Iran is going for broke in a high-stakes nuclear game

Only historians will be able to tell us whether the Middle East is now facing its most dangerous moment since the Yom Kippur war in 1973.

- JACK STRAW

It easily could be, and it certainly feels that both sides are gambling with much higher stakes than ever.

The leaders on both sides are under great personal pressure. For all its shortcomings (and there are many under Bibi Netanyahu, who heads up a fragile coalition and is subject to corruption charges), Israel is a democracy. Iran is not.

Part of its government is elected. But its defence, intelligence, and security apparatus are under the direct control of its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, aged 85, who has never once been out of Iran since he assumed office in 1989. He's propped up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and an extensive network of true believers across Iran. Their blind faith and fanaticism has to be seen to be believed.

Those with intimate knowledge of Iran tell me that since the death of Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly failing to wear her hijab properly in 2022, the Iranian regime has comprehensively lost even the sullen consent of about 80 per cent of the Iranian people. The economy is badly affected by sanctions. Many of the brightest and best are simply leaving Iran.

Sometimes, Khamenei seems to recognise this. In the presidential elections earlier this year he allowed a more moderate candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, to stand. He won. At the UN last month, Pezeshkian made a conciliatory address, calling for a resumption of nuclear talks with the US.

But his views have been brushed aside. It's evident from the extraordinarily provocative actions of Khamenei and the IRGC, in firing nearly 200 missiles at population centres in Israel with little warning, that they have decided to go for broke.

It's an incredibly risky strategy. I hold no brief whatsoever for the Netanyahu government. Its policy towards the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories has been appalling. But Israel is a small country of nine million people (including two million Israeli Arabs). Iran has 88 million.