“You did it to me so I’m going to do it to you”  isn’t appro­pri­ate behav­iour in a school­yard. In a region trem­bling on the brink of  an all-encom­pass­ing war , where  cool heads, informed think­ing and  sen­si­ble com­pro­mise are vital, it seems to be the best that ego­tis­ti­cal lead­ers dri­ven by ide­ol­o­gy and their  polit­i­cal sur­vival can  provide.

Crow­ing at about how  Israeli  air defences, with a lit­tle help from their friends , thwart­ed Iran’s mis­sile bar­rage blurs the fact that the  aya­tol­lahs in Tehran were backed into  a cor­ner they indi­cat­ed they  want­ed to avoid.
Con­sid­er­ing the poten­tial  costs of esca­lat­ing the ten­sion, one could argue that, for the moment at least, that makes them can­di­dates for apply­ing Pres­i­dent Ronald Reagan’s cri­te­ria for  the Sovi­et Union in regard to dis­ar­ma­ment: “Trust, but ver­i­fy”.
As rep­re­hen­si­ble and archa­ic-mind­ed  the tur­baned, beard­ed and ber­obed lead­er­ship in Tehran  may  appear  to West­ern eyes, they’re strain­ing to hold pow­er over 90-mil­lion peo­ple  whose his­to­ry and cul­ture dates back three mil­len­nia, under a sys­tem  based on sev­enth cen­tu­ry reli­gious teach­ing that has lim­it­ed pub­lic support.
In fact, a recent poll indi­cates that 89  per­cent  of lit­er­ate Ira­ni­ans did not want theo­crat­ic rule.
But that’s no rea­son to assume they love and back their coun­try less than the rough­ly same per­cent­age of Israelis  who have lit­tle or no use for Binyamin Netanyahu, or Amer­i­cans who despise Don­ald Trump or Pres­i­dent Biden, but expect who­ev­er is in pow­er to retal­i­ate for  a bla­tant  assault on their nation’s  sov­er­eign­ty nation­al dignity.
                      COMMON GROUND
There is legal hair-split­ting over whether or not  embassies and con­sulates are the sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry of the nation they rep­re­sent, but the pre­vail­ing ethos is that they are invi­o­late in  principle.
Even the Israelis admit bomb­ing  Iran’s  con­sulate in Dam­as­cus., which prompt­ed the bar­rage of mis­siles, drones and rock­ets  fired towards Israel, wasn’t  well thought-out. “The Israelis lat­er acknowl­edged that they had bad­ly mis­judged the con­se­quences of the strike, U.S. offi­cials and an Israeli offi­cial said.”
That’s a weasel way of say­ing the Iran­ian response caught them  by sur­prise, which makes it three for three  on the neg­a­tive side of the score sheet for the vaunt­ed Israeli intel­li­gence services.
Miss­ing the signs before the  Octo­ber 7  Hamas attack was an extra­or­di­nary lapse that will haunt the Israeli nation­al psy­che in perpetuity.
Who­ev­er thought aveng­ing that by flat­ten­ing Gaz­za, killing tens of thou­sands of women and chil­dren and forc­ing a mil­lion-plus civil­ians to the brink of famine would keep allies unques­tion­ing­ly in the Israeli camp needs to get out and about more in the world.
Maybe that’s why no one appar­ent­ly thought the Iran­ian reac­tion would be any less vehe­ment than that of Israel, or the U.S. if Iran killed their top gen­er­als in a diplo­mat­ic facility.
The most pre­dictable would be the  wingnut fac­tion in  Con­gress run­ning about with their hair on fire, look­ing for cam­eras and micro­phones  to scream “Nuke Tehran”, and  its acolytes and allies for good measure.
That would be laugh­able if it wasn’t for the fact they have no idea what they’re talk­ing about when it comes to the destruc­tive forces aligned in the Mid­dle East.
Iran­ian prox­ies, alone can lay waste on an epic scale. By U.S. State Depart­ment esti­mates, in addi­tion to weapons and train­ing, Tehran doles out more than $100-mil­lion a year  to Hamas and Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad.
With Iran­ian help,  Hezbol­lah, whose  fight­ers are con­sid­ered bet­ter trained, organ­ised and  dis­ci­plined than many Mid­dle East armies,  can make  its own weapons and has an arse­nal  that U.S. mil­i­tary and arms  experts esti­mate includes between  135,000  and 150,000 rock­ets and missiles.
Unless you mea­sure “vic­to­ry” by the amount of rub­ble you cre­ate and inno­cent civil­ians you can kill and main, nobody is going to “win” if the already mon­u­men­tal­ly destruc­tive and mon­ey-wast­ing  con­fronta­tion between Israel, Hamas and by exten­sion Tehran esca­lates from “you did it so I’ll do it back” into an all-out  region­al war.
                             DOVES BEWARE
The Econ­o­mist mag­a­zine quot­ed  Dana Stroul, described as a “for­mer top Mid­dle East pol­i­cy offi­cial at the Pen­ta­gon” as opin­ing: “Giv­en how sig­nif­i­cant this attack was, it is dif­fi­cult to see how Israel can­not respond.”
With that  atti­tude, if  a sym­bol­ic white dove  flew over the Mid­dle East today, Israel and its ene­mies would chan­nel Marc Antho­ny in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caeser”; “”Cry hav­oc and let slip the dogs of war.”, and  tens of mil­lions would be wast­ed killing a chance for peace before any­one even asked what it was.How much bet­ter — and more in keep­ing with the reli­gious zealotry dri­ving both sides — if the dove were con­sid­ered to be the one Noah sent out after the first one he dis­patched came back with an olive branch: He wait­ed sev­en days, and accord­ing to  Gen­e­sis (8:12);.” The dove had no need to return to the ark, since it had found a home on land. The ark could soon be emp­tied, and human­i­ty could begin to estab­lish itself again in the world.”
But that would require  cool heads and sen­si­ble com­pro­mise„ so don’t bet on the flood of vio­lence sub­sid­ing any time soon.
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