Armageddon by Accident or Design?

By Keith Best

The current parlous state of international affairs can, with a little stretch of the imagination, give rise to inventive yet thoroughly plausible conspiracy theories. We all know that a suspicion supported by a scintilla of fact can consolidate a fantastical tale into a plausible belief – one from which many cannot then be dissuaded. History itself is a rich fabric from which to weave threads of ignorance into what appears to be credible. Were the mafia behind the assassination of JFK after he endorsed his brother’s efforts as Attorney-General to crack down on their crime or was it the act of a lone gunman? Were the princes in the Tower murdered and, if so, on whose authority? Did the Americans organise the aircrash that killed General Zia Ul-Haq President of Pakistan and, if so, why? Who or what caused the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in southeast Asia in March 2014? Did Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari die in 2017 and was replaced by a look-alike Sudanese impostor? When then Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt disappeared while swimming in 1967 did he drown or was he really a Chinese spy and was secretly transported? 

Currently, we are all rightly concerned about the conflict in Israel-Gaza and whether this will escalate into a wider war: with the involvement of Hezbollah and Iran and the failure of the Arab states to exert co-ordinated influence it is now much more likely. It is iterated by the parties themselves as well as by informed commentators that no-one wishes to see such an escalation and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, has shown little appetite for it. Yet the Israeli strike against the Iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, on 1 April killing 16 people, including a senior Quds Force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and seven other IRGC officers could be seen as a deliberate provocation. The matter has escalated since then.

It was inevitable that Iran would retaliate (in a region where any act of aggression by one country is traditionally met with a similar or enhanced response from its victim). So, it came on 13 April with more than 300 drones and missiles launched at Israel by Iran overnight, marking Iran’s first direct attack on Israel after years of shadow-boxing. We are told that an anonymous source from the Revolutionary Guards said that the original Israeli strike in Damascus targeted a meeting between Iranian intelligence officials and Palestinian militants, including leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who were discussing the war in Gaza. This would be justification for Israel to attack albeit an overt assault on the sovereign presence of another state.

A conspiracy theorist could speculate that all this is happening not in a disjointed unplanned way but, in fact, is the development of a carefully prepared strategy to destroy Iran’s malign influence in supporting terrorism: underpin an unqualified support for Israel by USA on the basis of which Israel provokes Iran into a reckless action justifying a Western war against Iran (which has weak air defences), removing the Ayatollahs and re-establishing a secular plural democracy which could establish proper relationships with the West. Was this not the ploy in Iraq and then in Afghanistan?

Is this a preposterous proposition? Probably. It cannot be in the USA’s wildest dreams of intervention to want to go to war with Iran in the knowledge that this could drag in Russia (possibly supplied by China) and maybe the neighbouring Arab states. The efforts of Biden and the UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron should be taken at their face value as a strong urge for restraint. Moreover, an attack on Iran would inevitably drag in China which derives its oil supplies from Iran and is hardly likely to see it neutralised or dominated by the West.

Yet what of Mr Netanyahu himself? Deeply unpopular with many Israelis who see his failure to negotiate the return of the hostages as well as having increasing concern at the Palestinian humanitarian crisis and the engendering of hatred by a new generation of Palestinians against the Israelis he must realise that when the conflict ends he will be ousted from office and may well face indictment for war crimes. He has every incentive for not only prolonging the conflict but also widening it to secure his current position as the war leader and, possibly, go down in history as the man who helped eliminate the constant threat posed by Iran.

Yet would such a gamble pay off? Would both the USA and UK as well as others be prepared to embark on overt support for Israel that was the catalyst for such a wider conflagration or would the support be more like that for Ukraine – non-combatant but through proxy military supplies – with all the uncertainty as to its continuity we have seen. The West could hardly stand by and watch Israel be dismembered but the degree of enthusiasm for entering such a venture might be a bad miscalculation for Israel’s Prime Minister. In any event, it would be a mega war in the Middle East.

As for the war in Ukraine President Zelensky and others have repeatedly used as justification for the continued and increased supply of weapons materiel from the West the assertion that if Putin wins in Ukraine then other parts of Europe (NATO countries?) will be next on his list. The Kremlin’s stated view is that this special action is designed to re-establish the integrity of the old Russian empire (it does not accept the validity of the independence of Ukraine in 1991 despite Ukraine having established diplomatic relations with 182 of the 193 United Nations member countries, the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta).Russia claims to pose no threat to other countries – unless they intervene.

That may be true but if Putin is taking a leaf out of Hitler’s playbook in the 1930s then Zelensky may well be right. Estonia and the other Baltic states plan their defence around the scenario of a Russian attack, possibly though the Suwalki Corridor which would involve a violation of Polish territory. Remember Hitler’s protestations that all that he needed was the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia for “lebensraum” and to protect the German speaking population there – but, having secured that through assurances encapsulated in Prime Minister Chamberlain’s notorious scrap of paper and “peace in our time”, he then occupied the whole of Czechoslovakia, attacked Poland, violated the neutrality Low Countries and went on to invade both France and Russia.

There is evidence to suggest that Hitler never thought that Britain would declare war but that it would stay on the sideline. He miscalculated and precipitated the Second World War. Could Putin similarly miscalculate with an attack on a Baltic state and precipitate a Third World War? He keeps testing NATO (which, so far, has shown solidarity and, counter-intuitively for Putin, added both Finland and Sweden to its number) so would he test the Alliance just one step too far? He might, like Hitler, calculate that other countries will not go to war over, say, the Baltic States. If, however, Article 5 is invoked successfully then he will have precipitated not only a new world war but almost certainly the destruction of his own country (another similarity with Hitler?).

Is all this unthinkable? It is arguable that in the years leading up to the First World War Germany’s intention was to have a conflict before its navy was wholly eclipsed by that of the British – in which case, as we know his generals cautioned, the Kaiser moved too fast in 1914 when his navy was not yet sufficiently developed. Did he miscalculate whether the Franco-Russian pact would hold and that the Russians really would go to war over Austria-Hungary’s punishment of Serbia? The “war to end all wars” should never have happened but it was a result of massive multi-lateral miscalculation. Those who play with fire will get burned.