What began on October 7 as a conflict between Israel and Hamas seems to be spreading across the entire region. Even after 100 days of a conflict that has already claimed the lives of more than 25,000 people, Israel’s military assault on Gaza continues.
But this war has sprouted many secondary plot-lines: Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shia group backed by Iran, has been exchanging fire with the Israeli military. Shia groups that serve as Iran’s proxies have been attacking US and Israeli assets in Syria and Iraq. Israel itself has been carrying out assassinations of senior Iranian generals and intelligence officers.
And Iran has done strikes on what it claims were Mossad assets in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. It also carried out missile and drone attacks on Pakistani territory, sparking a retaliatory strike on its own territory from Pakistan. Amid all this, the Houthis of Yemen have kept up attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and in response, the US has been bombing Houthi positions in Yemen.
So, how does one make sense of all that’s going on? Is the West Asia security architecture unravelling? And how are these confrontations likely to develop in the weeks to come? Tune in to find out.