We could be on the brink of a cataclysmic Middle East war, writes Mark Almond
By MARK ALMOND
DAILYMAIL.COM
10 May 2018
For much of this year the world has been fixated by fears of nuclear Armageddon erupting over North Korea.
But over the past 48 hours, alarming developments in the Middle East remind us of the even greater likelihood of conventional warfare on a cataclysmic scale in the region.
Now that its heavyweights — Israel and Iran — have traded blows for the very first time, we ignore that threat at our peril.
After 20 Iranian rockets were fired from Syria at military positions held by the Jewish state on the Golan Heights, Israel responded by launching dozens of missiles at Iranian forces in Syria early yesterday.
They hit a radar station, air defences and an ammunition dump — killing at least 23 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which is based in the UK.
Iran’s rockets — fired by the Quds Force, a wing of the Revolutionary Guards — either fell short of their targets or were knocked out by Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ defence system.
This is not all-out war, but it certainly takes us to the brink.
In the Middle East, two major conflicts have been simmering side by side for years — the Arabs versus the Israelis, and the Shi’ite Muslims against the Sunni Muslims.
This week’s events seem about to drag them together into a gigantic and highly unstable flash point.
Iran, which is not an Arab nation, is the chief Shi’ite power. Since the revolution of 1979 which over threw the pro-Western, modernising Shah and imposed the harsh religious rule of the Ayatollahs, it has been spreading radicalism. The regime detests the West: it refers to America as the Great Satan, and Britain as the Little Satan.
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