(RepublicanJournal.org) – With Israel carrying out a major series of attacks on Hamas positions in Gaza, the US has warned the terrorist group’s backers not to get involved. America’s top military officer has warned Iran to stay out of the conflict. It’s easy to see why — it has the potential to destabilize the whole Middle East.
Israel Under Attack
Early on October 7, Hamas, the extreme Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip, launched a sudden barrage of at least 3,000 rockets against Israel. As the missiles landed, terrorists using motorized paragliders swooped down on towns, kibbutzes, and a music festival in southwest Israel as other militants used bulldozers to break down Israel’s security fence, allowing gunmen to pour through on motorbikes and in trucks.
The terrorists launched a ferocious series of massacres, going from door to door in towns murdering almost everyone they found. At least 260 people were slaughtered at the Supernova music festival, and a hundred more at Kfar Aza kibbutz. So far at least 1,200 Israelis are known to be dead, and another 150 were abducted and taken to Gaza as hostages.
Israel reacted with understandable fury, with troops moving to seal the border and kill or capture the invaders. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) say around 1,500 terrorists have been killed inside Israel. At the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas, who seized power in Gaza in 2007 and have used it as a base for rocket and terrorist attacks ever since.
Israel began a series of air and artillery attacks against Hamas targets inside Gaza. Unfortunately, Hamas is notorious for hiding its assets in residential areas, so Palestinian civilians are becoming collateral damage due to this illegal tactic.
Iran Is the Problem
Hamas is a radical Sunni group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that first appeared in 1987 — but it’s heavily backed by Iran, which seems to overlook Hamas’s Sunni identity because it’s a useful proxy against Israel. Iran denies any involvement in the October 7 atrocities, but Hamas leaders have said Tehran’s Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) helped plan the assault.
If proof of Iranian involvement appears, Israel is likely to retaliate against Iran itself. Meanwhile, Iran has called on Muslim countries to join Hamas in attacking Israel. So far, they haven’t; in fact, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which normalized relations with Israel as part of former president Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, called the attack a “serious and grave escalation” and said it was “appalled” that Hamas had taken hostages.
Iran is worried by the Abraham Accords, which could leave it facing a Middle East that’s united against it, with both Jewish and Arab states opposing the Tehran regime. Right now Israel is negotiating the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, the biggest and wealthiest Gulf state and Iran’s most determined enemy; was the attack aimed at wrecking those negotiations?
Either way, the US wants Iran to stop stirring the pot. The US Navy is already moving the USS Gerald R Ford carrier battle group to the coast of Israel; now General Charles Q Brown Jr, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Iran to back off. At a press conference on October 9, he said the US doesn’t want the conflict to spread and “the idea is for Iran to get that message loud and clear.” The question is, after President Biden’s short-sighted decision to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian funds in exchange for a handful of Iranian-American hostages, does Tehran respect the US enough to listen?
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