can be manufactured with ease in Gaza.

One Islamic Jihad official, Ramez al-Halabi, declared: ‘The mujahideen in Gaza and in Lebanon use Iranian weapons to strike the Zionists. We buy our weapons with Iranian money. An important part of our activity is under the supervision of Iranian experts. The contours of the victories in Palestine as of late were outlined with the blood of Qasem Soleimani, Iranian blood.’

Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, said that his group’s ‘complete gratitude is extended to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has spared us and the other Palestinian resistance factions nothing in recent years. They have provided us with money, weapons, and expertise. They have supported us in everything … They weren’t with us on the ground, but they were with us through those capabilities.’

Hamas’s overall leader, Ismail Haniyeh, thanked both IRGC chief Hossein Salami and the leader of its Quds Force, Ismail Qaani, and both Haniyeh and Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah wrote letters of thanks to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

None of this is particularly new. In 2018, Sinwar said that Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRGC ‘work together and coordinate and are in touch on an almost daily basis’. During the latest fighting, he asserted that there had been ‘a high level of coordination’, which was underlined by Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem. The Hezbollah-linked Al-Akhbar daily even claimed that a joint military operations room was established in Lebanon to oversee the conflict, staffed with officers from Hamas, Hezbollah and the IRGC.

What was new in this round was the very open support of the Houthis, both practically and rhetorically. Once a ceasefire was declared, representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad gave glowing speeches in Sanaa praising the Houthis for their role in the ‘victory’, and the local Hamas representative bestowed an award on the Houthis for their financial and logistical support.

During the conflict, the Houthis were fundraising for the war effort. In Syria, the Houthi representative reportedly met with Islamic Jihad’s representative to confer about the fighting.

Integration among all of Iran’s proxies reportedly went even beyond this. According to Al-Akhbar, the Houthis contacted Hamas to ask for coordinates inside Israel in a bid to target them with Yemeni missiles and drones. However, Hamas informed Sanaa that the situation in the battlefield was ‘very good’. An unverified report by IRGC-linked Mashregh News claimed that a Yemeni from the Houthi stronghold of Saada was killed in Gaza during the conflict, becoming ‘the first Yemeni martyr in the fight against the Zionist enemy’.

The Houthis, a longstanding Iranian proxy, view their war in Yemen as part of the regional IRGC jihad to destroy Israel, hence their slogan, adapted from Iran’s own: ‘Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse on the Jews! Victory to Islam!’ Comments like those of Houthi politburo member Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Mahbashi (‘The only path is the path to Jerusalem, the path of Jihad against the Jews’) are ubiquitous, and the Houthis openly recruit Yemenis to ‘liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque’ in Jerusalem.

Rockets and drones were launched from Lebanon and Syria, and possibly Iraq, by Iran’s proxies, indicating coordination across all the fronts. Islamic Jihad’s al-Halabi summarised this coordination, saying: ‘The axis between Jerusalem and Beirut, the axis between Jerusalem and Baghdad, the axis between Jerusalem and Damascus, the axis between Jerusalem and Sanaa, and first and foremost, the axis between Jerusalem and Tehran—it is a victorious axis.’

Al-Akhbar observed that this new round of fighting was different because of the intertwining of the efforts of all of the IRGC’s regional clients and proxies. That, said the report, was ‘a new equation established by the resistance forces in the last battle’, something recently reiterated by the IRGC’s Iraqi proxy Kataib Hezbollah, which declared its ‘entry into deterrence equation’ against Israel should there be another war.

Given how integrated the Palestinian terrorist factions are in the IRGC proxy network, and how operationally dependent they are on it, it’s not clear why media and other commentary almost universally failed to mention the central Iranian role.

The longstanding aim of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad is to destroy Israel and to establish an Islamic state. Their war has little relation to tensions in Jerusalem, though many promote this linkage. Rather, it is an outgrowth of Iran’s ongoing pan-Islamic crusade against Israel’s existence.

President Joe Biden has announced that he will withdraw US troops from Afghanistan by 11 September, finally ending America’s longest war ever. The move was indicative of a broader shift by the United States away from the Middle East—one that has been a long time coming. Will anyone take its place in the region?

China seems to hope so. Just a couple of weeks before Biden’s announcement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in Tehran to sign a 25-year ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ (CSP) deal with Iran, which will include economic, political and security cooperation. The move has the US concerned—and for good reason.

Yes, CSPs are a standard foreign-policy tool for China, which has already established them with other countries in the region, including Iraq and Saudi Arabia. And some have most likely exaggerated the scope of the CSP with Iran, such as by reporting that it includes US$400 billion of Chinese investment in Iran. (Neither party has confirmed any specific figure.)

But even if the CSP doesn’t elevate the China–Iran relationship to new heights, it is the first such partnership China has concluded with a long-established adversary of the US. At the same time, China is deepening ties with America’s closest allies in the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and even Israel.

For now, China’s motivation seems primarily economic. Aside from gaining access to the region’s energy resources, China can boost its profile in cutting-edge sectors by cooperating with Israel’s high-tech industries. That’s why—much to the annoyance of the US—it has sharply increased its investment in Israel in recent years.

China has also looked to Israel to advance its connectivity ambitions, encompassed by the Belt and Road Initiative. Just as China has already taken control of seaports elsewhere across Asia and Europe, it has established itself at the Israeli port of Haifa. Similarly, anticipating reliance on Iranian oil, China has developed a direct shipping route to the port of Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz.

One thing the US doesn’t have to worry about—at least for now—is China stoking conflict in the Middle East. Yes, the CSP with Iran mentions security cooperation, but it’s no military alliance—and China isn’t taking sides in any military conflict. After all, China also conducts military drills with Iran’s archrival, Saudi Arabia.

The last thing China wants is for a regional conflagration to disrupt oil exports or destroy its investments in the region. This makes China a responsible stakeholder in regional peace. But it doesn’t signal China’s willingness to underwrite security in the Middle East. Military alliances are not China’s preferred tool in its global competition with the US.

China has also been careful not to be drawn into the region’s long-running conflicts. While China recently suggested that it would host direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, this should not be given too much credence. China is well aware that it was only because of America’s massive expenditure of blood and treasure that China has been able to expand its economic influence in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is not the kind of investment it’s interested in making.

Ultimately, China’s economic interests are best served by keeping the Middle East’s established US-led security system intact. This partly explains why China’s main partners in the Middle East are mostly US allies. China made an exception when it signed the CSP with Iran, but that, too, was an economic calculation: it wants to revive bilateral trade, which has suffered mightily since the US withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reinstated sanctions in 2018.

In fact, it was only after sanctions were reintroduced that the idea of the CSP was born. The timing of its signing—just as the Biden administration tries to renegotiate and rejoin the nuclear deal—was a calculated decision by China to strengthen Iran’s bargaining position, thereby, it is hoped, hastening the lifting of sanctions.

Iran will, however, pay a high price for its partnership with China, which has taken advantage of its economic travails to lay claim to a heavily discounted supply of oil. During earlier phases of the CSP negotiations, some Iranians warned that China was seeking an exploitative deal, much like the agreements that ended with it wresting control of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port.

Iran’s powerful Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, should also be wary of China. In particular, Hezbollah will need to reconsider its threat to launch a ballistic-missile attack on Israel’s Haifa port, given that China now all but owns it.

As for the US, its military superiority in the Middle East will probably remain undisputed for some time. But military power won’t be enough to stem China’s strategic rise in the region (and beyond). For that, the US will also need to boost its political clout, economic engagement and cultural influence. Otherwise, as Biden put it in February, China will ‘eat our lunch’.

A key challenge facing President-elect Joe Biden will be whether the United States should rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was intended to persuade Iran to abandon its plans to develop nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration played a role in the nuclear deal, but critics say it failed to take account of Iran’s missile program, its unchecked rogue behaviour in the region and its state sponsorship of terrorism.

The issue was canvassed in detail when delegations from Australia and Israel met online in November for the sixth annual Be’er Sheva Dialogue. The series of webinars was designed to develop a greater appreciation of how Australia and Israel can work together on areas of common strategic interest.

Named after the site of the Battle of Beersheba, the dialogue is a partnership between ASPI, the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Herzliya and the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, bringing together officials, parliamentarians and analysts from both nations.

There was a strong feeling at this year’s dialogue that, while Biden has considered rejoining the JCPOA, he no doubt realises that it may not be an option given the changed circumstances of the Middle East, and the US will need to renegotiate an upgraded and improved agreement with Iran.

Some delegates argued that Biden represented a return to a more predictable management of global affairs that would see the US re-emerge as a global leader.

Australia’s defence minister, Linda Reynolds, noted that given how the pandemic has intensified strategic competition, this year’s session was perhaps the most important to date. Both nations, she said, must prepare for a post-Covid-19 world that’s poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly. She noted the growing prevalence of grey-zone conflict and coercion and highlighted the importance of Australia’s cooperation with Israel, bilaterally and multilaterally.

Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, the former Israeli Defence Force chief who’s intended to become Israel’s prime minister next November, emphasised major shifts in both the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. He said countries that had previously refused to recognise Israel are now publicly embracing peace.

The advantages of moderation, Gantz said, are becoming clearer to countries through the Muslim and Arab worlds, the Gulf and beyond. But he said this emerging alliance of moderates also faces forces determined to undermine stability. He urged like-minded countries who valued democracy and peace to unite to create a broad and cohesive front and predicted that Israel’s ties with Australia would only grow stronger.

Another key focus of the talks was China, with a view that Beijing’s goals in the Middle East were energy security and gaining strategic leverage over other countries. That involved a recognition by China that it was not at this stage a major power in that region and it was pursuing a soft balancing strategy, making the US expend more resources than it would otherwise have to. Beijing is also trying to connect economies in the Middle East to China through strategic investments in infrastructure and technology, linking economic ties to strategic and political objectives.

Israeli delegates argued that their country is not yet dependent on China and that the relationship offers valuable economic benefits. But Australian speakers warned that Israel should be wary as China develops relationships with different Middle Eastern countries.

Both sides agreed that strong democracies sharing a unified approach to the China challenge was the most productive way to reduce Beijing’s coercive use of power against individual states.

Australian participants suggested that Israel should think more about its strategic links with Beijing and their implications in the medium and longer terms.

On terrorism, the Israeli delegation stated that the top threat stems from the Iranian–Shiite axis that begins on Iranian territory, is created and funded by the Iranian regime, stretches out across the region and creates armed proxies. There are, they said, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Bahrain, the Houthis in Yemen, as well as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

These groups control territories and feature military hierarchies coupled with guerrilla tactics and terrorist operations. Several Israeli speakers noted that it was important to address Iran’s nuclear, precision-missile and cyber programs, as well as its malign activities in the region. They said  Australia should consider whether it is focused enough on Iran and its network across the region. They want Australia to expand its proscription of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation from just the military wing to include the whole organisation.

On cybersecurity, Israeli speakers described major cyberattacks on their nation’s defence-related entities and critical infrastructure. The most significant was on the water supply system and, if it had succeeded, it could have caused serious loss of life.

It appears that to deter those behind this aggressive cyber campaign, Israel attacked the control centre of Shahid Rajaee Port in Iran. Delegates called for greater cooperation to stop cyber threats.

In the Middle East, and arising from the Abraham Accords, delegates saw potential for trilateral cooperation between Australia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates in the fields of defence, defence industry, cybersecurity, tourism and agriculture.

It was suggested that a hotline be set up between the defence organisations of Australia and Israel to help jointly develop defensive and offensive capabilities for cyber, to exchange knowledge in force building and concepts, to undertake joint efforts to combat grey-zone activities and to develop cooperation between military colleges.

Other suggestions were a joint committee for defence innovation, joint projects in space and artificial intelligence, and sharing crisis management lessons, based on Australia’s experience with natural disaster response and Israel’s experience with mass casualty events.

US President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to reverse several of President Donald Trump’s policies that had overturned important decisions made by President Barack Obama, including the nuclear deal with Iran. However, Biden’s declared desire to return to the nuclear agreement with Iran will be extremely difficult to achieve.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action reached in 2015 was hailed as a major breakthrough because it stopped, indeed reversed, the Iranian nuclear program while giving Tehran relief in graduated fashion from stringent economic sanctions imposed upon it by the UN and the US. It mandated that Iran would not enrich uranium beyond 3.67% purity and not stockpile more than 300 kilograms of enriched uranium, and that it would dismantle its Arak nuclear reprocessing facility, ship 98% of its uranium stock abroad, and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor compliance with the provisions of the agreement.

However, in May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions, especially on shipment of Iranian oil, to put ‘maximum pressure’ on Tehran to force it to accept America’s maximalist demands that went far beyond the JCPOA. The Trump administration argued that the 15-year time limit on Iran’s nuclear program was insufficient and that Tehran must renounce in perpetuity its right to enrich uranium. Washington also wanted to impose a moratorium on Iran’s ballistic missile program and make Tehran commit to withdrawing its support to forces in the Middle East opposed to US interests.

After waiting a year to see if the European signatories of the JCPOA could persuade Washington to return to the agreement, Iran decided in May 2019 to breach the limit for uranium enrichment. It also began increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium beyond the amount allowed under the agreement. Finally, in January 2020, Tehran announced that it ‘no longer faces any operational restrictions, including enrichment capacity, percentage of enrichment, amount of enriched material, and research and development’.

In a confidential document sent to members last week, the IAEA stated that, as of 2 November, Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium had reached more than 2,442 kilograms, eight times the limit permitted by the JCPOA. The New York Times reported that, at a meeting the day after the IAEA report came out, Trump contemplated launching air strikes against the Natanz enrichment facility. His senior advisers, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dissuaded him, arguing that such an attack could lead to a major conflagration in the Middle East during his last weeks in office. However, given Trump’s mercurial and vindictive nature one can’t be certain that he won’t order an attack to preclude his successor’s attempt to improve US relations with Tehran.

Even if Trump doesn’t engage in such a reckless move, President Biden will find it very hard to revive the JCPOA because opinions in both Washington and Tehran have hardened over the past two years. The consensus in the US has shifted to a much more uncompromising position because of Iran’s refusal to change the course of its Middle East policy. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has trained proxy militias that have played a major role in helping the Assad regime in Syria to turn the tide of war against US-supported opposition forces. Tehran continues to finance and arm Lebanese Hezbollah and is the principal supporter of the Houthis in Yemen who have not only fought American ally Saudi Arabia to a standstill but also attacked major Saudi oil facilities with Iranian-supplied drones and missiles.

At the same time, it’s clear that any attempt by the Biden administration to link the nuclear issue to Iran’s ballistic missile program and its regional policy will be unacceptable to Tehran. The Iranian position is that any talks with the US will be contingent on Washington first returning to the JCPOA without preconditions. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made it plain in an interview with CBS earlier this month that ‘under no circumstances’ will Iran renegotiate the nuclear deal with a future American administration.

The US decision to unilaterally withdraw from the JCPOA has played into the hands of the Iranian hardliners and discredited those like Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani who had argued in favour of the JCPOA and by implication improved relations with the US. The Rouhani government signed the JCPOA in 2015 with the reluctant endorsement of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has changed his mind in light of Iran’s experience with the Trump administration and returned to his earlier position that no American administration can be trusted because all that Washington is interested in is regime change in Tehran.

Furthermore, Rouhani is a lame duck president. Under the Iranian constitution, he cannot run again when elections are held in June 2021 because he has already served two terms. The recent parliamentary elections have resulted in the domination of the Iranian parliament by the hard-line conservative faction known as the ‘principlists’. It’s almost certain that the next president will belong to the same grouping. The general consensus among the political class in Iran is that the new president should handle any negotiations with the US. Once bitten twice shy, the new Iranian dispensation can be expected to drive a much harder bargain. It is unlikely to accept a simple return to the original JCPOA. It will most probably insist on a foolproof clause that will preclude a repetition of the US’s unilateral withdrawal.

The internal political dynamics in the US and in Iran will make it almost impossible for Biden to revive the JCPOA. It is unfortunate that the positive momentum created by the nuclear agreement was seriously undermined by the unilateral American withdrawal. In all probability, US–Iran relations will be mired in hostility well into the future and continue contributing to instability and insecurity in the Middle East.

US President Donald Trump has generally pursued a foreign policy full of inconsistencies and contradictions, but that doesn’t apply to his approach to the Middle East. He has consistently targeted Iran as a menace and forged an anti-Iranian Arab–Israeli alliance to counter Tehran and its allies. Will his strategy pay off?

Trump has thrived on a ‘divide and rule’ policy at home and abroad. He is the first American leader to score well in enticing some of the Gulf Arab kingdoms to join hands with Israel to confront ‘the Iranian threat’. Hence his brokering of normalisation-of-relations agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Trump wants Tehran to renegotiate the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which he withdrew the US in 2018, and to retrench its military capability and regional influence according to American interests.

He has subjected Tehran to a policy of ‘maximum pressure’ to make it buckle under the weight of increased US sanctions at a time when Iran has also been hit hard by Covid-19. As Tehran has remained defiant, he has racked up pressure by seeking to use the JCPOA’s ‘snapback’ clause to restore all the pre-JCPOA United Nations sanctions against Iran, despite the US not being a party to the agreement anymore.

While lambasting Tehran for shirking some of its commitments to the agreement in response to his actions, he has ignored Iran’s legal right to do so under the same ‘snapback’ clause as long as it remains a party to the agreement. Not surprisingly, the other signatories to the JCPOA, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, say any attempt by Trump to reimpose the UN sanctions is ‘illegal’ and have confirmed once again their support for preserving the agreement as an important measure for regional stability and international security.

Trump says his policy actions are necessary to build a peaceful and stable Middle East. But they stand to backfire on a number of fronts.

The president’s policy of pressuring the Iranian Islamic regime to give in or die has caused maximum damage to the Iranian society, without necessarily endangering the survivability of the regime. The ruling clerical stratum has learned how to circumvent and cope with American sanctions for most of its life since 1979. It has developed all the needed religiously based pragmatic and nationalist mechanisms and measures for self-preservation, with a capacity to contain internal dissent and stand up to external challenges.

In response to US pressure, it has strengthened Iran’s strategic ties with America’s major adversaries, China and Russia, and maintained at significant cost its regional allies—including the Syrian Bashar al-Assad government, the Iraqi Shia militias, the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis—as part of a broad security architecture.

Trump may find it in his interest to provoke Iran into a confrontation, but Tehran’s approach is to wait until the outcome of the November US election. Democratic candidate Joe Biden has indicated that if he wins the election he will restore America’s participation in the JCPOA—although Trump is doing everything he can to make it impossible for him to do so.

The Trump administration is today more isolated than Tehran internationally. Not only America’s traditional European allies, Britain, France and Germany, but most of the global community have lined up behind Iran as being on the right side of international law. Trump is widely recognised as someone who has persistently flouted international norms and law at will. The cross-Atlantic rift has never been greater, and America’s adversaries have never been more emboldened.

Trump’s apparent goal of an anti-Iran regional front cannot serve the cause of regional stability and security. The 1979 and 1994 Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties with Israel brought no let-up in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the latest UAE and Bahrain deals with Israel are also unlikely to succeed in doing that.

And should Saudi Arabia join the chorus of peace deals with Israel, which is likely at some stage, that could be seen as a Judeo-Christian – Sunni Islamic alliance, given Riyadh’s historical claim to be the leader of Sunni Islam. This carries the risk of not only deepening the rift with Shia Islam, championed by Iran, but also playing into the hands of violent Muslim extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State.

Trump’s accelerated Middle East policy actions, when combined with making peace with America’s past ‘terrorist’ enemy, the Taliban, to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, are more geared towards enabling Trump to score domestically than marking the dawn of peace in the region. They are bound to deepen hostile lines between the US and its allies on one side and Iran and its supporters on the other.

That will erode the chances of engendering meaningful regional cooperation that could transform the Persian Gulf and indeed the wider Middle East from a zone of ‘frenemies’ to one of peace and stability.