Against a backdrop of escalating tensions and the recent missile attacks exchanged between Israel and Iran, the University Center Theater at University of Montana was packed nearly full on Tuesday afternoon for a discussion about the state of affairs in the region.
Part of the 21st Annual International Conference on Central and Southwest Asia, the panel was aptly titled “In the Shadow of a War: Israel, Hamas, the United States and Russia.” Three speakers, including two professors from UM and one from the Montana World Affairs Council, offered up their expertise and perspectives on the Israeli-Hamas conflict and its ties to Iran and the broader region.
“We are entering a new cold war,” said Mehrdad Kia, director of UM’s Central and Southwest Asian Studies Center. “At times, it’s not very cold, either.”
Kia outlined what he called a “bipolar world” in which much of geopolitics is shaped by two primary forces: the alliance between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea versus the United States and its allies.
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The Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 253 hostages were taken, were not just a continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as it was billed among politicos and much of the media, he said. “I think that’s a totally wrong analysis.”
Rather, according to Kia, it was the latest of a string of efforts by Iran to wage war on Israel through its proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. His basic question is whether the Oct. 7 attacks would have occurred if not for the support and encouragement of Iran.
Now, Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria and Iran’s retaliatory missile strike suggest a new willingness to wage war on one another more directly.
“Israel will retaliate,” Kia said. “We shall see in the coming days what the response is.”
Much of the conversation focused on the United States’ policy and relationship with Israel.
Michael Mayer, a professor of history at UM, focused specifically on President Joe Biden, questioning the consistency of his claims that he’s been a longtime friend of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mayer took the chance to editorialize about the president, calling Biden “arrogant,” criticizing him for validating casualty count numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry and characterizing his worldview as one that sees things the way he wishes they were, rather than how they actually are. Some of these traits, Mayer said, are shared by Netanyahu.
As the American people are increasingly critical of Biden’s stance on Gaza — a new poll found 37% of people wanted him to encourage Israel to halt its military operations in the area, up from February — Mayer’s position was that Biden has been fickle in his support and called for what amounts to regime change when he recommended Israel elect a new prime minister.
College campuses were the epicenter of some of the most fervent pro-Palestine protests in the country, particularly in the months immediately after Oct. 7 and Israel’s overwhelming military response that has killed more than 30,000 people in Gaza.
Demonstrators in Montana, led by the group Montanans for Palestine, have organized events statewide in an effort to get elected officials to call for a cease-fire. But things have been mostly quiet at UM, possibly setting the stage for this panel, open to the public, to be a space to air out those differences.
“The progressive left finds itself very comfortable with Islamist fascism, and I use that word not lightly,” Kia said, referring to the chant “from the river to the sea” that was popularized during many of the pro-Palestine demonstrations in Montana and across the country.
“That is a Hamas slogan,” said Kia, who said he personally favors a two-state solution. “When you receive your military technology from Iran, that is a signal that you want the destruction of Israel. You have no intention to negotiate.”
All three panelists agreed that the risks of the current conflict spilling over into a larger regional maelstrom are high, the consequences of which would be far-reaching.
Opportunity for feedback with the audience was cut short due to time limits. Both people who spoke expressed frustration at the panelists’ perspective, wishing that they had better represented the Palestinian point of view.
“(These) tend to be very emotional, hard discussions," said Robert Seidenschwarz of the Montana World Affairs Council. "Often it’s not with a lot of information that is important to that discussion.”