{"id":67165,"date":"2024-04-04T12:10:06","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T17:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67165"},"modified":"2024-04-04T12:10:06","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T17:10:06","slug":"israel-just-raised-the-risk-of-a-regional-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67165","title":{"rendered":"Israel just raised the risk of a regional war"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Israel just raised the risk of a regional war<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

And US troops may suffer the consequences.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Iranian protesters burn US flags during a protest gathering to condemn the Israeli airstrike against the Iranian consulate in Syria, at Palestine Square in Tehran, Iran, on April 1, 2024.<\/figcaption>\u00a0Morteza Nikoubazl\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/cite><\/span><\/figure>\n
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Joshua Keating<\/a>\u00a0is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book,\u00a0Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood<\/b><\/a>, an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Even as the fighting has raged in\u00a0Gaza<\/a>, a question has hung over the war: Would it escalate into a wider regional conflict involving\u00a0Iran<\/a>, its various proxy groups, and perhaps even the US military?<\/p>\n

Nearly six months after October 7, it\u2019s a mixed picture. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have played a much larger role in the conflict than\u00a0most observers expected<\/a>, up to the point of meaningfully disrupting international shipping. But early fears that a full-scale war with Lebanon-based Hezbollah would break out on\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u2019s \u201cnorthern front\u201d or that the Iranian government itself would get directly involved haven\u2019t materialized.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Monday marked a major step up the escalatory ladder. Warplanes,\u00a0presumably Israeli<\/a>, carried out an airstrike in Damascus, Syria, which\u00a0killed a senior Iranian general<\/a>, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who was deeply involved in his government\u2019s activities in Syria and Lebanon. He is the highest-ranking Iranian military officer killed by enemy fire since Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed by a US drone strike in 2020.<\/p>\n

Per its general practice with strikes in Syria, Israel has not officially acknowledged the attack, but four Israeli officials, speaking anonymously,\u00a0confirmed their involvement<\/a> to the New York Times…<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel just raised the risk of a regional war And US troops may suffer the consequences. Iranian protesters burn US flags during a protest gathering to condemn the Israeli airstrike against the Iranian consulate in Syria, at Palestine Square in Tehran, Iran, on April 1, 2024.\u00a0Morteza Nikoubazl\/NurPhoto via Getty Images Joshua Keating\u00a0is a senior correspondent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[19567,1049,34222,522,1048,827,834,19375,862],"class_list":["post-67165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-joshua-keating","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-vox","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67166,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67165\/revisions\/67166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}