In the wake of the alleged Israeli assault on thousands of Hezbollah members, whose pagers and walkie talkies simultaneously exploded on Monday and Tuesday, Arab governments rushed to condemn the attack, expressing fears that it would escalate the region's conflict.
Yet many of their citizens had other ideas.
In the days following the explosions, Arabic-language social media have been full of memes of Hassan Nasrallah, the militant group's chief, with a blown-up backside; schadenfreude remarks of how Hezbollah got what it deserved; claims that the explosions were divine justice and songs praising the operation. In Northern Syria, soldiers even handed out sweets to passing cars to celebrate the "Hezbollah massacre."
This isn't the first time since the Iran-backed terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7 that Arabs have cheered on brazen operations—allegedly—pulled off by the Jewish state against Iran and its allies. Indeed, according to The Media Line, a U.S.-based independent news agency that reports on Arabic and Hebrew-language media, the Arab world largely favored the assassination of Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in July and some Arab commentators even supported Israel's assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh last month. When Israel bombed the Houthi-controlled Hodeida port in Yemen, Saudi and Yemeni journalists and social media users rejoiced.
One of the many important nuances of the Middle East conflicts is that most victims of Iran and its proxies and clients such as Hezbollah and Hamas are not Jews but Arabs.
In Syria, Iran has propped up the despotic president Bashar Al Assad, who has used barrel bombs and chemical weapons against his own people, ethnically cleansed certain Sunni districts and strengthened violent and criminal militias such as Hezbollah and the ethnic-Afghan militia Liwa Fatemiyoun.
In Yemen, Iran-backed Houthis have torn the country apart, abusing their citizens and prioritizing fighting a faraway Israel while almost 3 million Yemeni children are either acutely or severely malnourished.
Lebanon, once known as the "Switzerland of the Middle East" for its snowcapped mountains and stability that led to it being the banking capital of the Arab world, has been hijacked by Iran and put on the brink of a war with Israel that would send it back to the Stone Age.
Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain live under constant threat from the Iranian regime, which seeks to dominate the region. In the past, Iran or its proxies have attacked each of these countries either directly or through proxies. In 2019, the United States and Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for striking two major oil production sites deep in Saudi territory. In 2022, Iranian-backed Houthis bombed an extension of the Abu Dhabi airport, killing three. And this year, an Iran-backed anti-Bahraini government proxy fired missiles at Israel from Bahraini territory. Iran and its network have also supported subversive groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, trying to indoctrinate their populations and have used captagon, an amphetamine-like drug, to exert pressure on them.
Despite their great wealth, Gulf states lack the military and irregular capabilities to take on Iran. The only two powers active in the region able to do so are the United States and Israel. But as Washington under President Joe Biden has taken a more conciliatory line with the Islamic Republic, Jerusalem has become the Gulf's only reliable partner in the fight against Iran.
Israeli political commentator Eliyahu Yossian mentioned that during the Abraham Accords, an Arab official told his Israeli counterpart that he hoped they were signing "with the Jews of 1967, not of 1973." This is a reference to the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel defeated five Arab armies and conquered enough land to triple in size in six days, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel, although ultimately victorious, was proven to be vulnerable. In other words, Abraham Accords countries want to see a strong and decisive Israel that can take on Iran and its proxies and win, not just maintain the status quo.
That is why although operations that humiliate Iran and its allies are important, they may not be enough. To truly prove its value to the region and gain back its deterrence, Israel must prove that it is not just capable of special operations but can also crush its enemies. This can only be done through decisively defeating both Hamas and Hezbollah.
Credence shouldn't be given to official Arab statements calling for de-escalation after Israel humiliates Iran and its proxies. When Israel pulls off a successful operation against the same Iranian-backed groups that torment Arab countries, their politicians and officials celebrate behind closed doors.
Joseph Epstein is the director for legislative affairs at the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a fellow at the Yorktown Institute, and a research fellow at the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
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