Black swans that have shaken West Asia

BLACK swans, says Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his classic 2007 book, are highly improbable events that have a high impact and where we cover our shock by concocting post-facto explanations. Applied to his native West Asia, the last 15 months have seen the appearance of more than one black swan and the high impact of each is still working its way through the region's fault lines.

The massive terror attack launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was a black swan event that initially cracked the legend of Israel’s invincibility. The heavy loss of life and abduction of over 250 citizens inflicted a collective sense of trauma on the Jewish state, accompanied by a reckoning that retribution alone could restore its sense of security. That retribution has led to over 45,000 dead Palestinians in Gaza, some 70 per cent of them women and children.

And yet, the bloodlust continues. Every day, day after day. Social media posts by Israeli soldiers, politicians and news anchors gloating over the orgy of death and destruction point to a stunning loss of humanity in people whose own sense of history should have made them more sensitive to the sheer injustice of collective punishment.

On the Arab street, October 7 was seen as a possible game-changer, an end to a debilitating status quo and a hope that the Iran-led Axis of Resistance would seize the opportunity and that Hezbollah and Hamas would inflict enough damage on Israel to bring it to the negotiating table. They clearly hadn't anticipated Israel’s willingness to use overwhelming and completely disproportionate force in the densely populated civilian areas of Gaza, nor its assassination of Hamas, Hezbollah leaders and even of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, nor the impotence of the international community to enforce a ceasefire.

The killing of Ismail Haniyeh in an Iranian safe-house in Tehran, of Hassan Nasrallah in a basement in Beirut and the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah cadres were mini black swans in their own right. The fear of Israel’s defence and intelligence capabilities was restored and the lack of a damaging response from Iran dashed any wishful thinking that October 7 might lead to a Palestinian state.

Israel's pursuit of retribution has been accompanied by a cavalier disregard of international humanitarian law. Judges at the International Criminal Court have issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, including starvation, murder, targeting of civilians and persecution. The International Court of Justice has also held Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem to be completely illegal.

Israeli's strident defiance of these rulings has been matched by the Biden administration's staunch defence of its principal ally in West Asia even as Trump 2.0 threatens sanctions against these international organisations for their temerity in citing the rule of law. For many in the Global South, the West's contrasting reactions to Ukraine and Gaza mark a fitting requiem to the rules-based international order.

The improbable evisceration of Hezbollah and diminution of Iran's bluster has also had a high impact in Israel’s immediate neighbourhood. To Israel's north, Hezbollah often acted as a state within a state and the fading of its dark shadow opens the possibility of Lebanon becoming a more normal state, something that its beleaguered citizens have yearned for decades.

And, in Syria, the sudden weakening of Hezbollah and Iran created an equally improbable opportunity for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The HTS moved out of its stronghold in Idlib, took the Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus cities in barely a week and toppled the hated Assad dynasty that had ruled Syria with an iron fist for over five decades.

The euphoria over the unexpected flight of Bashar al-Assad to Moscow among ordinary Syrians, however, is tempered by the unsavoury antecedents of Ahmed al-Sharaa. The HTS leader was closely affiliated with al-Qaeda and there are legitimate questions about the extent to which his jihadi tendencies were merely a youthful indiscretion.

To be fair, he has hardly put a foot wrong during the three weeks or so since he assumed power. Schools, government offices and markets are functioning with a remarkable sense of normalcy and the HTS has gone out of its way to reassure Syria’s sizeable Christian, Alawite and Druze minorities that their religious rights and personal freedoms would be respected.

After a brutal civil war that lasted for over a decade, the current transition period will be crucial to get the country back on its feet and will need the active support of both the international community and regional powers.

But this might be a tall order because Turkey, which backed the HTS, is triumphantly flexing its muscle while Iran is ruing the demise of a regime that provided both a strategic alignment and a land bridge to Tehran’s Hezbollah partners in Lebanon. Russia, which had steadfastly stood with the Assad regime during the civil war, was forced to abandon its protégé on account of its own preoccupation with Ukraine.

The departure of Assad now places a question mark on Russia’s naval base in Tartus and its air force base near Latakia. Despite his customary swagger at his yearend press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to negotiate with Turkey over the fate of its strategic foothold in the Mediterranean.

Which brings us back to Israel and the Palestinians. Under Netanyahu, Israel has won the war, but hasn’t shown any capacity for winning the peace. There isn’t even a peace plan on the table, nor a roadmap for Gaza once (if) Israel withdraws its troops. If anything, the military successes in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran have fed into hubris and a sense of impunity.

Leaders of the extreme right-wing factions within the Netanyahu government now speak of beachfront homes in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights within a Greater Israel while Netanyahu promises that after Syria, he will bring about a regime change in Iran.

The black swans of 2024 have clearly reshuffled the geopolitical map of West Asia and produced some unexpected winners and losers. The Trump presidency could be another black swan just over the horizon. But don’t concoct another false narrative to write off Iran and don't forget the Palestinians. Both will remain critical for peace and stability in the region.