A drone view of the remains of a ballistic missile, as it lies in the desert following a massive missile and drone attack by Iran on Israel
| Photo Credit: YAIR PALTI

West Asia supplies the most extractive resources for the world’s energy consumption, which makes peace an imperative in the region. Yet tensions are escalating in the region on account of the Israel-Gaza conflict, the hostilities between Iran and Israel, and the attacks and counter-attacks between Israel and Iran-backed militias from Lebanon and Yemen.

Apart from this, the region has also become one of the most heavily militarised in the world. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers 2023’, four of the top 10 largest importers of arms last year were from West Asia, with the U.S. being the main supplier (Table 1).

All this has resulted in West Asia becoming a powder keg.

Table 1 | The table lists the top suppliers of arms to West Asian countries. Figures in %.

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Crises in the region

Israel’s shadow war with Tehran underwent a dramatic escalation recently. Iran launched its first-ever full-scale military attack against Israel on April 14 in retaliation to the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s attack on April 1 on an Iranian compound in Syria in which General Mohammed Reza Zehadi, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed.

Also read: A new low: On Israel’s Gaza war and the U.S. response

Israel has been continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip in response to the October 7 Hamas attack which led to the death of 1,139 people. Nearly 34,000 Palestinians have been killed so far. The conflict persists despite the international community urging for an immediate ceasefire. The 10-month-long Gaza war and the amping up of Iran-Israel hostilities has caused concern among international actors amid existing tensions such as the unresolved Yemeni civil war, the Lebanese political crisis, the 14-year-long Syrian civil war, and the Turkey-Cyprus conflict, among others.

Chart 2 | The chart shows region-wise military expenditure as a share of their GDP.

Amid these crises, West Asia today accounts for almost 30% of the global arms imports and spends the most on the military among all other regions in the world. In the case of military expenditure as a share of the GDP, West Asia and North Africa have been consistently leading for over three decades now, though the share has come down from the peak of over 10% of GDP, reported in the 1990s. West Asia spent 4.6% of its GDP in 2020 on the military, compared with 3.3% in North America.

Share of GDP

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the oil and natural gas rich nation-states, have consistently spent over 5% of their GDP on defence in recent years, the highest among countries in this region. Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Israel have also spent close to 5% of their GDP on their militaries in the last decade.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the military expenditure as a share of GDP for individual countries in the West Asian region.

Though Saudi Arabia and Oman’s shares are on a decreasing trend, they continue to lead others in the world in this measure.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the share of labour force employed in the armed forces.

This is also the region where the share of the labour force employed in the armed forces is the highest. Chart 4 shows that 2.5% of the labour force is engaged in the military in the West Asian and North African region, compared with only 1.2% in Europe and Central Asia.

The consistent demand for arms can be attributed to the growing instability in the region fuelled by domestic insurgencies, transnational terrorist attacks, unstable regional boundaries, and, in some cases, foreign policies and the need to project “hard power”.

The hangover of the ‘Arab Spring’ that led to a lot of churning and resulted in the aforementioned issues has also contributed to the increased militarisation.

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New Delhi:
Hezbollah last night launched a barrage of Katyusha rockets at an Israeli army headquarters in northern Israel amid tensions between Israel and Iran. Hezbollah is an armed group based in Lebanon that is funded financially and militarily by Iran.

Here are 10 points on this big story:

Tehran:

Explosions rocked Iran’s central Isfahan province on Friday, according to state media, while US officials told American news outlets that Israel carried out a retaliatory strike on the Islamic republic.

The attack comes less than a week after Tehran launched a barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles in its first-ever direct assault on Israel’s soil. That unprecedented onslaught was itself a reprisal for an earlier strike in Syria widely blamed on Israel.

The escalating tit-for-tat between the arch-rivals has prompted global powers to urge caution and appeal on both sides to not allow frictions underlying the war in Gaza to unfurl into a wider conflict across the Middle East.

Here is what we know so far about the reported strike inside Iran:

What was hit?

Early Friday, Iran’s Fars news agency said “three explosions” were heard near the Shekari army airbase in the northwest of Isfahan province.

Iran’s space agency spokesman Hossein Dalirian said several drones had been shot down and there had been “no missile attack for now”.

An unnamed US official told CNN the target of the Israeli strike inside Iran was not nuclear.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the “nuclear facilities in Isfahan province are completely secure”.

Citing informed sources, Tasnim also denied Iran had been attacked from abroad.

Blasts were also reported in southern Syria, according to a local activist group.

How did Iran respond?

Air defence systems over several Iranian cities were activated, state media reported.

Flights to the cities of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz were suspended, as were airports across several parts of the country, according to the Mehr news agency.

Flight-tracking software showed commercial flights avoiding western Iran, including Isfahan, and skirting Tehran to the north and east.

One flydubai plane that had already departed for Tehran had to return to Dubai after the Iranian capital’s airport was closed, the Emirati airline said in a statement.

On Friday morning, Iranian television carried a live feed of normal road traffic at a roundabout in Isfahan, while the official IRNA news agency said “no major damage” was reported after the explosions.

Why now?

Iran-backed armed groups across the region have carried out attacks on Israel since the war in Gaza broke out in October.

Both Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas are backed by Iran.

But the recent, and direct Israel-Iran exchanges have ventured into unprecedented territory.

In response to a deadly attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 widely blamed on Israel, Tehran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at its arch-foe.

Israel had vowed to respond to that onslaught launched on Saturday, which was mostly intercepted and caused no deaths.

Just hours before the explosions were heard inside Iran on Friday, the foreign minister warned that Israel would come to “regret” any attack on his country.

Speaking at the UN Security Council during a meeting on the Middle East on Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called the Islamic republic’s weekend barrage a “legitimate defence” and said Israel should “stop any further military adventurism”.

What has been the reaction?

Israel’s military told AFP on Friday that “we don’t have a comment at this time” when asked about reports of explosions and strikes in Iran and Syria.

There was no immediate comment from the White House or Pentagon.

Several US media outlets reported that Washington had received advanced notice of Israel’s strikes, but had not endorsed the operation or played any part in its execution.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Israelis of Iranian heritage are torn between nostalgia for their country of origin and anger at its leaders following Tehran’s unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend. Many believe this is not the moment for Israel to retaliate.

“I hope we won’t have to attack Iran now, this is not the time. Let them worry a bit,” said Zion Hasid, president of the Central Organization of Iranian Immigrants, which says it represents 300,000 Iranian Jews.

In Jerusalem on Wednesday, he brought together his friends and members of the organisation’s administrative council for a meal ahead of Jewish Passover next week.

Many observers now think an Israeli response to Iran’s attack will come only after the religious holiday.

Hasid, a businessman with fond memories of Iran, said he has “felt bad” since Tehran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel on April 13.

The attack won Israel wide-ranging support from its Western allies as its ongoing assault in the Gaza Strip was meeting with rising disapproval, including from stalwart ally the United States.

Like others in Israel, Hasid worries a heavy-handed response could spark a violent backlash.

“I hope Israel will act wisely and with a cool head. That way, with God’s help, we will be able to win,” he said.

Iran — a key backer of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Palestinian militant group Hamas — launched the attack in retaliation for an April 1 strike on its consulate in Damascus that was widely blamed on Israel.

Nearly all the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israel with help from the United States and other allies. Israel has vowed to respond, despite calls to prevent escalation in the Middle East.

‘Blessed’

Iran’s Jewish community was for a long time the largest in the Muslim world. Many of the country’s Jews have emigrated in search of a better life elsewhere.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution and the fall of the shah, others followed, although Jews were protected under the constitution. Many settled in the United States or Israel.

Hasid has been living in Israel since 1964. His business cards bear the Israeli and Iranian flags — the latter with the image of a lion in the centre, as before the revolution.

“If the shah was in power, this wouldn’t have happened. The current regime wants to show the world it runs the Middle East,” he said.

After its creation in 1948, Israel had close ties with Iran. But the 1979 revolution dramatically ended the friendship and they have moved from firm allies to sworn enemies.

Members of the Central Organization of Iranian Immigrants, who sometimes converse in Farsi, all speak with the same affection for their country of birth and the “blessed” times of the shah, when Iran-Israel relations were at their peak.

Hostages

Yehezkiel Yegana, 75, whose cousin was killed by Hamas fighters on October 7, said he often thinks of the Israeli captives the militants took to Gaza.

Israel estimates 129 of the 250 hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

But Yegana has not forgotten what he called the “Jewish hostages in Iran” either.

Iran still has a Jewish community of between 8,000 and 10,000, who have a reserved seat in the Iranian parliament but complain of mistrust from the authorities in the face of the hostility between the two governments.

“The entire Iranian people has been taken hostage by an extremist group and will free itself from it one day,” he said.

Yegana said the question of an extended war between the two countries was “complex”.

“If we attack, that could provoke a conflict on several fronts,” he said. “If we don’t attack, we will be seen as weak.”

But Yegana believes the days of the Islamic republic are numbered.

“We’ve never been so close to the moment when we’ll be able to return to our country, to visit the cities and forests of our childhood,” he said.

 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Ann Tessa Joseph, a deck cadet who was a part of 17 Indian Indian nationals onboard the seized vessel MSC Aries, on her arrival at the Cochin Airport, Thursday, April 18, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

One of the 17 Indian sailors aboard the Portugal-flagged MSC Aries that was detained by the Iranian authorities last weekend has returned home in Kerala, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has announced. Ann Tessa Joseph, a resident of Thrissur, was welcomed at the Cochin International Airport by government officials when she arrived from Iran on Thursday (April 18).

“The Indian Mission in Tehran remains seized of the matter and is in touch with the remaining 16 Indian crew members of the container vessel. The crew members are in good health and in contact with their family members in India,” said the MEA in a press release informing that the MEA is trying to ensure the well being of the Indian sailors in Iranian custody. The Iranian authorities had earlier claimed that the cargo vessel had “violated international maritime law”.

In the meanwhile, in an interview with The Hindu, Iran’s ambassador to India, Iraj Elahi said on April 18, “Indian sailors are not detained. They are at the disposal of the ship’s captain. We are in direct contact with the Indian Embassy in Tehran and the Indian citizens are in a very good condition. As far as we know, they haven’t been able to come to the beach yet due to the bad weather and stormy sea. They are free and can leave Iran whenever they like.”

On April 13, the ship was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who rappelled down from a helicopter on the ship and steered it towards an Iranian base. Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz had described the Iranian move as “pirate operation” saying, “I call on the European Union and the free world to immediately declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guards corps as a terrorist organisation and to sanction Iran now.”

As a result, sources said the return of the other 16 Indians, still on board the MSC Aries at sea is more complex. While no charges have been pressed against the crew members, the ship itself has been impounded, and the crew would need a second ship to help them come ashore. In addition, the Aries cannot be left unmanned, and therefore, some crew members would need to remain. After a strong request from India, including External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s intervention, the Iranian government made an exception for the female cadet, and have ensured that other crew members can speak to their families in India.

The MEA swung into action after news spread that at least 17 Indian sailors were among the crew of the MSC Aries that is owned by London-headquartered Zodiac Maritime of Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer. At the time of the incident, the vessel was chartered to Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) headquartered in Switzerland. The MEA had started dialogue with the Iranian authorities both through the Indian embassy in Tehran as well as the Iranian embassy here to free the Indian members of the crew.

Soon thereafter, Mr. Jaishankar reached out to his counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and sought Tehran’s assistance in ensuring early release of the Indian crew members.

Interception of the MSC Aries added to the tension between Iran and Israel that subsequently led to the first ever drone and missile attack by Iran on multiple targets in Israel. By capturing the ship from the Strait of Hormuz, Iran had hinted that it had the military might to disrupt maritime traffic through the strategically important route in case of any further escalation in tension between Tehran and Tel Aviv. The incident is also an escalation to the ongoing Red Sea crisis. Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, Houthi rebels in Yemen have been targeting Israeli-linked commercial shipping on the high seas with ballistic missiles and drones.

Palestinian Territories:

Palestinian group Hamas said Wednesday that Iran’s weekend attack on Israel was a “legitimate and deserved” response to a strike on the Islamic Republic’s consulate in Syria.

In its first reaction to the Iranian aerial attack, Hamas said it was a “legitimate and deserved response to the Zionist entity’s… targeting of the Iranian consulate building in Damascus” on April 1.

“The response from the Islamic Republic of Iran confirms that the time when the Zionist entity (Israeli) could act as it wanted without accountability or punishment has ended,” Hamas added in a statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Iran said it asked the US to “step aside” as the country prepares a response to a suspected Israeli attack on its consulate in Syria while Hezbollah, its main proxy in the Middle East, warned the Jewish state it’s prepared for war.

In a written message to Washington, Iran “warned the US not to get dragged into Netanyahu’s trap,” Mohammad Jamshidi, the Iranian president’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, wrote on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The US should “step aside so that you don’t get hit.”

“In response, the US asked Iran not to hit American targets,” Jamshidi said.

The US hasn’t commented on the alleged message Iran had sent.

CNN reported that the US is on high alert and is preparing for a “significant” response from Iran against Israeli or American targets in the region. The network cited an unnamed US official.

NBC, citing two unnamed US officials, said President Joe Biden’s administration is concerned any attack could be inside Israel, specifically against “military or intelligence targets, rather than civilians.”

The Biden administration did take the unusual step of communicating directly to Iran that the US was unaware Monday’s strike in Damascus would happen, Bloomberg reported. That suggested the US was trying to prevent its own forces and bases in the Middle East being attacked.

The Islamic Republic has said it will deliver a “slap” to Israel, its arch enemy. Still, it’s unclear when that would happen or whether Iran would try to attack Israel directly or through one of its proxy groups such as Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.

The airstrike hit the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing at least seven Iranians, including two generals. While Israel has repeatedly targeted Iran-linked assets in Syria over the past few months, this was the first time an attack struck an Iranian diplomatic building.

Israel has been on alert since then, canceling home leave for combat troops, calling up reserves and bolstering air defenses. Its military scrambled navigational signals over Tel Aviv on Thursday to disrupt GPS-navigated drones or missiles that might be fired at the country.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Friday said a response from Iran is undoubtedly coming. But, he said, his group won’t “interfere in such decisions.”

“And after that, how Israel will behave, the region would enter in a new phase,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

Nasrallah, who lives in hiding, highlighted the coordinated work of Iran’s so-called resistance groups in the region.

Hezbollah, the Middle East’s most powerful militia, said the group hasn’t used “its primary arsenal” in the daily skirmishes with Israel along the southern border of Lebanon since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.

Hezbollah is “completely prepared and ready” for any war with Israel, Nasrallah said.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Emergency services work at a building hit by an air strike in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Iran and one of its key proxies vowed on April 2 to respond to a strike widely attributed to Israel that demolished Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus and killed seven, including two Iranian generals.

Iran’s state TV reported Tuesday that the country’s Supreme National Security Council, a key decision-making body, met late Monday and decided on a “required” response to the strike. The report said the meeting was chaired by President Ebrahim Raisi, but provided no further details.

Also read: Why are conflicts spreading in West Asia? | Explained

Israel has repeatedly targeted military officials from Iran, which supports militant groups fighting Israel in Gaza, and along its border with Lebanon. Monday’s strike in Damascus signaled an escalation because it struck an Iranian diplomatic mission.

It was not clear if Iran would respond itself, risking a dangerous confrontation with Israel and its ally the United States, or if it would continue to rely on proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The airstrike in Syria killed Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who led the elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016, according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. It also killed Zahedi’s deputy, Gen. Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi, and five other officers.

Hezbollah said Tuesday that Zahedi played a crucial role in helping “develop and advance the work” of the group in Lebanon.

“This crime will certainly not pass without the enemy receiving punishment and revenge,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza nearly six months ago, those proxies have stepped up attacks, leading to near daily cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, and frequent Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. Hamas, which rules Gaza and attacked Israel on Oct. 7, is also backed by Iran.

Israel, which rarely acknowledges strikes against Iranian targets, said it had no comment on the latest attack in Syria, although a military spokesman blamed Iran for a drone attack early Monday against a naval base in southern Israel.

Israel has grown increasingly impatient with the daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah, which have escalated in recent days, and warned of the possibility of a full-fledged war. Houthi rebels have also been launching long-range missiles toward Israel, including on Monday.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said Tuesday that Iran relayed an important message to the United States late Monday and that it called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The message to Washington was delivered through a Swiss envoy in Tehran; Switzerland looks after U.S. interests in Iran.

IRNA said Iran holds the United States, Israel’s closest ally, responsible for the strike.