Israel-Iran: Breaking the Mideast Cycle of Revenge in the Aeschylus Trap - Bloomberg

Israel-Iran: Breaking the Mideast Cycle of Revenge in the Aeschylus Trap - Bloomberg

Ancient Greeks make great geopolitical guides. Seemingly everyone now analyzes the contest between China and the US in terms of the Thucydides Trap — the historian argued that war between rising Athens and established power Sparta became inevitable, because the incumbent will always try to protect its position. To understand the terrifying situation in the Middle East, maybe we should invoke Greek tragedy and ask if the world can escape the Aeschylus Trap.

Aeschylus was the first of the great Greek tragedians whose works have survived, and he’s most famous for his trilogy The Oresteia. It centers on the notion of blood grudge; each time someone achieves vengeance, someone else must wreak vengeance on them, and so the tragic cycle continues. In the Oresteia’s first play, Clytemnestra kills her husband Agamemnon to avenge their daughter Iphegenia, whom he’d sacrificed to try to ensure victory in the Trojan War. In the second, their son Orestes kills Clytemnestra to avenge Agamemnon. In the third, titled The Furies or Eumenides, Orestes is pursued by the Furies who try to drive him to madness and suicide with guilt. A “blood grudge” forces all the characters into never-ending escalation and violence. No death can go unavenged, and the violence can only escalate.

The relevance to the dynamics of the Middle East is fairly clear. Iranian missile strikes on Israel over the weekend were what the analyst Tina Fordham of Fordham Global Foresight describes as “the biggest uptick in Middle East geopolitical risk for 30 years.” Wall Street investors have hurried to assess the impact. Here are some salient points:

• It was the first direct attack Iran has ever made on Israel (as opposed to acting through surrogates).
• Iran also seized an Israeli-linked container ship in the Straits of Hormuz.
• Nobody was killed, and 99% of the missiles were thwarted before reaching their targets.
• Iran says the issue can be deemed concluded and appears not to have aimed at big civilian centers.
• Experts also point out that it went out of its way not to attack the US.
• Western allies who helped the Israeli defense are already strongly calling for Israel to declare the issue closed.

With an Israeli counterattack a real possibility in response to such an unprecedented if failed assault, Fordham argues that this is “the closest we have come to full-scale regional war in the Middle East for decades.” There will be collateral effects. Fordham suggests that the success of the defense will mean “increased pressure on the US and Europe to supply Ukraine with air defenses on par with Israel’s,” while allies in Asia want to see that the US upholds its promises.